Tear down digital photography, right here, right now

Nicole · Oct 18, 2007

Pinholemaster said:
I hate nothing about photography, analog or digital. They are both tools for one's vision.

I have nothing to air. I'm tired of the hate, hate, hate, hate, as if one approach is clean as the driven snow, and the other was unleashed from the the furies of hell.

And who says you can control our answers? Just because you post this thread, doesn't mean anyone has to follow it. Why not some bullshit? Bullshit is good. Fertilizes the land. I deal with horse shit all the time 'cause we have two horses. Nothing wrong with horse shit either. Smells better than bullshit in my opinion.

Just like photography. The photographer brings intent and meaning to the photograph, but the viewer brings much that the photographer can't control. So to tell the view of a photograph that he or she can only think along the lines of the intent of the photographer is ridiculous. To start a thread by say what we can say or think falls in that same realm.

So historically the anti-digital arguments fall to the way side, just like older arguments about photographic ascetics have fallen. Pictorialism, Modernism, Post-Modernism, are helpful guidelines in understanding photographic history, but they shouldn't be used to control people's self-expression.

Via la difference!

I've always been a digital photographer. Even when shooting film, I've always used the first digit of my right hand to trip the shutter!

What he said... except I don't have horses.

Iskra 2 · Oct 18, 2007

Digital image capture is too expensive and limited compared to film, for me. I am patient and can wait...... but ...... if there was an inexpensive digital body for FD mount lenses .... like a Pentax/Oly .....maybe. Regards.

Daud · Oct 18, 2007

JBrunner said:
The tradition.

Continuing to learn and grow in the footsteps of my peers, mentors, and heroes.

I could not put it any better other than add a comment from my Wife - a water colour artist:

A bit like telling me I should stop because I can do just as well with colour film.

David.

dianna · Oct 18, 2007

There's a certain amount of mystery with film that appeals to me. I like working with antique cameras (big focal-plane shutters where the speeds are just estimates) and antique lenses, and experimenting with different kinds of film. The results are sometimes surprising. For me, it's just fun working with film. I get a sense of satisfaction figuring out how to make all the pieces work together. The cameras themselves (Graflex SLRs) are marvels of mechanical engineering. The old uncoated lenses give a magical glow to highlights that you just don't get with modern lenses. I love going to the camera shop and picking and choosing different kinds of film...I feel like a kid in a candy store when I'm shopping for film. As I'm shopping, I come up with ideas about what I want to shoot next and how to shoot it, process it, what kind of look to go for. Those ideas come from within myself, and it's the process of looking through my film and paper options that bring on the ideas. Then there's the darkroom work. My darkroom time is my escape.

I used to own a digital SLR and I was finding myself getting bored and not shooting as much because all the shots looked the same. I didn't really create any truly interesting images during the year and a half that I owned that digital camera. I sit in front of a computer 40 hours a week, and I guess I wasn't interested in sitting at a computer in my spare time post-processing images to make them look like they were shot with an old camera

Bob Carnie · Oct 18, 2007

Here are some of my gripes, but please consider that I am pro digital and pro film.

A lot of us here have spent a better part of our careers in the analoque world perfecting our skills. Around 2002 digital capture, digital printing has caught up to analoque output, sometimes less quality sometimes better quality.* the output quality matches but to match one needs to invest $$$$, learning curve which = time , .
Some of us here are passionate , almost crazy , about photography and all its potential.
Now to be able to move forward we must spend money and go on long, long , long learning curves.
I will give you and example which is my case only and not to reflect on others here since we all are different.
In 2002 I came to the conclusion, that I could continue analogue only, downsize my business and continue with clients that preferred my work.
Or invest in equipment and educate myself in the new digital world. At 49 I decided I was too young not to see what this whole new methodology is about.
Five years later, $400K later, thousands of hours in training , practicing and 7 day a week commitment , I can say my decision was justified.

This is the problem that I see and also the major stumbling block, if you are not in the position to buy the best camera* they are changing every day since 2002, the best scannner, buy 50 photoshop books, take 20 courses with expert leaders, learn painful colour managment, profile, expertise, your ability to compete as you did for the first 25 odd years of you career seems pointless. And why dammit should we have to change!!!!

So directly to the OP question, there are people , like myself that have forgotten more about photography than some of the new upstarts that only know digital capture and printing, and find themselves fighting , flaming and bickering about digital vs what they know.
It is in my opinion a flawed argument as digital photography is great , but so too is analogue.
The main problem is the thousands of dollars, thousands of hours to get into the digital game at the same level that they already are at , and I see that as the main pissing point.

