Digital cameras

For a long time I thought megapixels (or Mpixels) was the magic word. The more you could get, the better quality pictures you could make with a digital camera. That was true in the Beginning, I mean around the year 2000. An analog photographer at that time, having followed academia and developed in B/W, I refused to buy a digital camera because of the mere 2 or 3 Mpixels they had in store. And at that time I, and the other photographers swearing by celluloid and film rolls, were right: the limited number of pixels was the bottleneck. An analog film of, say, 100 ASA (or ISO) was equivalent to something between 8 and 12 Mpixels.

I thought I might compromise if there a 5 Mpixels got to the market, and so I did finally go digital with the first prosumer autofocus SLR cameradigital: the Minolta Dimage 5, around the end of 2001. I remember this moment very well, because the first pictures I shot with it were of my newborn son Jeroen. I instantly loved it (and him, of course): the ease of taking photos, being able to check them on the spot, copy and emailing them around.

As Mpixels became more abundant however, the bottleneck was no longer there and other criteria began to play a role again. In part the same ones as in the analogue days: quality and size of the lense (and autofocus), optical zoom range, and the hand and art of the master. But also new criteria: size (and sensitivity) of the CCD, delay of the electronic shutter, and power of the processor. Besides maybe special-purpose cameras, a good digital camera these days offers a balanced range of these parameters. Except for the master, who hasn't changed.

Or yes, he has. Today there are millions and millions of photographers, most of whom are hardly knowledgeable. But that doesn't matter. There is still photoshop to save pictures. Or else there is time to lose them, on CDs that go bad, harddisks that crash, and computers that are dumped.