How has digital photography changed photography?

hawkeye

hawkeye

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Over dinner the other night, a non-photographer friend asked me "How has digital photography changed photography."

I was about to give some glib, global response but instead just left the question hanging.

Later when I thought about it , digital photography has changed my photography by eliminating the costs of film and paper so I can shot a lot more and really get into a particular subject. Then I can make prints or email images and disperse them to my photo stock agencies and other places, much more widely than with film.

It has also given me more room to experiment in a way I couldn't before. I've made some panoramas with photo stitch software and I've shot some pinhole shots.

It has also affected my style of shooting simply because of the difference in handling. For example I find that I prefer an LCD monitor to an optical viewfinder for framing.

How has digital photography changed photography for anyone else?

Hawkeye
 
I think the positives are obvious, it's so much cheaper and easier to get into that film photography. All a student needs is the camera, and that's the end of the expense.

The negatives are probably the cameras themselves, as they're almost invariably plastic and interchangeable, aesthetically and operationally. The initial cost of a full frame or medium format camera has gone through the roof too.

Also, cheap, small cameras have tiny sensors which can't do shallow depth of field, whereas a cheap small film camera is every bit as full frame as a big SLR.

Long exposure seems to be an issue too I think, a $20,000 Mamiya MF digital can do a maximum exposure of 30 seconds, no bulb. Quite limiting for a camera of that price I think.
 
I think it has shifted the importance away from the gear and toward the image. I don't hear about many people fondling digital cameras and talking about them as cult objects as I've always heard with film cameras. Folks tend to buy digital cameras to shoot photos.
 
I agree to an extent as few digital cameras are worth fondling, but there is still a lot of "mines got more megapixels", "but mine can do 5 frames a second", "mine can make a glowing candle look like broad daylight". Maybe less fondling, but maybe more talking about numbers, like the computer market really.
 
Reduced marginal cost per image and instant feedback make it easier to learn from one's mistakes. These features also act as a check against some of my favorite dumbo mistakes (lenscap still on anyone?). However, I think the real time to ask the question will be in 2100 when we see what kind of a record has been produced/maintained of this time. After all, we have plenty of Matthew Brady images of the American Civil War around. Bill Mattocks has written compellingly of the single-copy failure mode problem. But I am not convinced that today's terrabytes of data will be legible when they matter most. So. We will see. Let, ya know in 2050.

Ben Marks
 
hawkeye said:
Over dinner the other night, a non-photographer friend asked me "How has digital photography changed photography."

I was about to give some glib, global response but instead just left the question hanging.

Later when I thought about it , digital photography has changed my photography by eliminating the costs of film and paper so I can shot a lot more and really get into a particular subject. Then I can make prints or email images and disperse them to my photo stock agencies and other places, much more widely than with film.

It has also given me more room to experiment in a way I couldn't before. I've made some panoramas with photo stitch software and I've shot some pinhole shots.

It has also affected my style of shooting simply because of the difference in handling. For example I find that I prefer an LCD monitor to an optical viewfinder for framing.

How has digital photography changed photography for anyone else?

Hawkeye
Click to expand...

I think this is largely true except I do not like using an LCD to frame my shots. For me its had an added benefit. I now have the means at my disposal to post process. Having trained myself to use Photoshop etc I can now make major changes to my photos so much so that in fact I probably process in some way or other every photo I keep. I simply could not do this before as I did not have a spare room in my house to use as a photo lab and hence could never learn the skills needed to process and print.
 
With the billions of photos being produced yearly, even if most don't survive, there will still be billions left in 2100! Probably a billion photos of cats. 😉
 
Cameras are ubiquitous now.
DSLRs are more prevalent in the "hobbyist" / "amateur" arena than SLRs ever were.
There's a camera in every thing, at every price point, and for every body.

They are everywhere.

So it surprises me just how afraid of cameras the general public/society has become while at the same time cameras have become so prevalent and ubiquitous.

Cheers,
Dave
 
Pickett Wilson said:
With the billions of photos being produced yearly, even if most don't survive, there will still be billions left in 2100! Probably a billion photos of cats. 😉
Click to expand...


Yes and probably 10 billion of snotty nosed little ankle biters taking their first steps as doting love struck mums and dads look on in adoration. :^)
 
  1. Changed the product lifecycle. In the past, people would buy a film camera that would last years. As film improved, they bought new better film and stuck it in the older camera. Today, when a new digital sensor is unveiled, the purchase of a whole new camera is required.
  2. It's lowered entry barriers for people to market themselves as professionals. Back in the day, one had to understand a certain level of technical aspects of operating a camera before being able to produce decent results. Today, it's easy to just press a button and have the computer do everything for you. While many film SLRs in the 1990s were auto-everything, the inability to immediately see results prevented pure amateurs from having the confidence to market themselves as professionals
 
Digital has changed photography in much the same way as dry plates vs. wet plates . . . or film vs. plates . . . or 35mm vs large format . . . or colour vs mono.

In other words, at one and the same time, it has changed things completely, and not at all.

It's still photography.

Cheers,

R.
 
Chris

Absolutely agree about everyone and his mom are now photographers. Went to a show of high school student photos. It was pretty uneven but generally fairly low quality even for students. But damn it, next to every photo every student had a "business card" that read Tommy Jones, photographer.

I also think that this is a moment like 1839 when photography was first introduced and somebody said that "from this day forward, painting is dead."
What followed by perhaps the single most creative century the painted arts have ever seen.

Now that everyone can take pictures of their dog, their sailboat, their friends etc...serious photographers will be 'free' to explore the photographic image even more.

Hawkeye
 
chris00nj said:
  1. Changed the product lifecycle. In the past, people would buy a film camera that would last years. As film improved, they bought new better film and stuck it in the older camera. Today, when a new digital sensor is unveiled, the purchase of a whole new camera is required.
  2. It's lowered entry barriers for people to market themselves as professionals. Back in the day, one had to understand a certain level of technical aspects of operating a camera before being able to produce decent results. Today, it's easy to just press a button and have the computer do everything for you. While many film SLRs in the 1990s were auto-everything, the inability to immediately see results prevented pure amateurs from having the confidence to market themselves as professionals
Click to expand...

Not sure. Digital today is where 35mm was in the 20s and 30s, and the rate of evolution of cameras then was very rapid indeed. In 20009-2010 we are probably hitting a mature market, where technical improvements in top-end cameras will make little or no difference to the look of the image for the vast majority of people.

Cheers,

R.
 
Because I entered photography in the digital age nothing much has changed for me personally ... I've used both mediums since I started and that seems unlikely to change.

A lot of people on this forum have a history that predates digital imaging so their perspective would have to be different to mine and I suspect that their allegience to film imaging and the fact that they now have an option of changing the way they photograph the world plays a big part in how they view digital.

Something that required a fair amount of practised skill to achieve consistently good results has now become (or can become) a matter of placing your faith in the technollogy in your hands and pressing the shutter.
 
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