bonatto
looking out
A while back someone posted a link to Patrick Brown's long term project, "Trading to Extinction". It's a decade long project, shot on film. He does carry a few different kits.
Now, in this interview he's very clear as to his choice:
"If I could show you some of the areas I had been to where I am so wet from humidity or thunderstorms, I don't know one electronic camera that would've survived five minutes. It would have to be in an underwater housing. There were times when I would take my FM2s apart and dry them over fires or in sunlight. I'd rewind the film and open the door up just to dry it out. I think some of the environments in which those cameras have survived would make the engineers at Nikon very, very happy. Or very stressed [laughs]."
It's a conscientious choice, and as a result, he has a hard, physical archive of his body of work.
I also read that Sebastiao Salgado’s “Genesis” was shot in part on digital, but then “converted” to black and white film, and subsequently printed. An interesting and unorthodox workflow, but one available to those with more dedicated funding. I don’t know what the specific reasoning behind this methodology, but I presume it is driven by aesthetic and archival intentions.
We seem to be reaching the top of the quality curve in the digital world, with file size and definition distances being shortened with each new product cycle. It is now possible to have comparable dynamic range of the Canikon flagships in consumer friendly packages. Shooting nocturnal available light, hand-held, is a very accessible reality. Happy pixel peeping for the masses, it’s here, and you don’t have to carry a 2kg kit to show for it.
However, and this forum is a testament, we still stick to film, dust and all. It can be a subconscious thing, knowing you are limited to the “x” amount of frames you may have to get it right. The fact that you can’t really worry about what you’re getting, because you’re getting a negative, whether you like it or not, and by the time you see it, you likely wont be anywhere near where you shot it (fully outfitted studio/blackroom excluded). You have a negative, and it’s tangible, it exists, and it’s not made up of intangible electronic data.
That’s if you loaded the film correctly…..but, on the same token, you can also forget to charge your battery before going out and be stuck between the same rock and the proverbial hard place.
Quality wise, I think we can comfortably say that the output of a high end 35mm digital frame can out-resolve some of the better 35mm lens/film combinations available on the market. The aesthetics, however, still remain distinct – clearly different mediums, each with its distinct proposals.
At the end of the day, it is you, photographer, that picks the camera you’re taking out. You’re deciding what you’re archiving and how, and for what purpose. You define the outcome of your own work. It’s part of the solitude of photography, your eye, your viewfinder, your timing, your framing. You pick the film, and why “that” film.
Then, maybe, you accumulate some un-developed rolls. Some discarded negatives. Little bits of life that anyone can press against a window and glimpse later on. We’re still working through Gary Winogrand’s and Vivian Maier's time-capsules.
What’s ultimately fascinating about film are the inherent limitations of the medium. You can’t quickly switch speeds halfway across a roll if you wish. You are limited to very real and physical constraints. At the end of the day, if all goes well, you will have a nice negative that you can look at against a light table. You retain the physicality of photography, and I think that in itself is something special.
Cheers,
Now, in this interview he's very clear as to his choice:
"If I could show you some of the areas I had been to where I am so wet from humidity or thunderstorms, I don't know one electronic camera that would've survived five minutes. It would have to be in an underwater housing. There were times when I would take my FM2s apart and dry them over fires or in sunlight. I'd rewind the film and open the door up just to dry it out. I think some of the environments in which those cameras have survived would make the engineers at Nikon very, very happy. Or very stressed [laughs]."
It's a conscientious choice, and as a result, he has a hard, physical archive of his body of work.
I also read that Sebastiao Salgado’s “Genesis” was shot in part on digital, but then “converted” to black and white film, and subsequently printed. An interesting and unorthodox workflow, but one available to those with more dedicated funding. I don’t know what the specific reasoning behind this methodology, but I presume it is driven by aesthetic and archival intentions.
We seem to be reaching the top of the quality curve in the digital world, with file size and definition distances being shortened with each new product cycle. It is now possible to have comparable dynamic range of the Canikon flagships in consumer friendly packages. Shooting nocturnal available light, hand-held, is a very accessible reality. Happy pixel peeping for the masses, it’s here, and you don’t have to carry a 2kg kit to show for it.
However, and this forum is a testament, we still stick to film, dust and all. It can be a subconscious thing, knowing you are limited to the “x” amount of frames you may have to get it right. The fact that you can’t really worry about what you’re getting, because you’re getting a negative, whether you like it or not, and by the time you see it, you likely wont be anywhere near where you shot it (fully outfitted studio/blackroom excluded). You have a negative, and it’s tangible, it exists, and it’s not made up of intangible electronic data.
That’s if you loaded the film correctly…..but, on the same token, you can also forget to charge your battery before going out and be stuck between the same rock and the proverbial hard place.
Quality wise, I think we can comfortably say that the output of a high end 35mm digital frame can out-resolve some of the better 35mm lens/film combinations available on the market. The aesthetics, however, still remain distinct – clearly different mediums, each with its distinct proposals.
At the end of the day, it is you, photographer, that picks the camera you’re taking out. You’re deciding what you’re archiving and how, and for what purpose. You define the outcome of your own work. It’s part of the solitude of photography, your eye, your viewfinder, your timing, your framing. You pick the film, and why “that” film.
