Has digital.... ???

[clayne]

Photography is now a shadow of it's former self. Digital has cheapened almost every aspect of it (not monetarily either), and it now requires little commitment to get into.

Some may argue that this is a good thing - easier for the masses, yada yada. I will argue it just produces more crap with less critical editing of any of it. To the people arguing that said crap has always been around - it surely hasn't been in the same level of quantity. Use your brain, people weren't taking 200 frames of nonsense at a particular setting because they were limited (pay attention now: limitations) by the media they used to record it with: film.

Limitations are incredibly powerful concepts that impose hard requirements of innovation, thinking outside the box, and commitment to produce results above the board. Once limitations become less and options rise, the end result is almost always counter-intuitive to what people would think: quality actually diminishes. It may sound a bit "out there," but either you understand what I'm talking about or you don't.

Signal to noise ratio has absolutely gone down.

 

[Nikon Bob]

clayne

The only way photography is a shadow of it's former self is that many more people are doing it but far less with film.

There has always been a huge amount of sub par photos even in the film only days. Yes, there are many more sub par photos today but I am thinking as a ratio it is still about the same as before. You just notice it more today with the advent of the net which makes it easier to see them as opposed to when they were hidden away in somebodies shoe box.

Limitations imposed by the equipment we use are just that limitations. Self imposed limitations, like culling your shots, are another thing altogether. When I use an old Barnack Leica I wonder how the photographers were able to produce such good results when Barnacks were the cutting edge of their day. I also think that that those same photographers, if alive today, would be the first to use the latest gear and appreciate how it would have made their job much easier and opened more avenues to explore.

Bob

 

[clayne]

http://www.wired.com/culture/design/magazine/17-03/dp_intro

For a design-oriented take on what I'm talking about with regards to limitations. There is such a thing as too many options. It's the limitations that allow one to focus without distraction or reconsideration.

Also, the ratio is totally skewed these days. Your average individual wasn't wasting more than a roll on something interesting only to themselves. The limitation of "x number of shots" was the governor of that. We have never lived in a time before with the sheer amount of data and distractions that daily life offers us today. As a society, we believe that all of this offers us more "power," "connectedness," and agility in daily life.

The truth is another matter entirely.

 

[Andy Kibber]

Also, the ratio is totally skewed these days. Your average individual wasn't wasting more than a roll on something interesting only to themselves. The limitation of "x number of shots" was the governor of that.

I agree. Let's ration the number of pictures folks are allowed to take and post online. We can set up panels to establish what photographic subjects are interesting to those other than the photographer and adjust the ration accordingly.

 

[Nikon Bob]

clayne

Yea, there is such a thing as too many options being confusing and distracting. I use a D700 and love it dearly but would appreciate a dumbed down version for most of what I do. Trying to be everything to everyone is maybe not such a good plan in all cases. OTH where would we be if we never reconsidered our approach to anything. Ansel Adams has done the same print a number of different ways so you can make an argument for re considerations and that there is no single correct interpretation of a subject, even the same one from the same artist.

I could not agree more with the fact that we are inundated with the sheer volume of data today more so than ever before. You have exercise the self discipline to shift through the chaff to find the kernels. Difficult and time consuming but there it is. Contrary to popular belief that we are more connected today that ever before, I feel that we are more isolated, Case in point is what we are doing right now and not doing face to face over coffee.

Bob

 

[Nikon Bob]

I agree. Let's ration the number of pictures folks are allowed to take and post online. We can set up panels to establish what photographic subjects are interesting to those other than the photographer and adjust the ration accordingly.

Good point Andy, photography is for the enjoyment of the photographer and if they are happy with what they are doing who am I to rain on there parade. Everyone's taste and what they find interesting and worthwhile in a photograph is different. Just be a panel of one and ignore what you don't like. Doing photography for a living/professionally you had better know what other people, clients, like and cater to that, even if you don't like to do that, or you become a starving artist in a hurry.

Bob

 

[Nikon Bob]

You make a valid point, Bob. "Adapt and survive".

Though even in "art" photography, the cream will always rise to the top.

Yea, the cream as judged by others, not the original photographer, and you can be along time dead or poor or both before you get such recognition.

Bob

 

[tinyrobot]

There will be no film and digital cameras in the future. There will be only Canon hairdryers that can shoot RAW at 60fps as Cameron predicts!

 

[_larky]

If a photographer embraces digital, part of the learning process is to get to grips with having backups of your data. Anyone who uses a computer should do this anyway, if you don't you deserve every bad thing that happens on your system.

I'm writing a digital archiving system currently, I fully understand the challenges involved with preservation of digital media. I can 100% say that I have no idea if my pictures will still be accessible in a digital format in 40 years, but I do know that I'm doing everything I can to make sure they are. I also know for a fact that it's very easy to let my software make a pure backup onto my servers at work, which in turn backup to servers in other countries. How would I do that with my films? Sure I can make prints, but if I loose the negs, I've lost the original.

With film, you will only ever have 1 copy of the original. With digital, it's free and instant to make as many copies of the RAW, PNG, and JPEG files I keep of every photo. Storage is cheap, computers are cheap, software is cheap - the only problem with digital is people need to learn new skills and if we are honest with ourselves, that's normally the barrier.

 

[jsrockit]

Digital has not ruined anything for anyone. It's actually allowed the average person to make technically better photos. Ever seen the crap the average person got out of a disc camera or a 110 camera?

 

[sc_rufctr]

Film has no inbuilt redundancy... If you store it correctly then it should last indefinitely.

