Award winning Amateur photographer needs help
switching from film to digital.
A customer asked me the other day:
After twenty years of shooting double exposures, landscapes
with water and art photography for myself, I am seriously looking to switch
from my Canon EOS A2e film camera to a digital set up. Where do I start?
Next, you need to decide about FoV crop cameras. In these,
the sensor [the single most expensive part of the camera] is smaller, and acts
like an extender as far as the focal length, but the aperture is not affected.
Indeed, as the sensor is in the middle of the film frame, any of your lenses
that were a bit soft in the corners will be improved due to the crop! OTOH, any
lenses with a bit of CA, chromatic aberration, will likely be worse in digital.
With one of Canon's 1.6 FoV crop cameras, your wide angle 24 mm lens will act
like [fl x 1.6] a 38 mm lens, not very wide at all. This is good at the long
end, for distant wildlife shots, but not so good at the wide end.
So, to maintain the focal length experience you have, the FF
[full frame sensor size = 35 mm film (negative) size] Canon 5D Mk. II is the
camera to get. There are other possibilities, but they are all more expensive.
The 5D Mk II is an excellent camera, although all cameras have limitations. A
FF camera will be more important if your landscapes are normally shot at wide
angles, as some are, or you may need to get a new wide angle lens also.
OTOH, the Canon 40D and the new 50D cameras are available
new, are quite capable as FoV crop 1.6 cameras, and are less costly. As an
experienced shooter, I think you would be less happy with the entry level
Canons, of which the XSi is the current leader, although they are smaller and
weigh (and cost) less. If size and weight of the XSi is good for you, it's a
nice entry level camera.
Indeed, as you venture into digital, not only will film
costs go away, but you can do things like check the previous shot on the LCD
display and checking the histogram to see if the camera clipped and you need to
adjust the exposure. Many advanced features such as a higher frame rate, more
capable autofocus, double exposure ability, histogram display, etc. will be
found, or be better implemented, on the xxD [and 5D] cameras, rather than the
entry level XSi, XTi, etc. cameras. Check these cameras out in your hands, and
feel how whichever camera feels natural [or less so] in your hands. Check out
the viewfinder also, as some SLR people find the viewfinder to be like looking
through a tunnel compared to using their SLR viewfinder, and hard to get used
to. Different models of DSLR are better or worse at this, as usual.
Try these out, and welcome to the new world of digital
photography.
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