Addressing the question in the subject line first:
I had to think about that a bit, but then decided that yes, digital
photography has improved my skills, just not in a direction I would
have chosen.
Specifically, it has improved my ability to work with a point-and-shoot
camera, and more specifically, it has impropved my ability to work with
the limitations of a particular subset of P&S: fixed focal length,
wide-angle, low resolution, crappy lens coatings (if it's coated at
all), random shutter delay point-and-shoot cameras. Alas, it seems
I still have quite a distance to go in improving these skills, and I'd
much rather be impropving more SLR-ish skills (or rather, _general_
photography skills not based on having a camera that gets in my way).
Being able to check the LCD soon after shooting -- when I remember
that the option is there! -- has shortened the feedback loop, for
sure, and means that I can a) remember what I did that got me the
result I liked/disliked and b) immediately go back and experiment.
At the wedding I shot, I used my P&S digital to (duh!) check my flash
setup before shooting film.
So even the crap digicam has helped me with lighting a little.
Though the limitations of the camera and the fact that I cannot
manually override the shutter speed or the aperture mean that I'm
still guessing and doing a fair bit of math to translate some of
this to film^H^H^H^H proper cameras that I can control.
So a little bit of what I'm learning will carry over to a _real_
digital camera someday, and some of it carries back to the film
cameras I'm still using, but an awful lot of what I'm learning is
about how many shots I have to fire to have a prayer of having the
shutter go off at the right moment when shooting a sword fight or
a dance (the shutter delay seems to be _random_ on this camera,
anywhere from 1/20 of a second to nearly two second!), or things
like, "That subject is too far away, so no matter how clearly I
can see it, it'll only be a few pixels across and have no detail,"
or "when I'm closer than eight feet away, put my finger over at
least half of the flash because this camera can't quench quickly
enough." And, of course, the frustrating, "It's not a Pentax lens,
so don't point it anywhere near the direction of the sun."
It does amuse me a little, admittedly, to find out what this camera
can focus through -- I wasn't sure whether the reversed-lens trick
for macro would confuse it or work normally, and it turns out that
I can get some decent macro shots that surprised the previous owner
(like so much of my gear, this is a hand-me-down from a friend who
upgraded, and despite my complaints with it, I'm glad to have it --
I just had to sort out what it was and wasn't any good for). And
it turns out that without any sort of adaptor, I can hold up one
side of a pair of binoculors to the camera lens and thus shoot tele
instead of wide (though keeping everything lined up just so while
reaching for the shutter button is a challenge).
Come to think of it, where what this camera has helped me learn about
lighting is most significant is in macro. It's been quite the help
_there_.
On another positive note, being able to review the most recent shot
while the proprioceptive memory is still fresh is gradually increasing
my ability to aim the camera without looking through it, such as
when reaching overhead to shoot over a crowd, or out a car window
without taking my eyes off the road.
When I borrowed a real digicam (our soundman's Nikon D70 -- two
bandmates have the same model as well) for an afternoon, I didn't use
it long enough to learn much from it, but I did find it _wicked_cool_
to use (until then I wasn't quite sure I wanted a DSLR, but it
convinced me), but for the shots I took of moving water, instant
review helped a lot to see what had worked and what hadn't, and give
me ideas of what to tweak and reshoot. (For more ordinary images, I
just used the viewfinder and trusted the auto-exposure like I do in a
lot of non-tricky, ordinarily-lit situations with film.)
A proper digital camera -- one that gave me full control over
everything -- that isn't an SLR, would allow me to do much of what
I want as well, but I do still like the ability to go into SLR
shooting mode, seeing through the taking lens and all that, without
relying on an LCD. And I'd want to be able to put my existing
Pentax lenses on it. So given my druthers I'd like to eventually
get my hands on a DSLR even if that's not specifically required
for what I want to shoot.
Moving on to the question in the message body:
Steve Larson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> asked,
> I guess the point I am trying to get across
> is if you have the ability to fire 20 shots at the same subject, are you
> going to take the same amount of set-up
> time for f/stop, exposure, background, composition, etc. as you would with
> film?
I may spend more time because seeing how the first shots came out
either shows me that I need to fix something, or gives me another
idea for something funky to try. Or just because I'm not worried
about running out of film or when I'll be able to afford to get it
developed. I may not do as much _planning_ahead_, but I may spend
more time, try more things, and come up with something I wouldn't
have thought of otherwise.
On the other hand, I also shoot _way_ more careless "grab shots" because
hey, I can just delete the files later if they don't come out.
On the gripping hand, since I know this particular camera has such
onerous limitations, if I'm going to be shooting somewhere where I
know it's going to give me trouble (and I care enough not to just
say, "Oops, oh well, this camera won't do much good here," but not
enough to commit a roll of film and wait months to scrape up money
for processing (yeah, I'm that broke; it sucketh)), I spend a lot
of planning time working out how I'm going to get around the camera's
limitations.
So "I can fire 20 shots of the same subject" can cut in multiple
directions. (Then again, I often shot 20-30 frames of the same
subject on film, too, because I couldn't know which had worked
until much later.)
To a certain extent, where digital can speed things up is knowing
when I _have_ gotten the shot I want and can stop shooting "just in
case" or "let me also try this" shots.
If I had a _good_ digital camera? I think it would in fact improve
my skills even more quickly WRT lighting, especially multiple flash
setups. As to what else it would help me learn, I'm not sure -- most
of what I can learn about exposure settings or composition, I can
learn just as well, albeit more slowly, with film (and have been
learning for a long time that way already). Maybe there are things
I'd learn that I haven't thought of yet because I'm not in that
situation yet, I dunno.
The key, in any case, is to _notice_ what works and what doesn't and
why, not just to keep shooting every which way and plan to pick the
best frame later without remembering what made that frame work and
the others not. (Though with regard to _timing_, that's about all
I can do, given the unpredictability of this camera's shutter. *sigh*)
Thanks for asking a question that got me thinking so much about my
process and about my recent progress (or, in a couple areas, possibly
regress).
-- Glenn
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