The brave new (digital) World

By the turn of the century (for those who have doubts which one: XX-th to XXI-st) it became clear to everyone that the good old film would die out while the "new" digital cameras would take over. I didn't insist on being on the wave of this revolution. For those who forgot, digital cameras were expensive and the quality of the pictures was just awful.

But, you know, even if you don't want to lead that change, it will finally reach you. That's what happened to me, too, when I bought my first digital camera, a Minolta Dimages E203 (pictured here; photo credit: dpreview.com). I bought it while visiting Mannheim (Germany) in September 2002. You wouldn't believe me today, but I payed 300 Euros in order to have this 2 megapixel camera. But, in its (and my) defense, it was no entry-level camera! Quality was acceptable (I'm talking about the 2002 quality standard) and it had even an optical 3x zoom (38mm - 105mm 24x36 equivalent). The maximum resolution was 1600x1200 and if you were short on storage space the camera could also use lower resolutions (1280 x 960, 640 x 480). It could even shoot short movies (now that was something new!).

Believe it or not, I was very happy with that point-and-shoot camera for almost three years. I discovered (some) great things about using digital photo equipment: instantaneous preview of your shot, deleting a bad one and quick availability of your picture (you just have to download it on yor pc, right?).

But I also changed my attitude while taking a picture. The brave new digital world has the motto: "shoot, then think" (some totally skip the thinking part).

This digital photography made me do exactly the opposite of what I was doing when shooting B/W films (in those glorious days, I took a long reflection before every shot, asking myself: is it worth to consume one film position with this picture?).

Nowadays, even in professional shooting, you tend to shoot first, and see if it was worth it after. Why wouldn't you? You can store thousands of shots on a single memory card and erase a bad shot in no time!

And speaking about photographic skills: today, even the cheapest digital camera has auto-focus, automatic exposure, automatic white balance (AWB), automatic face detection and the list can be continued.

So, what do you have to do man, in order to take a picture?

Just frame it, be sure to be in the "all automatic" (green square) mode, and push that damn' button. It's that easy! And you are a photographer!

Yeah, right!