A lot of my time this week has been spent researching the option of "going digital" for all my photography. I've been using my pocket sized digital camera, the Canon S110, to test some lighting and views for slides. It's great because I can take some photos and within minutes, see the results.
But I knew that for top quality slides, I'd need to use my film camera, an old but good Canon FT. Some of my energy has gone into finding and buying the two new lenses to fit this camera: a macro for closeups of bowl details, and a zoom so I can shoot from further away and get a better perspective. Shooting a bowl at about 85 to 100mm is supposed to make the bowl look in better proportion in the slide.
Sunday, though, a man from the CanonFD mailing list at Yahoo emailed me to suggest that I consider digital. I wrote back with what I knew - that it wouldn't work because I needed slides. Still, I thought I'd check to see if this was still true.
A post to the Crafts Report Forum led to some responses that made me think one of the newer digital cameras might make fine slides. Wow! This would be such a relief! It would be quicker and easier in many ways - and could pay for itself pretty rapidly compared with the cost of film, processing, and getting the film to Atlanta and back.
So began a roller coaster ride of yes/no/maybe/yes/no/maybe. I researched the cameras available, mostly at Phil Askew's review site, and at Steve's Digicams. The new Canon eos200d stood out as a camera that would surely take files that could be made into good slides. But a camera not out yet, a new Sony, will have features that are extremely attractive. Conceivably even the newer version of my pocket camera, the Canon S400, could take files that could make decent slides. That would be a camera I'd take with me everywhere.
Yesterday, based on my latest information, I decided to stay with film at least for a while. This morning I got an email from a professional photographer who specializes in slides of artwork. She said slides from her Canon10D were so good she was discontinuing film use. Hmm. Maybe my overlap between film and digital will be shorter than I expected.
This is the kind of major decision that can be really hard for me. But I know it will fall into place in time. That's what happened with my first computer. One morning I just woke up and knew which computer I wanted. I went that day and bought it. I never really fell out of love with it either. Once I make up my mind, I'm loyal.
7:14:01 PM 
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