As I mentioned here a few months ago, I bought my first digital camera, a Canon Powershot A40. It was intended as a replacement for my film-based point-and-shoot camera. Since I bought that camera, something that I never imagined happened: I’ve stopped using my very expensive, high-quality, film-based Nikon gear.
I’ve put off going digital for some time, but there’s no way around the fact that film’s a pain-in-the ass. As Val would tell you, I’ve got a drawer of film I never got around to having processed, and there are plenty of images on them that I’d like to see, but not at the price it’d cost to process them all and time it would take to wade through the ones I didn’t.
With my new Canon, pics are on the website and shared almost instantly, and the chaff is tossed easily. The only problem is that its 2.0 megapixel images don’t make for good landscape and other photography. This thinking has led me to decide to sell a bunch of my Nikon gear (and my film scanner) on eBay and make the jump to all-digital.
I’m keeping my lenses, and my current plan is to use the proceeds of the sale of my film equipment to buy the digital Nikon D100.
I played with the D100 at Macworld, and more recently at Keeble & Shuchat. It’s great: it feels like a film-based SLR, but is 100% digital. It’s a 6.1 megapixel body that can use my old Nikon lenses. It’s got a 1.5 focal length multiplier, which means that my cool 80-200mm f/2.8D becomes a 120-300 f/2.8D. That’s cool, but my favorite 24mm f/2.8D becomes the equivalent of a much more pedestrian 36mm. So, the only downside of this move is that I’ll have to invest in a wider-angle lens sometime soon.
I’ll post pics and stories about the transition after I get the camera and have some observations. My auctions end Sunday night, so I expect that it’ll be a couple of weeks before I make the jump. I sure am looking forward to being able to shoot and print without the hassles of film.