Having gone back to film SLRs and scans for most professional applications, in 2002 I purchased a handsome new digital camera. The Canon S30 was one of that generation of devices which gave due warning to the film industry. "Your days are numbered". It was beautifully made. Picture quality was more than adequate for gorgeous 10x8 inch prints. It had a nice colour screen, the zoom lens was handy enough and speed of operation had improved hugely. The compact flash memory card had arrived, providing a practical solution to storage at long last.
Of course the technical competencies which cameras like the S30 could offer were not the real reason that film was on its way to retirement. After all, film SLRs were still vastly more suited to the rigours of day to day photo-journalism and film was still much superior for most forms of commercial work. Nonetheless most people could quickly see that with a camera like the S30, their ability to produce genuinely fine images had just improved out of sight. Photographers could see the result of what they had just shot immediately and if they didn't like it, they could shoot another without financial penalty. Even more, with the aid of software like Adobe Photoshop, their computers could provide all of the image optimization power of a traditional darkroom.
This was a moment of much genuine excitement for keen amateur photographers. It was a moment when many casual photographers BECAME keen photographers.
When the Canon S30 was released for sale, affordable digital SLRs did not exist and so "point & shoot compacts" were effectively the front line of digital image capture. Excellent 3 megapixel sensors quickly grew to an entirely satisfactory four and five megapixels and even to a distinctly superfluous six megapixels ... and there they should have stayed.
I have comments to make on the idiotic megapixel race in compact cameras but that discussion comes in a future post. In the meantime, do you like the above picture of the S30? It was taken today, handheld at 1/15th of a second. Not bad eh?
The old Canon still looks and works as if it was brand new. Ah they don't make 'em like they used to.
Have a look at my work: www.pbase.com/davidhobbs
1 comment:
David
This is excellent and a very worthwhile project. Congratulations. I love the images of the early digital cameras.There is a good author Sherry Turkle who, I think, you would like. I have her latest called THE INNER HISTORY OF DEVICES which she has a chapter and has edited. I will have it copied and sent to you. No chapters on the digital camera. Now there is an opening for you. Congratulations. I am envy with your creativity!!
Steve
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