Shooting Chrome and the Minolta Dynax 7

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

heya crocuta, don't worry about step 3, Minolta is coming up with the Dynax 7 Digital. Should be out shortly after Photokina. That way you can delete step 1, 2 and 3 from your workflow, hehe. =P

Oh, just curious, you don't shoot chromes? Any reason for it?

[Crocuta]

heya crocuta, don't worry about step 3, Minolta is coming up with the Dynax 7 Digital. Should be out shortly after Photokina. That way you can delete step 1, 2 and 3 from your workflow, hehe. =P

Hmmm, no new lenses. I like the sound of that. Okay, now to earning some extra cash... <c'mon lotto!!!>

Oh, just curious, you don't shoot chromes? Any reason for it?

I love chrome and used to shoot it, but when I'm shooting wildlife, I just don't have the control of light that I'd like. Most of my shooting comes right around dawn and dusk with quick movement of subjects between light and shadow so I really need to push my film and I don't have time to set it up carefully. Negative film has enough lattitude that I can push it one stop faster and still have a bit left to deal with an additional underexposure. I usually use Royal Gold 400 (set at 800) because it has a nice grain and reproduces natural tones accurately without the oversaturation that some other brands favor.

[Crocuta]

heya crocuta, don't worry about step 3, Minolta is coming up with the Dynax 7 Digital. Should be out shortly after Photokina. That way you can delete step 1, 2 and 3 from your workflow, hehe. =P

(Later) I just checked out some of the previews of that Dynax 7 digital and it sure looks sweet to me! I love that they've built the image stabilization into the body instead of the lenses so I can use my current lenses and gain that feature. I'm also pleased that it's an APS size CCD instead of 35mm. I know landscape photographers wouldn't share my feeling, but for me that's like getting a free conversion of my telephoto to an even longer focal length, and I'm always looking to shoot a little longer. I've been planning to jump off the Minolta ship since they had seemed to abandon the DSLR concept, but now I think I may just stay onboard. We'll see how the real reviews go, but I'm hopeful. Thanks for pointing it out! :turn-l:

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Yea, exactly. Minolta are smart to pull this off. Minolta fans can go taunt the Canon fans "IS lenses? We need no stinkin' IS lenses!"

I also favour APS sized sensors greatly over full framed sensors, for cost reasons, for the crop, and to a certain extent, performance with wide angle lenses (see Nikon DX). That is probably another argument for another day though. =P

On film emulsions, I could talk all day long about them, but for ISO 800 negs, my choice is Fuji Press, and for high speed chromes, it has to be Fuji Provia 400F, pushed up to two stops when necessary (grain when scanned looks surprisingly good). However it does have certain characteristics which detract from it as a favourite film of mine. I wish Kodak could come up with a similar film!