Is digital boring to you?

[jaisin]

I feel like digital images are boring. I've grown up on digital, but I made the switch to film last year. I've really grown accustomed to the film look, and now it seems like digital images don't really please me anymore. I'm not sure why they aren't as pleasing, but I think they look too perfect? I don't really know how to describe it, so maybe someone else that understands what I mean can elaborate on it.

I love the convenience of digital, and I think about switching back sometimes. Maybe I've fallen in love with grain?

Does the snapshot of my dog have a film look to it? or maybe its the Leica look? or both?

 

[Tuolumne]

It actually does. But I am easily fooled by suggestion.

/T

 

[Doug]

Frankly, it doesn't matter to me, and I cannot see distinctive consistent differences between my film & digital photos. Issue is probably confused by the fact my film is scanned and therefore digital as well!

 

[Ororaro]

I like film because of the whole process. Kinda like giving birth after a gestation period (from shooting to developing to drying to scanning or printing). Film images are worth much more then digital images.

Digi sux

 

[sebastel]

>Is digital boring to you?

no.

 

[JeffGreene]

I like both, although digital is quite new to me. I still get a thrill out of the delayed gratification of waiting to see how my pictures turn out as I develop them. I enjoy the development process for my medium format and 35mm efforts as well as the scanning. As an amateur, I have that luxury.

Digital is still a work in progress for me. My family has three digital cameras, a Canon 20D used by my 19 yr old youngest son, a panasonic LX2 which is my wife's, and my RD1 which I've had since 2005 and experienced no problems with it. That may be because I don't use it continually.

My oldest son, who is a photojournalist recently gave me some software called photokit. It works directly with Photoshop and contains methods named after those used in the wet darkroom. I really like it, and it is making my transition to the digital darkroom more comprehensible.

 

[maddoc]

For me digital is wasted time (except for quick snapshots with my cell phone) and I regret having used a DSLR for nearly 3 years... :bang:

 

[Sam N]

Why switch to one or another? Just use both. Just be careful about applying too much vignetting 😛

 

[Keith]

I am biased toward film as I enjoy the process a lot from bulk loading canisters through to developing the film ... as Ned says a little like a gestation period and finally the birth of the image. It's a very satisfying process!

But no ... I don't find digital boring and since buying an M8 I quite enjoy photographing digitally! I don't get a huge thrill out of the time I have to spend at the computer processing DNG's and when there are a couple of hundred of them to go through it can be downright tedious but the end result is still very rewarding.

A good image is a good image ... just because it doesn't have grain doesn't mean it is anything less!

 

[jackal2513]

I totally agree

digital needs a HELL of a lot of work in post to get good results that arent boring and lifeless

it mimics what the eye sees too accurately and therefore is very tedious. A digital file is linear and flat and has no grade whereas film has an inherent gamma curve and an inbuilt beatiful grade depending on the stock. Historically, a large proportion of photography and certainly the photography that appeals to me has little to do with reality... its about an impression. Take black and white for example.... there is no colour information, it has nothing to do with what the eye sees. Then move onto stock like Velvia, portra, RSX etc.. and then onto cross processing, pushing, toning etc etc.. The imprefection of photography IS photography.

digital pics need way more processing than anything ever did in the darkroom

 

[Arvay]

For me it's not boring it's less interesting.
Moreover digital milks my budget cow very seriously. Each half a year there are new products on the market aimed to leave me screwing my mind whether the sensor is coming up to what I want to see. Each year I should sell the cam for 1/3 of its price to get a better one (I mean the sensor only, not GPS or WiFi, I still have no idea of vitality of these functions). And I have to spend my own budget as I am not earnin by the cam for the next cam. What for?
I am a photogeardownshifter (PGD) and would like my hobby to bring me more than it takes from me.
And finally I am not in a hurry to print photos the same day I did them. Life is so short that I have to spin out its enjoying🙂

 

[jbf]

I like film because of the whole process. Kinda like giving birth after a gestation period (from shooting to developing to drying to scanning or printing). Film images are worth much more then digital images.

Digi sux

I whole heartedly agree, Ned. 😀 After shooting so much film and really getting into the process it is a worlds difference from digital.

Personally I value the period of 'mental rest' that i am able to get with film. It allows me to detach myself from the moment or image.

That and i scoff at the idea of having to continuously buy new hard drives to keep backing up everything i own. I already have a ton of space and data taken up from having to do that with other work. No thanks.

 

[gavinlg]

I find digital boring for some reason. If i could shoot just film I would, bar a certain few situations.

 

[bmattock]

There is a man in North Carolina who is a master craftsman and a woodworker. He custom-builds furniture in the manner of top-quality furniture of long ago. He uses solid hardwoods, he dovetails every joint, his workmanship is without peer.

The furniture he turns out is incredibly lovely, as if one has gone into the past and retrieved the very best of furniture made 100 or more years ago and brought it forward to our modern day.

Then, when the last coat of varnish is applied and rubbed in, he takes a chain and beats the hell out of his furniture. This, he explained to me, 'distresses' it. Makes it look old. Weathers it.

