Is technology killing our gut instincts and intuition?

[Old-N-Feeble]

That's true to a degree, Mark, but I'd much rather be sitting with you and others here at a cafe drinking coffee or at a bar with beer. It's a very different thing, internet banter vs. face-to-face conversation.

 

[markbarendt]

That's true to a degree, Mark, but I'd much rather be sitting with you and others here at a cafe drinking coffee or at a bar with beer. It's a very different thing, internet banter vs. face-to-face conversation.

I don't disagree about preferring face to face.

Reality is though that I can't physically be in TX, CO, OR, CA, WA and ... at the same time.

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

I agree regarding the practicality issues. FWIW, I enjoy the faceless conversations here on APUG and other internet forums. It's far better then sitting alone twiddling our..... thumbs.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

You are right but ,there only is a problem if we think we can use technology to replace experience or creativity;that only leads to mediocrity!

There's an app or Photoshop filter for creativity. Adobe tagline "Spark your creativity". The funny thing is everybody's creativity looks the same with those filters.

 

[Terry Breedlove]

In some ways I think you are correct but over all I think Technology is expanding some of our brains. Instant information available at all times is incredible. I remember when researching something I used to go to the library and search for books and read them and maybe even have to order one and wait a couple of weeks to get it. Now I just google it and there it is in less than a second. This allows us to fully explore anything we want like no other time in history. Now about the photography end of things. I believe the ease of the new tools is killing really truly good photography. Just look at the over saturated mess now passing as art. Of course not everyone is abusing digital but the numbers are horrible. In my humble opinion.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I think technology increase certainty of outcome while for some, intuition embraces uncertainty and leverages it.

 

[markbarendt]

Intuition embraces uncertainty, technology checks the math and tells the world.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Intuition embraces uncertainty, technology checks the math and tells the world.

Yes. Technology is science and art is intuition. Science should serve the art. If photography is pure science, it's boring. It's true for other areas too.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I don't disagree about preferring face to face.

Reality is though that I can't physically be in TX, CO, OR, CA, WA and ... at the same time.

Your problem then is that you insist on staying in the time domain. Any electrical engineer will tell you that if you crossed over to the frequency domain, then you could be in more than one place at a time.

 

[markbarendt]

Your problem then is that you insist on staying in the time domain. Any electrical engineer will tell you that if you crossed over to the frequency domain, then you could be in more than one place at a time.

That kinda a particle and wave thing.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Yeah

 

[Alan Klein]

Let's get back to photography. Whether you're using a high tech digital camera or a fifty-year-old film camera, you still have to find meaningful content and compose the shot. Aesthetic value and creativity still comes from inside. Of course, it's seductive to think better technology is the answer to creating great work. Hence people upgrading their digital equipment regularly. But sticking with film doesn't make you more creative. After all, a film camera is technology as well. And you can catch just a boring and uninspired shot with film as with high tech digital.

 

[markbarendt]

Let's get back to photography. Whether you're using a high tech digital camera or a fifty-year-old film camera, you still have to find meaningful content and compose the shot. Aesthetic value and creativity still comes from inside. Of course, it's seductive to think better technology is the answer to creating great work. Hence people upgrading their digital equipment regularly. But sticking with film doesn't make you more creative. After all, a film camera is technology as well. And you can catch just a boring and uninspired shot with film as with high tech digital.

Here, Here.

 

[Dali]

Let's get back to photography. Whether you're using a high tech digital camera or a fifty-year-old film camera, you still have to find meaningful content and compose the shot. Aesthetic value and creativity still comes from inside. Of course, it's seductive to think better technology is the answer to creating great work. Hence people upgrading their digital equipment regularly. But sticking with film doesn't make you more creative. After all, a film camera is technology as well. And you can catch just a boring and uninspired shot with film as with high tech digital.

The difference is that with modern cameras, you take pictures without having influence on the most basic parameters of photography (speed, aperture, sensitivity). By default, these parameters are managed by the camera regardless user's interaction.