Then, maybe, you accumulate some un-developed rolls. Some discarded negatives. Little bits of life that anyone can press against a window and glimpse later on. We’re still working through Gary Winogrand’s and Vivian Maier's time-capsules.
What’s ultimately fascinating about film are the inherent limitations of the medium. You can’t quickly switch speeds halfway across a roll if you wish. You are limited to very real and physical constraints. At the end of the day, if all goes well, you will have a nice negative that you can look at against a light table. You retain the physicality of photography, and I think that in itself is something special.
Cheers,
KenR
Well-known
The other aspect of archiving is that most people today don't print out their photos. I was looking for a photo of my daughter taken when she was a baby and found it in less than 5 minutes. Will a digital file/viewer be available in 25 or 30 years?
kbg32
neo-romanticist
Absolutely. It will not only be available, but better than anything that exists today.
MarylandBill
Established
Yeah, digital viewers will be available. The bigger threat, it seems to me, is that electronic files can get lost. I am sure ones posted to Facebook or instagram (and the like) will likely be around, but the personal photos that you might never want to post could be lost with hard drive crashes, expired cloud services, etc.
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Bill
Exdsc
Well-known
If a photo is not successful today, what are the odds that it would be successful in 25 years time?
One in a billion?
One in a billion?
More film romance on RFF? 
lcpr
Well-known
Top end DSLRs are very well sealed provided you use the correct lenses and filters. Archival for both mediums can be as risky or as safe as you want. It all boils down to which workflow and result you prefer really.
Bob Michaels
nobody special
You mean like a drive to read those 5 1/4" floppy disks that hold that data I archived 25-30 years ago?
MarylandBill
Established
I am trying to figure out which archival mechanism for digital has the same life expectancy as a good black and white film? As a general rule, in computers, if you want to read something from media that was created 20 years ago, you need a reader that was built 20 years ago. And that is assuming the media is still good. There are work arounds of course, but they require a lot more work.
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Bill
Joosep
Well-known
The question is, will they be able to open your files. For some reason, I doubt that...
MarylandBill
Established
If you are referring to out of date file formats, I think that will be less of an issue. At the very least, I suspect that jpeg images will be readable into the indefinite future, as will TIFFs and any Raw format that is supported by open source software.
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Bill
Aristophanes
Well-known
JPEG is older than that already.
There is an inverse problem between digital and analogue. In digital it is very easy to store by way of copying. In fact we are swamped with copied digital files. We are awash in redundancy.
With analogue there is a much more substantive resource cost to keep viable that single original. That cost was so high most did not wind up in albums or sleeves, but unprotected in shoeboxes.
In both cases a lot of images are rarely seen after their first glimpse be it from chimping on the rear LCD of the digicam, or from the one thumb through when the results came in from the lab.
Economically digital replaced film by and large precisely because the cost to produce AND store images was magnitudes lower than for film. So low that phones are now a dominant camera (mimicking the declining costs of all communications). Given the costs, and barring another asteroid strike or super volcano, the capacity of digital images to last are infinite as our near field timeframe.
Monochrom
Well-known
Hi, well said...
On my behalf i´d love to use more films but the reality is that scanners aren´t getting better but sensors are...the more i used the m9 the more i left film cameras at home, today with my the dp2 merrill i can say i forgot where i left my film cartridges....
On my behalf i´d love to use more films but the reality is that scanners aren´t getting better but sensors are...the more i used the m9 the more i left film cameras at home, today with my the dp2 merrill i can say i forgot where i left my film cartridges....
thegman
Veteran
Certainly. I love film, I only shoot film, I don't own a digital camera. However, I envy the storage/backup options of digital vs. film. With digital you can make as many identical backups as you like, with film, you basically cannot make *any* identical backups. There are many online backup solutions such as Amazon, Dropbox, Google etc. I don't think any of them are going to disappear overnight, and if they did, the chances of them all disappearing at the same time, along with your local hard disk backups, are astronomically small.
Again, I only shoot film, no interest in digital at all right now, but I wish I could backup that easily.
thegman
Veteran
Certainly, film is unlikely to see too much technological advancement from now on, I expect there will be some, but not much. Digital sensors are of course where the money is, and there is profit is making the one that came before look useless.
However, film has the major advantage in that you just cut it the size you want. In that regard it's an amazing technology that you can just cut out a 4x5 sheet or a 120 roll and it just works. With digital, unless there is money in making affordable 6x6 digital camera or even 4x5 digital cameras, they'll never happen.
Time will tell. It is the photographers responsibility to keep moving data from one drive to another more relevent drive over time in the meantime.
All technology gets cheaper eventually.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
You never used 8" then? Or punched tape? Or drums? Or stacked hard disks? ALL of those were still in use when I first worked professionally in computers in the late 1970s. And obviously (heavy irony alert) ALL useful files were ALWAYS transferred to new media...
A century after my death, someone may find my prints, negatives and slides in the attic of what was once my house (and, however briefly, the house of my executrix). I've not even bothered to instruct her to put my old CDs, external hard dives, etc., into the same tin trunk.
Cheers,
R.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
thegman
Veteran
Yes, but it'll only get made in the first place if it's profitable. I doubt Phase One or Hasselblad want to race down $999 for a medium format digital camera, it's just not in their interests, IMHO.