The technology odyssey.

As much as we would like to think that imaging is all about skill and the artistic eye…the reality is that our art is always an interaction between our creative selves and our tools. Being human is pretty well defined as “making tools to solve problems”.

And, of course, once a tool is fashioned, it forever shapes the way we solve that particular problem.

Photography is no different. As an extension of vision, our tools (camera, darkroom, image processing software, etc.) actually shape the way we see. Add a new feature, a new technology, to our tool and our images will change…for better or worse…but change they will.

So, a little about the tools I have used in my photographic odyssey…kind of a technological odyssey.

I am tempted to take you all the way back to where I started, with a 127 roll film box camera, and follow the journey through folding 120s, black-and-white darkroom work, early 35mm consumer level SLRS, the first built in “match-needle” exposure systems, the introduction of micro-prism focusing aids, in-view-finder metering, color dark room work, auto-exposure, cibrachrome, programed exposure, interchangeable lenses, through-the-lens metering, push-processed Ektachrome, heat-seal slide mounts, and auto-focus. I was there for them all! (If you were there too, you will recognize the progression and the terms…and, from one survivor to another, congratulations! If you were not there, don’t worry. The history of any technology is completely subsumed in it’s latest manifestation…by which I mean that you are now benefiting from the lessons learned as cameras (and possibly photographers) got smarter.)

When digital came along (Trivia question: who introduced the first commercial digital still camera? Answer: Kodak, followed quickly by Apple computer! The image here is from the Wikipedia article.) I had given up carrying my multi-body, multi-lens SLR outfit because I felt that photography, primarily the hassle of carrying and caring for all that equipment, and of making continual equipment decisions in the field, was getting between me and the experience of the nature I love. I’d gone through several Point and Shoot 35mm zoom cameras in an attempt to simplify my photographic life, and had finally settled, as a compromise, on an excellent compact Olympus SLR with a built in 28-110 zoom, shooting print film. It was bigger than I really wanted, but the prints were amazingly good, and amazingly consistent, and it had a zoom range that pretty well matched my shooting style.

You have to remember that the first digital cameras cost what a full SLR outfit did, and produced images that were not quite as good as those from a $25 instamatic pocket camera loaded with Fujicolor and processed at the local drug store.

Still, the attraction of digital was immediate and obvious, and I will admit to waiting somewhat impatiently for the technology to improve and the cost to come down.

When the first 2.1 mp cameras broke the $500 price barrier, that was it for me. $500 was what I was spending on film and processing in a year. I bought an Olympus C2020, with a 1-3 zoom. I have not bought a roll of film since.

Right from the start, digital imaging hooked me. There is a quality to a digital image, especially when viewed on the LCD of a computer, that is more slide-film-like than print-film-like. The images are luminous, and even that 2.1 mp sensor captured the quality of light in a way that simply delighted me. Then too, that was just about when Photoshop Elements made its bow…and for a minor investment you could have more control over the image than any dark-room magician could have ever imagined. The digital file captured by the camera is roughly equivalent to the “first draft” of the image. You need a good first draft, but a little polishing in software often produces a much more elegant final image than you have any right to hope for.

Since my first digital I have owned and used a 4.1 mp Olympus, a 5 mp Minolta (with 28-210 equivalent zoom), a 5 mp Sony, a 8 mp Sony, and a 6 mp Sony (for the 32mm equivalent wide-angle and its shirt-pocket size).

I took thousands of very satisfying nature, creative, and landscape image with these P&S digitals. At first it was a compromise…I knew I was trading some image quality for ease of use (and that particular digital “vive” mentioned above), but it was a trade-off that I was willing to make.

(The major improvement I have seen, by the way, as the mp’s climbed, is not in detail but in color accuracy. My first images with the 2.1 mp sensor now look almost cartoonish when compared to the images from today’s sensors and internal processing software. )

I’ve already mentioned my personal epiphany, while reviewing and processing images of the Grand Canyon taken with a pocket-sized Sony 6 mp digital camera, and comparing them in memory to shots taken with my full 35mm SLR rig and slide film in the same locations. The digital images were better. The color was truer and more vivid. The exposures were amazingly accurate over an impossible range of lighting conditions. The tiny Carl Zeiss lens caught both the details and the grandeur of the Canyon in a completely satisfying way.

Today’s camera is a Sony DSC H9. It is lightweight and compact enough to carry everywhere, has a 31 mm to 465 mm equivalent zoom to cover an amazingly wide range of imaging options, adequate image quality, excellent color rendition, an articulated LCD that opens up all kinds of new angle opportunities, and a macro mode that focuses down to 2 cm for incredibly detailed close-ups.

It is the most “fun” camera I have ever owned…and I’ve taken almost as many images with it in a year as I did with all my other digitals put together.

In fact, I am ready to say that it (and its superzoom counterparts from other makers) represent, for me, pretty close to the ideal tool for nature, creative, and landscape imaging.

In the past year I have also invested in Adobe Lightroom, with its, for me, totally intuitive set of editing tools.

And finally, I discovered flickr…which is a wonderful platform (one of several out there) for sharing images with other’s of like interest.

Of course, someone, right this moment, somewhere is working on refining the tools we use…building an even better camera, better image editing software, and better image sharing services. New tools. New opportunities. New ways of seeing and recording the things around us which resonate with our souls.

The odyssey is not over. This is a good thing!