He does not to this to deceive. His furniture is advertised as 'distressed' and 'reproduction' and people buy it like crazy. He makes a lot more money now than he did before he began 'distressing' his work with a chain.

He told me that people don't like furniture that looks old but is 'too perfect'.

I think people are idiots.

Digital is not 'too perfect'. There is nothing wrong with film, either.

I see software designed to make your digital shots look like they were taken with a film camera. The equivalent of beating the hell out of your pristine furniture with a chain, IMHO.

No, digital is not boring to me. Neither is film. Making film a religion is boring to me, as well as tedious.

 

[rxmd]

Does the snapshot of my dog have a film look to it? or maybe its the Leica look? or both?

It's got a dog look mainly. It's a digital mini-image, downscaled to 600x400.

At that size I don't think any film-digital distinction would hold to a double blind test. You can any look you like from any source you like, film, digital or otherwise. At 0.24 megapixels there is no digital or film look, let alone a Leica look. There's just processing, which includes scanning from film.

Philipp

 

[Matthew Allen]

No, digital is not boring to me. Neither is film. Making film a religion is boring to me, as well as tedious.

Same here. But then a week has passed so I suppose we were due another one of these threads.😉

Matthew

EDIT: Hmmm, on reflection that sounded mean, which of course I don't want to be. Whatever - welcome to the forum jaisin!

 

[rogertai]

I got my first Digital camera is Canon 300D / Rebel. Now, I just came back to film and range-finder cameras.
I got Konica Auto S1.6 last year. Than I went to Bessa-R around 3 months ago. Now, my M6 class 0.85 is on the way be here.

 

[Rick Waldroup]

I shot, processed, and printed from film, in my own darkroom, for over 30 years. I was one of those guys that went kicking and screaming into the digital age. Once I got there, I thought, what the hell was I making such a fuss about? I switched from rangefinders and Nikon film cameras to Nikon DSLR's,

Digital is not boring. It is simply another way to capture an image. Personally, I came very close to going back to film, just a few months ago. Several years ago, after making the switch to digital, I sold all my rangefinders to help finance the move. But the bug bit me a few months ago and I came close to purchasing a Contax G system. Then sanity prevailed and I bought a Lumix L1 instead.

I will never go back to film. I am happy with my digital images.

And you know what is funny? When I finally went digital and closed up my darkroom, I thought I would really miss it. Once I saw what I could do with my images on a computer, that feeling lasted about 5 minutes. I have not missed film much at all.

 

[Pherdinand]

the snapshot of your dog is a snapshot of our dog, nothing more, nothing less.
It's your beloved, so you are supposed to love it. I'm not. 🙂

I don't feel that digital images are boring. What's boring is the explosion of the number of "photographers" and the explosion of number of images that are produced with the easy-going digital. Many great images lost in a swarm of mediocre ones.
Most people just don't have any self control. Sometimes that includes me too.

 

[dreilly]

Just two weeks ago I printed out 20 large sized images for a gallery exhibit at Union College. The images were all captured on a photography-focused study abroad program in Vietnam last fall. One of the 20 students on the program shot film, and when I printed out his image, I said "Ahhh." There was some character to it provided by the emulsion: nice grain. It has a gritty realism to it, at least, that's the way the grain made me feel. Compared to the technically near-perfect digital images, it really looked fresh and yes, interesting.

That said, the other images were amazing and I would never say "digital is boring". That would be like saying photography is boring. It's not. I've seen digital images that have stopped me in my tracks, moved me to tears, or at least, motivated me to shoot with my favorite DSLR, the Oly E-1.

I shoot both. Digital has it's charms. I think I shoot better on film, when I'm forced to slow down a bit, not riddle my target with shots hoping for the good kill-shot. The process, as someone mentioned above, is nice, and very different. Also, I just don't think that digital cameras have achieved the kind of grace and deceptive simplicity of film cameras. Not yet. They will. I'm not a naysayer, just watching as the technology evolves nicely.

I said above that film cameras are deceptively simple. Well, my Canon P is. An EOS-1v is not. At some point it struck me that all that fancy and complex "multi-pattern" or "matrix" metering was just trying to balance the same old two parameters, shutter speed and aperture. I love how the decisions with film cameras are spread out. Emulsion choice is first. What speed, what brand. How will you develop it later on? That might change what you load up and how you shoot it. (For example, if you develop BW in diafine, you need to know before hand in some cases to shoot at the proper ISO). Once that decision is made, you're committed at least for a while. Then you move on to other considerations.

Last week, shooting on "assignment" at an organic farm, I was using both the P and E-1 when the P was out of film. The P with its 1:1 finder kind of disappeared when it was up to my eye, became a transparent tool. That was neat.

Anyway, ramblings aside, I guess what's more interesting about film for me is the choice of emulsion. DSLRs have tweakable looks, but not nearly to the extent (in camera) of film choices. Post processing is quite powerful (ever use Alien Skin's film emulator...my Gods!) but again, it's a different thing. You can make each image look different....and risk consistency. When you choose a film you're making a commitment to a certain look.

Those are some thoughts on the topic.