Film or digital

[Bertram2]

I I mean, there are a TON of horrible photos taken with great film cameras! We all know that. Just because it's taken with a film camera doesn't make it inherently superior to digital.

(

No , and I think we have nobody here in this forum who would be stupid enuff to
claim such kind of nonsense. At least I hope so !!! 😀 😀
bertram

 

[ch1]

I know digital sometimes may be taboo to some members but lets not forget the RD1 and others on the plate. The gallery holds a combination of all sorts of photos taken with different cameras. Having said that, please answer the following without cheating.

Is the attached image digital or film?

Since it is posted on a digital website - it is a digital image. Whether it was taken with a film camera or a digital camera is immaterial. The former would have had to be scanned digitally in order to be posted here!

 

[Andy K]

Yes, indeed. But for paper prints also, it can be hard, maybe impossible to tell.

Put a silver print and an inkjet print in a bowl of water. You'll see the difference pretty quickly.

 

[JohnL]

Put a silver print and an inkjet print in a bowl of water. You'll see the difference pretty quickly.

Granted! But that's not how I usually view my prints 😀

 

[Andy K]

Granted! But that's not how I usually view my prints 😀

Fair enough. Put a silver print and an inkjet print on a sunlit windowsill. Look at them both again in a couple of weeks. 😉

 

[GeneW]

I'm finding this discussion quite interesting! As a noob to RF photography, a relative newbie to photography (film SLR) overall and an avid user of PS the topic of manipulation is one that is of great interest to me. I see many, many fabulous photos in the gallery, so much great work! But... how much of it was manipulated post pressing the shutter release?

I'm being only slightly facetious when I say I hope it has all been manipulated, although I'm not sure 'manipulated' is the best word. Do we call a fine B&W darkroom print 'manipulated'? Or do we call it craftsmanship?

Back when I did lots of darkroom printing, I would select papers to increase or decrease contrast, I'd dodge and burn areas that needed to be brought up or suppressed, and I'd frequently give a slight burn on the corners and edges to draw the eye into the photograph. Sometimes I would sepia tone or selenium tone the prints. In my digital darkroom, I do the same. Is this 'manipulation'? If so, I'd say we need more of it! 😀

My premise then, and now, is that a negative (or a digital capture) is a starting point, not a finished product.

Gene

 

[Andy K]

In my digital darkroom..

Please use the correct terminology, you mean 'on your computer'. 😉

I'm brilliant at Gran Turismo on a Playstation, am I as skilled at driving as Michael Schumacher or Hans Blix?

 

[GeneW]

Please use the correct terminology, you mean 'on your computer'. 😉

Learn another tune for you banjo, please 😀

 

[Andy K]

Learn another tune for you banjo, please 😀

I will change my tune when digital is honest about what it is instead of hiding behind analogue terminology. If people choose to use digital that's fine, but don't try to pretend it is the same as traditional wet process analogue photography, it isn't.

 

[Socke]

Andy, most of the terminology used in Photoshop comes from prepress and darkroom work and it was made to assist people working in prepress.

It is just a tool, and if you have to turn out 100th or 1000th of prints of consistant quality it is a damn fine tool.
Try to emulate an offset press in your darkroom, it is easy with photoshop.

And believe it or not, most F1 drivers used a PS2 to train the new F1 circuit in Turkey this year.
All comercial and all miltary pilots spend hours in flight simulators to maintain their skills and they are trained for new aircraft in simulators first.
And it is a sad fact, that the suicide pilots from 9/11 trained their attack with Microsofts Filightsimulator.
Powerplant operators practise in simulators, naval officers do, gunners do ....

 

[Andy K]

Andy, most of the terminology used in Photoshop comes from prepress and darkroom work and it was made to assist people working in prepress.

It is just a tool, and if you have to turn out 100th or 1000th of prints of consistant quality it is a damn fine tool.
Try to emulate an offset press in your darkroom, it is easy with photoshop.

And believe it or not, most F1 drivers used a PS2 to train the new F1 circuit in Turkey this year.
All comercial and all miltary pilots spend hours in flight simulators to maintain their skills and they are trained for new aircraft in simulators first.
And it is a sad fact, that the suicide pilots from 9/11 trained their attack with Microsofts Filightsimulator.
Powerplant operators practise in simulators, naval officers do, gunners do ....

Those people are already real drivers, real pilots. real powerplant operators. What would they say if someone claimed to be really flying/driving etc. when they had never used anything but a computer program?

So I'll ask again, I've never driven a racing car but I'm brilliant at Gran Turismo, so am I as good a driver as Michael Schumacher or Hans Blix?

I will also repeat call a spade a spade. Adjusting levels and curves in Photoshop is not dodging and burning, it is not toning, it is not developing, it is not a 'darkroom' it's a computer. Call an inkjet print an inkjet print. Don't try to pretend its a silver/carbon/pt pd print by giving it a psuedo-analogue title like 'carbon pigment print' etc.

I think that is the problem most analogue users have with digital, the hijacking of analogue terminology by the IT industry to legitimise/disguise the digital process.

Ps, why would I want to emulate an offset press? I make photographs not posters.

