Contents

• From Film to Digital
• A simple workflow
• Why to work in 16 bits and 16bit on the cheap
• Image Management
• Canon G5, my first camera
• The Histogram explained
• About RAW mode
• Device calibration and profiling and software to support it
• Digital Photography on my Photo Wiki

<H2>Intro</H2> Early 2004, I bought my first digital camera, the Canon Powershot G5. Since then, I have not touched my old equipment anymore - digital photography currently is as good or better as 35mm, and having a PC for a darkroom is so much more convenient… On these pages, I will share my experiences going digital. This is a new section on my site, so please bear with me if content is currently a bit meager - I’ll do my best to add lots of articles in the coming time.

These articles are meant to be short, concise, but useful especially to the beginner (either complete beginner or 'classical photography convert'). If you don't understand something, don't hesitate to tell me so I can fine-tune the articles for my target audience. If you want the full stories, I can highly recommend The Luminous Landscape which has lots and lots of extensive articles about digital photography (and very nice pictures!).

Digital and Linux

I am a big Linux fan. However, lately I'm getting more and more upset with the lack of end user features: my scanner scans lousily under Linux, there's no color management, there's no decent RAW conversion software, etcetera. My advice is to think twice before using Linux as your Digital Darkroom, but as usual Your Mileage May Vary. Still, there are various tools that will help you use your digital camera on Linux, if you insist, and I'll discuss them here. Personally, I am still on Linux (August 2004) but I am considering a switch to Windows XP or MacOS X for my photography work.

• gphoto - gets the images from your camera. A USB card reader will do just fine as well, I'm using the Hama 8-in-1 reader which was plug-and-play for my Linux box;
• dcraw - does RAW conversion, which is what you want when you want the highest quality (I am still trying to get BreezeBrowser to work under Wine, more here if I'm succesful);
• GIMP - a serious contender for Photoshop indeed. </UL> With these packages and some tools like zxgv or xv for browsing images, you will have everything you need to load and process photos. However, you will not have the color management features and ease of use of WindowsXP and/or MacOS X solutions (I'll write a bit more on color management, digital photography, and Linux later here because with some tweaking you can get rudimentary color management to work).

  All pictures on these pages were made with digital photography. Not all of them according to what I preach here: first, I have learnt a bit myself in the meantime, and second, there's always artistic liberty. You can find more images on my on-line image gallery (including snapshots of drunken people at parties ;-)). If you want to see what I personally like best and what others think of it, visit my Deviant Art site.