With all the advances in technology, I still find the time to go out and water the flowers for a half hour in the morning and evening, listening to 30 year old Grateful Dead music on the latest MP3 player.

How's that for a meld of old and new technology...

Tells some about your age Larry. I on the other hand fell in the Woodstock time frame. I do take time for myself but part of what is relaxing to me is going out in a quiet spot to take pictures or just sit quiet and be with myself. Scarry thought on some days. On the downside of the digtal camera vs the film cameras like the Rolleiflex it made me take time to get involved and that relaxed me. When I look at how much the world has changed in my lifetime I sometimes want to hold on to what was but I find change is exciting just to inviting to egnore.

Why haven't you kept the same shooting workflow with digital as you did with film? The actual picture taking hasn't changed, just the capture medium and post processing. But we still decide what to point the camera at and when to take the picture.

Okay you kind of got me there. The process is the same on how I shoot I just meant there was more time put into the shot. With the Nikon auto focus and everything being at my fingure tips it just happens faster. Now my last post is not valid when I think about it so let me revise my thought here. There is no downside to digital. Manual cameras had their place with me and the experience was rewarding `in the respect of the cameras I used. When I really look at it now the Nikon has an rewarding experience of its own. I do not always make sense Larry. I express myself at times but fail to get it across in the way I mean it.

There is not just one way to photograph as there is not just one way to be human. Cartier Bresson, Ansel Adams, William Mortensen and Richard Avedon had almost nothing in common photographically and how each made photographs, yet each expressed in their photographs a different dimension of the human vision that was equally true, just as there were many ways to Rock n Roll back in the 60's.

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Okay you kind of got me there. The process is the same on how I shoot I just meant there was more time put into the shot.

While I certainly take advantage of that which is uniquely digital, the addition of digital was seamless. A few years back when digital was in its adolescence, I was asked to keynote a new-media conference, heavy on content users - ad agencies, magazines and the like. Many of those attending I did not know, and so assumed the opposite to be true. I put together a retrospective slide show of my work as a way of introduction.

After my talk, I opened the floor to questions and discussion. One person identified herself as creative director of a prominent agency and said with some vehemence, "I just can not stand the digital look!!!" With the slide show running, I asked her to point out and specifically describe what it was she did not like.

She watched as many slides went by, growing more and more visibly agitated. Finally she sputtered "Are some of those DIGITAL???? I assured her that was the case and she said "I can't see any difference!" As discussion continued, it evolved that she was blaming the medium itself instead of the photographers who were just learning to process their own images and still inept. The "digital look" was simply a lack of Photoshop chops.

I recently added a Nikon D200 body after finding out that it fully supports my old manual glass. The experience of shooting with it is little different from shooting with the old F3. It is still the antique SLR optical viewing system that goes back to 1861, and the only real difference - other than the pentaprism which itself is over a half century old - is the addition of an electronic rangefinder that works with lenses of f-5.6 or faster. After years of shooting with high-end Coolpix cameras, this is a very retro experience. The photographic quality is superb however, and probably worth the effort in spite of the obsolete SLR design.

If it works, and in some ways the SLR is better than any design since, just how is it obsolete?

One of the things about the DSLR cameras are they feel natural. The D200 is quite comfortable to me because i had used film SLR cameras. When I used the Fuji 645ZI it felt very natural to me.

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If it works, and in some ways the SLR is better than any design since, just how is it obsolete?

Both use through the lens viewing. The SLR shows you a projected representation on the viewing screen, while the 21st century mirrorless design shows you the actual image as processed by the camera.

With the swing and swivel monitor plus the EVF, one can shoot either by looking into the camera as with an SLR - but still seeing the actual processed image - or at any angle with the monitor. Great for portraits since one can remove the camera from the line of sight and maintain comfortable eye-contact with the subject, without the intrusive camera calling attention to itself. Also very nice for shooting over the heads of a crowd, shooting macro at low level or shooting anything from any convenient angle. Compared to my CP8400, the D200 limits me to viewing through the viewfinder only. Shooting some spring flowers with the splendid old 55mm MicroNikkor told me that my knees were no longer those of a 20 year-old.

I speak not from lack of experience. As a working photographer, I probably have pretty close to a million exposures with SRLs ranging from a half-frame Oly PenFT to a 5x7 Graflex I once found in a pawn shop. The Coolpix was an epiphany. the content of my people photography suddenly got a whole lot better. The D200 is big and intrusive compared to the Coolpix 8400. It kills spontaneity, alerting the whole room that a photograph is about to be taken. People pose.

The D200 produces extremely high quality images with great sharpness with my old but fine lenses. It is fine for contemplative photography or commercial shoots where spontaneity is not a factor and the RAW images will be cooked with ACR. The ideal camera for me, would have the workings of the D200, in the Coolpix form-factor.

Using the viewfinder in the camera is what I am used to. I foound though the Rolleiflex GX I had viewing through the ground glass was far better. I miss that camera. It was not for quick shots but boy did it do a nice job.

Larry,

I don't buy your arguments. And, I have been doing photography for a living since 1952, and digital since late 1989, first with a PC with a Targa board. However, I did retire from owning and running a studio about a dozen years ago, although I still do photography every day and using a Canon EOS 5D for shooting. The only thing I got tired of was dealing with less than professional customers. At 74 sure its not as easy as it used to be, but it still isn't worth doing unless it is the best professional knowledge, skill and practice can achieve.

Monte,

I and many of my colleagues used Rollei TLR's (including the tele and wide angle models) professionally for all kinds of assignments from the late 50's well into the 70's. I stuck with them while some of my friends went to Hasselblad, in part because I did a lot of work on film sets where you had to be quiet, and those early Hasselblads besides being noisier were always requiring repair - but they did look impressive to customers! So eventually when the Rollei 6000 series SLR's had the bugs worked out I switched.

But the old TLR's had some unique advantages besides being quiet, you could shoot unobtrusively from waist level, as well as with the camera above your head to get above the crowd, and even holding the camera around a corner while you remained hidden. And frequently I found it advantageous to hold the camera pointed down at arm's length, often from on top of a ladder in my studio. It was more adept than just about any other camera, and one reason I am sure why Rollei TLR's remained popular for so long.

You are right about being quiet. From what I heard the GX was not as quiet as the older ones, but what a classic camera. Lens was tops and the square negs were nice. I am glad I had some time with one. When I sold it I got aboout what I paid. I looked at buying a 6008 but opted for digital instead. I still print from my negatives. I used Agfa 100 until it ended then went to Efke 100.

Monte,

Although I don't miss the long hours I used to spend in a darkroom, and my health today would likely be better if I hadn't been in a darkroom so much, I don't find this digital age even with all its advantages is as satisfying. I have always found black and white photography more rewarding. I would probably shoot a lot more and enjoy it more if my camera instead of having 12.8 megapixels of RGB capture, had all those color sensor sites converted to just capture panchromatic brightness and output a 40 megapixel grayscale file - Oh! what prints I could make.

But today small minority interests like B&W are far too expensive to satisfy. I am sure I could find a monochrome scanning back with a high megapixel output I could fit on a camera like the small 120 size Horseman field camera, but it would probably cost more than a new Mercedes luxury sports sedan.

Those odd, relatively little known products like Efke film were great, particularly in 4x5 sheet size, their film was much like the sheet films made in the '50's with lots of silver and great development latitude.

Even working digital images. I would rather work scanned BW negatives than digital. I have found the digital a good compromise from the film but when I print from a negative scan vs a digital camera RGB file there is still a more satisfying print from film scans vs RGB files. Now I like my D200 but would I buy a larger meg digital camera that only shot BW. You bet in a minute.