Is film better for the truth?

Sirius Glass · Feb 17, 2022

shuddered said:
people were manipulating photography since the 1840s, photographic images were never truths, but sadly people always think they are

Just because it was done in the past, does not mean it is correct or proper to do now. For example using reductio ad absurdum with your logic slavery is honorable and proper today. The image on the film is the truth as written by the light as received on the film. Adding or deleting significant object changes the truth of the original image. Your at saying that because subject manipulation was done in 1840, you are allowed to twist and destroy and photograph to what you want in your corrupt and evil mind.

Whatever was left out of the photograph by choice of focal length or cropping is part of composition, however once the latent image is on the film is its own truth. Sharks jumping out of the water to bite a helicopter which was pasted in flipped over does not show the reality and truth of the original photograph and should be labeled as manipulation. Anything less is dishonest.

Don_ih · Feb 18, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
Your at saying that because subject manipulation was done in 1840, you are allowed to twist and destroy and photograph to what you want in your corrupt and evil mind.

What? He didn't say that at all.

Any light that touches the film is the same as what would touch a sensor if it was digital. But none of that matters. Such an idea of truth relies on the possibility for any type of photography to be able to be trusted to represent the scene it depicts. The vast majority of photographs, film or digital, do exactly that, simply because there is usually no value in manipulating them and too much effort is required, anyway. Any photo, film or digital, is only of limited value as a "truth-source" because every object shown in the photo hides as many as fit behind it, excluded by the perspective of the photographer's view. It also excludes everything that happens outside the split-second moment of the photo itself, before and after. It is far easier to compose a convincingly deceptive photograph in camera (film or digital) than by manipulation of a negative or digital image.

John Rhys-Davies is the tallest of the three. Him appearing so short was done by perspective manipulation, not by digital means.

Helge · Feb 18, 2022

What most people miss I think, is that there doesn’t have to be one binary hard “truth or not true”. The premise is wrong to begin with.

There are grades. And not even on a linear scale. It’s a three dimensional space of gradations and clusters.

“Truth” is after all a human invention through and through. Based on our senses and cultural baggage. Even the untouchable “scientific truth” is affected by this.

That does not however mean that the concept has no merit, worth or applicability. And it does not mean that it is a free for all, and that anything goes.

The negative or positive has a very special position, held up against the stored readout from a CMOS sensor.

Of course anything can be manipulated, but it’s the ease and the ways in which it’s possible that are important, and part of the fundamental nature of each medium. And also the absoluteness of the manipulation that is common.
A highly manipulated film shot will still most often have the original negative and matted shots to refer to.
Where as with a digital file it’s very common to discard the original huge reference material once the photo or movie is “finished”.

shuddered · Feb 18, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
Just because it was done in the past, does not mean it is correct or proper to do now. For example using reductio ad absurdum with your logic slavery is honorable and proper today. The image on the film is the truth as written by the light as received on the film. Adding or deleting significant object changes the truth of the original image. Your at saying that because subject manipulation was done in 1840, you are allowed to twist and destroy and photograph to what you want in your corrupt and evil mind.

Whatever was left out of the photograph by choice of focal length or cropping is part of composition, however once the latent image is on the film is its own truth. Sharks jumping out of the water to bite a helicopter which was pasted in flipped over does not show the reality and truth of the original photograph and should be labeled as manipulation. Anything less is dishonest.

I did not know there has been a "correct and proper" way to make a photograph. can you please link to the website with the rules we must all follow?

CMoore · Mar 3, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
Just because it was done in the past, does not mean it is correct or proper to do now. For example using reductio ad absurdum with your logic slavery is honorable and proper today. The image on the film is the truth as written by the light as received on the film. Adding or deleting significant object changes the truth of the original image. Your at saying that because subject manipulation was done in 1840, you are allowed to twist and destroy and photograph to what you want in your corrupt and evil mind.

