I am a freelance photojournalist who has had work printed in both The Economist and New Yorker magazines. Also, if you are interested, I have information about purchasing a bridge in Brooklyn.

For me, photography is a hobby. As I said in the other photography thread, I primarily shoot objects in various degrees of shadow, and mostly with Tri-X 35 mm. I develop my own film and enlarge my own prints. You cannot produce true black-and-white photographs with digital, and you never will, which is why I am disdainful of the medium. As I had previously stated, I do own a Powershot A530, but it is, at best, a secondary camera, best used in settings when a quick set-up is required. It is convenient, but lacks the warmth and texture of film.

"Pooped from Posting". That's a new one.

There really is space between the pixels, and it can have an effect, just like the regular grid locations of those pixels can cause aliasing effects that you will not get on film. Now, film doesn't have infinite resolution, it also has a certain grain size which can become quite noticeable on high ISO film. but those grains are randomly distributed, which avoids some of the typical digital effects. Also, on colour film, the colours overlap. In typical CCD's, they are side by side, reducing the area sensitive to each colour.

High megapixel values are good, yes, but for the same sensor size and technology level they lower the dynamic range. Depending on light conditions, you might want to just downsample the high resolution image afterwards to reduce noise.

Oh, and it certainly is possible to do black and white photography with digital cameras. In fact, some of the best performing CCD sensors are monochrome. However, this is for scientific equipment, and I do not know of affordable general use cameras with such sensors. There's stuff available for attaching to telescopes though, including some for the amateur market.

Well, no. You describe a monochromatic photograph. This is not the same. True black and white photographs are given their sharp contrast due to the chemical reaction of the silver salts, which are converted to liquid silver, and re-convered to the crystals via it's reaction with chlorine. Therefore, you are not recieving the same type of optical density with a digital camera, regardless of how expensive it is, as you have no chemical reaction in the development process. Thus, it is close, but not the same thing.

The sharpness is not due to the chemical reaction (that's just a technical detail of the procedure), but due to the small size of those crystals. With bigger crystals (as in fast films), you'll lose some resolution, just like you lose some in low-megapixel cameras.

Given a correct choice of film for the conditions, it will beat digital cameras, but its resolution is not unlimited.

You could always change your passion. Why not be a video game collector instead? You have enough money right now to buy a few right?


Actually, if photography is your thing, why not do that to make some money? Go buy a cheap camera with a decent pixel rate and take pictures of things and try to sell them off to people that might be interested in your art and style. Create a website and use that as one of your store fronts. Add links on everything you post to solicate people to go to your site and buy. Be reasonable with prices and don't give up if you don't start making money right away. It may take awhile for word of mouth to spread. On the side try doing a few odd jobs to help with your income (mowing lawns, raking leaves, cleaning houses, babysitting, etc.) Take up on every offer you can to make a dollar. Try seeing if a local grocery store will allow you to bag groceries for tip money that you can use as a charity. You might make enough in a few days of doing that to buy a new camera.

Right now is the perfect time for you to make money. You still have the support of your parents and you don't owe anybody anything (car payments, house payments, utility payments, property taxes, etc.).

Great black and white photography retains a bit of 'grainyness'. One of the great problems with digital monochromatic photographs is that they are too sharp, which gives the photographs an almost unnatural appearance. Despite it's grain, the film does posses a richness of color.