Yellow Boxes No More

People who read this blog from time to time may remember my lamenting the end of Kodachrome film. This wonderful brand in its various incarnations had signified photography itself for me back in the (now) rose tinted 1960s. The yellow boxes which had brought my Kodak Instamatic colour slides back to me represented moments of great anticipation and joy. There remains a battered old suit case in my garage, containing dozens of them still. They hold hundreds of surviving transparencies which "I will eventually finish scanning and organising ..... someday soon".

Even as we read of the last Kodachrome production run, many of us realised that the final days for the Kodak company itself, could not possibly be far distant. When Kodak filed for bankruptcy a week or two back, there could not have been too many people who were actively surprised.

You don't need me to tell you how much Kodak dominated world photography, how the Box Brownie transformed the lives of our families, how many fantastic innovations it brought us over the generations and how many people it once employed around the world. Kodak was a true industrial giant - a legend of western culture and a personal friend which stood beside us at our daughter's wedding, our son's graduation, our mother's 80th birthday, our annual holidays to the seaside, the completion of our new home etc etc etc

It was in the movie "Jurassic Park" that two characters discussed why dinosaurs shouldn't be brought back to live again in the modern era. The argument went something like, "They had their time and simply can't exist in OURS" In the case of Kodak I guess that must be right. Somehow, while noises are still being made about the company returning from the grave like some latter day corporate Lazarus, I think we all know that Kodak has really been consigned to history. Hell of a shame ... but inevitable, I guess.

Is Digital REALLY Better than Film Part 2

Last time I discussed some reasons why shooting and printing with film can offer tangible advantages. Sometimes digital ISN'T as good as film.

Now it's time to get real. I contend that for almost ALL of us, almost all of the time, digital really is the way to go.

We all like to talk about "the old days". I, myself, am one of the worst offenders. I miss my Kodachrome slides and the excitement of receiving the "little yellow boxes". I miss the wonderful old cameras, the wonderful old darkrooms. I miss the mystique, the ceremony and the ALCHEMY of it all. Damn it. I miss the MAGIC. But perhaps what I really miss are the times that went with it. Maybe I just miss my youth or the traditional skill set.

"Here am I. I spend a lifetime learning the craft of traditional film photography. Along comes digital and any idiot with a computer, after five minutes on "Photoshop Elements", is better at image making than I am. My life has no MEANING anymore. It is just not fair."

Ring a bell? Be honest. Yes I thought so.

There are people that will tell you that film derived prints just plain LOOK better. They'll tell you that the COLOUR is better - or more natural or more vivid or more romantic or somehow less clinical. The fact is that many old diehards don't WANT digital images to be better, just like they didn't want flat screen TVs to be better than CRT screens or CDs to be better than vinyl records or jet planes to be better than propeller ones or "talkies" to be better than silent movies.

Someday we'll be hearing how petrol engined cars were better than these new fangled hydrogen fuel cell ones. 2D television sets were better than 3D ones or 3D with the old glasses was actually better than these "new" spectacle free 3D ones. etcetera, etcetera, etcetera yawn.

Lets pollute this discussion with some hard facts.

Colour fim emulsions were fixed to a particular colour temperature totally ignoring the fact that effective white balance changes with the seasons, the time of day, the atmospheric conditions and whether I had porridge or corn flakes for my breakfast. When we wax lyrical about the glory days of Fujichrome Velvia or Ansco or Kodachrome II, we ignore the fact that these films could only ever give an approximately accurate colour balance for any given circumstance. In reality, what we REALLY miss is one particular flavour of visual DISTORTION that one brand of film might once have offered compared with another.

The fact is that with digital imaging we can ultimately have any colour we want. It can be accurate or saturated or warm or cold or rosy or tinted or none of the above ... or any combination of the above or any graduated VARIATION of the above.

Furthermore the effective ASA rating of film would vary as rolls of film got older. We could "nail" the exposure settings for a particular shot only to EVENTUALLY find that dated emulsions would underexpose the picture. If a particular roll of film was loaded into our camera, we were stuck with the characteristics of that emulsion until the roll was used up - fast or slow, fine or grainy, warm or cold, daylight or tungsten light balanced, colour or black & white. People would wander around with multipe cameras in great discomfort just in case one needed to shoot with a film having different features.