Whatever was left out of the photograph by choice of focal length or cropping is part of composition, however once the latent image is on the film is its own truth. Sharks jumping out of the water to bite a helicopter which was pasted in flipped over does not show the reality and truth of the original photograph and should be labeled as manipulation. Anything less is dishonest.

I do not read the member you quote to say Anything as you describe.
IMO, he is simply saying that photos have been manipulated LONG before Digital made it "Easier" to do. That film is no more "Honest" than digital.
I do not seem him justifying slavery, dishonest use of photoshop, or anything else nefarious from his comment.
Not sure how you read it that way.?

Down Under · Mar 17, 2022

Good grief... why has this old shibboleth of a thread been revived??

Eighteen years down the track and nobody has yet defined exactly what is the "truth" in anything, let alone photography, whether F or D.

Enough said. I rest my case.

Maris · Mar 17, 2022

ozmoose said:
Good grief... why has this old shibboleth of a thread been revived??

Eighteen years down the track and nobody has yet defined exactly what is the "truth" in anything, let alone photography, whether F or D.

Enough said. I rest my case.

Yes, the consideration of truth is difficult. Modern philosophical analysis of the concept of truth boils down to four main approaches:

1. a priori truths. Example - a triangle has three sides. It's no use inspecting billions of triangles to make sure there isn't a four sided one lurking somewhere.
2. post priori truths. Example - things consistently discovered by experience or experiment.
3. truths by correspondence. Example - when there is a one to one correspondence between the terms of an assertion and what is actually the case.
4. truths by pragmatism namely believing something is true brings the believer a better outcome that believing it is false. Example - accepting it's true that a step off a cliff brings a fall without actually taking that fatal step.

One could say a priori truths seem stronger than pragmatic truths but that still leaves the nice question of which approach to truth, some, none, or all, delivers valuable insights regarding the photographic method.

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 18, 2022

Maybe representation is a better word than truth. So then the question becomes, does the picture accurately represent the original scene or not?

Helge · Mar 18, 2022

JNP said:
?

Sensors Bayer colour arrays are significantly desaturated to accommodate better luminance resolution for sharpening (and sensitivity).
Also the spatial colour resolution is significantly worse than film.
Films colour sensitisers are much more peaky and precise.
Look at a brick wall at a distance on both film and digital for a very clear demonstration.
Super pan black and white with filters can pull completely invisible patterns out of brick.
Digital is just mush. Clean mush, like wax.

Dynamics is difficult to trust, because what is judged an honest to goodness stop is quite different from film to digital.
Portra 400 has real detail from deep shade to bright clouds over at least 15 stops. Can be pulled to more. 160 not too far from that.
Black and white is out of any scale. 20 stops for certain films at least.
Slide is not as bad as it has been made out to be. If you are not aiming for projection first and foremost you can squeeze 10 stops out of most slide.
Expose for zone III, and skies will be fine, and you can dig a fine image out of the, to the naked eye, seemingly dead and dense dark parts.
Else burn in-camera with gradating ND filters and a polarizer.
The resolution of slide is far in excess of what any sensors of a similar size is able to achieve, and more than worth the drop in dynamic range.

Vaughn · Mar 18, 2022

Reality is experienced as an on-going gestalt of images, sounds, smells, vibrations, etc. within our brains. Seems like moving pictures come closer to that gestalt than analog or digital still imagery.

I do not strive to accurately represent the scene in front of the camera at the time the film gets exposed, rather record the coming together of Time and Place. Sounds sort of silly writing it out, but so it goes...

Alex Benjamin · Mar 18, 2022

George Mann said:
Not according to my Ektachrome slides. Not even close!

Well, if you're going into color and relating it to "truth", you're opening a whole new can of worms. Color is not "truth". We only see the colors we see, and how we see them, because our eyes are made to see them a certain way.

The sky is not blue. It looks blue because the blue wavelength vibrates faster than many others when entering the atmosphere, but also because our eyes is more sensitive to blue than to other colors. If our eyes were more sensitive to violet than to blue, we would see the sky violet, and that would be "our" truth.

