the person, or the equipment, the film and paper

[removed account4]

photography forums like any forum i suppose where there are materials, and equipment
seem to be 90% going on about cameras and lenses and sharpness and resolution of film and tonality of papers.

why is this so when the papers, films cameras and lenses just seem to
be bought and sold and gather dust on the shelf.
people gravitate to what they are used to what they feel comfortable with
( or without )
and in the end it doesn't matter, does it ?

i've seen some stunning photographs made without cameras and lenses, as much as i have seen
stunning photographs made with plastic cameras ( toys? ) or negatives smaller than your little finger nail
or 100 year old cameras or materials ready for the trash heap.

you probably don't have to look far to see what side of the table i tend to eat on,
but what about you, if you gravitate to pristine clinical image making tools and the highest resolution film
why do you do this, or why .. not?

i know people who might say it's just a tool in my toolbox that i can use or not use when i want ...
but that isn't really what i am thinking of ...

 

[Shawn Dougherty]

I like using a view camera or a medium format camera on a tripod and viewing a groundglass for either. Both force me to slow down, use a tripod, look at the image with two eyes as I will the finished print. FOR ME, I need to take time looking closely at the image and making decisions, both intuitively and with conscious thought.

I suppose I could take my time with any camera but I need the tripod to hold things steady while I look around the image area... and again, I just can't compose with one eye in a viewfinder (prism) like I can with two eyes looking at a groundglass.

 

[Whiteymorange]

I'll start it off, John (oops, too late). I, like you, like the surprise of throwing in various unknowables, the "what happens if I do this?" of old equipment photography. I use things that no one in their left mind would ever thing of using and sometimes (note emphasis) am absolutely thrilled at what happens. The fact that I would be very unlikely to repeat the success is irrelevant- no, perhaps it's even the point of it all. Of course, I have far fewer successes than I have failures- or "mediocres," which are worse.

It is the chance effects that stun me.

On the other hand, I have nothing but respect for those who plan just what they want, take the time to train themselves, get the proper equipment and achieve a repeatable level of success with most of their shots (nobody's perfect). Pre-visualization, good equipment and self control are wonderful. I just don't do that very well.

I'm not afraid to admit that I'm taking the easy way out here. I also am not afraid to admit I like it that way. I do have some very good equipment, and I have been known to actually focus (both mentally and optically) on what I'm doing, but, for me, that is a chore–well worth doing at times but far less fun. I think maybe when I grow up I may be better at it, but that better come soon, I'm almost 63.

 

[snapguy]

Not sure

I am not at all sure what your point is but it seems to be that the tools do not matter. The right tools matter a lot. I knew a guy who owned three classic Dusenberg automobiles and I am pretty sure the tools in my garage would not work with them. Nor would the Dusey tools do much for my (metric) Toyota.
Do some of us babble on about the "best" camera, lens, film and whatever? Yes, we do. Some of us are stuck in the mud and swear the LeiNiCan is the only camera any person should buy -- because "I" bought it and "I" am the smartest guy in the world. But a lot of us are trying to figure out how to get the best photographs we can, and which tools will do that for us.
Film photography used to be on Broadway, baby, and now it seems relegated to providing a breather between strip tease artists in back alley clubs in the Bowery. Off-Off-Off-Off-Broadway. Take-it-off-Broadway.
But I digress. Film is becoming a niche like silkscreens are to oil painting. It is here to stay but it is not easy to master, which I say is a good thing. It's not good enough to just phone it in.
By the way, the "big" piece of art over my living room couch is a silkscreen by a well known artist.

 

[cliveh]

John, a million people may have a million different reasons for the MO they use and decide to follow. As long as any individual follows the path that they believe is right for them and makes them happy, then amen.

 

[Chris Lange]

High end equipment has never made me a better photographer but to a degree I find that it can allow for a more transparent working method. A V35 is a far more efficient tool than a rickety Omega. There are times I use a Hasselblad like a Holga, and times that I use a Stylus Epic to make pictures others would delegate to a 4x5.

I have a Russian sonnar knock off that renders beautifully, but for the sake of fluidity and ease of use, I haven't even looked at it since I put a summicron on my M2.

I find that I derive very little enjoyment from wrangling crappy equipment, I just don't have time for that stuff. Consistency and reliability are the name of the game in my eyes and from an equipment standpoint that is a guarantee that you only get with well maintained equipment, be it an old folder or a Hasselblad 503CW.

 

[Vaughn]

The image, person, equipment, film, and paper -- as well as the light.

All are equally important to me, all part of the process.