 

[Dave H]

For me it’s all irrelevant, a photo is only a photo when it’s in my hand as a print, or hung on the wall at an exhibition or home. Even if its printed in a book it may not be in its original intended form, (to coin a phrase). I couldn’t give a rats a** where an image came from or how its been manipulated until I see it in print.

Robert Frank’s pictures from “The Americans” had a monumental impact when I saw them at the Tate Gallery last year compared to viewing them on screen over the web. His prints have in the past been slammed for their poor technical properties, yet I felt that they were photographs in a real sense.

It’s all about the PRINTS.

 

[Socke]

Hm, it is easier in german. The german word for a photographic print is "Abzug" which is more like copy in english.
Something coming from a printing press is called a "Druck" because you need pressure (Druck) to make it.

And then it gets complicated 🙂
A Laserprinter is based on a photographic process, the drum has to be exposed and there is not much pressure applied but you need to fix the toner on the paper. A Dot Impact Printer applies presure but there is no plate needed in the process, think of the needles as plates reduced to the size of one dot. And in the Inkjet Printers we have totaly eliminated the plates.

Then we come to the different means to get colour, black is a colour here, on paper.
One way is to totaly cover the paper and remove what's not needed to form the image, another is to apply just what is needed to form the image.
The next thing is the material you use to form the image.

You can reduce the image to grains of silver on a brighter, usualy white, surface or you can reduce it to dots of ink on a surface.
Then there is no difference if you used gravure printing, relief printing, shoot small drops of ink or whatever.

Dye or pigment based inks have been in use much longer than inkjet printers, the inkjet is just another way to get the ink on paper 🙂

Again in german there are different words for pigment and dye based inks. Tinte is pigment based ink and Farbe is dye based ink. If it's less opaque it is usualy called Lasur or Lasurfarbe.

Ok, I better stop here before I begin to talk about Pantone and HSK offset "inks" used in different offset presses and how to get consistant results when you have to redo something you once did with Patone in HSK 🙂

Silver based copies from negatives are only a very small portion of "printing" and, compared to other processes, very limited, but the only way to get a silver based "print" on fibre paper.

Thanks to photoshop and computer assisted printing I can afford Salgados books, I wouldn't know about him if he had only silver based prints made, I hesitate to call that publishing.

BTW, I just used AZO dyes, not in the form of slides but in the form of a DVD-R 🙂

 

[Bertram2]

My premise then, and now, is that a negative (or a digital capture) is a starting point, not a finished product.

Gene

Exactly. The word " manipulation" is used often so thoughtlessly that you have doubts if the person has any clue about she/he is talking about.

Maybe they were healed if somebody would teach them a proper darkroom work or if they would know at least what a burn-in-plan is ?

Isn't reality manipulated by camera and film from the beginning on ? In so many ways ?
I mean taking all colour out by B&W film IS a kind of manipulation too, isn't it. 🙄

these discussions too often suffer from using terms thoughtlessly, out of the complete context and from not beeing able to keep 2 thoughts properly separated.

If one will not end in arguments on has to set the definitions BEFORE the conversation begins, There is no hope a s long as everybody uses a term like HE understands it without saying that clearly.

As you said well, the result is made in the darkroom, by manipulations if one wants to call this kinda work this way. But what has this to do with people photoshopping bad photos to dead, calling that creativity ? 😕

Regards,
Bertram

 

[Bertram2]

I think that is the problem most analogue users have with digital, the hijacking of analogue terminology by the IT industry to legitimise/disguise the digital process.
.

I think the problem most analog users have with digital is that the choice of film could get seriously reduced, not impudently "hijacked terms". like Digital Darkroom.

Your statement sounds a bit like the devil in diguise, trying to seduce people to do IT, the unspeakable, the worst of all sins so to say.

If the efforts of delimitation get so fundamental it's at the limits to religion and it sounds already like that. We all know where fundamentalism leads to., TV tells us daily, that is simpy the worst way to deal with your own convictions isn't it ?

BTW the digital darkroom , as a learning tool, which is not a real darkroom of course, otherwise it would not be called digital (trivial), gave me a chance to learn more within 2 years than I had learned during the 20 years before.
It lead me back to photography, to film, not to chip imaging.

Maybe this excludes me forever from the holy grail, but should that really bother me ?

Bertram

 

[Trius]

I agree with this, like totally, dude. 😉

I prefer shooting analog not only because of this, but for a variety of other reasons, see below. However, it is the final image that counts, and individual preference for workflow is, afterall, individual. GeneW mostly shoots digital for colour, and with a Canon CMOS at that. But he knows how to handle the gear and workflow, and I really like his work. I still prefer film for colour, but that's just me.

My reasons for an analog workflow:

1. The equipment is more comfortable and easier to use, as djon has so cogently observed. The digicam with kitchen sink included makes a fairly simple yet potentially intense task more complex. Yes, I know you can calibrate your shooting and settings to get to a simplicity. But gee, an analog workflow is quickly achievable with nearly any simple film camera. Doesn't take me days or weeks of use, a forest of menus or hours of reading a stunningly boring manual.