So a film, or the iPhone, may offer a "perfect" rendition of what we see, that perfection has nothing to do with truth.

As the saying goes: Color is a pigment of our imagination.

gone · Mar 18, 2022

ozmoose said:
Eighteen years down the track and nobody has yet defined exactly what is the "truth" in anything

You'll have to go back much further than that, people have been obsessed w/ it as long as there has been recorded history. Why I don't know, there's a lot of things in life that are much better than truth, and a lot more fun too! One can only stand so much truth.

There appears to be no truth, only relative truth, and that's the truth. Today's truth turns out to be tomorrow's lie, and so on. There's that empirical thing that says information isn't knowledge, knowledge isn't wisdom and wisdom isn't truth, but none of that ever leads to the truth.

The fire is hot...even that isn't true, it's a relative truth. For someone not near the fire, it's just an abstraction. You'd have to define hot, and it can't be defined, only measured. But if you stick your finger in the fire, then you know hot. Maybe truth has to be experiential.

MattKing · Mar 18, 2022

Digital vs. analog arguments deleted.

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 19, 2022

Alex Benjamin said:
Well, if you're going into color and relating it to "truth", you're opening a whole new can of worms. Color is not "truth". We only see the colors we see, and how we see them, because our eyes are made to see them a certain way.

The sky is not blue. It looks blue because the blue wavelength vibrates faster than many others when entering the atmosphere, but also because our eyes is more sensitive to blue than to other colors. If our eyes were more sensitive to violet than to blue, we would see the sky violet, and that would be "our" truth.

So a film, or the iPhone, may offer a "perfect" rendition of what we see, that perfection has nothing to do with truth.

As the saying goes: Color is a pigment of our imagination.

So is everything else we see, feel hear taste, etc. It's all assembled in our brains but really isn't that way in reality. Here's an experiment. Try explaining the color purple to a blind person?

JNP · Mar 19, 2022

Alex Benjamin said:
Well, if you're going into color and relating it to "truth", you're opening a whole new can of worms. Color is not "truth". We only see the colors we see, and how we see them, because our eyes are made to see them a certain way.

The sky is not blue. It looks blue because the blue wavelength vibrates faster than many others when entering the atmosphere, but also because our eyes is more sensitive to blue than to other colors. If our eyes were more sensitive to violet than to blue, we would see the sky violet, and that would be "our" truth.

So a film, or the iPhone, may offer a "perfect" rendition of what we see, that perfection has nothing to do with truth.

As the saying goes: Color is a pigment of our imagination.

Thank you for this..

Alan Edward Klein said:
So is everything else we see, feel hear taste, etc. It's all assembled in our brains but really isn't that way in reality. Here's an experiment. Try explaining the color purple to a blind person?

Would they know what a king or royalty is?

Don_ih · Mar 19, 2022

Alex Benjamin said:
It looks blue because the blue wavelength vibrates faster than many others when entering the atmosphere, but also because our eyes is more sensitive to blue than to other colors.

That is, from the point of view of empirical science, what "The sky is blue" means. It does not debunk the statement in the least. As an investigation, determining the reason behind the veracity of "The sky is blue" is vacuous without according experience and the context in which the terms gain any meaning. "The sky" is not even something that can be said to exist beyond such experiences as "the sky is blue" or "the sky is overcast", if you scrutinize the idea enough.
The statement "The sky is blue" from a non-scientific point of view does not have its meaning or truth value outstripped by any scientific statement. From the non-scientific point of view, the scientific statement seems irrelevant. (One of the reasons you often can't use science-backed explanations to persuade someone of anything.)

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 19, 2022

JNP said:
Thank you for this..

Would they know what a king or royalty is?

Sure. You can explain it to them even if they;re blind. A king is a leader of a country or group of people usually determined by birth. Now try to explain purple to a person who is blind and has never experienced color or sight since birth.

