I subscribe to a few photography magazines, both for film and digital. I don't do much film work any more, and neither does my wife. But I still like to keep up on the latest news in both worlds.
I think its safe to declare the digital revolution as completed. Almost all photographers, amateur or professional, have acknowledged that today's digital cameras rival film, and have advantages over film in many key areas. Many professionals claim to be switching to predominantly digital use, especially for sports and for photo shoots such as weddings and similar affairs. Film seems to be relegated to studio and portrait use. Interestingly, there have been a number of new film announcements recently and the state of that art is still being pushed forward.
One area of interest is in the digital professional, or semi-pro cameras. There are a number of these available now, with all of the major camera vendors offering one or more pro-type SLR cameras. Many of these are second or third generation, and are getting quite good. The cost has gone down, to where a digital SLR body is only 2-3 times the price of a good film SLR body and about the same as a high end film body - about $2000. Popular examples are the Nikon D-100 and the Canon D60.
The primary issue in buying a digital SLR is the lenses. The manufacturer of my camera, the Olympus E-10, decided to offer a digital SLR with a fixed, non-removable lens. There are two reasons for having a fixed lens rather than a changeable one: one is to keep dust out of the camera (which is a more severe issue in digital cameras than film) and the other is that the lens for a digital camera needs to be designed differently. The light coming into the digital sensor in a digital camera must appear much more perpendicular to the sensor than light hitting the film in a film camera. This is analogous to the way digital LCD computer displays look - if you look off to the side, the image rapidly fades or changes color compared to a CRT display. The manufacturers of these new digital SLRs imply that their cameras can take any standard lens, but in fact lenses designed for digital use will work better.
A second issue with lens selection is that the sensors of most digital SLRs are smaller than the standard 35mm size. Without getting too technical, a standard 35mm lens will focus its image to a standard 35mm film size. If your (digital) sensor is smaller, then you get only a portion of the image available. This results in what is called the digital multiplier. If, for example, a digital SLR has a multiplier of 1.7, then a 28mm lens (a fairly standard wide angle lens) becomes 1.7 x 28 = about 48mm. 48mm is not a wide angle lens and is in fact fairly close to 55mm, which is 1:1 - i.e. the camera lens sees what the eye would see - neither wide nor telephoto. On the other end of that equation, telephoto lenses become even better!
Many film camera users buy two lenses for normal use - a 28-90 zoom and a 90-200 or more zoom. But now, a much wider lens is needed for true wide-angle shots - perhaps a 15mm. These are not common and very expensive.
There are some digital SLRs coming out with true 35mm size sensors. Signa offers one with the Foveon sensor chip, and Kodak has recently announced a new pro-level camera with a full sized sensor. But both of these cameras are very expensive.
To sum it up: digital SLRs are here to stay, and getting cheaper. But you need to think about lenses before you buy.
Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport / Oak Island area. You can visit his website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail him at bsc@bobseidel.com).