Film to Digital: Truth about the transition?

[jwyn]

I am planning to go digital, from an EOS 1 to an EOS 10D. My shooting is done mostly on aviation subjects: in-flight shots of airplanes, ground shots of the interiors and exteriors, some plane-and-pilot portraits. Not having to ever buy or pay to process film sounds great, as does the freedom to shoot away without concern. But I recognize there are other costs/time factors involved, I just don't know how to calculate them. They seem to mostly involve three items: computer, printer, and software; and two types of time: the amount spent learning how to use the gear, and the time spent transforming whatever gets saved on the chip into something of sufficient quality to be uploaded and reproduced in a magazine.

I want to do all editing, etc. on a laptop PC (my current Vaio is due for replacement). Are there any special requirements in a computer to make them more digital photo friendly? Can photos typically be improved by tweaking them in photoshop or some other program? How much time does this take, for example say you were going through the equivalent of 15 rolls of 36 exposure slide film? Has this proved to be a problem for people making this transition? What software is needed? Is a printer necessary for this editing, or can it be done onscreen? What kind of printers work best for this output? What haven't I asked about that turns out to be an unrecognized major issue?

I am eager to hear from anyone who can provide a perspective on these questions.

Thanks!

[daveh]

jwyn wrote:
I want to do all editing, etc. on a laptop PC (my current Vaio is due for replacement). Are there any special requirements in a computer to make them more digital photo friendly?

Well mostly you want a CRT. An LCD (especially a laptop LCD) will be your weakest link in photo editing.

jwyn wrote:
Can photos typically be improved by tweaking them in photoshop or some other program?

Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, and many others will all work (at dramatically different price points.)

Time? 5 seconds to a couple of days. Really it depends on what you need to do. Since there's so much you could do, you need to decide how much is worthwhile. I was doing this long before going digital. Since about 1995 much of my (important) film has been scanned and worked over.

For example, when doing an important product shot I will get rid of any dust spec by hand. If it's less important I'll use an automatic filter. With a film camera (before film scanners) I usually would have just lived with the dust because getting rid of it was too much work. There are lots of variables here.

[RichardtheSane]

Wow, a lot of questions there! First recommendation I would make is if you can afford to, keep your EOS 1 - Digital isn't beating film yet :)

Here is what I do with my photographs and some other bits and bobs.

When I am shooting digital I find that I am more creative, because it is less expensive to make a mistake. Good thing. I fill up compact flash cards quickly, so when you buy the equipment get plenty of memory cards. Don't spend all your money on one card, buy at least 4 cards to make up the total amount you need. Basically if you have a card go faulty/missing it is far less upsetting to loose a quarter of your images and also you still have 3 cards for the rest of the days shooting.
OK, now I shoot RAW all the time, so I am going to give you a quick rundown of my main RAW workflow (which IMHO is much quicker than a jpeg workflow).
Shoot the images
Download the images to the PC using a card reader and zoombrowser
Load a seperate program called Capture One DSLR LE to develop my raw images.
I probably spend 1-5 minutes per image cropping, correcting exposure (yes, shoot raw and you can do that :) ) and correcting white balance, colour casts and contrast .
Once done I add them all to a batch for developing and leave the computer to it while I eat/sleep/drink beer :)
Now you have a directory with RAW files and another with the final TIFF's - at this point I back both up.
Now into photoshop to prepare for printing (I use a canon i950) - this can take a bit longer and is made much less frustrating by having a decent colour profile setup across your equipent to ensure what you see onscreen is what prints. Products such as the colorvision spyder are good for this. If you are going to use a laptop make sure it has a screen which can be profiled.
In photoshop I will double check the colours using the many photoshop tools available. Often apply some unsharp mast to brin the best of the image out nicely and also make any final crops to get a good print size.
I print the image, look at it, and think 'I did that' :D

I am sure this doesn't answer all of your questions, but it is a good starting point to see what you can expect when shooting digital.

[GPR1]

I'm a serious enthusiast, not a pro, so I don't go through as much film. Digital isn't cheap -- beyond the camera you mention computer and printer. The consumables aren't cheap either -- ink and paper.

However, I agree with the above post that you can be more creative, and I really enjoy the immediate feedback of the display. I also enjoy the post-processing in the computer, but the learning curve is steep, even for an experienced photographer.

I still have my film cameras. Some situations cry out for Velvia to me, but I shoot mostly with my 10D now.

[sjprg]

I do a most of my PS 7 work on a laptop, for critical work I plug in an external monitor. (21"). LCDs can be calibrated and I use mine daily.

The main thing is "memory, memory, memory" even at the expense of CPU speed. My present recomendation is the Toshiba P25-607 with two gig of DDR memory on a 200Mhz FSB. The specs are on the web.

Otherwise Adobe 7.0 is almost a must, though 8.0 should be out in Sept. (current rumor). Wait if you can. It has the raw conversions for the Canon cameras.

C1 is the current best converter, and the limited edition ($99) works well if you don't have a large workflow. If you do the PRO version ($499) handles large batched conversions. Either are available for free 30 day evaluation.

I'll never go back to film.
Paul

[jwyn]

Hello All –

Thanks to all for your thoughts on this subject. Recommendations on memory, downloading protocol and editing software, as well as the carrot of the increased creativity, are all very helpful in plotting my digital converstion!

Best –

jwyn

[Andy_T]

Hi JWYN,

Don't forget about hard disk storage, if you want to use your Laptop!

A RAW image on the 10D would be about 5 MB. Most 'consumer' laptops have free hard disk memory in the 5 - 15 GB range, which would be about 500 - 1500 photos. Now, with a DSLR, it won't take you long to shoot that amount of photos...

So you might think about an external drive or a CD/DVD writer to archive your photos (100 per CD / 1000 per DVD). If you have more than one laptop, a firewird CF card reader (and the CF card from your camera) could take care of image transfer. On the Laptop, a PCMCIA adapter would be fastest.

Regards,
Andy