A creaking donkey walks into the Digital World.....hee haw.....On impulse, I bought me a 2nd hand Canon G3 digital camera last week.

At almost 50% off retail, I couldn?t say no. My first digital camera...... So I spent the last 5 days sleeping with it by my side nightly. Comments on my first dip into the world of digital photography below are based strictly on my own first experiences last week.....so they might change in future.

Boy there sure are a whole shitload of buttons and dials on this thing ('bout 16 at last count, not counting them holes on the sides and the memory and battery slots). Having something akin to techno-phobia, I was scared.

I got the obvious out the way quick enough. Its just like swimming, toe-dipping in familiar territory before jumping into the deep end...

1. how to turn the thing on/off
2. where aperture priority switch was
3. where exposure compensation was
4. where flash compensation was
5. where the spot and other exposure metering buttons were
6. where the 'idiot' proof shoot-under-all-situations button was
7. where to select ISO

The tough part next....WHAT in the world is White Balance? It sounds like a Ku Klux Klan slogan. And golly, its ONLY got 8 settings.

Getting my first indoor pictures in bluish or greenish casts, I need to master this white balance thing.

So the weekend was spent pretty much experimenting all possible permutations of ISO's, shooting conditions and in various color modes.

I'll stop here with the techno-babble and touch on some of digital's battle cries. I was suckered by some of these claims when I weighed digital's pros and cons.

Some of the ?pros? have since ended up being demoted to join the list of ?cons?.

I?m sure my personal views on digital cameras will change again down the line. But for now, trying out digital for the very first time, here?s how I feel about them:

?Digital or Film, its still the same B/W?

It is NOT. The results from shooting in B/W mode (even fitted with an assortment of compensating color filters) turned out quite ?muddy?, flat and of low contrast. Yuks!

Severe tweaking in Photoshop saved the situation somewhat but the end results didn?t leave me too many pixels left-over to do anything beyond a 5R print with.

Good friend Cheng Kiang (CK) advised shooting in color and the post processing it through Channel Mixers and Unsharp Mask in Photoshop. That worked wonders in saving those precious pixels (hell, I only got 3.9 million of them in JPEG to work with in the first place!)

?The Shutter Lag is much improved?

THAT really depends on what you?re comparing it against really.

Versus the early-generation digital cameras ( or even the recent G2), the lag (time between pressing the shutter release button and the shutter itself actually activating) was light years faster.

Versus a regular Point and Shoot camera, it was a snail in slow motion.

I pressed the shutter release button?..and had to wait for the shutter to react.

I wanted to make a picture of a man stepping out of a shop?.I ended up with a picture of only his legs with the rest of his body halfway out of the scene.

I tried to shoot a boy throwing a trash bag into a bin. I ended up with an image of a boy facing a bin?.with trash bag already INSIDE the bin hours ago (kidding) instead of it flying through the air.

I've kind of gotten around the slow shutter lag when my 16 year old neighbor told me to just shoot it in multiple-exposure and just delete everything else and keep the exposed 'moment'. "At 2 fps and no film cost, what's the problem....old man?"

?You can shoot really weird angles?

This is true and such a useful feature.

With a swiveling LCD screen, I?m able to compose ground level perspectives without getting low and dirty.

I can see what I?m shooting with the camera held high above my head.

I can ?peek? around corners and check out the scene through the LCD screen with only the profile of the camera visible and the photographer invisible.

Best of all it allows me to get up close and personal with subjects. I was sitting down at the Amoy Street Food Center on Sunday after the shoot and the table right next to mine were seated some well-tattooed guys from the local tong. I flipped the screen to a 90 degree angle, powered up, aimed the lens directly at them and pretended to fix a damaged camera. Turning off the in-camera flash, I managed great up-close, unnoticed coverage without getting thrashed.

?The camera will pay for itself in savings on film and processing costs?

This one single reason with a direct relationship to the long term health of my personal finances was obvious. Factoring in the cost of the camera and CF cards and a re-sale value of half what I paid for it (which works out to about 25% of retail), I figured on ?breaking even? and covering my investments after shooting the equivalent of 26 to 30 36-exposure rolls.

The BITCH is that I end up with ALL the post-processing work. With plenty of evening hours on my hands, that would be an invisible cost (assuming I work as free labor) Otherwise, if it means missing Frazier, the Simpsons or Wrestle Mania on TV, that?s going to be big opportunity cost.

