From "another network" a comment ...

[dmr]

This appeared on one of the Las Vegas boards, and I thought it might interest people here. On the attitude that the public has toward film and digital shooters ...

Picture gawkers: At first I was courteous of people tying up traffic with Digital cameras, but after 10 days my patience wore thin.

I gave leeway to people with film though since it appeared they at least gave some thought into the shot.

Like the cell phone users, many of the digital camera users took the picture taking thing to an extreme given it's ease/expense.

 

[oftheherd]

Well, I saw you post in the thread on last posts in a thread, and figured I would post here so you could see some interest.

Anyway, maybe this will be like a recursive thing, where my post here closes the thread. 🙂

 

[SolaresLarrave]

That's exactly my philosophy... as a film user. Digital shooters can always retake their pics, but film users cannot retake their photographs with the same ease.

As for my behavior... I simply don't care if anyone is using a digital camera in my path. But I'll break to let a film user take a photograph.

Now... I've been known for "killing" threads sometimes. Let's hope this is not the case! 🙂

 

[Socke]

So I'll kill this thread 🙂
Ferengi rule of photography #233:
A photo is a photo is a photo.

To be true, my Contax G2 in continous with autobracketing on is faster than my Canon D60. 4 fps versus 3fps, 36 frames versus 9. It takes longer for the Canon to clear its buffer than changing the film in the Contax 🙂

 

[Frank Granovski]

...Contax G2 in continous with autobracketing on is faster than my Canon D60. 4 fps versus 3fps, 36 frames versus 9. It takes longer for the Canon to clear its buffer than changing the film in the Contax....

I did not know this. Thanks! I'll have to pass this on tol the wife so she can crack me a smile. It's been a few days now. (So far she hasn't found out about my R3A purshase nor the lens I bought from FrankS.) 🙂

 

[Richard Black]

How does the general public distiquish film users from digital? If I am shooting one of my m/fs or a folder, now that gets comments, people will actually wait, but my 35mm slrs that's different. I try to plan my photos or at least time them so people won't have to pause, some, I know, won't. Maybe this will end this, but its too good it should continue.

 

[VinceC]

I have zero expectation that someone would pause for me to take a photo. The picture is my business, not theirs, and common courtesy doesn't even come into play.

In fact, my biggest problem, when taking travel photos is when I've timed a shot so that a passerby will walk into the frame to give the image a human dimension, and the person politely stops and waits for me to take my photograph! Arghh.

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

I hate it when I wait until the lights turn red so I can walk into the road to get the angle I need and some stupid car driver makes a fuss that I'm in his way.

The light is red. He can't go anywhere more than another three metres even *if* I moved. And I never ever move.

 

[Solinar]

I generally don't mind folks taking photos with either digital or film and yes digital users take more exposures than a typical film user. If they are tourists, I tend to give them plenty of leeway and hope that they enjoy their stay.

 

[RML]

I generally don't mind folks taking photos with either digital or film and yes digital users take more exposures than a typical film user. If they are tourists, I tend to give them plenty of leeway and hope that they enjoy their stay.

Indeed. Local economies often depend on tourists, who may just as well be on the trip of their life. No need to treat them like vermin. I want to be treated courteously too when I'm out on a trip after all.

 

[kmack]

In fact, my biggest problem, when taking travel photos is when I've timed a shot so that a passerby will walk into the frame to give the image a human dimension, and the person politely stops and waits for me to take my photograph! Arghh.

Yeah, I hate that. I have been putting my Zorki on a monopod with a cable release, then I can frame up the shot, wave them through and snap when they hit the prearranged spot.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

So I'll kill this thread 🙂
Ferengi rule of photography #233:
A photo is a photo is a photo.

LOL -- I see you're well-versed on the rantings at the "other" site.

I'm a bit confused, though: tied traffic where? On the street? On an online forum?

One prescription for the malaise of inane digital shooting is this: use a small-capacity memory card, and shoot in RAW mode. Then it's like having a 24 or 36 exposure roll loaded in your camera. That'll teach you to slow them trigger-happy fingers.

 

[dmr]

I have zero expectation that someone would pause for me to take a photo. The picture is my business, not theirs, and common courtesy doesn't even come into play.

In fact, my biggest problem, when taking travel photos is when I've timed a shot so that a passerby will walk into the frame to give the image a human dimension, and the person politely stops and waits for me to take my photograph! Arghh.

Many passers-by try to be courteous. (LOL, it's often a wife/gf holding her husband/bf back.) I will often times motion them on. I consider bystanders to be part of the scenery in most cases. I know that many try to have as few people in the scene as possible, or worse, photoshop them out 🙁 but I've always included them.

On many of the night scenes, the motion of the people in the longer exposure of the slower shutter speed adds to the effect, IMAO.

And ... I think I probably take as many images on film as I would if I shot digital. The film is cheap, the images are priceless. Of course I use/print a very small fraction of what I take.

 

[dcsang]

How does the general public distiquish film users from digital?

heh.... as I've said on televsion when being interviewed for a news story - it's due to the fact that digi shooters, 9/10, if they're amateurs/tourists hold the camera at arms length and are looking directly at an LCD rather than framing the photo as film users do.

Folks with their cell phone cameras do the same thing.

