“I am sure the next step will be the electronic image, and I hope I shall live to see it. I trust that the creative eye will continue to function, whatever technological innovations may develop.” – Ansel Adams

Last week, Cannon announced a new camera that creates huge 50 mega-pixel images.  When available, this will become the highest resolution, 35mm format camera in the market place.  The digital images from it will be gargantuan in size and take up much space on hard drives and require a really good computer to process.  The largest sized  images previously came from the Nikon D800 family of cameras ... 36 mega-pixels resolution.   

I was reflecting on this announcement and thinking about the first digital cameras I purchased in 2001 and 2002.  They were both the "State of the Art" technology available from Nikon.  At the time, the debate about digital vs film was just begining.  Most photographers were still shooting film, but given my background in computers, I was intrigued and quickly went all digital.  The first camera was a Nikon D1x.  It delivered 6 mega-pixel resolution but at a measly 3 frames per second ... a rate inadequate for capturing fast moving objects like birds.  So, I purchased a Nikon D1H which was capable of shooting at 5 frames per second.  WOW!  There was a catch, though, as it's resolution was only 2.74 mega-pixels.  The newly announced Cannon: it's a jump of 1,825% resolution in just 13 years.  Holy cow, on average, that's more than a 100% increase in resolution each year!  

My reflections led me to rediscover images in the library that were taken with those cameras on a trip to South Dakota in 2003.  My preconceived notion of South Dakota was completely wrong.  I found both the geography and wildlife varied, and interesting.  Here are a few images from that shoot that I've pulled for this posting.

Sunrise Over the Badlands: 

More Badlands:

Bighorn Sheep Ram:

Young Rocky Mountain Goat:

A Very Large, Very Close Bison:

A Landscape of the Hills near Custer State Park:

An Authentic Log Cabin:

A Moody End-of-the-Day shot of the Moon rising at Sunset: 

I gleaned several important lessons from my reflections:

• Camera technology is important but certainly not primary in making good images!
• It is important to keep images even though their future use is unknown.
• New processing software can compensate for older technology.
• My post-processing skill set is much better today than 13 years ago.  Yea!  :)

As always, thank you for taking the time to look and comment.

Adam

Here's a bonus image taken using one of those cameras that I've rediscovered from Homer Alaska: