My mate is very interested in what the digital transition has cost me (us) in monetary terms (never mind the emotional toll the transition has extracted). I imagine a lot of other people are too. I went over the books since I started shooting digital and came up with some numbers.
The total outlay for the last 9 months: around $27,000.
The biggest outlay has been for cameras, lenses and accessories: $16,000. I’ve spent over $1,000 on CF cards alone. I bought a Canon 20D in December and three lenses in short succession. Six months later I got the Canon 1Ds Mark II body, which alone cost $8000, pre tax.
Computer hardware comes second: $7,100. I got a laptop (Fujitsu Lifebook), a 19" Lacie CRT monitor, a second LCD monitor and a 2 screen video card, calibration hardware, a major upgrade on the desktop (more memory, a 300gb mirrored RAID array and hot-swap bays), and lots and lots of hard drives for back-up. I also added a couple of printers, an Epson 4000 and a Epson 200 (for printing on CD’s).
Feeding that printer is responsible for the bulk of the $1,400 I’ve spend on supplies ($500 alone for a replacement inkset for the 4000), but it also includes blank CDs and DVDs for which I seem to have an insatiable appetite.
Instruction has cost me close to $1,200, not counting travel. I did one out of town workshop (with Barry Haynes), and any local one that came through. Hundreds of dollars has gone for various books (I recommend anything by Bruce Fraser). Education is the one area I expect to spend a lot more on in the next year. It’s never-ending—I seem to only learn how much more I don’t know.
Software upgrades (two Photoshops, and various other necessities—Noise Ninja, Photo Mechanic) have run about $600. Repairs have run about the same—I had a very expensive splash of water on my laptop earlier this year. Sensor cleaning costs me $50-$100 a month.
Remember that I am operating on a professional level, and I am getting by fairly cheaply at that. I know colleagues who have invested 3 or 4 fold what I have. Your mileage may vary, but the switch to digital is not cheap, and the ongoing expenses exceed analog. Plus, all this hardware will be obsolete in a couple of years.
Is this passive-aggressive Mac behavior toward Windows or what?
There’s a new hummingbird at the feeder, a male Anna’s in mid molt and looking ratty. The resident hummers have left and the winter contigent won’t be in for another month, so this one is a migrant filling up at our tank. He’s been around for two days. A large flock of House Finches empties the feeders every day now—they’ve been around only for the past week or so. There is a wonderful sense of change in the air, and the birds are a great window into it.
There is no way to keep a sensor clean, nor is there a way to safely clean a sensor. That is the conclusion I have reached, after trying all methods. There are many weak links in achieving quality from capture to fulfillment; the fragile state of the pristine sensor surface may by the weakest.
I shot a wedding yesterday, and it seemed like a good opportunity to test ingesting mechanisms. Not at the wedding, of course; I waited until I was in the privacy of my own home.

It took me several minutes to locate the bird. "Look just to the left of the Killdeer," someone suggested. I saw several Western Sandpipers beyond the geese, and then one that looked different. A heavier coloration on its breast. If I imagined hard, it could be red. The other sandpipers chased it away. On my own, I never could have called this bird. At best, I would have labelled it a Pectoral Sandpiper. I helped someone else locate the bird, then looked through my neighbor’s scope, a Swarovski. I had instant scope lust. The scene was enormously brighter, and the bird had an unmistakable red wash on its throat and breast. I could see that it had a slightly shorter bill too than it ought to for its build. These were subtle field marks that were beyond my birding skill to find without help. Nonetheless, I was happy.
I am in the middle of another round of lens testing. I did this once before when I got my 20D, wanting to know how my lenses (all designed for film) held up against a digital sensor. My conclusions then—every lens is sharp at f/8, and some lenses are better than others.
Recent Comments