A quick visit to my shop can be a eye opener as I have over 200 digital and analogue framed prints in our hallways and common areas and with some exceptions one would not be able to tell me which ones are digital and which ones are analogue.
So my main gripe about digital is MONEY & TIME to compete.

since I am on a roll I will add another very sore point.

The Manufacturers of materials misrepresenting the naming of their new fangled products.

I have made Platinum prints
I have made Silver gelatin fibre prints
I have made Ultra Stable Prints
I have watched Sandy King make Carbon Prints
I have seen Azos printed by MAS.

all of the above are time honoured processes and should be revered for the qualities of look, permance and history.

An Ink Jet print is a ink sprayed *Giclee* and as such should be called such.
I am all for the Manufactures introducing new products, improving products, getting Wilhelm to endorse their product. But call them what they are and do not confuse the fickle market place with bullshit claims, names and such.

Will S · Oct 18, 2007

I'm surprised no one has mentioned cost as a factor. For someone like myself on a limited budget the cost of a computer, printer, printing supplies, digital camera and lenses that would give me comparable output to what I can do with film is at least a factor of 10 higher in cost. If you were really cutting corners maybe your could get it down to 3x higher, but it is still a lot more expensive.

And how in the world do you get the movements you need for architectural photography with a digital camera? I know that they have digital skew controls, but that can't possibly work as well as a view camera with full movements. Of course, there are digital backs, but now we are talking 100x the cost or more.

But there are lots of different kinds of photography and photographers. What is true for me but may not apply to others. Family vacation type snapshots, I think, are an area where digital is catching up price-wise if you never print them and only take pictures for display on the computer screen. Still, an Olympus stylus costs about $25 and a 7.2 mp digicam is around $250, so you are still looking at close to a factor of 10 on just the price of the camera alone! And how long does that digital camera continue to work? 3 years? Maybe 5?

I also think the "instant feedback makes you a better photographer" thing is just a myth that will go by the wayside in a few years. It is really sad to see young people out taking pictures and then chimping instead of continuing to observe and take more pictures.

There are other, more personal reasons, I prefer analog, but I can't really even afford to try digital, so I have to tell myself I don't really know for sure about those.

Will

TheFlyingCamera · Oct 18, 2007

Bob-

hear hear. An inkjet made to look like a platinum print is NOT a platinum print. An inkjet made to look like an Azo print is NOT an Azo print. To mis-label it as such is to invite disaster - what if the mounting gets damaged 30 years from now, and because some moron insisted it was a "platinum" print when in fact it is an inkjet, an inexperienced conservator trusts the label and tries to remove the mounting using a water bath? badda-boom, badda-bing, no more inkjet print!

copake_ham · Oct 18, 2007

I don't believe I actually read a half dozen posts of this thread!

What a waste of time.

Andy K · Oct 18, 2007

copake_ham said:
I don't believe I actually read a half dozen posts of this thread!

What a waste of time.

As was your post. Had you read more you would have seen some very valid and well presented argument.

Drew B. · Oct 18, 2007

I've owned a digital SLR...for about 3 months and sold it. It has its uses (ie. photojournalism) but it represents another component of our throw-away society. If you want permanence, stay with film. I got married 30 years ago this month..and still have negatives from 1977 (and before)

Andy K · Oct 18, 2007

Drew B. said:
I've owned a digital SLR...for about 3 months and sold it. It has its uses (ie. photojournalism) but it represents another component of our throw-away society. If you want permanence, stay with film. I got married 30 years ago this month..and still have negatives from 1977 (and before)

The print scan in my gallery of (there was a url link here which no longer exists) was made from one of my father's negs, shot around 1965, I also made this print from one of his negs shot in 1964. I wonder how many average digishooters digital image files will still be around, and still accessible 40 odd years after their creation?

DrPablo · Oct 18, 2007

I just used my DSLR to take a picture of a giant frog that somehow appeared in our toilet, apparently via a long and unpleasant journey up through the pipes. I'd NEVER have taken that shot with a film camera. I don't care if that picture is around 40 years from now, and I'll never print it, but having a DSLR gave me the opportunity to take that shot.

Both sides of this argument are full of bias -- everything from the predictions of film's imminent demise by naive digital fanboys, to the ridiculously arrogant "digital has no soul" arguments from stodgy film apologists. They both are what you make of them. There are technical limitations of both media, and many of us do use digital technology to edit and print color film images -- getting what we feel is the best of both worlds.

What I dislike about the digital world is that it has failed to make larger format capture affordable, and that it seems to think that the SLR is the only legitimate camera design in history. I enjoy shooting with different types of cameras, and it's a pity that we don't have more digital rangefinders, view cameras, panoramic cameras, and even TLRs. The Nikon D3 and the Canon 1DsIII may do a lot of things, but if you don't want to carry around a $5000 to $8000 SLR-design camera (not counting glass) then what are they really worth?

