Digital; or Autofocus?

F

FS Vontz

Aspirer
Local time
4:42 AM
Joined
Sep 12, 2009
Messages
164
Location
Narn Irn
View My Gallery
Which do you think had a bigger impact on photography? Not one area in particular, the thing as a whole.

I know many people don't even use digital(I myself use it rarely), or autofocus, but still - have a think.

Think I may have made a mistake here, I've never posted a poll before, tips anyone?
 
Last edited:
Digital, without a question.
Autofocus is for the most part just a convenience for lazy people. With the exception of some niche areas like sports photography (where it has contributed to the ability to capture images) I don't think it has changed how people see. Digital on the other hand has democratised the delivery of images to the media, and substantially reduced the 'time to press'. In addition, it has vastly extended the reach and the audience for all types of photography. Even those of us who shoot film, scan in order to stay in the loop.
Digital is a rolling revolution.
 
Digital imaging has had a far greater impact on photography as a whole than any other advance in the mediums short history. As with nearly all prior technologies, it has changed how we take pictures. Gone are the days of "Will it turn out?" and waiting three weeks or a trip to the mall and the small miracle of the one-hour photo-mat necessary to find out. This alone has enabled more successful snapshots than any prior tech or gizmo.

It has also changed how pictures are viewed and how we interact with them. With instantaneous feedback, we socialize in new ways around images. The sharing of life's moments now occurs almost immediately gathered around an LCD, our experience bisected with a digital simulcrum of it all within seconds, along with promises of emailed JPEGs for all. This influences not only our relationship with photography, but with one another.

Coupled as it has been with the rise of the World Wide Web, it has also created the potential for every image to be a part of a larger (10 cent word warning!) ecosystem of images. Witness technologies such as Photosynth http://http://photosynth.net/. We are only, what? roughly ten years into mainstream acceptance and usage of digital cameras? Who knows what else lies in store?

Autofocus seems so quaintly mechanical and warmly 1970's in comparison.
 
Digital, because it's a digital world.

Meanwhile... autofocus is not just for lazy people, no more than light meters or automatic transmissions.
 
AF has done wonders for sports and news photography, childrens portraiture too probably. But I have to go with digital. I have an MF digital RF, and love it. I also have a DSLR with AF, and love it too, but often without using AF.
 
When I worked in a camera shop in the 80s the introduction of Canon's EOS range and the Minolta 7000 before it had a huge impact, but the introduction of digital has changed photography in so many ways and not always for the better!
 
FS Vontz said:
Which do you think had a bigger impact on photography? Not one area in particular, the thing as a whole.

I know many people don't even use digital(I myself use it rarely), or autofocus, but still - have a think.

Think I may have made a mistake here, I've never posted a poll before, tips anyone?
Click to expand...



How many is 'many' ? Because the 'majority' of people using cameras (especially in 3rd world countries) use digital. With film stocks being discontinued monthly and revenues from processing dwindling, film is dead to most people. Also consider how the end result has changed. Most pictures taken by the majority of people are never meant/intended for printing.

Perhaps many older people don't use digital, but even my parents and grandparents now use digital p&s cameras because it's easier, cheaper, and they get better results than they did with their film cameras of old. Note I'm talking about amateur photographers here.

In short, Digital has made much more of an impact than autofocus. Before digital cameras became widespread, a sizeable chunk of camera usage (and film revenue) came from those cheap, crappy, one time use disposable cameras. Those people now own digital cameras, and in an increasing number of cases, dslr's.

Don't get me wrong, I love my M2, but there is no way I would argue that it delivers results a digital can't, not in these days. I use it because I enjoy shooting with it more, I enjoy processing my own film, and it's smaller than a slr/dslr counterpart, especially once you factor in a grip.

I think the only reason people who consider themselves 'artists' stray from digital (and there aren't as many as there were now) is the stigma they've put on digital--that it requires less skill, thought, and effort to get a good picture. Digital is begrudged due to it's ease of use and almost non-existent learning curve. Digital has made photography much less exclusive and accessible to everyone. I look at people referring to digital as inferior these days the way as I look at people who dislike bands once they become big. "I liked them years ago, they were better before they came big"/"I was into photography before it became big, back when it was film"
 
Most changes to photography have been the result of evolutionary ideas that expanded the ability of photographers to use the tools of the trade. Some were revolutionary and forced a rethink of the entire paradigm of photography, not to mention killing off what came before it.

Just a rough whack at it:

From wet collodion to dry plates - revolutionary.
From dry plates to flexible film - revolutionary.
From cut sheet to roll film - evolutionary.
From medium format to 35mm - evolutionary.
From rangefinder to SLR - evolutionary.
From manual exposure to auto-exposure - evolutionary.
From manual focus to auto-focus - evolutionary.
From film to digital - revolutionary.

Digital is a game-changer and upsets the apple cart in ways that no other change up until this point ever has. We see this in our time as taking a decade or more to accomplish; but in the frame of photographic history, that's a blink of an eye. Twenty years tops from film to no more film, period. Dry plates didn't die off that fast, even wet collodion lived on for some time after dry plates came out. Revolutionary - it changes what photography *is* and will continue to do so as technology expands the capability to record electromagnetic spectra and imaginative people find new uses for this technology.

Auto-focus was a mere blip in the timeline, so to speak.
 
I rate autofocus as more important because it has carried from the film world into the digital world and has been a constant on cameras regardless of their type or configuration for a long time now. It enabled manufacturers to build tiny high quality compact film cameras like the Ricoh GR series and Nikon T series etc ... these cameras would not have been as universally successful as they were with a manual focusing system! The progression for these types of pocketable consumer film cameras into the digital realm was simple because autofocus had been perfected many years ago.

Because this type of point and shoot camera still dominates sales for obvious reasons I rate it's already well sorted autofocus system as more importand than it's transition from film to pixels!
 
I'll try and take Keith's point a little further. Digital technology (non-image-related) made for a serious change in photography, and laid down the tracks for digital imaging. The advent of auto-everything cameras created a massive (and ultimately unsustainable) spike in 35mm film consumption between the mid-1980s and 2002. This leveled the playing field between snapshooters and amateurs/pros. The cameras focused for you, metered for you, activated flash for you, threaded, advanced and rewound the film for you. The Intimidation Factor was eliminated for a lot of people, and the good times rolled for the Industry like never before. One-hour lab services, as a result, proliferated like mushrooms after a thunderstorm.

And, without all this, I question just how quickly digital would have caught on. (not if, mind you, merely when.)

Digital imaging, as a whole, was indeed revolutionary: I was scanning film, and printing digitally, starting in 1998, when most, if not all digital cameras (there weren't many to choose from) left a lot to be desired. It definitely revolutionized the way I dealt with my film, post-shoot. It had nothing to do with digital cameras in my work until just a few years ago.

Edit: As for the least-significant technological development in photography in the last 20 years, IMO, it has three letters...APS.

- Barrett
 
Last edited:
Barrett's made a good point that I hadn't considered ... photography was already riding the crest of the automation wave when the pixel bomb was dropped.

The door was wide open for digital!
 
Definitely the invention of film had the biggest impact.

Cameras were around before that, but not too practical.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom