LIGHT METERS

A picture must possess a real power to generate light and for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.
Henri Matisse

I been trying to make this transition with a lot of question,sometimes to many,last week with a couple of friends ,we tried to put some lights together and my mind went blank do I really do the same things i used to?? well the key of reading light in photography makes no difference,the light is the same with digital or film,but here is some info..

The earliest type of light meters were called extinction meters and contained a numbered or lettered row of neutral density filters of increasing density. The photographer would position the meter in front of their subject and note the filter with the greatest density that still allowed incident light to pass through. The letter or number corresponding to the filter was used as an index into a chart of appropriate aperture and shutter speed combination for a given film speed.Extinction meters suffered from the problem that they depended on the light sensitivity of the human eye (which can vary from person to person) and subjective interpretation.

Later meters removed the human element and relied on technologies incorporating selenium,Cds and silicon photo detectors. There are two general types of light meters: reflected-light and incident-light.

Reflected-light meters measure the light reflected by the scene to be photographed. All in-camera meters are reflected-light meters. Reflected-light meters are calibrated to show the appropriate exposure for “average” scenes. .

Incident-light meters which measure the amount of light falling on the subject using an integrating sphere (usually, a translucent hemispherical plastic dome is used to approximate this) placed on top of the light sensor. Because the incident-light reading is independent of the subject's reflectance, it is less likely to lead to incorrect exposures for subjects with unusual average reflectance. Taking an incident-light reading requires placing the meter at the subject's position and pointing it in the general direction of the camera, something not always achievable in practice, e.g., in landscape photography where the subject distance approaches infinity.

Spot metering as the name indicates only reads a small spot or portion of the overall image (usually 1% to 3%). This type of metering is useful in any situation where the lighting is extreme. Backlit subjects, macro shots, or even pictures of the moon can benefit from this type of metering. This type of metering is usually found on the more costly upper end cameras.

THE DIFFERENCE FILM VS DIGITAL

In the old days, if your camera (35mm of course) had a battery die on you in the middle of an important shoot, you still had options. I mean after all; the only thing you needed the battery for was the light meter, it’s not like your whole camera will shut down if you have no battery. Oh, I’m sorry . . . if you are using all digital that might have stung just a little bit.

The point was if your battery died, you still had a way to get a good picture. If you were using 100 speed film you could set your shutter speed to whatever the flash sync speed was (usually 1/60th or 1/125th of a second), set your f-stop to f-16, and bracket every shot. Besides the obvious dependency on batteries, there are other differences between film and digital cameras.
No doubt you heard the phrase: "35mm equivalent". This means that the optics are not exactly the same in a digital camera. Since the 35mm SLR camera has been the standard for so long, that’s what newer cameras are compared to. The difference between the two is a ratio of 1:1.4. Simply put, a 35-200 zoom on a digital camera would be like having a 49-280 zoom lens on a traditional 35mm camera.

The main reason the optics are different is because the sensor (the device that actually reads the light) is also a different size. Film cameras use film (sensitive to light) that is placed directly behind the lens. When the correct exposure is calculated, that image is literately burned into the film. Digital cameras use a sensor; that also sits behind the lens. This sensor is made up of millions of individual points that each represents 1 pixel. Once the sensor has gathered the information for each pixel it transfers that data to a digital media card (which can be used repeatedly.)

The sensor is the physical device that gathers information about the quality of light coming into the camera. The process of "how" the sensor goes about gathering information is referred to as "metering". The human eye can distinguish a range of about 16 different f-stops; camera meters only have a range of about 5 f-stops. This is why camera meters are calibrated for a "mid range" exposure of 18% gray, because 90% of the time that is as close as they can get to the human eye. It’s not the camera’s fault that it can not see as well as you do, it’s simply a fact of life.