Using digital, accurate sensitivity settings and any OTHER image characteristics can be varied between individual shots and the eventual result previewed on the spot. Shot one can be a superfast grainy black and white documentary style image. Shot two might be an exquisitely fine grained still life image. Shot three can be a fast moving glimpse of a championship volleyball match etc etc.

How can the results from film POSSIBLY be better - when with digital imaging, the results can be anything we WANT or NEED them to be?

In the end, the proof of a pudding is in the eating. Every kind of photographer has better RESULTS under digital. Anyone can see it. What can possibly be better about a former system under which the final results WEREN'T as good.

Back when I was young I remember that every time I pressed the shutter release it represented 20 cents which was effectively the per unit cost of colour transparencies (film plus processing). I rationed my shooting by what I could afford. How can this situation POSSIBLY have produced a better result than one in which I can go on shooting from any angle, at any exposure etc without restriction?

At the end of the day, under digital, we KNOW we have the shot we want, or at least a shot close ENOUGH to what we want, prior to finishing the job back at the computer.

Digital imaging has given us so many advantages, it sometimes makes we wonder how we managed without it. Spoiled aren't we?

Is Digital REALLY better than Film? Part 1

There was a time - quite a long time actually - during which traditional photographers refused to give up a life time of acquired skill and shift to digital capture. For some years it was possible to argue that the ultimate quality of film was superior to digital. There are STILL many who argue that way.

To be sure, at a purely technical level, it cannot be denied that (all other things being equal) the ultimate resolution of film for large prints is better than digital. Given the inherent resolution prowess of medium to large format film as compared to (say) APS-C or even "full frame" 35mm sensors, the advantage is even greater. Even when the limits of resolution are reached, analogue prints with blurry edges and details still look FAR better than pixelated digital versions of the same image. Wouldn't you agree?

Likewise under low light, film grain always looks better than digital noise. This may only be due to the fact that 180 years of tradition makes it easier for us to ACCEPT the look of film grain but it still looks better to me. I don't care what anyone says. We are so accepting of film grain that there are even filters in image processing software which SIMULATE film grain with which we can add "character" and apparent "authenticity" to documentary style monochrome digital images.

It ALSO cannot be denied that in the case of slow to medium sensitivity, film offers better inherent dynamic range. The scourge of digital capture must surely be the ease with which highlights and shadows are reduced to featureless white or total black with all detail lost forever. Admittedly, there are strategies for remediating this problem, RAW capture included, but given that most people shoot jpeg images and utilise NO dynamic range enhancement strategies, film was and remains a better choice in this regard.

It certainly seems clear that the marketplace attributes a higher intrinsic value to film and its analogue prints. Even superb digital prints pale in significance compared to less technically perfect ones produced by traditional means.

In some cases the higher prices are for rational reasons. Traditional prints are inherently rarer than digital ones because (generally) one has to have the original negative before a print can be produced. Consequently a traditional print has more the feel of an "original" than a digital version which (it seems) is so much more readily copied. For a long while the longevity of prints produced by digital means was questionable. Not so long ago digital prints could be expected to start fading within weeks of their having been created. Even NOW it has to be conceded that digital prints have not been around long enough to have TRULY stood the test of time. On the other hand we have analogue prints which are almost as old as photography itself - still on display, still looking good.

Some of the reasons are perhaps less strictly rational but are just as valid. If I buy a new analogue print (perhaps one of a limited release) produced from film by entirely traditional means, I seem to have something special - something which connects me to the great photographic artists of the past whose skilled hands produced similar items using almost identical materials, chemicals and techniques. Indeed when one purchases a print of an image shot last week on a "famous name" German camera made in 1964, with a film emulsion first produced in 1930 using a chemical first employed in 1905 with an actual enlarger manufactured in 1941, my purchase offers me an antiquity and provenance which cannot be compared with the same picture shot on the latest digital camera and run off on a brand new digital printer tethered to my computer.

