bmattock
Veteran
I always dislike this "digital vs analog" discussion. It always ends up in the classic nonsense of "us vs them".
Often but not always.
Some old things work very well, to the point that the new things which have replaced them are below that standard. This has happened on two bases: reduction of cost in manufacture so more profit to the people who make them, and increased access to the people who want them due to lower cost. Neither of these bases are bad things in themselves. The difficulty comes when people accept the new that are substandard and assume that is as good as it gets, "there's nothing you can do about it." That's the difficult thing. And of course the other difficult thing is when those expectations and the substandard qualities of the things become the norm and there is no impetus to improve them.
Some new things work very well, to the point where the old things that they have replaced are really and truly obsolete, irrelevant, to be avoided. Do you really want to go back to a day of high energy X-rays in every medical procedure for a film process to achieve a decent image of something ailing you instead of a far briefer exposure to dangerous radiation to get a better picture of the problem? I doubt it. That's just one example: There are many many many. And then there's the downside of new things, the huge substrate of information and knowledge it takes to understand, design, manufacture it, and the "hiding" of all the basic processes by which it works. That's the difficult part.
Old camera technology—film, developer, etc—has its cost. So does new camera technology—bits, bytes, chips, etc. Both have their plusses and minuses. Old*and new music recording technology: the same.
I've lived through this entire cycle so far. I don't cling to old stuff any more than I grasp for new stuff. I play with lots of stuff of both genera in the hope of understanding, of finding where it is advantageous and where it is not. And then I try to learn to get beyond it and see what I want to produce, what qualities am I looking for, to make my photographs and my art. I don't care, in the end, whether what I make comes from old or new, as long as I get to make what I want.
I just bought a nice old Leica R6.2, the last of the mechanical Leica SLR film cameras. I'm enjoying re-discovering and learning anew some of the things I like about film photography with it, and with my Polaroids, and with my other film cameras. I also bought recently a nice new Leica CL: I'm enjoying re-discovering what I love about digital capture, about flexible and repeatable image rendering, about the depth and range of how I can make prints with the new technology, and about how facile and capable this new technology is.
Neither is better than the other in every way. Both help me reach my photographic goals, together, as long as I remain aware, and work hard at it.
What more can one want?
G
Well said. And I do indeed use the best (I hope) of both worlds. I do tend to cling a bit more than I need to to the old - but I hope I can be forgiven as I am older now and I has the nostalgia.
I work with the new on a daily basis. I love technology.
However, as the guy who sees the sausage made will not eat sausage again, there are certain aspect of modern technology which I actively avoid. For example, I drive an old truck and will continue to do so. I know enough about the newer ones to want no part in them.