For Position Only: Seeing the Light of Digital Photography

Anita Dennis

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If you’ve read my column, even once, you know that I’m a curmudgeon. True, I love technology and all that it can do to make our jobs more efficient and our tasks easier to complete. But I’m also a skeptic, and I’m loathe to change an opinion once I’ve formed it, even if facts and circumstances evolve and my perspective grows dated. I’m a lot like that kid Mikey in the old Life cereal commercials — I’ll stare at the bowl interminably and refuse to taste a new food (or try a new technology), but eventually I give in and then look out — I love it!

And that’s what happened to me this spring with digital photography. I saw the light.

Futzing with Buttons
As you well know, there’s nothing new about digital photography. It’s been around for years now, and cameras have steadily improved, yielding better image quality, offering better control over capture, and becoming increasingly affordable. And while I have long intellectually understood the benefits of digital photography in a print production workflow — fewer processing steps, greater image integrity, no film costs, and so on — I haven’t had much opportunity as a freelance writer to appreciate those benefits firsthand.

Personally, I love my Ricoh XR10 35mm camera, on which I learned all about photography — f-stops, apertures, white point, filters, and more. OK, so I migrated to a little Ricoh R1 point-and-shoot and got a tad lazy over the last few years, but it works just fine, thank you very much. I know how to use its three simple buttons to get the image I desire, and I have my Ritz Camera Frequent Foto card that gets me 10 percent off on prints and free doubles (a must for every parent of a small child). I’m just a happy photographic camper.

So what does my husband do? He rocks my world by buying me a digital camera for Christmas: a snappy silver device, a 2.1-megapixel Ricoh Caplio RR10, which does double-duty as an MP3 player among other neat feats. I admit, I was excited when I unwrapped the box, and I immediately began playing with it, checking out the various modes, charging up the battery, setting it up, and tethering it to my Mac. I told you: I love technology. But actually use it? Pish. Remember the trip to Italy I wrote about a couple of months ago? We took the digital Caplio and the analog R1: my husband used the former, I used the latter. Who wants to mess with a new, unfamiliar device when you’re on vacation? I want to snap a photo quickly and then put the camera away so that I don’t see the sights through a viewfinder. Er, LCD. And that’s just what I did, while my husband futzed with buttons and spent our down time in the hotel room figuring out (and cussing a bit at) iPhoto.

Instant Gratification
But a few weeks later, I was inspired to use the camera to solve a small problem: I had to buy a dress for my daughter, who’s going to be a flower girl in a wedding this summer. The bride, my sister-in-law, who’s living in Los Angeles, shared some ideas about color and style, but it was up to me to find the right one. So I popped the camera in my purse and trotted off to Nordstrom, where I photographed my daughter trying on four different dresses. I came home, emailed the photos to my sister-in-law, and the next day she told me which one she liked best. How much of a hassle would that have been using a film camera?

Softened, I decided to bring only the Caplio on the two trips I’ve taken since then. That 64MB storage card is pretty amazing. It holds dozens of photos; forget about bringing multiple film cartridges, everything fits on the one card. And, hmm, I can snap the photo and switch to preview mode immediately. My sister closed her eyes for that one. Delete. Try again. That’s better. No disappointing prints will be returned a couple of days after I drop off the film at Ritz. I know now that I got the shot I want.

Speaking of developing, remember my frustration with Shutterfly.com last fall when I used the service for my Christmas cards? At the time, I found its interface perplexing, and the cards Shutterfly.com printed were dark and oversaturated. Since I’m pretty sure those cards came out poorly because of color management issues, I gave the online print service another shot after I returned from New Mexico with a few dozen digital images, a straightforward processing job. And guess what? Shutterfly.com is my new best friend. Uploading the files was quick and easy using the site’s batch plug-in, I added a custom message to the back of each print (a nice feature), and clicked Place Order. The prints arrived in my mailbox three days later, and they were gorgeous, each and every one. Who knew they came from JPEGs and not film?

Total Conversion
So I’m a convert. My film cameras are hereby relegated to the closet shelf. Hereafter I get my photo prints just as fast but without leaving my house, confident that each shot’s composition and quality will be just right. And I will snobbishly deride those who are still operating in the dark ages of film photography.

Of course, I still have a lot to learn, such as when it’s best for me to remove red-eye and lift shadows using Photoshop and when I should leave the dirty work to Shutterfly.com. And I have to figure out efficient and intuitive systems for naming and storing images. But even though my experience with digital photography thus far is that of a consumer, it gives me a renewed appreciation for how digital photography can streamline professional workflows and processes, as well as the hurdles that graphic arts shops, agencies, and other publishers have to overcome when they adopt any new technology. But as always, it’s worth the effort.

Now, one of these days I think I may actually listen to some MP3 tunes on my digital camera. Just don’t ask me when.