gabrielma said:
His observations on leaving the "debate" are dead-on. The different technologies should be left as that, not one taking over the other. His painting analogy was apt.
Arrrgh! Sorry, I *really* wanted to leave this alone, but I find I cannot. I'll try once more, God help me. Forgive me in advance, if you can.
His painting analogy is not apt - in fact, it is as incorrect as it could be, and worse, it attempt to redraw the lines of the debate to his own liking.
Photography, as Mr. Puts well knows, has gone through revolution after revolution. From the Pictorialists to f/64 to Polaroid-Squeezers Unlimited - photography has never stopped evolving - which is what art does. Painting as well.
The digital recording device that replaces film is no more soulless or contrived than a collection of photons affecting silver halide such that it is converted to metallic silver in a chemical process later on. All else is basically left be - there is a lens, a shutter, an aperture, a light-tight box. What then, is different besides the recording medium? And even this - film took the place of glass plates, which in their turn took the place of wet collodion - and how did each one stop being photography and become a new creature? The answer, obviously, is that it did not.
Mr. Puts offers us a sop - well, he opines, digital technology could well offer even more resolution than film - tut, tut. But he then implies that what is done to it in (we are left to presume) Photoshop afterwards renders it without a connection to a photograph any longer - it is, in fact, more like a painting; an interpretation, not a reliable recording.
Oh, puh-leeze. Darkroom alchemists and reclusive powder mixers have been concocting, burning in, dodging out, changing contrast and perspective, altering focus, solarizing, and doing God-Knows-What to both negatives and photographs since before either of us were born. And as mentioned, photography has gone through a number of changes in terms of what is popular - gritty realism, or soft focus smoothness - or somewhere in between.
By throwing us the 'digital could well be higher resolution' bone, he hopes to carve out a niche for film to defend itself - you see, digital is a new kind of art - film is real photography. He then makes statements he doesn't even attempt to defend - photography, you see, is chemical in nature. Since digital is not chemical, the fact that a digital camera has an aperture adjustment ring or a shutter speed adjustment knob is of no consequence - it isn't a proper camera after all. He airly waves away with prejudice what he cannot argue away with logic.
He clearly wants a niche, he needs a niche, where he can stand and defend - ah, you see, this far and no further. Film owns this niche, as as such, will live forever. But there is no niche. And no point trying to make one now - the game is well up.
A camera is a camera. Film and digital are merely methods of recording images. Each has strengths, each has weaknesses. Film has the disadvantage that it's parameters are unlikely to change at this point - it is what it is - and it will undergo no new revolutions in composition or capability. Digital sensors have not even begun to properly mature yet. We cannot predict what the public will want when the DSLR hits 10 mp at a popular price - or 25 mp - or 100 mp.
One thing is true - and he missed it entirely. The much-reviled CEO of Kodak recently introduced the wireless camera that can send photos over a wireless LAN type network (Canon has one too) and said essentially that they don't know if that's what the public wants or not - but now is the time to experiment with new forms, new ideas - new concepts about what the public wants in a camera, what they want a camera to do. Because film made a particular requirement in terms of size and shape of the camera bodies, digital cameras have aped that up to now. It may be that they no longer need to.
Why not a DSLR, for example, in which the sensor is moved at an angle to produce portrait photos without tilting the camera over? A 'rotating back' like some LF cameras have had for years, but internal. I'm just saying...
Anyway, I had to say it. I'm sorry. I could not disagree more with Erwin this time out.
Best Regards,
Bill Mattocks
