This past weekend I looked at various parts of Champaign-Urbana through my viewfinder, a hobby that has taken the proverbial back seat to my more recent obsession with the art of brewing beer. One thing I've immediately realized, if you don't stay in practice, little by little you lose your eye. All of those shots that looked wonderful in your mind just will not line up. My second revelation was a little slower in realization. Those of you who know me know that I shoot entirely in digital, do a minimal amount of post work, and primarily share my work through my great (albeit sporadically updated) photoblog. I always expose, adjust saturation, and finally sharpness to the point that it looks good on my relatively calibrated LCD at home. Unfortunately for me, very few of my viewers are reviewing my work on my LCD, and therein lies the rub. Completely digital presentation, that is, through some sort of a web/electronic medium can never be consistent. I adjust everything for viewing at home, head to work and share under-saturated, under sharpened photos through the dull glow of our cheap LCDs at work. It is no wonder Matt prefers the traditional development process. Even though he eventually has to deal with these consistency issues (when he scans his pictures), he will always have that 'perfect' print that matches exactly what he thought that moment/place/object should be represented as. It makes me wonder if I shouldn't start printing my photos more regularly.
In other photography related news, both Canon and Nikon have announced new entry-level cameras, but neither have really piqued my interest, especially considering the ridiculous choice of SD memory cards on both of those bodies. Don't they know I have 10GB in CF that I'm attached to!? I have no idea what my future camera plans are, but I do know that with all of the other purchases of hobby related items recently, if I don't acquire at least a European vacation for Anna and quite possibly an automobile shortly after that, I may be looking at acquiring a bed for the garage :) So if I figure that a new camera body purchase is at least a year away, it really makes it hardly worth considering at this point... maybe I can sneak a lens in there somewhere though ;-) probably something in the big zoom range, maybe something like 100-400mm or a 70-300mm 4-5.6 IS. A decent zoom is definitely something my camera bag lacks, right now I make do with an old 75-300 4-5.6 III that I picked up for a song right before our honeymoon trip to Hawaii... and while it has captured its share of pictures (1,2,3), I think it may be time to retire it to the great camera bag in the sky.