Archaeological Photography – Digital Symbolism

When looking back that this lecture, I am still not sure what “symbolism” has to do with digital cameras, but it was nice to move from film to digital format as that is what I use (and I think most ordinary people use) now (there are probably some real professionals who still like to use film).  That said, I did enjoy learning about film and working with it (film sort of has a romantic feel).  This lecture basically just introduced us to digital cameras and what they can do and I will relate that in this post.

We were told that (as we can see) digital cameras keep improving their megapixel capabilities but the peak will be somewhere around 35 megapixels with most cameras peaking somewhere around 25.  I went this morning to look at digital cameras on the market to see where they are and most of the high-end cameras are around 14-16 megapixels.  However, if you have 3-4 thousand dollars to throw down for a camera, you can get some in the high 20’s.  The highest I saw was Nikon D800 that is about $3000 and offers a surprising 36.3 megapixels!

I think the reason we were told that the peak would be somewhere around 35 was that there is only so much information you can put into a certain space.  Another reason might be that resolution, which is measured by pixels per inch (ppi), is what everyone wants.  However, the higher you go the greater the space needed to store the image.

Because of the space problem, photos are often compressed.  TIFF is a format of files that are not compressed.  JPEG, by contrast, is a compression format that balances, more or less efficiently, subtle graduations of tones of a larger size.

Often, on digital cameras you will find settings that you might not know what they mean.  “P” is a setting that you can program (such as for changing the film speed).  “Tv” is a setting for time.  “Av” is a setting for aperture.  “M” is a manual setting.  “A-Dep” is a setting for automatic depth of field.  “C1” and “C2” are custom settings.  If you want to customize a setting for colder temperatures one trick you might try is to point the camera at a white piece of paper and tell the camera to use this.  You would use that custom setting for a scene with multiple light source types.