I dont want to be offensive, but your post comes across as offensive,
That's your opinion.
That's right.
That's your opinion.
it is biased and elitist and shows everything wrong in an attitude a film user could have.
He said he tried digital, committing time and money to it, but went back to film. He expressed an opinion based on that experience. How is that biased and elitist?
I shoot film and digital, I dont feel neither is a waste of time or money
Good. But for him it was.
"DigiSnapper" please don't make up terms to degrade someone else's medium.
He didn't make it up. It's a fairly common term. In context, he's referring to the camera, not the medium.
"Doesn't provide the true essence of photography" this is rubbish I'm afraid to say.
It's like saying Paint X or Brush A doesn't provide the true essence of painting like Paint Y or Brush B, it's just rubbish.
That's your opinion. What he said was his opinion. My opinion is that you're not understanding what he's really saying.
Photography occurs before equipment and medium,
I don't know how it occurs
before equipment and medium. Without them it doesn't exist.
Do you perhaps mean it transcends?
dismissing it like that is both wrong and elitist.
He tried it, didn't like it. Having tried it, dismissing it in an opinion based on his experience is his prerogative.
A print (inkjet, dyesub, optical wetprint or laser wetprint) or image on a screen are not photographs, they are reproductions of photographs.
So a print we see on a gallery wall is not a photograph, but the negative we never see is?
Film, printing (whatever type), and scanning, digital display, are all reproduction methods.
Film? You mean it reproduces what comes through the lens? I'd call it a method of recording rather than reproduction.
I can shoot photographs without film, paper or digital. As an image in my mind may also be a reproduction of a photograph, that I saw with the lenses in my head and captured on my retinae, and I can recall that for later viewing, which is a reproduction - I just can't create a good reprodution for anyone else's viewing.
I think that falls outside the usual meaning of the word "photograph".
All photography is equal,
I suppose you are referring to equipment and media. Some people produce work which strongly blurs the line between photography and some other form of art, throwing into question whether it even
is photography.
there is no segregation of pure photography between film, digital or otherwise, referring to film photography or digital photography is a reference to the equipment and workflow someone has chosen in order to reproduce their conception.
OK. But remember this is APUG, where most have chosen to use film instead of digital because of what film offers that digital doesn't. The statements should be viewed in that context.
Implying or saying that the equipment, process and methodologies of one photographer is somehow less photography than another (or that it does not provide the true essence of photography) is totally invalid, the very idea is not even worth entertaining.
I think he was speaking for himself, not in an absolute sense. He went digital, became unhappy with it, switched back. Calling film the "pure essence" of photography doesn't mean that all other forms are totally invalid. He's a 4x5 user: he could have said the same thing about large format and I, a user of 35mm and medium format, would not have been bothered by it. I know what he means.
As I said before, all photography is equal, it is all created in exactly the same way with no differences.
And if we could just figure out what that same way is, a lot of discussion could be avoided!
Really, your statement needs to be qualified somehow to make its meaning clear. If you mean that light hits a light-sensitive medium and is then processed into a record of it, well, OK, everybody knows that. Beyond that I cannot see how your statement is valid.
The amount of work gone into it, and value of the art, journalism or purpose may greatly differ, but this is not the point at all.
I agree there.
The various types of luminscence, incandescence, and reflectance and translucency of objects remain identical for users of film or digital equipment, as does electromagnetic radiation. Physical law doesn't suddenly [change] for anybody's preference.
I think that's well understood by most people, certainly the majority of those here.
But how those things are recorded by the medium is different. Setting aside digital, how many different kinds of film exist? None gives a result identical to another.
A photograph is conceived (a conceived drawing/image of light), therefore it is a concept. Not a print, not an image on screen, not a strip of negatives, nor a memory card.
Is that what you meant by "occurs before"? Just one problem. A photograph is not a concept. It is an expression of a concept. If you have a concept but never do anything with it, no photograph results.
The one on my driver's license is an expression of the concept that my ID should have a picture of me on it. But they never said, "Step over to window A so we can get a concept of you".
Equipment cannot alter the essence of your conception.
But it can alter the ability to express it. I've never been able to take decent macro with an Instamatic. View cameras are not prevalent at sports events. Wall size murals are seldom made from a Minox.