Economic Research: Digital Camera

Friday 28 December 2012

Digital Camera

Michael Melford has been working with digital cameras for several years, but the first big professional project that he shot totally with digital was a story on San Diego for National Geographic Traveler in the early 2000s. Since working with a medium-format camera was a big part of his professional work, he shot this project with a Contax 645 and a Kodak digital back. Now his digital work is done mainly with a Canon EOS 1Ds. "I shoot a lot of wide-angle views, so having the full-frame 35mm-size sensor of the 1Ds is important to me," he explains. Most other digital SLRs have smaller sensor sizes so the wide-angle is cropped; you don't get the whole coverage of the lens. He really got started with the digital process when he took a Photoshop workshop about ten years ago. Still, Melford does not consider himself a computer expert. "It's taken me years to get comfortable with the computer," he says. He adds that he relies on a computer guru, Don Landwherle, for a lot of the technical details.