sf
Veteran
some of us are selling our traditional gear to buy into the new, efficient and actually quite capable (or VERY capable) digital workflow from camera to post processing to presentation and sale. We are buying DSLRs and digital backs for our medium format cameras and our large format studio cameras. We're buying Photoshop and paying for the lessons (necessary for the non-digital age crowd). Buying those surprising little printers that produce beautiful results in less time and for less cost. 1 Compact Flash card rather than 30 rolls of film - we can hold 10,000 quality images in the palm of our hand, and we get a built in polaroid (that nice little LCD screen). And we never buy film again. Never have to worry about the printer ruining our negatives, or losing them, or printing them improperly. We decide exactly what we want from the image, and have more tools at hand than any traditional shop could dream of (with the monstrous effects packages now available). We get what we want because we have 30 levels of undo in Photoshop, and we get to work with the lights on and NOT in a bathroom at midnight with chemicals stinging in our nostrils. We airbrush our own work and run our own galleries whose images may never exist on tangible media, and may only glow on screen in someone's home or office. We own and manage our galleries in HTML or the like, and our potential market is global - or only as limited as the marketing package for our website. As news photographers, we don't bother with mailing bags full of film back to the home office. We send by satellite uplink, or mail a handfull of CF cards. And those darned airports and customs offices with their x-rays always trying to kill our captures, well, never again will we be bothered by those. We can change ISO ratings on the fly. Changing from 100 to 400 to 3200 in three shots and only push a button three times. We love our cameras and our computers.
But, some of us are selling our digital experiments to return to good old-fashioned film and darkrooms and cameras. Giving up the instantaneous fulfillment and hours converting RAW files. We are returning to all the smells and redlights and showing prints in little galleries that only artists seem to know about. The delicacy of the process, loading film in a closet, preparing stacks of Elite film holders for our Graflex press cameras. Cutting thousands of feet of bulk film. Practicing all this in our bedroom with our eyes closed. Bursting from our bathroom turned darkroom after 6 stifling hours in the blazing red chemical haze with 20 perfect prints in hand and 50 losers stained black by light and developer in the bathtub. We enjoy buying film and development chemicals. We pick over the film selection like fine Chefs choosing ingredients for some fantastic culinary creation. Imagining the special characteristics of certain films, and how they interact with certain developers. The anticipation of photographic opportunity burning in the paper bag of film in the passenger seat of our car on the way home from the camera store. Opening film containers, we salivate similarly to our children as they open candy wrappers. We buy handbuilt cameras, and have personal preferences for the particular clack or snip or snap or click or silence of our shutters. We feel some indescribable visceral arousal at the sight of Leicas and collectable Canons, and the underdog Voigtlanders and various Russian friends. We fondle our cameras and lenses with likely disturbing degrees of bliss and lust in our eyes. Our friends and spouses don't understand us. They don't understand why we pose our camera with our coffee and share pictures of our babies with our fellow sociopath photophiles.
The used equipment cabinets at our local camera stores are home to old friends and we paw through the derelict piles hoping to discover forgotten treasures. They are not graveyards but pounds for homeless and once beloved tools of creation.
The digital age offers simplicity, efficiency, disconnection from film and processing costs. It offers freedom in many ways. Traditionalists savor the complexities and the old ways' familiarity and stability. The tangibility and romance of the old style warms our photographic passion in ways that computer chips and software cannot. But both the digital and the traditional crowd are artists. Both appreciate the power of the image equally.
I was enticed into buying that D70 a year ago and never hold it how one holds something priceless. And I never feel anything when I pass by the digital desk with all its beefy pro-digital cameras. 16 megapixels sounds nice, I guess. But when I walk by the Leica desk I am pulled in, at least slowed down, and I feel it. And I spend more time window shopping upstairs at the lonely large format counter than in all areas of the store combined. I like it that way. But I am only one guy and I have my opinion.
But, some of us are selling our digital experiments to return to good old-fashioned film and darkrooms and cameras. Giving up the instantaneous fulfillment and hours converting RAW files. We are returning to all the smells and redlights and showing prints in little galleries that only artists seem to know about. The delicacy of the process, loading film in a closet, preparing stacks of Elite film holders for our Graflex press cameras. Cutting thousands of feet of bulk film. Practicing all this in our bedroom with our eyes closed. Bursting from our bathroom turned darkroom after 6 stifling hours in the blazing red chemical haze with 20 perfect prints in hand and 50 losers stained black by light and developer in the bathtub. We enjoy buying film and development chemicals. We pick over the film selection like fine Chefs choosing ingredients for some fantastic culinary creation. Imagining the special characteristics of certain films, and how they interact with certain developers. The anticipation of photographic opportunity burning in the paper bag of film in the passenger seat of our car on the way home from the camera store. Opening film containers, we salivate similarly to our children as they open candy wrappers. We buy handbuilt cameras, and have personal preferences for the particular clack or snip or snap or click or silence of our shutters. We feel some indescribable visceral arousal at the sight of Leicas and collectable Canons, and the underdog Voigtlanders and various Russian friends. We fondle our cameras and lenses with likely disturbing degrees of bliss and lust in our eyes. Our friends and spouses don't understand us. They don't understand why we pose our camera with our coffee and share pictures of our babies with our fellow sociopath photophiles.
The used equipment cabinets at our local camera stores are home to old friends and we paw through the derelict piles hoping to discover forgotten treasures. They are not graveyards but pounds for homeless and once beloved tools of creation.
The digital age offers simplicity, efficiency, disconnection from film and processing costs. It offers freedom in many ways. Traditionalists savor the complexities and the old ways' familiarity and stability. The tangibility and romance of the old style warms our photographic passion in ways that computer chips and software cannot. But both the digital and the traditional crowd are artists. Both appreciate the power of the image equally.
I was enticed into buying that D70 a year ago and never hold it how one holds something priceless. And I never feel anything when I pass by the digital desk with all its beefy pro-digital cameras. 16 megapixels sounds nice, I guess. But when I walk by the Leica desk I am pulled in, at least slowed down, and I feel it. And I spend more time window shopping upstairs at the lonely large format counter than in all areas of the store combined. I like it that way. But I am only one guy and I have my opinion.
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