Analog Photography Makes a Comeback

[Agulliver]

If that works for you that’s great. I shoot film too. I don’t find shooting digital complex, certainly not more complex than shooting film. Of course, I don’t spend time futzing around with menus and such. Just aperture, shutter speed, exposure compensation, and ISO, same as with a film camera. Honestly, I don’t know what digital shooters need to change in their menus when they are out shooting. .

Aperture, shutter speed, exposure compensation and ISO.

Well....at least ISO needs a menu on every digital camera to have crossed my path. Usually exposure compensation does not on a DLSR but does on compact digitals. I can adjust any of the above on most manual film cameras by turning a physical knob. Even later film SLRs in the 90s had menus for ISO settings and whether you wanted aperture or shutter priority and so on.

 

[faberryman]

Aperture, shutter speed, exposure compensation and ISO.

Well....at least ISO needs a menu on every digital camera to have crossed my path. Usually exposure compensation does not on a DLSR but does on compact digitals. I can adjust any of the above on most manual film cameras by turning a physical knob. Even later film SLRs in the 90s had menus for ISO settings and whether you wanted aperture or shutter priority and so on.

My film cameras pre-date the '90s plastic blob and LCD screen craze. When I shoot digital, I use a Fujifilm XT2. I bought it specifically because it handles like my film cameras, with aperture, shutter speed, exposure compensation and ISO settings made using physical knobs/dials/rings. I can't remember the last time I looked at the menu.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Constrains may not be quite the right word....and no, it is not at all analogous to playing the guitar or ukulele.
It's more like comparing taking lessons and practicing eight hours a day five days a week for seven years to buying a bunch of CD's.
(I wrote a bunch of stuff, deleted it, tried again, and again and still cannot quite find the words to express what I'm thinking.)

I understand you. Practicing on a keyboard [or piano] versus playing CDs.

 

[Sirius Glass]

You know she's 71 years old...

Well that is still younger than I am.

 

[Pieter12]

Now I know where to find film photography these days. On the dumpster a.k.a. iG.
I wonder how many of them out where are able to see difference between film and FujiNoFilm film preset.

Given the quality of the images on IG, I doubt anyone can tell the difference between film and digital, especially digital manipulated to look like film.

 

[faberryman]

Given the quality of the images on IG, I doubt anyone can tell the difference between film and digital, especially digital manipulated to look like film.

I think I have some film emulation selections for my digital camera, but they are probably in the menu somewhere so I never use them. That, and I think they only apply to jpgs. I shoot RAW. Shooting jpgs is like heating up a Lean Cuisine in the microwave for dinner. Sure, you end up with an image and nobody can tell the difference on Instagram, but you know that it sucks. I don't know how anyone can shoot jpgs and still live with themselves.

 

[MattKing]

I don't know how anyone can shoot jpgs and still live with themselves.

If the settings on your camera determine whether you can live with yourself, you need to change hobbies!
On the family digital camera, I tend to use the setting that produces both a jpeg and a RAW file - partially because the built in jpeg algorithm is really, really good!
If the result turns out to require little or no post-processing, the original jpeg is often what ends up being sent to the lab for RA-4 printing.

 

[Pieter12]

I think I have some film emulation selections for my digital camera, but they are probably in the menu somewhere so I never use them. That, and I think they only apply to jpgs. I shoot RAW. Shooting jpgs is like heating up a Lean Cuisine in the microwave for dinner. Sure, you end up with an image and nobody can tell the difference on Instagram, but you know that it sucks. I don't know how anyone can shoot jpgs and still live with themselves.

If you don't print the images, it pretty much doesn't matter.

 

[warden]

Shooting jpgs is like heating up a Lean Cuisine in the microwave for dinner. Sure, you end up with an image and nobody can tell the difference on Instagram, but you know that it sucks. I don't know how anyone can shoot jpgs and still live with themselves.

Enough of this gatekeeping nonsense.

 

[Agulliver]

My film cameras pre-date the '90s plastic blob and LCD screen craze. When I shoot digital, I use a Fujifilm XT2. I bought it specifically because it handles like my film cameras, with aperture, shutter speed, exposure compensation and ISO settings made using physical knobs/dials/rings. I can't remember the last time I looked at the menu.

Good for you. The fact is that the vast majority of digital cameras, and to some extent the last generation of film SLRs, need menus to select some basic functions. I really don't think there's room for any argument, it's pretty incontrovertible.

Enough of this gatekeeping nonsense.

This. There's no need for snobbery like "shooting JPEGS is useless". I'm sure like many I sometimes shoot RAW and JPEG combined...and 99 times out of 100 I end up using the JPEGs.

Oooh I only shoot 26 inch wide ISO 4 sheet film because otherwise the grain is like golf balls, don't you know. Only useful for 6x4" prints a la supermarket. Totally useless for anyone who demands the best.

 

[markjwyatt]

...I'm sure like many I sometimes shoot RAW and JPEG combined...and 99 times out of 100 I end up using the JPEGs....

I shoot RAW and JPEG on the Fuji XT-2, also, but use RAW 95+% of the time.

 

[faberryman]

I shoot RAW and JPEG on the Fuji XT-2, also, but use RAW 95+% of the time.

I probably do too. I probably made that selection in the menu when I first set my camera up, thinking at the time that I might need a jpg every once in a while, and just haven’t changed it, but I don’t think I have ever used a jpg SOOC. I have exported RAW files that I have worked on as jpgs to upload a couple of times.