Conclusions that "film is dead" may be very much premature. For serious professional and enthusiast fine arts photography, film is NOW very much the medium of choice. Traditional film producers who contemplated the total abandonment of that technology have begun life anew. Film will never be produced in the stupendous quantities that it once was but companies like Agfa, Ilford and even Kodak have found a worthwhile niche market producing a select range of emulsions in a number of sizes along with a comprehensive range of chemicals, papers and darkroom kit.

Careless assertions that digital is inherently better than film need further consideration ... next time.

The Entry Level Shooter Part 3

Two articles ago I described how I grew up with 35mm film SLRs. They were relatively unsophisticated devices back then but curiously, many great, legendary photographers produced many memorable images with nothing more. How many great National Geographic articles did we read, festooned with pictures of exotic people and places shot by mostly manual Nikon Fs and the like?

These cameras couldn't shoot at 7 frames per second, they didn't have face recognition. They didn't boast ultra high definition LCD screens, live view, auto focus, stabilisation, automatic ISO, movie files, wifi connection, auto-bracketing, noise reduction circuitry, red-eye correction, D-lighting blah blah blah ... and yet great pictures were made, week in and week out, by working photographers across the world.

What is more, the lenses that such photographers worked with were relatively primitive. Computer aided design technology and white hot manufacturer competition have brought us lenses, in recent years, which are far and away superior to anything which camera jockeys of the 60s and 70s ever had access to. Even today's so called "kit" lenses, (while admittedly suffering from light construction) are astonishingly good. When a token amount of skill is employed in their ACTUAL USE, it is discovered that they are often the optical equal of advanced pro models dating from, say, fifteen years ago.

How on EARTH can one explain the generations of great pictures which have adorned the pages of National Geographic, Life Magazine, Cosmopolitan, the New York Times or the Saturday Evening Post when such pictures were shot by the simple featureless cameras of bygone days. How did serious photographers ever function without the legion of features and gimmicks which modern marketing departments INSIST that we have to have? Bit of a mystery isn't it?

One can buy an "entry level" Nikon D3100 or a Canon EOS 1100D SLR for maybe $600 or so which is a quarter of the price of a D700 or an EIGHTH the price of a D3s and yet it can be argued that these humble, much despised "entry level" devices are far and away superior image capturing instruments than anything possessed by the great photographers of past eras. Somehow, however, modern entry level SLRs are not good enough for the likes of you and me. We must spend more ... presumably for the continued survival of Nikon and Canon marketing team executives! Let's be kind. After all these people have swank suburban residences and BMW dealerships to support.

Such bottom of the line SLRs offer clean resolving power which would have been envied by the owners of top pro cameras only five years ago. They offer rapid speed of operation, nice bright viewfinders, big clear viewing screens and a broad selection of the essential digital features and facilities. They are light, convenient to carry, fun and simple to use and offer total, accurate manual control. Under all but truly exceptional conditions, the ultimate image quality from such cameras is effectively equal to anything available.

"Whoa! Hold on there! Just a minute. Now you've overstepped the mark, Hobbs. Everybody knows that the pictures from a D3100 can't possibly compete with those from say a nice expensive D300s for example. After all I just shelled out for a D300s and I sure as hell don't want to have to swallow the idea that some jerk with a D3100 can get pictures just as good as mine!!"

Now this is where I have to disappoint a whole lot of people. Recently as part of their comprehenive camera review articles, DPreview.com started including a page which enabled the picture quality from ANY of the cameras which they had formerly reviewed, to be compared with the results from the model currently under examination. You can move the cursor around the display screen to make 100% enlarged comparisons using any part of a comprehensively arranged sample scene. You can vary the ISO settings. You can look at RAW results AND jpeg. Not much goes unrevealed - let me assure you. It enables me to make an outrageous statement here.

Given that 90% or more of photography is generally done using ISO settings 100 to 1600 I think it is legitimate to concentrate on comparisons made under those conditions. Accordingly, anybody who goes to the DPreview site and does the exercise can quickly see for themselves that the quality of the pictures produced by our entry-level brigade compares well with almost ANYTHING regardless of price. Most people just don't seem to understand that simple fact.