NOISE AND GRAIN

Quote:
Action is the foundational key to all success.
Pablo Picasso

What is better than a nice trip where you can take your camera and feel like a kid in a candy store???that was my weekend in Chicago,I love buildings,noise,traffic,and art,a lot of art,on the streets ,museums,hotel,people;i took some pics everything in manual with my 35-75 nikon lens,what do you think??
And this is more important photography info:
Noise and grain
Thermal noise, produced by heat and manufacturing defects, degrades shadow areas of electronic images with random pixels of the incorrect colour. Film grain becomes obvious in areas of even and delicate tone. Grain and film sensitivity are linked, with more sensitive films having more obvious grain. Likewise, when used at high sensitivity settings, digital camera images show more image noise than those made at lower sensitivities.

Nearly all digital cameras apply noise reduction to long exposure photographs to counteract thermal noise. For very long exposures, the image sensor must be operated at low temperatures to prevent noise affecting the final image. Film grain is not affected by exposure time, although the apparent speed of the film changes with lengthy exposures, a phenomenon known as reciprocity failure

Film vs digital

Quote of the day:
"There are lots of things you could have been,could have done,could have seen,could have known,and could have experienced.Yet nothing compares to the wondrous places you'll go when you do what you know you CAN."

When i went to photography school some years ago,digital was just not there yet!! film,lab,and all kinds of working,i mean really working with lights,sun and the great dark room,was the way to learn to be a photographer,and then some years after i decided to get back on track and OMG,what happen? I found myself lost in the digital world,,pixel,megapixel,image sensor,,,scary!
Film and digital capture are completely different media. They are used for similar purposes, but they themselves are completely unrelated to each other.
I used to spent time a lot of time to take a pic,developed and then sometimes not even been 100%happy with the results and I just had to do it all over again.
Even worse when a see people looking at me like I'm a alien just because I still love film but i have to admit it,after my 8008 Nikon this D90 is a little princess!!
my old film camera will always be w me,and my dark room will be in my garage but i spend all my time now,reading post,articles,and manual for to improve my photography knowledge and to feel in the mood to just take pictures without feeling like a digital amateur,,I guess not matter how many years i spent in school or how many pics i took before i have to start all over again..and you know what?It is just OK...
So here i go some I will get some technical info.. I know is no fun but is helpful

Spatial resolution

The quality of digital photographs an be measured in several ways. Pixel count is presumed to correlate with spatial resolution. The quantity of picture elements (pixels) in the image sensor is usually counted in millions and called "megapixels". The resolution of film images depends upon the area of film used to record the image - 35 mm, Medium format or Large format - the speed of the film and the quality of lens fitted to the camera.

Digital cameras have a variable relationship between resolution and megapixel count;other factors are important in digital camera resolution, such as the number of pixels used to resolve the image, the effect of the Bayer pattern or other sensor filters on the digital sensor and the image processing algorithm used to interpolate sensor pixels to image pixels. Digital sensors are generally arranged in a rectangular grid pattern, making images susceptible to moire pattern artifacts, whereas film is not affected by this because of the random orientation of grains.

Estimates of a photograph's resolution taken with a 35 mm film camera vary. More information may be recorded if a fine-grain film, combined with a specially-formulated developer are used. Conversely, less resolution may be recorded with poor quality optics or with coarse-grained film. A 36 mm x 24 mm frame of ISO 100-speed film is estimated to contain the equivalent of 20 million pixels.

Many professional-quality film cameras use medium format or large format films. Because of the size of the imaging area, these can record higher resolution images than current top-of-the-range digital cameras. A medium format film image can record an equivalent of approximately 50 megapixels, while large format films can record around 200 megapixels (4 × 5 inch) which equates to around 800 megapixels on the largest common film format, 8 × 10 inches, without accounting for lens sharpness. A medium format DSLR provides from 42 to 50 megapixels, which is similar to medium format film quality.

The medium which will be used for display, and the viewing distance, should be taken into account. For instance, if a photograph will only be viewed on a television or computer display, which can resolve approximately .3 megapixels and 1-2 megapixels, respectively, or HD sets of 1080p that can display 2MP, the resolution provided by inexpensive digital cameras may be sufficient.