Now instead of going to the lab and letting them handle EVERYTHING, I?m forced to download and process images MYSELF. Some like the independence and the power to control their picture?s final destiny. Me? I suddenly find myself needing to know more Photo Shop skills than before (which, in the past, was limited to Brightness/Contrast, Image Size and the Sharpening Tool)

I just want to take pictures, not become a technician in front of the PC. I was bad in the wet darkroom and still not much better now in the digital darkroom. I pray quietly now for the new breed of all-digital photo labs.

The profile of tomorrow?s photographer continues to evolve.

'You can shoot, shoot, shoot and shoot till the cows come home'

I was given a measly 32mb CF card that came bundled with the package. Feeling a couple of inches inadequate, I bought a 256mb card that'd give me about 120 exposures and my wife bought me a 512mb CF to make a 'real man' out of me.

(At this point of writing a 256mb 30x CF card costs about US$76 while a 512mb 30x CF card runs about US$133)

Well, lets be fair?.truth of the matter is?.as far as testing out the camera and seeing the results of tests, a digital camera wins hands-down as the results are available instantaneously.

It allowed me to fast forward and spike the know-your-camera learning curve from my traditional 3 weeks down to literally 24 hrs (I?m a slow techno-phobic learner)???.at no cost. The old way with traditional film cameras would?ve cost me at least 3 to 4 rolls of slide film plus the cost of processing NOT counting the cost of at least 1 trip to pick up film and 2 trips over to the lab.

The other advantage would be the big storage capacity of high-resolution images in extremely small CF cards when traveling. My 256 and 512 cards with the G3 should hold about 360 max-resolution images?..about 10 rolls worth of film, free from the horrors of airport X-ray machines, all packed into the size of a regular match box.

There are 1 gig cards out there now but I doubt if I?ll pick one up anytime soon ?unless I get me a D SLR (or a D Rangefinder IF that happens)

But that should be where the capacity plug absolutely ends.

I?d put aside the Leica M6 (sorry ?ol girl) on Saturday morning, loaded up the G3 with the 512 and figured on shooting to my heart?s content.

After 75 exposures within an hour, it struck me.

I wasn?t using my head or heart and I sure wasn?t learning anything new from a compositional or ?art? perspective. The 512 gauge shotgun quickly turned my mind off to key elements in good picture making. I realized ?This is bull-shit!? as I reviewed my 74 shots of crap (I did find one single keeper but the keepers-per-roll hit rate was absolutely pathetic)

But WHAT if I?d left the 512 card at home and just brought along the humble 32mb card that came FREE with the package? That would effectively limit myself to about 14 exposures on the G3.

I left the house at 7am on Sunday morning with just the 32. Strangely, I felt great with so little capacity (even compared to a regular 36-exposure roll). I was back at being the efficient and deadly stalker with 14 ?rounds in my ?rifle?. The on-spot edit was merciless and cruel as I dumped one picture after another to save capacity for ?that? keeper that I knew lay just around the corner.

I was no longer the cow that chewed on any crud of grass. I was again the fine gourmet picking and choosing only the best truffles (refined pig that I am).

I was no longer Saturday?s any-booze alcoholic. On Sunday, I was an aficionado drinking only the finest single malt whiskeys I could find and shunning anything mediocre.

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The Java Train Ride gallery brought me an email from Gladia (male) that was so heartening. He commented that the pictures really took him back in time to his homeland in Java as he relived his experiences through the pictures. I live for these emotions.

I?m all hyped up about attending the Clickart World Photojournalists seminar here in June. Steve McCurry is going to be here and I cant wait to hear his ideas on people photography.

Shahidul Alam , head of Drik and this year?s Chairman for the World Press Photo competition is going to be in town May and I can hardly contain my excitement of possibly hosting him with a couple of other guys.

The Singapore History Museum managed to get approval from Tan Tock Seng Hospital to document SARS. I?m new to this but am helping co-ordinate a group of photographers covering this epidemic from various perspectives around Singapore. Working with an absolutely great group of people.

I?ve committed to speak at the Singapore History Museum during end-June on ?People Photography ? Breaking the Ice within 60 seconds?

The July exhibition is getting warmer as the date approaches. I?m off to Cambodia early May for a week to complete the photo story ?My Fists Feed My Family?.

I turned 41 yesterday. Shit happens.


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