Consider the following:

Most great pictures are shot by people who use cameras. I don't care HOW good a camera you own at home in the cupboard. If you don't have it with you when the picture presents itself it might as well be a box brownie that you couldn't find film for. My Nikon D40 is light enough for me to carry almost anywhere I go - just in case. Try carrying a HEAVY camera on spec. You don't do it do you? I didn't think so

A lot of the best pictures are to be found in out-of-the-way, hard-to-get-to places. Sometimes the conditions are difficult and we are worried about damaging our expensive cameras. My entry level camera didn't cost very much. If I drop a D700 off a cliff, its gone and I shall probably have to buy another at great relative expense. I can drop FOUR entry level SLRs off FOUR cliffs before I am up for the same cost. Accordingly I can afford to take a few more risks, go to a few more dicey places and get a whole lot of great pictures I probably would NOT have got if I'd been too worried about my camera.

Expensive cameras ARE expensive, very often because they bristle with features which marketing departments tell us we MUST have. I don't know about you but 99% of the time the only features I need to know about are the auto-focus, the shutter speed and aperture controls, the exposure compensation, the ISO adjustments and the shutter release button ..... pretty much like the old film SLRs I was brought up with. Sometimes I go to try out some totally superfluous new fangled gim .. er .. feature. I learn to use it but might not have need of it for another 12 months. I have to get out the manual because I've forgotten how the feature works. Meanwhile the picture I was after goes away. What - I ask you - was the point of having the feature in the first place?

Expensive cameras are designed to take more punishment and last a lot longer than entry level cameras. Again I am led to ask what the point of that is. If you are a working professional you need for the camera not to let you down at critcal moments. That is fair enough, but as I said last time, I am addressing myself to enthusiasts who are usually able to work without abusing their equipment. My entry level camera has never let me down and I have been using it heavily for four years or more now.

I might also suggest that having an expensive camera designed to last a moderate enthusiast user for some seven years or more has little point in an environment in which technical advances make it desirable to update equipment much more frequently. Of course, if you didn't spend so much on the camera in the first place, it is much less wasteful to update more frequently. Wouldn't it be nice to always have the leatest gear without alarming the bank manager?

Wouldn't it be nice to have the right lens for every purpose? If you didn't spend too much on a needlessly expensive body, you can probably afford to do just that ... and having the right lens for the shot WILL MOST ASSUREDLY make a noticeable difference to the quality of your pictures. Once you have got the glass, you will probably never need to buy it again. Am I missing something vital in this discussion?

Look. If you are an enthusiast photographer (rather than a workaday pro) there are many many reasons why you MAY be better off using "entry level" SLRs in preference to overly expensive models. I have only mentioned a few.

Before closing this article I'd just like to address ONE last point. There is a suggestion from some quarters that the less skill and experience a photographer has, the more he/she needs an expensive camera to somehow compensate. This makes no sense to me at all. If I have learned one thing over the last forty odd years it is this. NOTHING makes a bigger difference to picture quality than one's ability to do the basic things well. Anything which makes the basic things harder will tend to HARM the quality of one's pictures - not the other way around. One reason why I DON'T use expensive, complicated cameras is that they are generally too big, too heavy and too fiddly for me to use as quickly or as well as a smaller, simpler, less demanding camera. It is as simple as that ... but it's entirely possible that all of that is a problem peculiar to me.

Anyway for right or for wrong the foregoing are the reasons why I believe that most mere enthusiast photographers, like me (and possibly you), might easily be better off using nominally "entry level" equipment in preference to so-called professional kit. Before you shoot me, it is just my personal opinion. If you have a different view, feel free to express it.

The Entry Level Shooter Part 2

Just who am I talking to, on this subject.

Well I suppose I am mostly talking to people sort of like ME: relatively experienced, relatively well informed, anxious-to-learn, enthusiastic photographers who occasionally earn money from their shoots who really CARE about the quality of the images that they produce. I am NOT talking to full time professionals who use their equipment for long periods every day. I am NOT talking to people making their first tentative steps into photography or who will occasionally use their cameras to shoot family barbecues, children's concerts and annual holidays.

