Photography. Been taking a keen interest in what cameras are out there. Is there such a thing as an Ideal solution?

Large Format.

A Large Format Digital back for my field camera. They don’t exist. The betterlight co. make some, but they are essentially studio bound (for monorail cameras). In any case it runs into some serious money. At 416 million pixels I suppose it’s to be expected.

http://www.betterlight.com/

So I’m stuck with film for that baby, and I would use it if I could find someone to develop the film. I no longer have the time & patience to do it myself. Of course, no-one offers this service.

Medium Format.

Digital Medium Format is too expensive, despite being one hell of a lot smaller. The Mamiya ZD looks nice.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0409/04092902mamiya_zd.asp (its £8,000)

As for Hasselblad, £20,000 for digi-back? Dream on…..

35mm Film & Digital.

I have a film scanner for 35mm negs & slides, but because this is an additional process, the results can’t compete with images from a digital camera.

A digital back for a Contax SLR ? No such animal. Worse still, Contax/Yashica withdrew from the market in 2005. The good news was that Contax made a digital camera just before this; the N Digital. If I could find one I’d be able to use all my old lenses with it. Trouble is I can’t find one anywhere.

Someone on ebay is offering conversion rings enabling C/Y lenses to be used on Canon EOS cameras. I’m considering this. A workmate brought in his EOS 350d yesterday for me to try out. It is complicated. All I want is manual + aperture & shutter priority. This thing does everything but make coffee. Also, I’m not sure that the camera could properly support my heavier lenses. They (may have) already cracked two Yashica FX3 polycarbonate top-plates. That’s why I replaced it with the all-metal Contax in the first place.

It’s a tough call. For the moment I may stick with my modest Nikon Coolpix for a little longer.