 

[faberryman]

If you don't print the images, it pretty much doesn't matter.

I am sort of the school that if you don’t print it, it really isn’t a photograph.

 

[Pieter12]

I have hundreds of negatives that are waiting to be printed and work prints that have not been refined. Guess those are not photos in your book.

 

[markjwyatt]

I probably do too. I probably made that selection in the menu when I first set my camera up and haven’t changed it, at the time thinking I might need a jpg every once in while, but I don’t think I have ever used a jpg SOOC. I have saved RAW files that I have worked on as jpgs to upload a couple of times.

Most of the jpegs I keep are one of the ACROS sims, or occasionally color for a more utilitarian shot (or one that just looks good as it is- unfortunately I do not always look at the jpegs).

 

[faberryman]

I have hundreds of negatives that are waiting to be printed and work prints that have not been refined. Guess those are not photos in your book.

Not yet, but you have made a good start. I am obviously overstating my position, but I think the tangible embodiment of the work is critical. It is probably a position falling further and further out of favor.

 

[Pieter12]

Not yet, but you have made a good start. I am obviously overstating my position, but I think the tangible embodiment of the work is critical. It is probably a position falling further and further out of favor.

But where does the scan of a print stand?

 

[faberryman]

But where does the scan of a print stand?

A scan of a print is just a digital copy of a print. The quality of the copy depends on the quality of the scanner and the expertise of the person making the scan.

A couple of years ago I saw an announcement of a show of a photographer's work I admired. I would have had to fly up to Boston, or Philadelphia, or Chicago, or wherever it was, and make a weekend of it. I was reading about the show on the museum's website, and, to my dismay, in the fine print, it said that the photographs were digital copies of the originals. I didn't think it was worth the time, effort, and expense of going to see digital copies of the works. I could see those in a book or on the internet. Of course, if they were digital images to begin with it wouldn't have made any difference. In that case, maybe instead of prints, the museum would have the photographs in these TokenFrames so you would know you were looking at the real thing.

https://tokenframe.com/

 

[BradS]

Wow. Of all the threads...I never would have guessed that this one would degenerate into people bickering about the finer points of digital imaging.
Can you guys take your discussion of digital stuff over to somewhere in the digital area...Please?

 

[Pieter12]

Wow. Of all the threads...I never would have guessed that this one would degenerate into people bickering about the finer points of digital imaging.
Can you guys take your discussion of digital stuff over to somewhere in the digital area...Please?

But the initial post was about a company using digital (social) media to engage folks in analog photography...that would end up pretty much only as digital.

 

[BradS]

But the initial post was about a company using digital (social) media to engage folks in analog photography...that would end up pretty much only as digital.

And some Canada Geese stay here all winter.

 

[test_realm]

Given the quality of the images on IG, I doubt anyone can tell the difference between film and digital, especially digital manipulated to look like film.

but shooting film is more fun and im shooting for myself not for others

 

[radiant]

Can I summarize:

- Everyone says they are analog photographers but mostly shoot on digital
- "I only shoot for myself" -> yeah right, but you don't mind good flattering feedback? (sorry not ref. to you test_realm)
- only publishing method that matters is Instagram
- only RAW makes good photographs
- only way to view photographs is looking at optical print in sun light wearing sustainably manufactured clothing
- is it snowing?
- I AM RIGHT YOU ARE WRONG

Anything to add?

 

[Anaxagore]

- I AM RIGHT YOU ARE WRONG

Anything to add?

Yes, you forgot that “I am right you are wrong” is rule #1 and that there is rule #2 that says “if you can prove me that what I say is wrong, refer to rule #1”…

BTW, just as a side note, I admit that seeing “ISO 100” is something that annoys me. The ISO for film speed (international standard) was created to merge the ASA (American standards association) and the DIN (Deutsche Industrie Norm = German industrial standard) standards, i.e. one should write “ISO 100/21°”. I know that most if not all digital cameras have dropped the DIN part, probably because it is easier to teach photography with proportional values than logarithmic ones*, but when referring to films it would be more logical to keep the old “100 ASA” if only using the ASA part…

* unfortunately the rounding of ASA numbers is inconsistent across the scale, e.g. why have 64 (64*2=128) and 125 (125/2=62.5, which could be rounded to 62 or 63) in the scale ?..

 

[Don_ih]

I wouldn't bother shooting film if I wasn't making darkroom prints. I find the magic of photography to be when it shows up on paper. Digital cameras (especially phone cameras) have made photography ephemeral. At least with Instagram, you can look at a user and see all the images he or she has posted. Other applications that young people especially use, the images vanish after they are seen, people are not keeping them as any kind of record. There is the fable that everything survives on the internet, but the internet is so vast that anything put there quickly becomes impossible to find (for those on Facebook, think of trying to find a picture posted several years ago) - and actually tends to disappear without warning, if you are not the one paying for its existence.
A few days ago, Facebook and Instagram were cut off from the rest of the world due to the way their infrastructure was set up. Billions of people noticed that. Furthermore, in that situation, billions of people were cut off from their main means of communication and the repository of their lives. Dealing with removing photos from a phone or camera and trying to store them and finding the pictures you like on a hard drive or storage service are daunting and frustrating tasks for many people. A lot of those people have chosen to put the photos they like on Facebook as a kind of family album. They then delete the photos from their phone so they have room to take more photos. More and more people don't deal with any computational device other than their phone.That's not surprising, since many of those people who now have a sophisticated smart phone in their pocket (hand) all the time never did own a computer.