Big, tough, fast, expensive cameras have their place. As I have said so often in the past, if you expect your gear to give reliable service during long, frequent, intensive periods of use, you had better purchase equipment designed to do that. Such gear costs a lot of money to buy or lease but if you are shooting commercially most days, you should have the available funds to justify the expense.

Small, convenient, pocketable cameras, designed to be used a dozen times a year under mostly ideal conditions, have their place as well. Why have a heavy, expensive, complicated, inconvenient camera? Most pocketable compact cameras give results well suited to their owners' expectations. Why use anything else?

Of course if compact camera users suddenly "get the bug", they start to become members of MY group and so I am talking to THEM as well. First off let me say to such people that ... well ... I am sorry about your illness (for that is what it is). Secondly let me say welcome to the wonderful world of SEEING anew and expressing what you see. Thirdly let me say that you are going to need a suitable tool - one which will give you the control and flexibility that you will need. Question is ... which one?

At the present state of the art, it seems certain that you will need either an SLR or one of those newly emerging SLR-like classes of camera, offering large sensors, responsive operation and interchangeable lenses. It ALSO seems certain that there is NO single brand of camera manufacturer that has all of the answers - no single brand that is unambiguously the best. Given a specified price point, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Olympus, Sony and a good number of OTHER manufacturers are quite capable of supplying you with a tool which will enable you to see and capture perfectly sound image files.

To my mind, the REAL question is what that specified price point should BE - and at last we arrive at the focus of these articles. Manufacturers and retailers WANT us to spend as much as possible. Like the automobile industry, higher spec (and higher PRICE) models of camera equipment always carry the highest potential profit margins. There's much more money to be made from making and selling (say) ten $5000 cameras than (say) a hundred $500 cameras. The trick is to make us enthusiasts believe that we are missing out on fundamental capabilities by NOT purchasing the high spec gear ... and make no mistake - the industry's marketing psychologists works very hard to do just that.

Strategy one. Refer to "Entry Level" equipment. "What? I am not ENTRY LEVEL I am an experienced photographer. I can't be seen using ENTRY LEVEL equipment. People will think I am some kind of beginner. My reputation will be ruined. I shall have to buy more expensive equipment"

Strategy two. Refer to "Semi professional" or "Professional" equipment. "Yeah. I am an experienced photographer. Obviously unless I have the best equipment, my soaring talent will be constrained. I simply have to HAVE professional equipment.

And so it goes on.

I have always been a follower of certain web-based photographic forums. Each week you see the same questions being asked and the same newly consecrated gurus drawing upon their MONTHS of experience to provide the same misinformation.

Question: "I am new to serious photography. Should I buy the el cheapo model SLR or one of the more expensive models"

Answer: "You'll soon outgrow the cheaper model. If you want serious images you'll need to pay the serious money"

I have long since stopped buying into this sort of discussion. I think I must be some sort of secret masochist. I keep being drawn to read these threads. I can find no sensible reason for it. The point I am making is this. Not only does the industry work hard to UPSELL us enthusiasts. For a variety of extraneous reasons, photography enthusiast PEERS work hard at it too. I fully understand why so many people finish up paying too much for their gear, buy gear that often doesn't suit them, buy gear that causes their interest to wane, pay too much to replace it four or five years later and KEEP doing so ad infinitum. CRAAAAAAZY!

Okay. Statement time. I know some people are NOT going to like this. Some people are going to be resentful. Some people are going to call me names. But any thoughtful research, any purposeful examination of the facts and any worthwhile dollop of actual experience may enable the reader to arrive at these same conclusions.

Attention folks. Draw near. Here is the statement. Next time I shall give you my reasons for making it and try to explain why so many people will take issue with it. Ahem.

Most enthusiast photographers would be better off buying "entry level" equipment. I, and most people like me are really "entry level" equipment users, whether we like the sound of it or not.

After 45 years of photography - film and digital - I confess that I am really "an entry level shooter" ... and so (I suspect) are YOU.

The Entry Level Shooter Part 1

PROLOGUE

This is the first of a series of posts addressing the ongoing battle that most of us serious shutterbugs have with the marketing psychologists at the big brand camera manufacturers. It's a battle which most of us regularly lose.

