Can you feel it comin' boys and girls? Can you?

Hi Roger,
Thanks for responding to the thread.

Just to play devil's advocate a bit: If a camera became available that could mount the lenses you like, could outperform film dynamically, could provide ISO range like 80 to 1600 with no noise... you mean you'd still use up all your time, effort, and money to buy film, process it, and get prints that were not as good as the digitally produced ones?
Jamie
 
Dave,
Yes, you're probably right. I wasn't suggesting that the LX3 is THE breakthrough that'll change everything. But it is a camera, along with others coming out now, that show me that (I believe) our camera techology world is being radically changed before our eyes. A major shift is coming, because relatively inexpensive digital cameras are going to be able to outperform film cameras in every way that matters to us. I'll bet this is going to happen within the next three to five years. And there's going to be camera bodies that'll do it in a way that will make me not feel bad about giving up my ZM. :)
 
Hi Al,
As I suggested in another post here, I think longevity of digital media is not a problem we're going to have to worry about in the long run. There is just too much demand in the world for high quality, extremely long-lasting digital storage, demand not from photographers, but from financial institutions, corporations, etc.. The digital storage industry is going to research the hell out of this potential market... trying to be the first one to develop "archival" media. It'll happen... soon. :)
 
Jamie Pillers said:
Hi Al,
As I suggested in another post here, I think longevity of digital media is not a problem we're going to have to worry about in the long run. There is just too much demand in the world for high quality, extremely long-lasting digital storage, demand not from photographers, but from financial institutions, corporations, etc.. The digital storage industry is going to research the hell out of this potential market... trying to be the first one to develop "archival" media. It'll happen... soon. :)
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Up to a certain point, I have to challenge this assumption.

Financial institutions, et al (or what's left of them, at the moment) really DO require reliable data storage. But, besides them, who else bothers to buy only "enterprise-class" hard drives and archivally-stable optical-storage media (CDs. DVDs, and the best, but most-neglected of removable media, magneto-optical disk)? Next to no one. We go to the usual suspects and buy whatever 500GB, 750GB or 1TB (and bigger) hard disks happen to be on sale and grab a few of them, not paying attention to specs like MTBF (raise your hand if you know what that stands for). Like the economy at large at the moment, digital media storage is something of a game of musical chairs, where a lapse of attention at the wrong moment can ruin more than just your day. So you have to rotate your HDs on a certain basis (if a given heard disk hits the four-year mark, I replace it, whether it's working perfectly or not), consider a RAID setup, and so on. But, now, we're on the treadmill, where the mantra is Upgrade or Die. Ugh.

As far as cameras go: Even with my fave digicam (Olympus C-8080, which I rhapsodized about in another thread a while ago), NONE of them hold a largely-spent candle to any of my film cameras in terms of absolute speed of use and control manipulation. They simply don't quite work at my speed...yet. And I speak as someone who works like crazy with desktops, laptops, PDAs, cell phones, BlackBerrys and iPhones (and does tech work on all the above for others), so I'm not a hidebound Luddite. Film just works better than digital for me, at this time. In the dSLR world, the Big Thing at the moment seems to be "convergence" with HD video. Since I don't watch TV, that's something of a non-starter in my house.

I suppose that my "problem" is that I know a fair number of film types, and what they can and cannot do, so when I load a given film in a given camera, there's a not a lot of big-brain work involved in working the camera, and I happen to like that. A lot. I'm not quite expecting high(er)-end digitals to match this exactly, but I want something a good deal more intuitive than what's being pedaled as SOTA right now.

So, no, counter to what Tony in West Side Story (of which I got to see a tiny part actually filmed) would famously sing, I don't get the feeling of "something's coming", at least not soon. But someone had better have something better up their sleeve before too long.


- Barrett
 
Still not sure why many think digitals are slow to use. Set the ISO, set the shutter speed, set the aperture, focus the lens and press the shutter. That's all it takes to shoot a digital camera. Certainly seems the same to me has shooting my M3.
 
