The Subtlety of Grandness

I spent the weekend reorganizing my digital life. I’m in the middle of transferring my photograph collection from Aperture to Lightroom, a process that involves exporting out the master RAW files from Aperture’s monolithic library, transferring them over the network to my PC, and then having Lightroom import them into its catalog. Along the way, I’m having Lightroom convert the RAW files to DNG, which are basically digital negatives. DNGs are slightly smaller than RAW; I’m saving about 300MB for every 2GB of RAW files converted. But it also lets me consolidate my library into a single format rather than having to deal with different RAW types from my SLR and my Sigma DP-1.

Speaking of my DP-1, while I was going over the photos I’ve taken with it I was reminded of why I have such a love/hate thing going on with this camera. The DP-1 is a compact camera that takes SLR-quality images. The reason is it was the first compact camera in the world to incorporate an SLR-size sensor. And this isn’t just a regular, conventional sensor, but a Fovean sensor, which is pretty much the closest thing to “digital film” there is. In terms of megapixels, the DP-1 is rated at a whopping 14, but that’s a bit misleading due to the nature of the Fovean sensor. Nevertheless, this thing takes gigantic images with incredible image quality. When you look at them the photos just pop right out at you.

The downsides are that the DP-1 costs more than most consumer SLRs, is incredibly finicky to use, and is incredibly slow. The user-interface from the buttons to the menu system and settings feel like they were made by pocket protector-clad engineers. Steve Jobs would burn down Apple in a heartbeat if the R&D guys ever gave him anything as kludgy as this. Even worse, due to the many compromises needed to get the SLR sensor into such a compact body, the entire thing is slower than molasses on a cold day. The lens is so slow that taking a photo in anything other than pure, bright daylight is a total crapshoot. It’s difficult to get a clean photo in indoor lighting, and it’s downright impossible when shooting in dim conditions. And when you finally do take a photo, the camera spends several seconds processing it. You aren’t going to be taking action photos with this.

I suppose that’s part of the charm of DP-1, though. It makes you have to think about your photo before you take it. DSLRs let you shoot dozens of photos in seconds, but they’re so fast that you stop thinking about it. The DP-1, on the other hand, is old fashioned in comparison. But when it works, it pays off.

It’s also amazing to go through some of my photographic archives. I’ve shot thousands upon thousands of photos, and I was reminded why I don’t really throw any of them out. As I was browsing through a collection of random photos I found one that I had taken the morning the mother of one of my coworker’s visited San Francisco and toured the office. I snapped a photo for them right before I raced out the door to catch a flight down to LA for an event. It was just one of many random photos taken during a busy of time of the year . I later uploaded it along with all my other photos into Aperture and didn’t think anything of it since then. It was just a single photo amongst tens of thousands. But when I stumbled upon it I realized the significance of what I had. His mother had passed away suddenly in the past year. I sent him a copy and learned that this was one of the last photos he had with her. I’m glad I still had it.