It doesn't have to be this way, you know. We can all fight back and win if we take up the challenge with cold hard logic.

THE REAL ARTICLE STARTS HERE FOLKS

Once upon a time we bought a film SLR to last us for maybe 10-15 years or so. The basic principle of good SLR design had been pretty much established in the late 1960s and didn't really change much (except for nibbling at the edges) until digital models started to appear about 9 years ago.

The top of the line Minolta SRT101 cost me about $300 back in 1967. It had through the lens Cadmium Sulphide sensor metering, an accurate single point microprism style manual focus screen, bayonet lens mount, damped mirror action, depth of field preview and sturdy metal construction built to "take it". It had a small replaceable battery which had to be changed every 18 months or so and that was pretty much THAT.

One could change the shutter speed via a little dial on the top of the camera, the metering sensitivity could be changed via a collar under the shutter speed dial, the aperture could be changed on the lens barrel and a big fat easy grip ring gave us nice precision for accurate and fast manual focus. You changed the exposure settings until a little needle hit the mark in your viewfibder and you were ready to fly.

There was very little reason to update the camera. It gave no trouble and the later models such as the SRT101b or SRT100 or the SRT303 were basically the same camera. Newer models offered maybe a maximum shutter speed of (say) 1/2000th second instead of 1/1000th second, there might have been a split/prism style focussing point instead of the microprism one and the body styling may have changed minutely ... but they were basically the same. Cameras were kind of like cars. The models changed superficially every year or two so that people had a reason to buy a new one and be SEEN using/driving "the latest" If you looked after the old model however, you might not LOOK quite so cool but the film and the fuel were consumed the same way producing the same pictures and covering the same distances turning basically the same steering wheels and pushing basically the same shutter release buttons.

Even film, re-assuringly, stayed the same for year after year. If new, faster, more colourful, finer grained (whatever) versions of old favourites came along you loaded up the new roll and were immediately operating with the latest and greatest. It didn't matter one whit how old the camera was. My picture quality with "the new Kodachrome 64" was just as up-to-date with my OLD camera as Fred Nerk's roll of Kodachrome 64 was with his brand new one.

Somehow millions of photographers went around with these basic tools, capturing memorable (occasionally legendary) images on film. Incredibly we did it without such essentials as "live view" or "auto ISO" or "face recognition" (imagine having to get by without FR - gasp!) "51 auto focus points" or the ability to shoot "8 fps" etc etc etc

Now, of course, things are somewhat different. Apparently every few years they change the nature of light, the physical parameters of exposure vary from what they used to be somehow and the way that photographic subjects behave goes through some dramatic transformation. Hence we simply MUST have the very latest camera model to work with or we just won't be able to produce good images any more. Indeed each new camera model comes with a host of new gimmi ... er ... features, without which (we are breathlessly informed) photography as we know it becomes quite inconceivable.

Of course it could be argued that we are now dealing with "digital" systems which unlike "film" are an immature technology. Naturally every year or so massive new technical strides are made which will mean huge improvements to the capabilities of new camera models. Right? If one ISN'T using the latest and greatest, one's pictures really won't be any good. tch tch

I am not sure that things are QUITE like that but certainly more so than they used to be. Most assuredly it is in the perceived interests of camera manufactures, retail stores, photographic magazines, technical journalists and enthusiast bloggers that we potential puchasers THINK that this is true - else life as they know it might surely end.

Certainly the following things seem to be true:

1. No digital camera will continue to give service and provide state-of-the-art performance over many many years in the way that traditional film models once did.
2. Digital cameras are infinitely more complex and vulnerable than traditional film models. Alas, after five years or so we can expect that our oft used toys may start to give trouble. We can ALSO expect that camera manufacturers (whose only REAL interest is in flogging the latest model) will start to "lose" the original parts with which one might expect one's old camera to be repaired. At the very least, rare parts will soon get sufficiently expensive for repair to seem uneconomical.
3. While there AREN"T staggering revolutions in camera performance, with each new model, after five years or so, the latest cameras may WELL be expected to offer tangible improvements for the discerning enthusiast and worthwhile profit earning efficiencies for the professional.

