I thought I'd share this picture with you.
So, this photo may mean things aren't so bad. It's not a particularly nice photo, it's only remarkable because I took it with the camera in my phone. Check it out (you'll need to click on it to see it full-size):
It's a snapshot of some moving water in Glenariff Country Park, by the way.
So, maybe moving to digital isn't a wholly bad thing. I'll miss a lot of the jiggery-pokery that goes with film at the minute - the choice of film based on what effect you want to give, that kind of thing.
The digital CCDs are great, I'm sure, but I just don't think they're configurable enough yet to have a profile that says "emulate Fujifilm Superia 200 ISO" yet in any meaningful way, so no matter how good your post-processing, you're starting a bit further behind than where you'd be if you used film.
Still, digital is definitely a whole lot more convenient than film, and I know that in time the quality will hugely surpass what can be achieved with those little silver halides. I just don't think we're there yet, so Nikon's move seems a little premature to me.
The funny thing about all this is that Nikon are doing this immediately after
going out of their way to piss off their digital enthusiasts. I was a Nikon/Nikkor fan, I still think their film cameras are great, but their proprietary RAW encoding means I'm not going to buy one of their high-end digital cameras. Not when there are other digital manufacturers out there who have no proprietary formatting, who are open to any developer whether they pay the Nikon tax or not.