JNP · Mar 19, 2022

Alan Edward Klein said:
Sure. You can explain it to them even if they;re blind. A king is a leader of a country or group of people usually determined by birth. Now try to explain purple to a person who is blind and has never experienced color or sight since birth.

It wouldn't matter, they would have to use their imagination. Writers describe fantastical things that we have never seen all the time.

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 19, 2022

JNP said:
It wouldn't matter, they would have to use their imagination. Writers describe fantastical things that we have never seen all the time.

But blind people don't; have the sense of seeing. So there's no explaining using a comparison to another thing they never sensed. Think of how you explain purple to a person who sees. Here's the definition of purple: a color intermediate between red and blue. Well, a blind person never saw red or blue either. So there's no way to explain it.

markjwyatt · Mar 19, 2022

Alan Edward Klein said:
But blind people don't; have the sense of seeing. So there's no explaining using a comparison to another thing they never sensed. Think of how you explain purple to a person who sees. Here's the definition of purple: a color intermediate between red and blue. Well, a blind person never saw red or blue either. So there's no way to explain it.

You mean someone born blind or with no memory of vision. Also, you could explain to a person who has never seen that people who do see [usually] are able to distinguish between different wavelengths within the visible spectrum, and that purple is a name we give to a certain band of wavelengths that we identify as "purple". You could further explain that certain items that they know like certain grapes, certain children's characters, some plums, etc. are "purple". You could try and use an analogy of sound (low pitched sound, high pitched sound, etc.) to try and convey how purple might be different than red. Of course it would be very hard to actually get them to "experience" seeing something purple.

MattKing · Mar 19, 2022

Alan Edward Klein said:
A king is a leader of a country or group of people usually determined by birth.

Or a photographer and volunteer Moderator, or perhaps a well known singer and musician:

Or more generally, a name or identifying label.

greg zinselmeier · Mar 19, 2022

I find I it ironic that we speak of “ blind people” on a web site dedicated to a visual form/ some how the topic of “ truth” relating authenticity, relating to appearance, within a codified culture. Wow! Shake your leg like the “ king” Elvis , Elvis, we love you!!! Elvis. . . Bizarre moments here in the APUG. . Love you guys ! Great entertainment! And I’m serious. Insert here your favorite emoji,

JNP · Mar 19, 2022

Alan Edward Klein said:
But blind people don't; have the sense of seeing. So there's no explaining using a comparison to another thing they never sensed. Think of how you explain purple to a person who sees. Here's the definition of purple: a color intermediate between red and blue. Well, a blind person never saw red or blue either. So there's no way to explain it.

It doesn't really matter if what they internally visualize and imagine purple to be is what you think it is. I can't tell the difference between lots of things. It doesn't bother me but I guess it bothers others?

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 19, 2022

There was this fellow who was blind since birth. He had a bunch of videos on Youtube I believe. He would explain what he experienced as a blind person and how it differed from a sighted person's experience. It was fascinating. Try to imagine a fourth dimension or fifth. That's what it was for him with sight. What impressed me the most was he did not exhibit any self-pity. He had himself interviewed like a scientific experiment trying to keep to the facts about his experiences. Maybe I can find the links or someone else can.

There's also a brain "malfunction" called synesthesia where people sense in the wrong sense. So they can experience numbers as colors and colors as sounds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia#:~:text=In one common form of,are perceived as inherently colored.

It's paradoxical that for sighted photographers who spend so much time looking, we often disagree about what it is we're seeing.

markjwyatt · Mar 19, 2022

greg zinselmeier said:
I find I it ironic that we speak of “ blind people” on a web site dedicated to a visual form/ some how the topic of “ truth” relating authenticity, relating to appearance, within a codified culture. Wow! Shake your leg like the “ king” Elvis , Elvis, we love you!!! Elvis. . . Bizarre moments here in the APUG. . Love you guys ! Great entertainment! And I’m serious. Insert here your favorite emoji,

You have entered the philosophy zone. Check you expectations at the door.

Is film better for the truth?

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