Fred Burton said:
Still not sure why many think digitals are slow to use. Set the ISO, set the shutter speed, set the aperture, focus the lens and press the shutter. That's all it takes to shoot a digital camera. Certainly seems the same to me has shooting my M3.
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With an R-D1 this is certainly true. Works just like a film camera, including all of the controls, but isn't.

/T
 
Fred Burton said:
Still not sure why many think digitals are slow to use. Set the ISO, set the shutter speed, set the aperture, focus the lens and press the shutter. That's all it takes to shoot a digital camera. Certainly seems the same to me has shooting my M3.
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That's how it should be. But, as with some high-end film-based SLRs that infuriated me over the years, the devil's in the details. AF systems that choose to freak out at an inopportune moment. Ponderous "feedback" data when all I'm trying to do is grab a quick shot. The amount of "override" work I have to do to make the camera do my bidding with minimal interference (while taking my chances with a given sensor's limited exposure latitude).

Look at it this way: it's sort of like having a Formula 1 driver move from paddle-shifting back to a floor-mounted shift lever. For some people can grok dSLRs more-or-less the same way (I know of damned few). What happens when, by necessity, you have to move to a new camera? In the film world, new cameras came and went, albeit a good deal more slowly than high-end digitals do now. But the general controls and concepts were similar enough that you got to grips with minimal hand-holding.

Each of us goes the way that works best for us: that's just how it is. I simply think the digital camera world has more than a little bit to sort out before someone can shout, "Lads, I've GOT it!"

Back to my film scanning.


- Barrett
 
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The main feature of the Nikon F that convinced photojournalists to "go Nikon" was the fact that the rangefider S3 and SP Nikons and the original Nikon F had all the controls in about the same place on a body that pretty much felt the same as the other. Motor drives were available for both. The original Leicaflex was expected to look and handle pretty much like an M. It hit the market with a different body shape, different control placement, and without a full field focusing screen. It bombed! Neither the 'flex nor the M was backed up by a motor drive option. It caused a lot of Leica M shooters to "make the Big Switch" to Nikon.

As for authentic B&W, yes there is a market for it, and the art market is very much interested in silver gelatin prints, just as it is in serigraphs, lithographs, and the intaglio print making processes. It'd be so much cheaper and faster to just use offset lithography, but nobody would pay squat for the prints.

It gets really irritating to some of us when we're told by some tech geek "I just bought the latest bestest newest digital camera and it does all the thinking for me! Then I can post process to make pictures that look just like you make ha ha." Have fun. Make all the pictures you want, make them look just like 1954 Tri-X souped in Promicrol or 1962 Royal-X Pan Recording souped in DK-50 or Adox KB-14 in Neofin Blue. Have lots of fun imitating what's been done before. Just don't put down those of us who've learned our craft, understand lighting and exposure, don't depend on "Oh, I can always fix it in Photoshop", know which lens, f-stop, and shutter speed will give us the image we want.

And never ever equate a digital print, whether ink or pigment, with a well made silver print or dye transfer print. If you're shooting for publication or web use digital is great, but not for making a print of value. The very fact that you can make an unlimited number exactly the same kills the value right there.

...and that doesn't even start to get into all the neat things that you can do with the swings and tilts, lateral shifts, rise and fall, on a commercial monorail view camera.

Calling educated, knowledgeable, and experienced photographers "boys and girls" is both condescending and insulting. Thank you very much for the insult. Take your pixels and shove it.

End of rant.
 
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As usual.. I agree with you Ruben. Shirley had an amazing, unique voice. But don't get me excited about looking for her recordings... I have enough trouble staying away from the camera and lens classifieds here!! :)
 
Lots of good stuff out there in the classifieds these days. The LX3 looks very cool and if the lens is good enough would solve my one problem with the GR-D I, the lack of a 60mm or 75mm twin sister. While I really like the 28, I want something longer but the Ricoh zooms are no where near the quality of the GR-D.