Meanwhile you can scan film and store it digitally on a "complex" digital storage solution.

Also... With properly stored film you have the option of re scanning the negative 10 years down the track.
It's the ultimate "backup".

There is no "free lunch" with film or digital...
Either way you'll have to pay to store your images long term regardless of what medium they're shot on.

------------------------------------------------

My film photos look better than anything I've shot on digital.
Often from a roll of 36 exposures I've got 36 usable images.

The same can't be said for many digital photos. Often it takes 70 or more shots to get 5 or 6 usable images. (what I would call usable)

The reason for this? I think it's the photographers attitude more than anything else.
Because many people think that digital photography is free they don't seem to care as much about actually taking that individual photo... That one that makes the grade.

 

[Neare]

Digital has not ruined anything for anyone. It's actually allowed the average person to make technically better photos. Ever seen the crap the average person got out of a disc camera or a 110 camera?

People with digital cameras are not taking any less crap photos than they were with film, they are simply taking more of them. And because they take more, eventually when they stumble on a good one, they choose not to delete it.

The average person deletes a lot of digital photos. Whether that be at the time of taking, or when uploading to facebook.

 

[Archiver]

When I look through the photo albums that my family (and related families) have collected over the years, I see reams and reams of posed family photos destroyed by flash. There were hardly any landscapes, streetscapes or candids, and certainly no natural light photography, not indoors. Candid photos? Forget it. Interesting storytelling stuff from when we were kids? No way.

Even though my Dad owned a Minolta SR-T and a Pentax ME, as time went by he bought a mid level Nikon P&S. That was the main family camera for years, from 1987 or earlier. When I tried taking anything outside of posed nonsense when we went on trips, Dad would grumble that I was wasting film! He'd spend money to take us on trips but not want to record what we were actually SEEING, yet stupid posed photographs of us standing next to statues was desirable. And this was a man with whole collection of camera magazines, but I digress.

My Mum and I played with film cameras for non-stupid-posed photographs, including flowers and animals, but the cost of buying and developing film meant that we didn't do too much of that.

When I got my first digital camera in late 2002, I took hundreds of photos of anything and everything. The freedom to shoot gave me the ability to explore and experiment. So much so that when I got into film in 2006, I was immediately shooting street, candids, landscapes, low light, cityscapes, still life, architecture and everything else that was absent from the family photography albums.

And since I knew that my shots were far more limited with film, I took everything that I had learned from digital shooting and used it to make my film images count.

Before digital photography my family was living in a tiny little world of flash-lit posed photos with the subjects smack in the centre. Digital photography changed all of that for the better. Now Dad has a Canon G11 and he takes photos of hotel rooms, food, landscapes, and all the things that he tended to avoid with film.

So, no, digital has not ruined photography for average people. Not for us.

 

[Neare]

^ Using flash doesn't destroy photos.

 

[_larky]

I had a revelation today. I think that's the word, something hit me in the head hard and pang, thoughts were clear. Think that describes it.

Anyway, I believe it's harder to learn photography, the art of photography, with digital technology. And I'm a digital enthusiast. There is simply too much help, even if you shoot 100% manual with a digi cam, processing is going on in the background which helps you when you get to playing with the RAW. You get instant access to your pictures, meaning the objective viewpoint is non-existant for many.

It's free to take thousands of shots in a 2 hour walk, so people do. Out of say 500 shots, one will be make-nice-able in Lightroom. Digital can treat you to edit your work down to 1/500th of what you shot, but that is the art of hiding the failures, not the art of photography.

I don't know how to describe what I'm thinking. I was at an exhibition today at the Tate, and the photographs were nothing more than snapshots of interesting locations. The photos actually were poor, considering how great the location could have been. The colours and effects made the pictures more interesting, but that was Lightroom and Photoshop at work. The camera's CPU was at work. The printer, the RIP, the technology was at work to make those great colours. The stuff the tech could not do, the composition, the decision when to fire, the place to stand etc, were all wrong on these pictures.

Anyway, that's an unfinished thought streaming from my head.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

That is an interesting point of view, coming from a digital enthusiast that just started shooting with a film leica.

I've been shooting Digital since it was in it's infancy. "In Those Days" shooting digital was more difficult than using film. As in reading the technical manuals and writing your own image processing software. I wrote thousands of lines of FORTRAN and assembly to produce my images.

I honestly believe that as much thought and care can go into the making of a digital image. Take the time and care that you use with the M6, or whatever film camera that you use- and treat the digital camera as if it were the same process. It all comes down to exposure, focus, and composition. M6, M9, or x100. They all let you take as much time and care as you wish to invest in making the image.

 

[_larky]

Oh I agree, and in some ways I think you and I had similar beginnings with digital. I wrote many pieces of conversion software. I worked in the feature film industry for a fair while, as an artist, but would get dragged into writing yet another piece of software to aid the path towards digital imaging.

I believe there is a very different way of thinking between digital and analogue, and only after much practice can you blur the two. At the start digital can hinder you as you try to learn photography. After n years, it can help you. But it should never be allowed to make any decisions for you, not unless you know how and why those decisions are made.

This is all my opinion, and this is a complex discussion, so it's likely to warp after more thought.

 

[Archiver]

^ Using flash doesn't destroy photos.

You should see the family photos. Whited-out people with infernally red eyes and black, overshadowed backgrounds litter the photo albums. 😡 Flash doesn't destroy photos, incompetent photography destroys photos. But flash is a powerful weapon in that destruction.