It's better to learn photography with an analogue camera

I find it rather intuitive to look at the screen . It's placement sort of demands my attention. It's not an amateur thing at all but just an aspect of digital. I don't even think about the difference when I am shooting a film camera. It doesn't occur to me. The two paths just have a different mindset for me.

blansky said:

I read a lot of nonsense on this site about chimping.

In my Hasselblad days when we wanted to check our setup or exposure on tricky lighting situations we put on a polaroid back and shot a polaroid, waited a minute or 90 seconds and checked the picture. Naturally the polaroid sucked as they all did, but it gave us a idea of what we had. Sometimes on highly nuanced lighting, we would shoot maybe 5 to 10 polaroids to get where we wanted to be.

Now with digital, we don't have to waste all that time and money and calculations (polaroid had a different ISO than the film usually). With the back of the camera now we can see the image, the histogram and know exactly what we have. Within 10 seconds we can shoot again and again to get the setting we want with both our lights and our exposure.

You can even tether the cameras directly to a laptop to see a large image, save the file, and/or show another person the shot.

Add to this, what if you were shooting a once in a lifetime event, or a shoot with thousands of dollars worth of talent, or something that could not be duplicated, what would your rather do: hope and pray until you could develop an image that you nailed it or look at the back or your camera? What if you fucked up? With chimping, you don't.

So while some smug people here have a good laugh about chimping, what kind of idiot would not check their work while they were doing it, if they had the opportunity.

Remember some people HAVE to produce results with their shots, not just trudge off home and home like hell they maybe got one decent shot.

I know people from the film days that shot an entire wedding with their ISO set to something they had their light meter set to the night before, and forgot to change it. I had a Metz flash that flashed but not at the proper power for half a wedding. I had a lens that jammed at the wrong aperture from what I had set it at.

So while it's fun to think that chimping is some amateur reflex, let me tell you that after shooting over 500 analog weddings and waiting a week for the film to come back and uttering the usual "thank God" because everything worked, you'd understand that chimping is one of the best things ever invented in photography.

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Plus 1 on the weddings. The angst of awaiting those negatives, whether I was developing them or the lab, just wasn't worth it. I used Polaroid on product shots, too, whenever the lighting was something new or complex. Digital would be a Godsend to do a wedding with.

+ two about weddings and everything thad have to get fast results!!!!

Cheers Armin

Back in the pre-digital 1980s, I and a friend photographed the start of the Icebreaker canoe race in Saranac Lake New York. We developed the E-6 film, in a janitor's closet at the town hall, dried it with hairdryers, cut and mounted the slides, and had a slide show of the start at the after race party. Think of how easy this would have been to do with digital, all of you who say digital sucks.

The only objection I have to chimping is when people do it in lieu of understanding how to meter their strobes and adjust accordingly. I have met people who have strobe outfits (often AlienBees, but that's an entirely different discussion) and have not the faintest idea of how to control their flashes, and who say, "but I don't need a meter - I'll just chimp until it looks right". Technically they're correct: if it looks good it looks good, but c'mon - make a little effort to understand what you're doing and learn about lighting ratios, the inverse square rule, and basic light modification.

In fact the ultimate in chimping happened in the movie business.

For years now when shooting a movie in film, the director and DPs would shoot a video assist that they could play back to see if they liked the shot, the blocking, the acting, the lighting etc. It saved them a ton of money on extra takes and hours of time.

They simply mounted a digital video camera with the main camera and captured the identical shot on both cameras.

Then they'd have a "group chimp".

blansky said:

In fact the ultimate in chimping happened in the movie business.

For years now when shooting a movie in film, the director and DPs would shoot a video assist that they could play back to see if they liked the shot, the blocking, the acting, the lighting etc. It saved them a ton of money on extra takes and hours of time.

They simply mounted a digital video camera with the main camera and captured the identical shot on both cameras.

Then they'd have a "group chimp".

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The Leica came about to CHIMP exposure and lighting of movie sets. Hear that, Leicaphools?

The OP was about learning photography with film or digital, not working at weddings. This thread risks becoming another "digital vs film" thread if we abandon the original question (a horse already inhumanely punished by the way ).

"Chimping" is bad when it is performed as a matter of fact, in ordinary situations, and in substitution of understanding certain aspects of photographic technique.

Beyond that, it's as good as any tool, for there's no tool on earth which doesn't serve a purpose.

Photographers who chimp "instead of" visualise the results apply a bad technique and this will certainly worsen the general quality of their production, coeteris paribus.

Photographers who chimp as a technical necessity for a good work do the right thing. Studio works requires spending maybe days in the chase of one image, that can obviously involve chimping, or great use of Polaroids, lots of bracketing, different films and voodoo rituals

That's a hard question... I learned with an Exa 1b (very primitive SLR without light meter) and 50mm lens and it tought me a lot. Firstly, you need to really understand shutter/aperture/ISO with a camera like that, secondly it tought me to properly compose an image before taking the photo and not take 100 photos and select the single one that might be ok.
However, if I needed to teach someone photography today, I'd use digital. Being able to view the pictures right away can be very useful. For the very beginning (until the exposure is properly understood), I'd set it to manual exposure and probably even use an external light meter. Most people who only know automatic cameras don't understand the basics, though they're very important. A 1000+$ camera is no good when you have to ask "how do I make the background blurry?" or "why do all the pictures look shaky?"

If you want to learn something you need think clearly and it's a very bad idea to let a computer do all the thinking for you.
Later on, the automatic modes are very useful (I shoot mostly in aperture priority or program mode with Canon EOS), but they're no good, when you don't understand what they do.

The best method would probably be large format with polaroid, but that's got little to do with the kind of "mobile" photography that most people are into. It combines the completely manual aspect with being able to see the results right away, but lacks the possibility for experiments, unless you have all the time and money in the world.

Learning photography is completely different from being a professional photographer. If you shoot weddings, you probably know how to use a camera and what all the settings do. It's the results that count. As a beginner, the results don't really matter, but it's about understanding the technology.

On the topic of chimping and polaroid: There's a difference between deciding "I need a preview, because the lighting situation is rather difficult" and looking at the display after every shot to decide if you'll keep an image, probably missing a dozen good opportunities while doing so. With my d*g*tal camera, I turned off the automatic review screen, so I'm not even tempted to do it. When I'm not sure about an exposure, I can still look, but it's not like the involuntary habit of "chimping"

blansky said:

In fact the ultimate in chimping happened in the movie business.

For years now when shooting a movie in film, the director and DPs would shoot a video assist that they could play back to see if they liked the shot, the blocking, the acting, the lighting etc. It saved them a ton of money on extra takes and hours of time.

They simply mounted a digital video camera with the main camera and captured the identical shot on both cameras.

Then they'd have a "group chimp".

Click to expand...

That isn't entirely correct. Motion picture film has so much latitude that we would never use the assist to make any decision regarding exposure or lighting and would roundly berate anybody that did. Assist pretty much exists so directors can second guess what they saw the first time around. As a director of photography/cinematographer I never looked at it. The dailies were where the rubber met the road.

Different strokes. All the movie shoots I worked on they used them for what I mentioned. Didn't say anything about exposure, but light placement. Also used in tight location shots where the director has a hard time being in the same room.

Apparently Jerry Lewis was the first to use it to direct himself and get instant feedback.


1960

Actor-director Jerry Lewis invents and makes first use of a video assist system on The Bellboy,
an idea that Francis Ford Coppola perfects on One From the Heart (1982).