Story: Down on digital

[amateriat]

When Dylan "plugged in" on that fateful day in the 60s, it was, supposedly, the shot heard 'round the world.

Today, you can still buy a nice acoustic guitar most any place you look.

When Herbert von Karajan uttered, in praise of digital recording in general, and the Compact Disc in particular, "All else is gaslight", analog recording technology was essentially considered toast.

Today, while vinyl is decidedly a minority music platform, it's in better shape now than it was a decade of so ago.

This isn't a "digital sucks/analog rocks!" diatribe, but merely a reminder that technological shifts aren't always as decisive as we'd like to believe. But, sometimes, change is good. For example: would anybody here wish to go back to their v90/56k analog modem?

Nope, didn't think so.

Would you want to go back to having to hunt far and wide for a public phone that hadn't been vandalized out of commission, or been used by someone whose general hygiene was challenged enough for you to get a nice rash by simply placing the handset to your ear? (it happened to me, once, about a decade ago.)

No, you wouldn't like that too much, either.

So, I'm no Luddite, generally speaking. But, by Gum, I much prefer working with film, despite my experience with many sorts of digital cameras. It's not a dislike of digital imaging for me (otherwise, I wouldn't bother with scanning and digitally badgering with all the film I shoot), but the cameras themselves that drive me up a wall. This is not an insurmountable problem, IMO, but it seems to be a huge problem for the people making the damned things. Until someone on that side gets it together on that end, I'll keep making my trips to Adorama and/or B & H, and bricks of my favorite emulsions, black-and-white and color.

As redpony put it, choice, indeed, is good.


- Barrett

 

[mrisney]

I have no bias towards the camera technology. I don't wet print
so ultimately all my images end up as digital files.
The camera is just a box, to gather light - not fascinated by it.

Sometimes it is easier to use a digital camera, and sometimes it is
easier to use a film camera and then scan the images captured.

It is all about the lenses.
Whichever camera, film, digital body, adapter, or combination of -
can yield the sharpest, fullest tone image I am trying to obtain is the most appropriate
- I sometimes already have the image in my mind, I just need a tool to get it, don't care which one.

Why fret over which one reigns superior, there is room for analog and digital

 

[semilog]

"And then digital came along and I thought, Oh God, here we go. But then I realized it just not matter at this point in my career."

Chuck Close during an interview, the place I made the photograph of him, in black and white...

Thanks so much for sharing that: a lovely quote and a penetrating portrait.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Many times, even if the process matters, it becomes irrelevant. Tried to buy the stuff to do Dye Transfer prints from your negatives in the last decade? If Dye Transfer prints were your artistic thing, the soul left the body years ago. Even those who hoarded massive amounts of the materials are now running out. Film will ultimately go the same way.

 

[Dave Wilkinson]

Even those who hoarded massive amounts of the materials are now running out. Film will ultimately go the same way.

Of course it will!, and if my old legs will still get me through the door, with a camera bag around my neck - I'll be full of joy!....even if it is a digicam😀
Dave. (time you went to bed Picket!)

 

[Haigh]

I use whatever seems fun at the time, digital or film.

 

[Cpitch]

Of course it will!, and if my old legs will still get me through the door, with a camera bag around my neck - I'll be full of joy!....even if it is a digicam😀
Dave. (time you went to bed Picket!)

Dave our fellow countryman in my singature never got bogged down
with what and how he just done it
Chris

 

[KM-25]

Many times, even if the process matters, it becomes irrelevant. Tried to buy the stuff to do Dye Transfer prints from your negatives in the last decade? If Dye Transfer prints were your artistic thing, the soul left the body years ago. Even those who hoarded massive amounts of the materials are now running out. Film will ultimately go the same way.

Black and white will be around, it is fairly easy to make, I save my 120 backing paper just in case. But it also keeps rather well in deep freeze, at least ISO 400 and slower. I am 42 years old, I am fairly confident that I will be shooting film at the ripe old age of 80, health providing.

And you have to be pragmatic too, try not to hold onto archaic films like, well, Kodachome, when there are staple films like E100 or Tri-X that are far more likely to stick around longer. You have to see things coming like the loss of Kodachrome and plan accordingly. That is why I stocked up on 1,000 rolls of Kodachrome to shoot it all in one glorious year, the last one....shoot now, ask questions later.

That is what photographers do anyway, when they don't have a cold from a magazine assignment that saw them wandering around in a blizzard at 11,000 feet in the middle of the night...🙄

 

[semilog]

I'd echo what KM25 says.

Dye transfer is a very complicated and demanding process.

Black and white film is really quite easy to manufacture and for this reason even a niche market should be adequate to support its manufacture. It may become harder to get, but so are many artists' materials that continue to be widely used. The chemistry is not complex. I will be able to make my own vitamin C developer and stop and fixer from scratch for as long as I live in a country with *any* functioning industrial infrastructure. We should not forget the images made by photographers who coated their own plates in the field - in some cases, the battlefield.