By

Phil Maranda

The bright yellow explosion in the right of the image is a group of trees bursting into flames. This photo was taken after dark with a 80 – 400 VR lens. The D100 light
Meter was excellent.

The idea of switching over to a digital camera had been an itch in my photographic pants for some time. Up till about a year ago, however, all I could do was drool heavily every time I walked into a camera store and saw the little devils sitting behind the display case glass like little prisoners just waiting for me to come along with the cash and bail them out.
When the big day arrived, I woke early with all the excitement of a child on Christmas morning, dragged my somewhat reluctant companion Tracey Lalonde out of bed, and then we made the hour and fifteen minute drive to the nearest camera store that carried the photographic gems that I was convinced would enhance my image making ten fold.

I’ve always enjoyed the autumn around the Okanagan Valley. The Bighorn Sheep
Come down from the summer range high in the mountains and they lay around in the meadows where they are easier to photograph. This image was taken under harsh lighting conditions with a Tiffen 812 warming filter.

We walked out of the store half an hour after we’d arrived into a brilliant blue-sky day with a brand new Nikon D100 that was already out of the box. At the time I was convinced that the smile on my face must have made me look like a raving lunatic to passers by. Oh well, they’ll get over it, I thought and then jumped into the Jeep, slapped a 28-70mm AF-S Nikkor lens on the camera and drove away in search of the first photo ops.
The first shots happened right after we stopped for gas. I’d managed to talk my co-pilot into taking the wheel so I could fiddle with all the new buttons on the camera, and as we drove down the crowded highway, I shot one frame after another at passing vehicles, billboards, and every other subject that certainly would not be useful for anything.

These cute dogs were shot in the shade on a clear sunny day with an 812 warming filter. The hardest part is in the posing of the dogs.

It was like ascending a stairway into magical world where you could eat as much ice cream as you wanted and would never grow fat. One frame after another, clicking away to my hearts content without ever worrying about wasting the precious film that up in Canada, where we live, costs around $25-plus for one roll of 36, developing included. “This is going to be great,” I said to Lalonde.

Martin Mars Water Bomber: Using a fast shutter speed, the D 100 was able to
freeze - - as well as any film camera – the giant Martin mars as it flew in to pick
up water.

Little did I know, that faithful day, that my learning curve in the quest for digital excellence—or a least a half decent shot—was going to get thrown into overdrive. Looking at photographs on the computer the following day I found spots on the images that looked in many ways like the familiar dust that sometimes shows up on scanned photographs. And as I soon found out these little dust devils were a fairly common occurrence with the interchangeable lens digital cameras.
Panic stricken, I phoned the dealer from which the D100 was purchased and asked what could be done about the little specs of dust that would surely ruin any photo I made that included a sky or other lighter subject. He suggested that I either live with them—removing them from the images in Photoshop after the fact or send the camera off to Nikon to get it cleaned every time a spec of dust became evident. (Like, easy for him to say—a portrait photographer whose greatest adventure is photographing a family in the wilds of there own back yard.)

These small, yellow flowers were shot handheld with a fast shutter speed and the D 100 metering system worked fine.

After contemplating the dealer’s solutions for a couple of seconds, I thought my life was coming to an end. Or at least my ability to take the D100 with me on any of the outdoor adventure assignments that had been dominating my life for the past five years. How the hell was I going to be able to afford to pay a Nikon tech to accompany me when climbing a 500-foot wall of ice in the Rockies.
Then it hit me, an epiphany, I would go on the trusty Internet and find out if there was any solution for my dilemma. It took a few days and tons of cussing, but I finally found an answer that should have been obvious in the first place…that’s right, I’m not going to mention it here. But if you are having the same kinds of problems with your digital camera check out this website: www.bythom.com/cleaning.htm.