 

[David Brown]

people gravitate to what they are used to what they feel comfortable with ( or without ) and in the end it doesn't matter, does it ?

but what about you, if you gravitate to pristine clinical image making tools and the highest resolution film
why do you do this, or why .. not?

Well, John, it matters to some of us. I do admit that I am sick of talking about tools and materials, but I do not discount their value to the individual. It's only when they out-value the resulting image that I think there's a problem. And, I suspect, this applies to you, too.

I am influenced by my background in music, where there is definitely a difference in the music made based on the quality of the instruments being played. Yes, a really good musician can make music on a poor instrument, and a bad musician is not helped with a first-rate instrument. But what we are after is the really fine musician playing the really fine instrument! It makes a difference, and one can hear it.

The variable there is not having to fight the weak instrument. I find it is the same with cameras and photo materials. I want consistency and quality. I then do not need to overcome the weaknesses in either.

Other photographers like the unpredictability of certain things. I do not. It's really that simple.

I am not at all sure what your point is ...
By the way, the "big" piece of art over my living room couch is a silkscreen by a well known artist.

I rarely know what your point is ...

 

[eddie]

you probably don't have to look far to see what side of the table i tend to eat on,
but what about you, if you gravitate to pristine clinical image making tools and the highest resolution film
why do you do this, or why .. not?

I eat on both sides of the table... (but, I do admit the threads about whether to buy the 1.4, to replace the 1.8, a bit ridiculous. That sort of post seems, to me, to be magic bullet chasing.)
My work varies, from wanting tack sharp images, to things some people would argue aren't even photographs. I like the dichotomy I've found in my work. Keeps it fresh... keeps me engaged... and keeps me striving for more.

 

[Bill Burk]

An open question deserves a rambling thought. Literally the question might be understood as "why do we talk about gear when it's the photography that's important" - yet I fall for it every time - I think it's just an opportunity to talk about what's on our minds...

The gear for me is provisions. What I do with it is photography. I have no problem talking about how I provision a trip...

Just came back from a trip where I spent the day sitting in one spot. Thought about my forum posts and others' occasionally since my mind was free. The weather was partly stormy. It'd rained Friday night, and by morning the storm was clearing but we had partly cloudy skies. I was thinking about the long range of light with sunlight-dappled leaves. And how easy with a few minutes' wait, the scene would fit the film's range easily.

I had four pieces of photographic paraphernalia with me. Only one required batteries, the Sekonic Twin-mate. One was a spare box of film. Another was the Weston Master II with Zone System patches and the fourth was the only camera I brought with me, the new (to me) Kodak Retina I with f/3.5 Ektar lens.

The Retina had been just CLA (by me) and film, light meter and shutter all were in a calibrated state. So I KNEW my shutter speeds. When I want 1/40 I select 100... The film EI could be either 100 (because it is) or 64 (to suit my taste). I had a full range of shutter speeds, but as you can probably tell, without a tripod my choices were 100 (1/40), 250 (1/80) and 500 (1/160). Fortunately the Master II HAS these shutter speed markings, and the day provided opportunities to use them.

With partly cloudy skies, the light was changing rapidly. Not only that, but I was stationed at a corner where it was dark - a forest shaded road junction. My job was to tell the mountain bikers to turn left (straight ahead was certain misadventure). Each rider passed my station exactly once, they all had to learn the route anew each time.

In the morning, the still-wet trail caused inexperienced rider's several spills. Only one rider was significantly shaken, the rest of the incidents were minor and they bounced right back.

I nicknamed the event "Ouchery".

Now comes the part I regret. Dusk arrived and so my opportunities to photograph came to a natural end. Sure I could have brought more gear (I could have checked the PC contact and brought a small flash). What WAS I thinking? Sunday, I knew we'd just pack up and go. So at the end of dusk Saturday, I rewound and decided to NOT load the second roll of film.

Too bad. Sunday morning we had more rain. I would cherish photographs of young, (miserable) campers packing up in the rain. I missed foggy hillside views. Sure I would have had to tend to moisture with a paper towel and kept the camera in a chest pocket.

Oh well, next time I'll do it right and treat film like the commodity and time as the more precious resource.

 

[ntenny]

Well, it's easier to talk about gear than about vision and aesthetics, as the occasional threads here on the latter subjects show; so maybe looking at online fora automatically skews what you see towards gearheadedness. That said, though, I think we see lots of examples of people favoring tools for reasons other than technical precision; cameras that "just feel right", lenses that have "character", films chosen for tonality rather than resolution. While the discussions may be 90% about stuff rather than ideas, I don't think they're so uniformly about finding the technically "best" stuff.