2. Variety of film. Sadly, this is changing, but it is still easier for me to swap film type than to learn how to twist a sensor's output into something I saw in the first place.

3. Cost of ownership. This applies to the equipment, of course, as film processing costs can be high. But to take advantage of #2 above, I can own several bodies and lenses for the price of a digicam/DSLR setup that are subject to electronic failure, recalls of CCDs, and obsolescence.

4. Most important, FILM SLOWS ME DOWN. I approach photography as a contemplative, often Zen exercise. Film forces me into a discipline and perspective that helps me. YMMV.

Similar to what T_om posted, I recall a photographer, perhaps it was Weston, Steichen or Minor White, who responded to an inquiry by Pop Photo for technical information on one of his shots. His response was "The camera was faithfully used."

Earl

Mox Nix, like my father used to say.

The worst things about digital, other than the elephantine top models and the terrible viewfinders in the prosumers, and the mayfly-short product life of all of them, are the DOF issue the and lack of wide lenses.

DSLRs are way behind SLRs of the 60s, from a utilitarian point of view. The fast shooting and elaborate metering capabilities of modern SLRs/DSLRs is nothing but fluff for most photographers.

However, if I was still seriously professional, I'd certainly be using digital Canons or Nikons, or medium format digital.

The $1800 Nikon D200 sounds like a bigger winner than the $3000 Canon 5D, even.

Upcoming DSLR results from Sony/Konica/Minolta collaboration may change the APS game entirely, given Sony's chips, consumer confidence, and marketing smarts, and KM's image stabalization.

 

[Trius]

<snip>
My premise then, and now, is that a negative (or a digital capture) is a starting point, not a finished product.

Gene

As Ansel said, the negative is the score, the print is the performance. My goal in producing a negative (other than capturing the moment/scene with a good composition) is to produce a negative or chrome that is as close to the final print/visualization that I can achieve, given the limitations of the film. The same holds true for digital capture.

Why would I want to make my sbusequent work harder? When I was shooting full time, I got to the point where a significant number of my prints required very little manipulation. I'm not bragging, I'm just saying I worked really hard at it. I viewed dodging and burning as undesirable. Now I feel a bit differently, but old habits die hard!

Now, I'm sure that if (when) I go back to some of my better negatives, I will find new ways of interpreting them, whether it be different papers, developers, tonal scale enhancements, or other.

The bottom line, of course, is how the print communicates to me and to other viewers.

Earl

 

[vincentbenoit]

The look of the results I'd say ?

My point was, there are people who find that the look they get from digitally captured images suit their photographic vision. (The term "vision" being understood in a broad sense here, e.g. taking pictures of one's kids riding their bike 😉 ). In this case, why shouldn't these people use a digital camera?
My guess is - correct me if I'm wrong here - that you're not quite aware of the full potential of digital capture. I agree that the output of most point-and-shoot digicams is crap (oversaturated colours, smoothed-out detail, digital noise, sharpening haloes and other artifacts make for truly ugly and unnatural-looking images), but a high-end dSLR (such as a Nikon D2x or Canon 5D) used skillfully both at the image capture and post-processing stages can produce very good results indeed, without any of the above-mentioned artifacts. The rest is mostly a matter of taste and, again, vision.
FWIW, I happen to be partial to grainy B&W prints, so I use silver-based film for my own work -- but for someone who favours colour pictures and screen display, using a digital camera is not only legitimate, it's also sensible in most cases.
Anyway, I'm not willing to waste any more time on this topic, I have some film waiting to be developed 😉
Cheers
Vincent

 

[Andy K]

Your statement sounds a bit like the devil in diguise, trying to seduce people to do IT, the unspeakable, the worst of all sins so to say.

Exactly.

Analogue terminology is deliberately used by the digital marketing men to fool the public into thinking it is the same as their old film camera/photographs.

Some of the main selling points used for digital: It is easier, quicker, cheaper.

If that is true why do I see queues of people after every holiday, memory cards in hand, waiting to get prints from the kiosk, for the same price they used to pay to get their films processed?

Digital photo paper and ink cost more than analogue paper and chemicals. If I chose to I could process as many night shots as I want, with large black areas, for the same cost as making prints with little or no black in them. How much would that cost the digital printer in ink?

Then there is the constant 'need to upgrade' urged by manufacturers. My analogue cameras do today what they were designed to do when they were new. They weren't obsolete 18 months after purchase.

If you wish to buy a camera for the same cost of a car knowing that in 18 months to 2 years it will no longer be 'cutting edge' and will be worth a fraction of what you paid for it and that you may have to buy another camera for the same cost as a car, then that is your choice. Personally I figure I could buy several decades worth of photographic materials for the cost of a Dslr.

Me, I'll stick to analogue everything and spend my money on film, paper and chemicals, and spend my time making photographs.

 

[Ukko Heikkinen]

Fair enough. Put a silver print and an inkjet print on a sunlit windowsill. Look at them both again in a couple of weeks. 😉

Put a pure carbon inkjet print on a fine art rag paper and a silver print on a sunlit windowsill. Look at the both again in a couple of weeks. :bang:

Ukko Heikkinen