"pro" shooters with digi SLRs love to chimp - you'll note after the shot has been framed and taken, they'll immediately check the back of their cameras and chimp to their hearts content 😀

Film folks will sometimes shoot more than one frame if they're bracketing and then move onto their next "subject" 😀

Cheers
Dave

 

[Sonnar Brian]

> Digital shooters can always retake their pics, but film users cannot retake their photographs with the same ease.

You mean you have'nt trained your brain to Latch the image through the viewfinder when your ear hears the "click"?

The two Digital cameras that I use on a regular basis do not have "little TV Screens", and I have the Nikon D1 programmed not to display the captured image. It's too slow, and holds up taking the next shot.

 

[Bobbo]

[rant]

"pro" shooters with digi SLRs love to chimp - you'll note after the shot has been framed and taken, they'll immediately check the back of their cameras and chimp to their hearts content 😀

I'm a "pro" digi SLR shooter, and I don't "chimp". I tried it once after every shot one day (just to say I tried it), and I lost too many shots and found out it breaks my concentration (I know, digital shooters aren't supposed to concentrate, but after shooting film for so long, I still treat the camera like it is film and I take my time and get it right the first time). I know what I have on my card before I look at any preview screen. It's called lots of practice and knowing what you are doing. Only the feeble-minded "chimp"😀.

I could also say the same for people who use motor drives...all consecutive shooting on my 10D accomplishes is filling up the memory card with images that are just going to be deleted anyway, slowing the camera down to a crawl and making it so I can't shoot when I really need to. Besides, what's the point in shooting 1,000 images at a soccer game when you will only use five? That's almost 28 rolls of 36-exposure film (Robert Capa went to D-Day with two, btw). I think if I can't get the shots I need in the first 50 tries or so, then I probably shouldn't be shooting. Where would I have been 70 years ago with a Speed Graphic? Does anyone have any idea how long it would take to just shoot (not loading or processing) 1,000 frames with one? My head hurts thinking about just putting that many frames of 35mm film on 36-exposure rolls onto spools🙂.

I never met an editor who appreciates going through 1,000 frames to find 5. If I were the photo editer, I'd be kicking some *ss over that crap.

[/rant]

Crap, I'm ranting again, aren't I? Grr...Sorry about that.

Have a nice weekend everyone,
Bob Clark

 

[VinceC]

>>I'm a "pro" digi SLR shooter, and I don't "chimp"<<

Back in the early days of digital, a decade ago, I sometimes used one of my newspaper's NC2000s, a very early digital SLR that grafted a huge motor-drive type electronic unit onto a Nikon SLR. It had no screen for viewing images, just a (horrifically unreliable) microdrive card that you'd plug into a laptop after the day's shoot. My usual film cameras, aside from the rangefinders, were an unmetered F and F2, so I found the automated controls on the camera body (an N90??) rather unintuitive. I found I was able to set it on manual and shot using sunny-16/exposures-estimated-by-experience (is EEBE a new acronymn?). I actually took some of my favorite images with that strange camera. My 50mm Nikkor became a 75mm f/1.4 portrait lens, and the black and white tones of the camera were nice (our paper still had a B&W press, so the first thing we did in PhotoShop was convert to grayscale). The viewfinder was masked off with a thick black rectangle to show the reduced area of coverage on the 1MB sensor. It was quite a lot like shooting a really heavy rangefinder. And you could only carry one body because the darned things were so expensive, so you really had to slow down and decide which lens was best for the subject.

As far as having the ability of digital to take lots of pictures, three-quarters of a century ago, that was a big selling point of 35mm rangefinders. Cantankerous oldtimers insisted on using their plate cameras or rollfilm rigs, but the 35mm users could spool through roll after roll after roll, taking a decadent number of images.

 

[dmr]

As far as having the ability of digital to take lots of pictures, three-quarters of a century ago, that was a big selling point of 35mm rangefinders. Cantankerous oldtimers insisted on using their plate cameras or rollfilm rigs, but the 35mm users could spool through roll after roll after roll, taking a decadent number of images.

What about those motor drives that were so trendy in the 70's? 🙂 You remember seeing the runway or sports photographer out there with that "ka-wick ka-wick ka-wick ka-wick" sound. That had to be more images than the typical digital shooter today does.

And ... as I think about it, "chimping" is nothing new. (Up until last fall I really didn't know what "chimping" meant.)

As I think back to my childhood and my aunt's Polaroid, that old "1 2 3 4, count to 10 and open the door" one 🙂 when she would peel off that just-developed B&W print, everybody would gather 'round and go "oooooohhhh" and yes, "chimp" while she would carefully coat the fresh print with that icky smelly goo fixer. 🙂

 

[VinceC]

Have you noticed that filmmakers still dub in the sound of film motordrives into any scene showing a gaggle of news cameras, even though today's digital SLRs are much, much quieter, not having to actually drive any film?

My 7-year-old is only now beginning to accept the fact that when she stares at the back of a Nikon S3, there is no image to be seen. She doesn't like it, but she accepts it.

 

[vsolanoy]

In fact, my biggest problem, when taking travel photos is when I've timed a shot so that a passerby will walk into the frame to give the image a human dimension, and the person politely stops and waits for me to take my photograph! Arghh.

That's funny... I've done the same... waiting for someone to walk through and the next thing you know... I look out the corner of my eye and they're standing their smiling at me.

Sometimes I snap the photo, sometimes I don't, but I always say "thanks!" However, in my mind, I'm thinking, "They ruined the photo... so much for decisive moments."