Whichever way you look at it, we live in an age when serious photographers can expect to HAVE to purchase new cameras on a regular basis.

Question: How much disposable cash does one have to have and/or how much money does photography have to be earning you before it becomes a good idea to buy truly expensive equipment and for you to replace it with similar kit each time the need arises?

Answer: HEAPS

Another Question: For what you (yes YOU) do with cameras, how much difference will it really make to your pictures if you spend up big on expensive gear - as opposed to (say) the universally despised "entry level" gear?

Answer: Let's BEGIN to discuss it in detail .... next time.

But then again ...

Last time I railed against the zealot newbie photographers who have discovered prime lenses and taken to implying that zoom users should not be taken seriously in photography. These people really DO exist - I assure you. I was perusing some correspondence on a web forum from members of the "prime mafia" only this morning.

You'll recall I made the point that it didn't matter how sharp and clean the images produced with prime lenses were if the time and effort required to frame up a picture meant that the original inspiration had walked away. I also referred to the large apertures of fast prime lenses which made fast shutter speeds possible in low light. I suggested that this factor was not as important as once it might have been in the days of slow film emulsions because the latest DSLR bodies can produce usefully clean images at sensitivities of ISO 6400 or more.

In suggesting that "primes were past their prime" was I saying that there is no longer a place for prime lenses today? No. What I DID say was that I virtually never use prime lenses MYSELF anymore (for what that's worth of course). Being "past their prime" means to me that the period during which prime lenses were the glass of automatic choice now lies in the past. Back then, film was slow and zooms were pretty dreadful. Primes were truly in their prime.

In the 35mm film days EVERYBODY used 50mm prime lenses most of the time. I know I did. When the first DSLRs came along, the sensors were "APS-C" or "DX" size which was a somewhat cropped version of a 35mm frame. Consequently all of our beloved 50mm lenses became less generally useful because they became (in effect) short telephoto lenses. To make matters worse, some of them didn't always autofocus properly on the newest bodies. Manual focus was also less viable with digital bodies because they had removed our great film era focussing screens. So we pretty much all started using a generation of much improved ZOOM lenses and learned to make do.

Today, for most purposes, particularly photojournalism, sports coverage, general purpose vacationing, weddings & events shooting, birding, real estate, landscape and most on-location commercial shooting it is hard to go past zooms as the most readily suitable glass.

It has only been relatively recently that modern, fully autofocussing "normal" and "short telephoto prime lenses have again become available in any variety. I am the first to agree that for high quality studio set-ups, especially fine macro work and portraiture, prime lenses are a desirable choice and perhaps, once again, THE choice.

In my own case the arrival of the Nikkor 35mm f1.8 DX lens brings with it potential new horizons. It is a genuinely "normal" lens for the DX format. These days I run a couple of Nikon D80 (DX format) bodies with which I do occasional paying jobs - weddings among them. As sturdy, reliable and useful as the D80 is for now & then professional turns, it has always struggled (along with most bodies of its generation) to produce truly clean images at high ISO. When the powers that be prevent me from using flash during a wedding ceremony or when I am trying to cover (say) a choral festival in performance, I am usually left to get by as best I can with 1600 ISO under available light at a maximum f4. I have frequently had to manage with 1/30 second shutter speeds which is hardly ideal to say the least.

I could buy one of those super sensitive new bodies like the Nikon D3s of course but that's a lot of money and it may never really earn its keep.

Hopefully the 35mm f1.8 prime might give me a fraction more than two extra stops on my existing bodies. All other things being equal, my 1/30 second shutter speeds becomes a rather more viable 1/120 second. Of course I WILL have to perform gymnastics to get into good framing locations (I ain't as spry as I used to be, mate) given that the 35mm is only a normal lens. It IS very cheap however and a genuine bargain by all accounts. If I don't use it all that much I will have not wasted my investment. Now the 85mm f1.4 would be fantastic to cover theatrical events but it costs a lot of money too. I dunno.

Aaaanyway. Let me modify my assertions from last time. Are prime lenses past their prime? By definition, I have to say YES. Are primes dead and buried? Most certainly NOT!