The main difference with "primitive" camera is this extra layer of "intelligence" coming from the camera. Instead of having reality (the scene) , a tool (the camera) and an operator (the photographer), you have now the camera capturing reality (i.e. setting parameters) on behalf of the operator.

I don't own and use any d... camera, only manual film cameras. When I see manuals for these d... cameras, it convinces me of staying away from these devices which need a 80 pages booklet to be understandable (unless you agree to transfer part of your skill to the camera). What was easy to understand with 'primitive" cameras became awfully complex because of technology. I am not sure there is a net gain for the user...

 

[Bob Carnie]

Personally I think that the advent of digital technology opens up the potential for image making that we could only dream of in the 80's.
Today I am using both fluidly together to create images, and I am extremely happy that I embraced the wave of digital, as I now can mix
it with the tried and true processes I cut my teeth on as a photo lab technician and printer for others.

We are just scratching the surface today of the potential of both working together.

 

[markbarendt]

The difference is that with modern cameras, you take pictures without having influence on the most basic parameters of photography (speed, aperture, sensitivity). By default, these parameters are managed by the camera regardless user's interaction.

The main difference with "primitive" camera is this extra layer of "intelligence" coming from the camera. Instead of having reality (the scene) , a tool (the camera) and an operator (the photographer), you have now the camera capturing reality (i.e. setting parameters) on behalf of the operator.

I don't own and use any d... camera, only manual film cameras. When I see manuals for these d... cameras, it convinces me of staying away from these devices which need a 80 pages booklet to be understandable (unless you agree to transfer part of your skill to the camera). What was easy to understand with 'primitive" cameras became awfully complex because of technology. I am not sure there is a net gain for the user...

It's completely ok to not want to go digital but I'm going to suggest that given your admitted experience level with digital, you may not want to wander out on that limb.

 

[BMbikerider]

For my birthday, my wife took me out to dinner at a nice restaurant. At an adjacent table to ours, a group a 3 men and 3 women, all twenty-somethings, were already seated and had ordered before we came. All six had their heads buried in their smartphones, all six were thumbing responses to the emails/SMS sent to them. ALL SIX said NOTHING to each other even after their orders were presented and they put the phones down to eat. Eventually, (my guess is 2/3 into the group's time at the restaurant, they finally started to interract with one another!
Sad, sad, sad...how often one can see GROUPS of folks together and each one is interreacting to their phones and not at all to each other in a casual conversation. Millenials seem seem to be a bunch of antisocial hermits!

At least, we British are not alone in that aspect. If say 20 years ago a similar scenario happened with the same 6 people in the same restaurant, but instead of smartphones they got out a newspaper or a book and started to read, people would think them to be either very rude or simply no manners or social etiquette how to behave in a group. Yes I have a smartphone, no I don't use it to connect to the internet, I have one simply because there are no other types to buy. A phone for me is to speak to someone. Even when I am driving it is shut off so I am not distracted. (It is a serious criminal offence to use one when driving in UK, especially if you have a crash as a result) and turn it on when I stop for a break. I can live without one surgically attched to my ear or forefinger, I am glad of the peace.

 

[BMbikerider]

If not for Digital I would not shoot film.

Pencils are still useful. Linotype is not. I would love to use a Linotype machine though.

There was a lot of money spent on developing a pen that would write in weightless conditions when in orbit above the earth, The Russians continued to use what was at hand and was thoroughly reliable every time with no cost - it is called a pencil!

 

[BMbikerider]

Digital photography has it's uses however I think it makes it just too easy with little skill needed. but for me there is nothing as pleasing as using a camera, assessing the correct exposure then developing the film, finally producing even 1 cracking print from the negatives either black and white or colour.

A similar analagy can be made with furniture. You can buy flatpack furniture as a kit and assemble it using even simple diagramatical plans. However it takes a crftsman, using basic hand tools to take a piece of wood and by sawing, planing, saning and finally assembling whatever is being made takes a craftsman. There is skill needed, nay skill is essential, not simply plans drawn up and the material cut elsewhere, using jigs and computer driven programs to trim and shape items for inclusion in a flatpack.