-NT

 

[eddie]

Well, it's easier to talk about gear than about vision and aesthetics...-NT

I certainly agree with this. I think there are a few reasons. For one,there's a wide range of experience, here. It means that some are still struggling with the basics, while others are struggling with personal vision. Secondly, photography meets at the intersection of art and science. It tends to attract those with an interest in both. Finally, it's difficult to discuss aesthetics when what we see (on the internet) is, at best, just a facsimile of what the real print looks like. There's always nuance lost- the paper texture, the subtlety of toning, etc.

Even with the difficulties I mentioned, APUG is an extremely valuable resource. There's always something to be gained, regardless of one's level of experience.

 

[fotch]

Its always the person that makes a difference, however, human nature is to hope you can improve by buying more gear, or more and better gear. Always hoping that if you had a better camera, your pictures would be better. Also an interest in what a really good photographer is using. Just human nature I think.

 

[snapguy]

small

Smaller words for Brown. Got it.

 

[Bill Burk]

By the way, the "big" piece of art over my living room couch is a silkscreen by a well known artist.

Matisse?

 

[MattKing]

John:

Gear is fun, and can be beautiful.

Techniques and materials can be as well.

I spent part of the day at a Camera Sale and Swap. When my wife dropped me off in the car, she made sure that my pocket protector was straight and that I had my geekiest glasses on too - it was important that I fit in!

It was fun and educating and interesting, just as it will be fun and educating and interesting on Tuesday when I meet with my Art Photography group.

The challenge is to make sure the mix is good.

 

[removed account4]

thanks for the posts so far ..

i think of my own experience with buying equipment, lenses film, whatever ,,
after the hype, after the purchase, after using it for a year or 2 or three
it never lived up to the promise.

not so much that i was promised or believed if i drank the magic kool-aid
things would be that much better, different, or whatever but that what i had
already been using was already a known-quantity or a comfortable extension
of ME ( film, paper, camera, lens whatever )
the other "stuff" didn't really connect with me the same way ..

it's not that i don't want to be the adult that hears the bell with no clapper make the bell ring
its just the opposite because i am naive enough to truly believe that there is something magical about photography
and it doesn't really matter about equipment, or materials as long as somehow the equipment / materials used somehow
resonate or make a connection with the user. ( look at the materials used by Miroslav Tichý )

couldn't agree more, to each their own ... its just nice to know how + why its their own .. or IS IT their own yet ?

 

[ntenny]

people gravitate to what they are used to what they feel comfortable with
( or without )
and in the end it doesn't matter, does it ?

Having taken a break to go outside and water my pepper plants, I've thought about this thread some more, and I think it matters exactly as much or as little as you think it does.

Tools are useful for doing things; otherwise they wouldn't be tools. You can create a photographic image without a lens, without film, without anything meeting the conventional definition of a camera; you can make it with strange tools like Pintoid processors or theoretically poor ones like typical "toy" cameras; but I don't think you can do it with no tools at all. As a result you always have to find some answer to the question: What tools are you using for this image?

The answer always creates some constraints, and we spend most of our time here talking about those constraints. I want to use my rangefinder, but I have to figure out how to handle parallax. Or: I'm going to end up with an 8x10 cyanotype, so a lens that covers 8x10 would be helpful, or maybe I need to learn about enlarging to internegatives. That's three very typical APUG topics right there, all of them about tools rather than ideas, but all of them pretty easy to relate to the practical issues facing a maker of images.

I think some people are too hung up on perfection, but it usually doesn't confront me in practice. I won't try to make them use Rapid Rectilinears as macro lenses if they don't try to make me spend money on the latest and greatest super-apo-whatsit, and most of the time that seems to work out OK.

-NT

 

[Bill Burk]

Having taken a break to go outside and water my pepper plants, I've thought about this thread some more

I can't wait to see your pepper pictures... I CAN'T take decent pictures of peppers since the grocery store always sticks stupid labels on them and cuts the stalk off in unappealing places.

 

[dpurdy]

The challenge is to be in control of every aspect of what you do and make the statement you mean to make. The more aspects of the statement you take responsibility for and and make exactly as you intend the truer the statement is. Working out of control with tools that aren't precise and process elements that depend on serendipity for artistic value are false, a lie, a step backwards and a waste of time.
Dennis

 

[pdeeh]

e challenge is to be in control of every aspect of what you do and make the statement you mean to make. The more aspects of the statement you take responsibility for and and make exactly as you intend the truer the statement is. Working out of control with tools that aren't precise and process elements that depend on serendipity for artistic value are false, a lie, a step backwards and a waste of time.