David A. Goldfarb · Oct 18, 2007

I just don't care for the look of inkjet prints. Ink sprayed on paper just looks different from emulsion floating on a sheet of paper.

As far as digital cameras go--the sensor is too small and forces a small-sensor aesthetic--long DOF, so-so wideangle performance. Maybe one day I'll get a DSLR for bird photography, which is one of the only things I do with 35mm, but otherwise, I prefer the look of larger formats.

Digital C-prints are interesting to me for color, but lately I've been looking at projection C-prints and having second thoughts about Lambda/Lightjet/Chromira. The texture of pure film grain with no grain aliasing is an attraction of projection prints, and something to be weighed against the easier control of digital.

Marc Akemann · Oct 18, 2007

Fugazi Dave said:
I want to know what issues you take with digital photography. What bothers you about it? What do you outright hate about it? What pisses you off about it? Do you consider it a form of photography even? If so, why? If not, why not? What disqualifies it as photography or as art or as whatever else?

Digital imaging, by itself, doesn't bother me. It's just something out there that I happen to not have much interest in. I dabble in it for work but I get no joy from it. I get a slightly less positive feeling from it as I do when typing in my PIN number at an ATM.

I don't call it photography, I call it digital imaging and digital imaging seems more of a graphic arts type thing.

I was a member of three camera clubs in my area, one of which I founded, and have decided (as of last May) to distance myself from them. Digivangelists have made it unbearable for me.

Lastly, one of the reasons I joined the APUG is to get away from these types of conversations, which you can find on any other so-called photography forum site. On the other hand, I also appreciate APUG's open-ness to allow this type of thread. I didn't have to reply, but you trolled and you got me.

Good luck on your quest for understanding....

Marc

c6h6o3 · Oct 18, 2007

Willie Jan said:
I had a photoshop course yesterday.

The guy told the audience that archiving is much easier...
After 45 minutes he explained that he lost hunderds of images because the cd's we no longer readable and a laptop with recent work (wedding shoots) had been stolen. Now he puts the images on a drive, and 3 cd's.

Yeah sure, easy storage....

This is becoming a huge problem in a lot of government agencies where documents must be kept for long periods of time. Where I work that means until the end of the Republic. And it's not just photographs. The archives here house original documents signed by John Jay. Can we make reliably permanent records of them by making digital photographs? I don't think so.

When the National Gallery of Art switched from photographing their acquisitions with Ektachrome to scanning digital backs, did they consider the long term implications of preserving the images? One wonders.

mabman · Oct 18, 2007

For me it's a couple of things:

1) Digital still lags behind film in terms of capability (lattitude, flexibility - toe/shoulder equivalent) - in available low-light (800 ISO or higher) the vast majority of digital shots I've seen don't work very well - way too much "noise". I like shooting available-light in a variety of conditions, and use 800 ISO or higher on a regular basis. I'd consider digital more if it worked as well as film in those conditions (and it might, some day).

2) I had an interesting conversation recently with 2 local graphic artists who work in the advertising business (unsolicited, they started talking to me once I pulled out my camera at a party) - both deal with photos every day. It was their opinion that the availability of digital has overwhelmed consumers to the point where they can't distinguish a decent photo from a bad one. Also, according to them, it's making a lot of (local, at least) professional photographers "lazy" - their word, not mine - more and more of their time is spent adding elements to photographs in Photoshop to make them suitable (not just standard darkroom burn/dodge/crop/contrast, either - actually adding things to the photos that weren't there previously). I find this disturbing. A similar argument from the consumer side could possibly be made for film point & shoot cameras, but that shouldn't be a factor on the professional side. Perhaps lazy photographers aren't limited to digital, but the apparent ease-of-image-capture seems to facilitate that more so than film.

That said, I do usually get my negatives scanned, and do some basic adjustments in Photoshop - mostly because I don't have the space for a darkroom. I'm not opposed to digital techniques per se, I just have some technical and philosphical issues with digital cameras as they currently exist.

However, I do believe digital cameras have their place. Just the other day a local part-time professional did a studio strobe-lighting presentation at our local camera club meeting. He brought his gear, and used an EOS 40D "tethered" to a laptop with a projector, and showed us his sample shots in real-time. Something like that wouldn't have been possible with film (well, to some degree with Polaroids, but not quite the same).

Anyway, just my $0.02.

johnnywalker · Oct 18, 2007

To do digital imaging well, it is too expensive, too time consuming and not any fun for me. I simply enjoy black and white photography, which is my hobby.

