Back in the late 1950s my father gave me an Ansco "box" roll film camera just prior to our trip to Disneyland. This was my first camera, and along with giving it to me he allowed me (finally) to come into his darkroom in the basement and develop/print the pictures I took. Thus began my life-long love of photography.
I have no idea how many images I've taken, nor where some of them are anymore. Photography took a back-seat to computers and kids for quite a while, being supplanted by the purchase of an 8mm video camera through the trade-in of my Canon A1 system shortly after our son Michael was born. Video tape was a lot less expensive than film, processing and printing - and kids just never hold still. At least that's my justification for the purchase and the boxes of tapes we now have.
More recently I finally purchased a Nikon D70 (then lost it and purchased a D80 replacement) after having several "snapshot" style digitals. It replaced the Pentax K1000 I'd resurrected in the mid 1990's to teach Michael and David about film and cameras; a camera that I still have and love for its basic simplicity.
Here you'll find my thoughts and experiences with both semi-professional digital photography and enlightened amateur digital archiving of old and new images.
Back in 2004 I wrote an article in my Digital Rag, Pixels and Dots - Basic."When digital images directly downloaded from any digital camera show up in PC software such as Photoshop... the "image size" box shows this as 72 ppi ... which, of course, is the optimum for a PC monitor..... and it is easy to "save as" the image to 300 ppi or more... but my question is whether the basic image we are starting with is 72 ppi.... or is that just a reading of how it shows on the monitor?
As you know, saving a truly inferior image to a 300 ppi or more resolution, merely demonstrates the pixelation in its worst form.
Bottom Line: what does 72 ppi mean in Photoshop after images are downloaded from digital cameras, because 72 ppi going to the printer invites disaster..."
I lost my Nikon D70 - how is not relevant except to say it was my own fault.
I've grown attached to my digital SLR now that I've had one for 2 years. The D70 went everywhere with me and I have some great shots with it. My problem was that I'd also offered to take pictures at some friends' wedding this weekend, so I had to replace the D70 pronto.
The D70s would be the natural replacement, same camera mostly, and updated software - but along with my camera I'd lost all my compact flash chips, batteries, and everything - so starting over and choosing from scratch was an option. I still had my 70-300 Sigma zoom, but I'd decided I wanted a better long lens anyway, so it really didn't even matter if I stayed with Nikon.
I should probably explain that, while I'm one of the Internet pioneers, I really would much rather shop in a store than online, so...off I went to my favourite camera store to see for myself what were the current offerings.
In part one I gave an overview of what I do with the images from my Nikon D70. You can use these same tips for the Nikon D70s and with little change for any of their other digital cameras. I use Linux almost exclusively (I have Windows but generally keep it in a VMWare window on my desktop for things that I simply can't do otherwise) so my tools and techniques are best suited to others who have Linux.There is, however, a way to get these tools under Windows and I'll get to that later in another part.
In this and later sections, I'll go into more detail, including scripts and references to the actual tools and how to use them.
An article on Nikon's web site says that they (Nikon) are stopping production of most of their 35mm film and larger format cameras. Only the F6 will be available (in Europe and North America) and the F10 mechanical in the rest of the world along with a small number of manual lenses. The assumption is that only their newer lenses that are compatible with the likes of the Nikon D70(s) and D50 and D100 etc. will be available. The ones I lust after :)
Note that while I was doing a bit of research for this article, I came across the fact that they have a recall for the battery that I use in my D70 - the EN-EL3. See the note at the Nikon USA web site I phoned the Canadian support number and find that I can exchange it at their Richmond BC location rather than sending it in via snail-mail.

I have written elsewhere about "bit rot", or the disasterous degredation of recorded digital media, either through actual deterioration of the medium, or through obsolesence of the technology.In this article I'm concentrating on the most typical storage medium for digital photos today, the CD/DVD.
We all use CDs - either by getting them produced from our film at the processing lab, or because we just don't have enough hard disk (or reliable enough computers) that we feel confident of keeping our precious photos safe "online".
When CD-Rs were first proposed as a consumer digital storage medium some seventeen years ago in 1988, they rode on the coattails of the original "pressed" CDs introduced a few years earlier as a distribution medium. The pressed CD is touted as having a longevity measured in centuries. The problem is, many CD-Rs we can purchase at the local computer supply store will last only from as little as a year to the typical 5-10 years; far shorter a period than most people expect. DVD-Rs (DVD-R and DVD+R) suffer from similar problems, so for now I'll lump them all in together - the only point of difference being that if you lose a DVD to age you can lose a lot more photos.
Digital cameras have revolutionized photography in many ways, but to my mind the least understood one has little to do with what you do with the resulting image. Instead it has to do with how you look at the act of taking the photos in the first place.In essence, you trade the cost of film and processing (none with digital) for the cost of your time in winnowing out the bad shots from amongst far more taken at the time, as well as the cost of storing the images securely and quickly.
Canon has gone on record that they and they alone shall know the format of the image information stored in their RAW image format and if we don't like it, we can purchase someone else's equipment.According to a statement published in another Blog Canon officially states, "In order to maintain our leadership position, we find it necessary to protect our intellectual property. Therefore, we have decided to maintain the confidential nature of the communication protocols of our digital cameras and the documentation of our RAW image data, among other things."
Prior to the purchase of my new Nikon D70 (now you get the Nikon D70s instead) I checked to ensure that I would be able to use the "raw" image format pictures it can create on my Linux workstation. I'm so used to using the image tools under Linux to prepare shots for the web, that I felt it imperitive that I be able to do so with the new camera.A look on the web found the dcraw program which does a wonderful job of converting the "NEF" format raw images from the Nikon to a format that I can work with on Linux with GIMP, Xview, and ImageMagic, my typical tools.
I was commissioned to travel to Jamaica in September to take some pictures for a friend of mine of his villa. I had thought about renting or borrowing a camera to do the trip as I didn't have anything but an old broken Kodak DC215 (didn't zoom anymore) and Vern wanted me to be able to give some of his staff "instant" pictures while I was there.I spent much of a day looking at my options, and settled on the Nikon D70 for a couple of reasons. My choice has been more than amply confirmed by my first few weeks of use of it, despite the fact that I didn't get to Jamaica.