Online Shoppers Blog - Become's Pocket Change

I’ve loved photography all my life, but have never owned a good camera. However, I’ve been lucky enough to get a chance to use the best of the lot, courtesy of my gracious professors and teachers, who loaned theirs out to me. I had been thinking of buying a good SLR camera for quite a while, and last week, the moment felt right. The Nikon N80, one of the best amateur SLR film cameras on the market, had long graced my daydreams. That was until I set eyes on the Nikon D70s, Nikon’s prosumer digital SLR camera and a thing of immeasurable beauty and intense sexiness. I was tempted, but in severe denial of the existence of any such blasphemous emotion (read my first blog post for a brief history of my passionate allegiance to film.) In my defense however, the digital devil has many more temptations at his disposal than any mechanical alternate ever will. The thought of owning a great digital photo printer to supplement the digital camera was my tipping point.

I was shaken, but not broken. A personal shopping adage that I have long adhered to is this: “When in sustained and frenzied doubt about which item to pick, get both. You’ll eventually end up owning both of them anyways.” So I got the Nikon N80 and the Nikon D70s. After some research on the issue, I have realized that film and digital photography are different forms of artistic expression. They both have their challenges and strengths, and provide unique tools and opportunities to bolster creativity.

Life with both a digital and a film camera is pretty sweet. You don’t have to buy separate lenses for both camera bodies, since lenses that work on film SLRs can also be used on the digital outfit with almost no loss of quality or sharpness. (Check individual brand names and models to confirm this; it is true for almost all Nikon models.) However, be careful because it doesn’t work the other way around. Lenses developed specifically for digital cameras will leave huge black corners on the image if used on a film camera. So, if you already own a film SLR with a good set of lenses, buying a digital SLR is not that heavy an investment after all.

Mustafa