1D Mark 3?

[Jonathan Wienke]

Jonathan, obviously for someone that shoots as much as you do, it makes perfect business sense. No argument from me there. My question would be, have your photographic skills and vision improved proportionaly? Out of 36 shots (1 film roll), do you have more keepers now then before? Blasting away at high speed motordrives is easy, but I prefer to photograph in a more "meditative" way.

Absolutely. One learns by shooting, looking at what you shot, analyzing what worked and what went wrong, and applying that to future shooting. I don't use motor drive that much, I compose and shoot each frame individually 99% of the time. I do shoot a lot though, and the experience has definitely improved the "keeper" rate. I shoot a lot of concerts and events, where a slow contemplative approach means you'd miss a lot of stuff if you had to set up a tripod and take 11 meter readings and fuss with the focus for 2 minutes before firing the shot. What makes the difference between a keeper and a clunker for me now has more to do with things like the subject blinking as the shutter was pressed, or someone walking in front of me, a band member moving unexpectedly, etc. The experience I've gained from shooting that many frames means I can go in and shoot and be confident in my technical abilities, and select shots based on best facial expression, composition and the emotion of the moment rather than on whether I manged to get the exposure and/or focus within reasonable limits. That means I can catch grab shots that a contemplative approach would totally miss. Here's an example:



I shot this at a wedding; as the bride was getting ready, one of the bride's friends came in with her daughter and the daughter sat down for a moment. The only reason I got this was because I was technically prepared and all I had to do was briefly AF and hit the shutter.

If I'm shooting pruducts in a studio type setting, I won't shoot very many frames; I don't need to for that. If I'm doing a series of similar items with the same lighting, I may only shoot one frame per item once I've got focus, exposure, and lighting dialed in. It's a different approach for a different situation.

[T-1000]

I didn't want to start a new thread, so I'll ask this question in here:

MR says:
"I was working with my new Canon 1Ds Mark II, and also the Phase One P25 back on a Contax 645. These are both wonderful tools, though very different in their character and capabilities. I'll have much more to say on this, but just to give you a hint – the game isn't about megapixels any more!"

What do you guys think this means?  Three things come to my mind:

1. He's talking about the importance of quality of the lenses as we increase in megapixels, or...

2. Somehow, the Canon beat the crap out of the Phase One 22 megapixel back (I doubt it), or...

3. The Canon did VERY well against the Phase One 22 megapixel back, and/or he enjoys using the Canon more than the Phase One back.

I'm pretty sure by the time everyone starts answering this question, Michael will have already updated this site with his field reports and comparisons.  But for now, what do you all think he means?

T-1000

[T-1000]

Wow, I totally forgot about Dynamic Range.  Too bad I can't afford the Phase One beast

T-1000

[didger]

Yeah, maybe that's what I needed to hear too; think I'll go pick up a 1dsMKII.  Uh, well, maybe after I figure out where to "pick up" the money for it.

How soon you figure MKII for you, Jonathan?

[DiaAzul]

The only problem that I have at the moment is that the cameras have now outstripped the supporting technology in terms of capability. The 1DsII is nice, though the 1DII fits my needs perfectly (I'm a snap and run sort of person), however, I would like to see a printer with greater tonal range to give more detail in shadows and highlights rather than more pixels (it would be nice to get output like a traditional B&W print - if anyone knows how to do this then let me know). However, if I was a landscape artist I can see that more spatial resolution would be a real benefit.

[didger]

digital images into slides, to be sure that they will have something in the future

I've had enough grain, low resolution, scratched emulsion, and all around physical deterioration of slides in my past.  I don't reckon this is a "something" that I want in my future.
Kinda like making a plastic copy of a diamond as a "backup" and "something for the future" in case the diamond gets lost or damaged.  Digital storage is extremely compact and economical and pretty bomb proof if you're diligent about backup and maybe refreshing every 5 years or so.  Beyond that, just how much "future" are we talking about here, that a slide would survive for?  I've worked on a scanning and archiving project for a huge collection of old slides (1970-1980 or so); yeeccchhh!!  No more old slides (or new) for me.

[DiaAzul]

CDs/DVDs, No. They will certainly rot after two years or less as the tech stands today. It would not suprise me one bit however to pull out a hard drive 20 years from now that I store today and find it still accessable with all my data.

The only thing we can say with certainty is that there is no certainty. Which having written it is a bit of a contradiction, however, ho hum.

I think you will find that both of your statements are extremes, though I am sure you realise this. There are cases (as Didger has pointed out) where CDs are perfectly readable after 10 years - though if these are music CDs then they include a lot of error detection/correction algorithms to protect against fault data bits, data CDs do not and as such will not be so fault tolerant. Hard Disks are like any other magnetic media and degrade over time. Many  large companies used to (and still do to a lesser extent) store back up data on magnetic tape in offsite storage, however, more often than not, when an old tape was retrieved the data was found to be corrupted.

The only way to overcome this problem is to continuously and regularly test your back ups. Keep two copies of the data backed up and if one of the backup media should show signs of failure then copy all the files onto a new media and throw away the old. As the only way to detect errors is not being able to read the archived file then a duplicate is required for recovery. This process is difficult to conduct with CD-ROM/DVD, hence the reason that more organisations are moving towards disc based systems - even if the archiving systems discs are unpowered (cold) most of the time.

All media will fail - archiving is not about which media the images are stored on, but the ongoing process of checking and replacing faulty media.

File formats and the ability to read data over a 10 year period is less likely to be an issue as there is so much equipment/data out in the world that needs to be supported from a legacy point of view. If you are following an archiving process that swaps out faulty media on a regular basis, then converting from one file format to another can be done at the same time. It is a case of getting away from a mentality of store and forget, towards one of constant maintenance.

[Jonathan Wienke]

Anyway, Jonathan, thanks for posting that picture; my smile for the day.

You're welcome. Here's another little grab-shot gem:



This was from a portrait sitting I was doing at a park. It isn't exactly what the parents had in mind at the beginning of the shoot, but when I saw that in the viewfinder, I couldn't not hit the shutter release.

[Paulo Bizarro]

Didger, if you never had any digital storage failure, you must be lucky. I am in the process of copying my June 2003 CDRs into DVDRs. You know what? On average, one file per CD gives me an error message.

And these are Sony high quality CDRs I am talking about. The good news is that I have the original slide safely stored away.