I have been shooting almost exclusively digital for the last 3 months. About 5000+ exposures later, I have come to the following personal conclusions about myself:

1. I cant stop shooting as long as there's juice in the battery and unused capacity in the memory card.
2. With a 1 gig card in the Canon 1Ds, the pictures have been coming in thick and fast
3. I'm a memory addict......with 8 CF cards I'm still craving for more
4. Never hit the Delete All button
5. I have a grand total of 5 images I'd seriously like to think are 'keepers
6. With the return of the top of the line Canon 1Ds to the generous client....my prosumer Olympus 5060 seems miniscule, inadequate all of a sudden

The 'upgrade' devil also kept bugging me......so I upgraded from a 3mp model to a 4mp model to a 5mp model and after tasting a 14mp full-sensor on the 1Ds , even an 8mp is not satisfying my hunger any more.... I was craving for 14mp or even 20mp resolution ...... the MP drug...... I want MORE of it....More, more,.....more.... aaaiyyyeeee...I cant live with anything less than 10Mp anymore!!!!!!

With the return of the 1Dsto its owner (I first took it with one Million Thank Yous but returned it with 1000 curses).....I came crashing back down to earth. I loaded up some film and burnt the first roll within 10 minutes. Going back to film, I faced a serious case of withdrawal symptoms....

1. I could not review what I shot immediately. I actually had to Think before I released the shutter button.
2. I ran my film through 5 x-ray scans and through checked-in luggage in a fit of memory lapse when I went to Bangkok and back last week and fogged everything
3. Being happy with a single exposure was no longer enough....1 had control the urge to snap 5 images of each scene
4. I got nervous about the battery life in my film camera after 200 exposures which normally requires a battery change after 500 exposures
5. The rangefinder's viewfinder didnt look as 'real' as the LCD monitor
6. I tried cleaning an imaginary CCD when there was only a shutter curtain on the other end of the film chamber
7. After the first 2 rolls of 'breaking' back into the world of film use..... I averaged at least 3 decent keepers per roll......12 real keepers after the weekend in Bangkok.....well, they would have been 'keepers if the negs werent fogged by the darned X-ray machines

And the Worst symptom of all......my wallet is still aching.....it just occured to me painfully that shooting film cost me alot of money. I had happily returned to Singapore when I realized I had to send in the film for processing and I couldnt get everything back for a WHOLE 3 days! and that I had to PAY almost $100 for this inconvenience!

Moving back to film was not easy....fool that I was to think that I could switch back and forth between digital and film like a switch light. It was tough 'slowing down'.... I thought I was totally in control when I was shooting digital.....I was totally addicted like a crackhead. Forcing myself to look again at potential images slowly and studiously seemed too difficult.

My fingers were itching to hit that shutter release button all day long.....my eyes yearning to peer into a 1.8" LCD screen for that sense of false reassurance and comfort that I had a correctly exposed image.... And the biggest bug of all.... the need to reload a new cartridge of film after every 36 exposures, drove me mad.

Instinctively, I was looking for WB control.... looking for a histogram.... looking for the delete button stuff that were clearly not on my Contax G2.

On Sunday, I blamed it all on Contax and made a worse mistake...... I loaded film into the Leica M6 TTL..... Suddenly the meaning of ANCIENT, the definition of Extinct, the smell of Old filled my senses as I struggled with the damned baseplate and tried to slip in a roll of Tri X into those dinosauric slots.

Hell, on the digital camera, I could pick any of 6 different types of sounds that represented a shutter release from a solid Klonk! to the gentle chirp of a canary. On the Leica, what was touted as the most silent shutter release on Planet Earth now sounded like a whimpy little c-l-i-c-k whisper.

The only consolation was that I felt like I was REALLY shooting again. I had real images on negatives that I could start to slowly appreciate again..... one frame at a time. Is the price, is all this extra effort, is all this extra $$$ for a few exposures worth it as compared to shooting digital? Yeah you bet...... I'd rather shoot less and have better images on hand than 5000 exposures hardly worth looking at.....I mean you can get a case of imaging overdose reviewing and processing this amount of digital images within a 48 hr span......especially when EVERTHING is in damned color and you have to look at it on a computer monitor.

These are serious symptoms of digital addiction. And I'm past the denial stage but still undergoing Cold Turkey.

------------

8 June 2004

Today, Venus lined up with earth and crossed the path of the sun. I had coffee with Judhi Prasetyo and Iman Wicaksono Soegijjoko who was all prepped up to capture this once-every-120-year event. I learnt something new about astrophotography that day especially with a 'sun' filter that blocks out 99% of light to allow the sun to be photographed via a Celestron telescope without getting blind in the process.

----------------

Grain magazine will be running an article on the recently concluded Central Java Photo Trip 2004. I hope Wubin puts together a good article.

Just received an email from John Cosgrove, Editor of Photo i magazine. They're also asking for images and comments on the trip.

Planning the next trip with forums from Malaysia and Philippines already. Response from Philippines has been warm and very encouraging.

----------------------

Funny thing...... whenever there's a model shoot of female models in the forums, the shooters' lists get filled up pretty fast. Lance advertised 2 weeks back for a model shoot of a transsexual model and so far has gotten zero responses. I guess its still pretty out of most folks' palletts.

---------

Ken Rockwell....... its always a love/hate relationship for me when I visit his website. Overall I cant help but say that I admire his light satire and style of writings...... sifting through his articles I came across this gem titled "Why Your Camera Does Not Matter".

I'd just like to share a part of that article with you

Quote Ken Rockwell: "When it comes to the arts, be it music, photography, surfing or anything, there is a mountain to be overcome. What happens is that for the first 20 years or so that you study any art you just know that if you had a better instrument, camera or surfboard that you would be just as good as the pros.

You waste a lot of time worrying about your equipment and trying to afford better. After that first 20 years you finally get as good as all the other world-renowned artists, and one day when someone comes up to you asking for advice you have an epiphany where you realize that it's never been the equipment at all.

You finally realize that the right gear you've spent so much time accumulating just makes it easier to get your sound or your look or your moves, but that you could get them, albeit with a little more effort, on the same garbage with which you started.

You realize the most important thing for the gear to do is just get out of your way. You then also realize that if you had spent all the time you wasted worrying about acquiring better gear woodshedding, making photos or catching more rides that you would have gotten where you wanted to be much sooner." End of Quote.

The entire article can be found here: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/notcamera.htm

Makes me seriously think if I should clear out half my dry box.

-------------

I'll close this edition of my diary entry with another excerpt from Ken from his article "How to Take Great Photographs"

Quote "Photography is communicating passion and sparking excitement in the mind and body of another person. If you don't care about the subject then the results won't get beyond the basics. Care deeply and incredible things happen. Don't care and you are quickly forgotten."

"Photography is the art of communicating passion. You need to be passionate about whatever it is that you photograph. If you are passionate you'll get great results, if you don't care, you won't." End Quote

The entire article can be found here: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/howto.htm

End