 

[Luckless]

There was a lot of money spent on developing a pen that would write in weightless conditions when in orbit above the earth, The Russians continued to use what was at hand and was thoroughly reliable every time with no cost - it is called a pencil!

The Russians continued to use a pencil, grease pens, or other things, up until the point that they were able to buy the same zero-g pens the Americans were buying for their space program.

A pencil is fine and dandy on earth. But they're a good way to get someone killed in orbit, especially when you're using 60's and 70's era electronics. Graphite is conductive. Every time you write you break off fine dust that then floats around your environment if you're in orbit. These tiny flakes become potential bridging material between electrical contacts. Then there is sharpening them, which and produce even more free floating conductive material. And then there is the risk of breaking off a lead, and having a large chunk floating around that becomes even more capable of shorting contacts... Oh, and the dust is a fire hazard...

Yeah. The good old pencil was such great and superior tech that everyone was working on solutions to them from the very beginning and promptly dropped it at the very first opportunity when a reliable alternative became available.

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

It's completely ok to not want to go digital but I'm going to suggest that given your admitted experience level with digital, you may not want to wander out on that limb.

I agree with this. Among my photographer friends there are those who use digital cameras to make their work, those who use film only, and then most of them use both. Film is good. Digital is good. Great photographs and prints are made with both. The whole preference thing is just down to whether we enjoy it or not, and how we prefer to work.

 

[frank]

I agree with this. Among my photographer friends there are those who use digital cameras to make their work, those who use film only, and then most of them use both. Film is good. Digital is good. Great photographs and prints are made with both. The whole preference thing is just down to whether we enjoy it or not, and how we prefer to work.

This bears repeating. It comes down to personal preference for us amateurs.

 

[removed account4]

not sure how this became a film vs digggital thread
but i think it is kind of funny that it always ends up to be one.

couldn't agree more thomas, frank and mark
the endless " film is so much better" rants have gotten
rather boring. im glad people like film, im glad people have figured out
how to make electronic images, or mix both film and electronic stuff together
and i am glad there is less and less chest thumping about one or the other.
i'm more than happy using both, and have been having a blast making paper negatives
and cyanotypes from electronic files, or adding colors to black and white, or making modern trichromes.
like bob said, the creative possibilities seem to be endless at this time, and i like that, too

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

not sure how this became a film vs digggital thread
but i think it is kind of funny that it always ends up to be one.

couldn't agree more thomas, frank and mark
the endless " film is so much better" rants have gotten
rather boring. im glad people like film, im glad people have figured out
how to make electronic images, or mix both film and electronic stuff together
and i am glad there is less and less chest thumping about one or the other.
i'm more than happy using both, and have been having a blast making paper negatives
and cyanotypes from electronic files, or adding colors to black and white, or making modern trichromes.
like bob said, the creative possibilities seem to be endless at this time, and i like that, too

Yeah, I agree. I think the film/digital thing comes out because digital photography represents technology and advances that some people deem is taking photographic skill backwards, and will make you less informed / in charge of the process as a photographer, or less of a craft person. It is analogous to other technologies in my view. Whatever... People use digital negatives to make stunning platinum prints or photogravures, where the process is improved by the available technology due to the amount of control one has over the end results.

Can all of this be summed up in: as long as technology, old or new, is used resourcefully and intelligently, it's all good?

I have been asked for directions by people blindly following a GPS, while there was a sign of their destination pointing in the direction they needed to go half a block down. Somebody reading a map might have made the same mistake.

 

[Cholentpot]

There was a lot of money spent on developing a pen that would write in weightless conditions when in orbit above the earth, The Russians continued to use what was at hand and was thoroughly reliable every time with no cost - it is called a pencil!

As nice as this story is, it's a myth. Pencils in zero/micro gravity would make a mess. All those graphite crumbs floating around would get everywhere.