Well, that sounds like that's the challenge you set for yourself, which is fine of course, but also comes across as dismissive of anyone who doesn't work within your personal framework of beliefs, or even somewhat narrow-minded.

When I look at a photograph (or any work of art) my first thought is not "was the photographer (painter, sculptor, performer) in control of all his materials and process?", it's about what I am experiencing in front of me.

It's a bit like the how photographs are discussed - with a set of unspoken assumptions embedded in the discourse, as if particular aesthetic criteria must be used that only apply when talking about any (or all) photographs.

An example is "this photograph is nice but it doesn't have a clear subject" - to which one response might be "What's the clear subject of a Jackson Pollock?".

I wonder if this is what John is getting at - this reduction of photography to a set of shoulds and oughts and "if you're not doing it like me then you're doing it wrong" that so often pervades discussions, and not just at APUG.

To speak only of my own movement - as I get older I'm increasingly less interested in camera and lenses "performance" because I've found I can't really tell the difference between a Vivitar I found in a skip jammed with fungus and a clean £1000 Summicron - unless I use them on a digital camera and can peer into the corners of the images at "100%".

I care about cameras as aesthetic objects though - I have a perfectly good Yashica MAT that I never use because I think it's ugly and clumsy in my hand, and when I pick it up I just want to put it down, regardless of the lovely images I can make with it. On the other hand, I have an OM-1n that just feels lovely, and when I pick it up I just don't want to put it down.

Equally, I find the whole business of photographic chemistry fascinating. I'm not silly enough to think that using one developer over another will magically make my images work better, but in the past two years I've learned more about chemistry than I ever learned at school 40 years ago, and I just enjoy the experience of tinkering.

It does occur to me that it's perfectly possible many discussions about "gear" (interesting by the way, that - in the UK at least - "gear" is slang for street drugs, usually heroin) are self-justifications for buying stuff that we just want because we want it.

 

[benjiboy]

To my mind and in my experience of the past sixty odd years as a practicing photographer the biggest leaps forward in film photography in that time have been in the films papers and chemistry, much more than in the hardware, if a photographer in the days when I started photography would have had the films, paper, and chemistry that are available today they would be over the Moon.

 

[removed account4]

The challenge is to be in control of every aspect of what you do and make the statement you mean to make. The more aspects of the statement you take responsibility for and and make exactly as you intend the truer the statement is. Working out of control with tools that aren't precise and process elements that depend on serendipity for artistic value are false, a lie, a step backwards and a waste of time.
Dennis

i can see where you are coming from, and agree to a certain extent that
for some types of photography it is important to be a good technician
and be in control of every aspect of the operation.
often times when i take an assignment that is what i am being paid for
whether it is to make portraits for a church directory or portraits of a building for an archives ...
but ... to me at least, being a good technician is just that, being a good technician ... a photographer who is
being hired to do a job is a tool to use a camera + solve a problem as much as the camera and materials s/he uses
to make the photographs ... i don't really find all the hype that swirls around that to be the be extremely fulfilling
i can make exactly what i was paid to make, but i don't find that to be the be all and end all of photography.

years ago there were people here on apug that claimed that if it wasn't a portrait it wasn't "true photography"
and a handful of years later when there was going to be an apug book made people worried that if it wasn't a grand landscape the
guest-curator wouldn't consider it to be a photograph worthy of being published ...
me?
i couldn't care less what kind of a photograph it is what it was made with, how it was processed or if it is going to
deteriorate into a gray piece of paper in 2 days (and only a photograph for a small period of time) ...
but i think that a lot of people, whether they love the technical side of things, beautiful mechanical devices
or a certain type of imagery have a lot of boundaries and constraints that make them work hard
to make what they want to make, great! ...

is that what photography is all about being in control of the the materials and the technical aspect of things ?
or is there something else ... or do we never leave our comfy chair because the other stuff is a lie ?

i mentioned Miroslav Tichý earlier ... he conquered the technical aspects of the materials he was using, was his work a lie
because his materials used were substandard to some, hand made, and considered trash by others ?
if his images were made with pristine optics, and a leica with modern emulsions printed on fiber paper and toned in selenium
gold and thiocarbamide would they be less of a lie? or would he have been overlooked as just another photographer from eastern europe ...

 

[pdeeh]

I saw some of Tichý's prints as part of an exhibition within the past few weeks. They were aetherially beautiful ... to me.

 

[BrianShaw]

John, a million people may have a million different reasons for the MO they use and decide to follow. As long as any individual follows the path that they believe is right for them and makes them happy, then amen.

Amen, sings the choir.