The next challenge in my pursuit of digital excellence, that followed up the dust devils fiasco like so many partisans in a New Orleans funeral precession, reared its ugly head in the form of digital cameras—in my opinion at the time—making truer colors (and to my eye more subdued) than say films like Velvia. In other words, those pale blue skies really looked pale blue. At first blush, this seemed like another job for the infinite wisdom of the great knower of all knowledge Cyberspace, but after playing around with some of the cameras features—and finally reading the manual, I was able to improve the color in certain images.

When photographing the tiny marmot it takes the patience known only to monks and die hard nature photographers. There is a need to shoot dozens of images
When trying to capture a great pose. The digital camera solves this problem.
I saved all that film and simply deleted all the poor shots.

To enhance the colors of my digital images, I set the D100’s color mode to III instead of the camera’s default setting I. According to the manual setting number I is for portraiture and number III is for nature and landscapes. This seemed to work well for most of the images I shot, but they just weren’t quite there yet. The next step was to figure out what effects Tone Compensation, White Balance, Hue Adjustment, and Image Sharpening would have on the individual photographs.
The next mode adjustment I tackled was Hue, and this one proved to be a bit tricky. The idea behind adjusting the hue when making an image with a digital camera—from what I gathered—is to try and get the colors as close to the actual subject, background, etc., as possible. I thought if the hue was cranked up a little bit, then the images would be more saturated. Wrong! After setting the camera at 3? the first thing noticeable was the color of a red hat, that Tracey was wearing one day, which looked orange in the images I made of her. Needless to say, I quickly reverted back to the original setting, and then looked elsewhere to enhance the images.
In the end, after playing around with every bell and whistle on the D100, I settled on a fairly straightforward group of settings within the camera, leaving the White Balance on auto, Hue set at 0°, Tone Compensation on auto, the in camera sharpening set at low or none, and the Color Mode left at III which seemed to work fine for most image making situations. In the manual it explains in detail how to fine tune features like White Balance etc., but only time and tons of practice and messing around with the settings can give a digital newbie like me the confidence to change up the settings in situations where getting a great shot is paramount.
Most of the other features in the camera, like exposure metering, focusing, and depth of field etc., work just like any other Nikon camera I’ve ever used. Using Nikons professional lenses, for instance, I found the focusing seemed to work just fine, as good as some of the SLR film Nikon cameras that I’ve used. It was no problem nailing rafts attacking some major rapids on the Thompson River in British Columbia despite the constant movement of the water and the rafts. To accomplish this, I stood on the edge of the river with a Nikkor 28-70mm F/2.8 AFS ED on the D100, focus set on auto continuous, with dynamic auto focus engaged. I also used an 80-200mm Nikkor and a 80-400mm VR Nikkor.

The more I’ve worked with the camera over the time I’ve had it, the more it seems very similar to using a film SLR. As James Moershel pointed out, you can still use polarizer’s and other filters to achieve the desired effects or to tame the beast that is harsh lighting conditions. The pictures I’ve made in the last year have improved greatly over the first month or so, and soon it will be time to rise early and make another trip to the camera store to bail out another digital.
With my itch nicely scratched I leave you with the images that dot this article to judge for yourself if digital is the way to go. Personally, I’ve never shot so many images in the nine years of my own photographic adventure and have recently—like in the last couple of days—decided to purchase another digital, the Fujifilm FinePix, S3 Pro when it comes out up here in the boonies. That beauty is supposed to have a total of 12.3 megapixels floating around within its digital interior, and apparently will shoot images close to film in quality.
True, digital might not be for everyone, but it sure has worked for this humble, Canadian photographer who is now getting to shoot just enough pictures so that the act of being behind the camara is feeling comfortable once again.
End.



This fire scene was taken at the Okanagan Mountain Park. It was a handheld shot
At dusk from across Okanagan Lake as the fire raced towards Kelowna, B.C. The
D 100 read the tiny bit of light and the bright flames as well and with the help of a
80 – 400 VR lens, I was able to produce a sharp image under difficult lighting conditions.