I first thought about Digital quite some time ago but different things put me off it such as having a fixed lense on the camera, time delay in pressing the shutter button to taking your shot, lack of a traditional viewfinder and finally not being totally happy with the image quality.

When I first started to think about it I would regularly check out Digital photos and the first thing I would be paying attention to was how the grass looked in them, this I found was a good indicator of the image quality as with the less capable ones you tend to see the grass rather fuzzy and soft looking rather than being able to see blades of grass like I could when scanning slides on my Epson 1640SU scanner.

It was only recently that I was persuaded to go Digital by the emergence of the Digital SLR's, initially I was looking at the Fuji S1 Pro so that I could use my Nikon lenses on it but after some research I decided against it in part due to the lack of Stabilised Nikon lenses.

The deciding factor was seeing the excellent quality of the Canon D60 and this DSLR camera fitted the bill with it's 6.3 Megapixels, the ability to use a range of Canon lenses like a normal SLR, a standard glass viewfinder and the capability to multi shoot so this is now my main camera.

I do not want to totally give up on slides so I also have a Canon SLR as well so this will serve as my back up, here below is my current Camera equipment.


Fred. (28-2-03)


1).Canon EOS D60.
My 6.3 Megapixel Digital SLR.

2).Canon EOS 05
My back up camera and one that I can continue to take slides with although this will be at a much reduced rate from now on.

3).Canon 75mm -300mm (F4 - F5.6) (Image Stabilised)
This is my first ever Image Stabilised lense and is far more effective than I ever thought "IS" would be when I first heard about it, the stabilising effect is just as good as what you see with Camcorders and it opens up all sorts of possibilities for long distance and action shots.

The D60 has a multiplication factor of 1.6x due to the cropping effect which means that in the lense becomes a 120mm - 480mm and with the "IS" enabled you get very good quality images at full distance thanks to the lack of camera shake.

4).Canon 28mm - 135mm (F3.5 - F5.6)(Image Stabilised)
This short lense will come in very handy for closer taxiing shot and as this is in effect a 45mm - 215mm on the D60 it will be handy for many situations, I was quite aware of having an overlap between the lenses so that if a subject is close to the minimum range of my longer lense (75mm - 300mm) then I can safely choose this one knowing that I can shoot it without finding that I have the wrong lense on.

When I had my normal Nikon gear my most used lense was the 35mm - 135mm as that covered a lot of the aircraft to shoot, this lense was a must for me as before that I was carrying a 28mm - 75mm and a 75mm - 300mm so situations arose when I ended up with the wrong lense on my camera and missed out sometimes.

4).Canon 70mm - 210mm (F4 - F5.6)
This lense is not a Stabilised one and the plan of action in getting it was to effectively replace my 80mm - 210mm Nikon one that I had with my previous gear.

My old Nikon one was a particular favourite as it had a filter size of only 37mm and that meant that I could use it to shoot between fence wire without any problems of getting it showing in the corners of the shot as it was a lense size that was smaller than most fence wire is.

This lense has a filter size of 52mm so is wider than my old one but it is the smallest that I could find and will come in very handy for those tricky through the fence shots.

(My scanner)
Epson Perfection 1640SU (Slide Film I use)
Fuji Sensia 100asa

This has made a definate improvement as this camera has a lot more shutters speeds and aperture settings available and it's autofocus is much more reliable so this is the one I now use as my main camera.

My camera equiptment in the 1970's (1975-1978) was a Zenit B and in those days there were no zoom lenses so I had a 125mm fixed lense with a 2x converter which wasn't great and I used Boots slide film.

Looking back I should never have used Boots slide film as the quality was poor but just out of school cheap film was the order of the day.

I gave up taking aircraft photos completely from 1978 due to a loss of interest partly down to work and the closing of the excellent Spectators Terrace which went due to "progress" and has never been replaced since.

One day in 1995 I found a box in my loft and in it were my old slides from the 70's and looking through them my interest came back and the old Zenit was dusted off again for use, I soon realised that it wasn't up to the task so my next purchase was a Cannon T70 and a couple of lenses for it and in 1998 I upgraded to a Canon T90.

I was never totally happy with the results I was getting for a long time which I think was down to a combination of reasons,with taking prints results were variable depending on where I would put them in for development, also I suspected the Cannon T90 wasn't performing as good as it should be.

At the beginning of 2001 I decide to trade in my Canon equipment for a Nikon camera and better quality lenses plus switching from prints to slides and it's definitely what I should have done years ago as this has improved the results that I get now and I am finally satisfied with my slides when I get them back from Fuji.

I replaced my previous scanner with a new Epson 1640SU which was a good improvement on the previous one that I had which struggled to give the sharpness and colour definition that I was looking for and having had two previous scanners I would recommend this one to anyone who wants to scan their prints or slides.

Most of the photos on my site from 1996 to the end of March 2001 were scanned from prints but from April 2001 onwards all scans are from Fuji Sensia 100asa slides and this is what I use permanently now so I hope that you think they look okay.

I don't mind trying to help out if anyone is having scanning difficulties although I wouldn't call myself an expert. If anyone would like to ask me a question on the subject just use the email gif on the main menu page.


Fred (8-11-02)