Because family and friends know I like to take pictures, I am often expected to take pictures of them. Eventually that became more like work than fun, so I now use a digital point-and-shoot to do that with, and give the files away. I also use black and white for family/friend pictures, but those are mine, rarely to be given away.

I also use the same digital for work-related pictures. These are not "mine" either.

I also wonder about the permanence of digital files. How many will bother to transfer their images to the latest storage medium when the last one becomes obsolete?

BradS · Oct 18, 2007

It is not fun or even remotely interesting.
The results always look sterile to me.
Fully automatic cameras turn one's mind to mush (goes for film too).

thefizz · Oct 18, 2007

I don't hate digital imaging but I do hate when asked "why have you not gone digital", and the statement "sure its the final image that counts" irritates me also. For me the process is equally important if not more so, for many reasons. The main ones being enjoyment of the process and hand crafted versus computer made.

As mentioned by many, my main dislike of digital imaging is having to use computers. Unfortunately I stare at one in work all day so I don't wish to do it at home.

A few similarities come to mind:

Hand made coffee table v. computerized machine made.
Vintage car experience v. modern car with all the bells & whistles.
Ordinary compass v. using a GPS.
Old style cooking v. Microwave dinners.

I do think digital imaging is great for some things but "computerized" and "hand crafted" have little in common.

Valerie · Oct 18, 2007

Because a desk and chair can never come close to the feeling I get when I step into the sacred space that is my darkroom.

Because an image on the computer screen will never fill me with the sense of awe and magic I get every time I see a print come up in the developing tray.

(I do not hate digital. I prefer traditional.)

BradS · Oct 18, 2007

Valerie said:
Because an image on the computer screen will never fill me with the sense of awe and magic I get every time I see a print come up in the developing tray.

(I do not hate digital. I prefer traditional.)

Very well said.

thefizz · Oct 18, 2007

Oh another thing, I don't care if digital imaging is cheaper and faster. I love spending time and money on my hobby. Hobbies are there to use up your free time and enjoy it.

I also hate when the darkroom is referred to as the fume room. Usually said by those who never set foot in one.

I think the title "tear down digital photography" is a bit harsh. Oh goodness, does this mean I'm defending digital?

KEK · Oct 18, 2007

I have a digital SLR i use at work and i like it alot. It serves its purpose and does its job very well. I use it to document projects I'm working on and when the project is finished the prints go in the trash. If if it's a project i want to have published i call in the pros and they come in with the heavy duty digital equipment. They email the images of the project and it's a real time saver.

As much as i like my digital camera though i never seem to bring it home to use in my free time.

JBrunner and WillS hit it on the head for me.

1. Right now cost is a big factor for me(three kids in college) and i don't want to get caught up in the keeping up with the joneses equipment thing. I'll have to admit though that i'm very tempted to try making some digital negatives. $$$

2. For me using film and a darkroom is all about the craft and the satisfaction i get when i finally get a keeper. I didn't just push a button and out pops a print ( I know it's not that easy ) I made it by hand. I started with LF last year and absolutly love it. It really does make you stop and think. I remember a lenswork editorial that talked about new software to orginize your images and the author was using as an example a week long photo trip he had been on and shot thousands of digital images.I roughly figured how many shots per day and the author must have been on a dead run all day. Thats not for me and i hope it never will.

Kevin

Doyle Thomas · Oct 18, 2007

Because with photography you fire the shutter and the light writes a permanent record of the scene in the light sensitive emulsion on the film. Once developed the image can be viewed with the naked eye and any available light source.

What I like most about film is that it creates an artifact, A physical object that was there at the time the exposure was made.

Doyle

Chuck_P · Oct 18, 2007

JBrunner said:
The tradition.

Continuing to learn and grow in the footsteps of my peers, mentors, and heroes.

The Spartan approach that leaves no excuses, save for my own skills and talent.

No magic bullets, no compromises.

Ansel, Imogen, Edward, and Edward, and so on down the line.

JB, this is perfect. I wish I had said something so eloquent. Instead, I'll just say that digital is just no fun, it's boring and there is nothing stimulating about its process.

Tear down digital photography, right here, right now

Nicole

Iskra 2

Daud

dianna

Bob Carnie

Will S

TheFlyingCamera

Membership Council

copake_ham

Andy K

Drew B.

Andy K

DrPablo

David A. Goldfarb

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Marc Akemann

c6h6o3

mabman

johnnywalker

BradS

thefizz

Valerie

BradS

thefizz

KEK

Doyle Thomas

Chuck_P

Tear down digital photography, right here, right now

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