Digital Film

When I shot film, most of the time I would load up with a general purpose slide film. Fujichrome 100 was my choice. It was fine for landscape, architecture, still life, travel and portrait work. But it was probably not the best choice for any of these. Even though I shot a fair amount of film, one roll could contain shots from several of the disciplines listed above. If I knew that I was going to finish a film on a particular shoot I could load my camera appropriately - Velvia for landscape, etc. But this was fairly rare. And portraits on Velvia are interesting to say the least! Hence, the general purpose film.

With digital cameras this has all changed. I can effectively use a different film for each shot. I can increase the contrast and saturation for a landscape shot or decrease the saturation and contrast for a portrait. I can do this on a shot by shot basis. There are two ways of doing this. I can change the in-camera settings before shooting or I can change most of the setting during RAW processing. I prefer the second approach for several reasons. I have far finer control during RAW processing. For instance, in-camera I have five settings for saturation; during RAW processing I have about 100. Also, I can change the contrast, saturation, etc far more easily during RAW processing. If I were shooting JPEGs and selected the wrong settings in-camera before shooting, that could mean a lost shot. This is not the case with RAW. In short, RAW gives far more options and far more control. 
Copyright © Greg Wright 2005-14 Photography from Frome - All rights reserved
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