I also have to say the GR-D is a fun camera. Coming for several years working with a Bessa T and an L, I like the external finders, as long as they are good bright-lines please and thank you.

B2 (;->
 
Al Kaplan said:
Calling educated, knowledgeable, and experienced photographers "boys and girls" is both condescending and insulting. Thank you very much for the insult. Take your pixels and shove it.

End of rant.
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Generally, Al, I really enjoy your posts, but I gotta say this rant over a common colloquial expression used among one's peers like "boys and girls" is really LOOKING HARD for a reason to get upset. I've met Jamie in person and I'm quite sure he meant no disrespect to you or anyone else on RFF and used that expression only to convey a sense of his own childlike excitement and anticipation. Obviously, you don't share that, but there's no need to look for offense where none is intended. If you find threads touting digital technology so "irritating", don't read them? Simple solution :)

In my experience, those who respond harshly like this to such a minor provocation are usually people who have had a bad day, are feeling quite insecure or are actually rather childish. As I've nothing to go by except your posts on RFF, I won't draw any conclusions and just let you pick which reason is most likely the cause of the outburst. :)

I'm not throwing away my film cameras anytime soon, but I sure don't care if people get excited over new digital cameras.


Best,


Kevin
 
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Scopes trial redux

Scopes trial redux

[Calling educated, knowledgeable, and experienced photographers "boys and girls" is both condescending and insulting. Thank you very much for the insult. Take your pixels and shove it.
[/QUOTE]

Hey chill, man. You're off base. You and monkey should take a little time out. I'm confident, both from personal knowledge as well as any sober reading of what he in fact wrote (as opposed to what was attributed to him) that Jamie didn't show any disrespect to anyone, and no one else took it that way. That said, real men own up when they go too far. So what is it, man or monkey?
 
Not sure how the "art market" got into this, but who cares about the "art market." The art market is incestuous, inbred through too many generations and out of touch with the rest of the photography world. If I were shooting for the "art market," I would shoot with the most exotic equipment I could find, in unusual formats and using processes so dangerous that working with the chemicals required a HASMAT suit. Then I'd find a good agent to point all that stuff out to the "art community" and whip them into a frenzy over my uniqueness.

But for the rest of us, the LX-3 B&W might be just dandy. Does it really matter if snapshots of the kids don't look precisely as if they were shot on Super XX with an 8x10 Eastman 2D?
 
I would shoot with the most exotic equipment I could find, in unusual formats and using processes so dangerous that working with the chemicals required a HASMAT suit. Then I'd find a good agent to point all that stuff out to the "art community" and whip them into a frenzy over my uniqueness.
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That's funny. :D
 
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OK, I'm horribly ashamed of myself. Anybody care to explain to me what gamma is or why DIN and ASA don't exactly equate with one another, or why ISO doesn't always give the expected correct exposure? Maybe explain why some people prefer the look of a silver print? Or getting back to optics, which applies equally to digital capture, why does a bit of uncorrected spherical aberation give the illusion of greater depth of field? Or what effect putting the diaphragm in front of the rear group in a four element Zeiss Tessar lens design has compared to sticking it immediately behind the front element as Leitz chose to do with their four element Elmar? Yeah, that change is also as visible with digital as it is with film.
 
The charm ...is missing when using a digital camera. Where is the "feel" of history and craftmanship? I just need the metal manual cameras of the past. I ask myself, who used this 1950's camera before me? Then comes the film. There is a variety of B&W and color film types available to choose from. I can use Reala with a Sonnar pre-war lens, or use Tri-X with a 1960's Canon LTM lens,and the charm is there. There is warmth and there is a "soul" in film photography.

I don't know how else to explain how I feel about this issue. It is not a practical aspect or a "performance" aspect to me that really matters. Digital will continuously improve the performance side, but what about soul?

You have street music in Bourbon street, and you have a CD with music of the same musicians. It's not the same feeling that I get.
 
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