Website Argument

[kxl]

Baseball analogy: 1927 Yankees or 1975 Reds?

Or were the 1975 Reds the "modern" 1927 Yankees? Agan, using ***MY*** definition of fair, it's unfair to both teams. Unfair to the Yankees because the technology in 1975 (equipment, training, etc...) of 1975 were obviously vastly superior to that in 1927. Unfair to the 1975 Reds because the argument implies that they needed 1970's technology to even be comparable to the 1927 Yankees as the greatest baseball team of all time.

Suffice it to say that both were great.

 

[d_ross]

Although I agree with Roger Hicks in his reply to this, I think there are a couple of points worth considering had digital technology been available at the time.

First, would "the greats" have got the results they did using digital? I've never been able to obtain, or indeed seen others obtain the subtleties and nuances of black and white film using digital.

Secondly, given the almost built-in obsolesence of digital equipment, would we still have the technology to retrieve and reproduce their images? (I've read - true or false - that NASA recently had to scour car boot sales for floppy drives to boot up their 1980s space shuttles.)

Thirdly, would their giclee / ink jet prints have faded by now?

I'd say they would have got perhaps a different result but still great. and my first digital camera an Agfa studio something, only shot jpeg and the files couldnt be read by any computer or print shop about 4 years ago now.

 

[d_ross]

also, I might add that some of their silver gelatin prints have faded by now! you might be surprised at the amount of rescue work made on old prints held in institutions.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

You are right there. They all fell to bits years ago. We still ride horses though so there's a poke in the eye for progress....

Actually, I saw an old man driving a Model T here in Fort Wayne last week. They haven't ALL fallen to bits!

 

[jan normandale]

http://xkcd.com/386/

heh... that's great. I think I'll take a screen shot using film ;D

Anyway... lets see .. film vs digital? Here's the reality if you were a pro you used a Leica product shooting film or maybe a Nikon F series shooting film before the advent of digital photography. The average person is not in need of these cameras so like most technologies there's a trickle down from the leading edge consumers (ie pros) to the mass market. It's how our system works

If you've got a few thousand you can buy a Canon I D Mk IV or I, Nikon D3X for $8,000 plus, a 24 - 70mm lens for $2,000 before taxes and you're a pro. Pros and wealthy amateurs buy this equipment and the camera makers love these people. They should. These people drive their business and create demand for their products. A Leica M9 is about $ 7,000 and a 50mm Leica Noctilux lens is another $6,000. I'm picking top end materials because I want to go "apples to apples" Back in the day people used Hasselblads, Leicas and Nikons and paid top dollar for high quality equipment. The same is going on today. Pros use digital for in camera processing and uploading and sending their photography to clients from remote locations. Film's not there for that.

Even if if you move down the food chain a couple of notches digital is still an expensive proposition. On the other hand film cameras are dirt cheap and you pay for the images you make. If I shoot 25 rolls a year I pay $100 for film , some chemicals and equipment and I'm in business. No front end prepayment for the images like one inherently does with quality digital equipment. I'm a film shooter by default. I can shoot film and it's cost effective compared to digital. I can rent an Imacon scanner and scan my Hasselblad / 120 film and get 35mb images just fine. The camera costs $500. Someday digital will pierce this equation and then I'll commit. For now I'm shooting film and a reasonable digi P/S a Panasonic DMC LX3 for snaps and sketches. I've also got a 4x5 Toyo Field again I get a lot of quality for an outlay I can handle.

Digital is basically a pro world or a family snapshot world. Film's a way to get quality while not breaking the bank or needing financing for the equipment. For me film's not dead and film's superior because of the economics and my disposable income. I love the digital shooters. They are taking the hit for the rest of us. Thanks guys.

 

[Ranchu]

I think the argument is specious but you ask for others. The reason film is superior in my opinion is the dynamic range is greater. Also, I like the colors better. I suspect that there is some inherent unnaturalness in the way color is captured by digital because it is captured in a linear fashion as opposed to logatrithmically as with film. I suspect the gamma translation screws up the color, but I think it would cost me too much time to come to a solid proof and it may also be beyond me to do. Film looks more like the world than digital to me, but I don't know the reason for it beyond my outlandish suspicions.

 

[shadowfox]

Baseball analogy: 1927 Yankees or 1975 Reds?

Or were the 1975 Reds the "modern" 1927 Yankees? Agan, using ***MY*** definition of fair, it's unfair to both teams. Unfair to the Yankees because the technology in 1975 (equipment, training, etc...) of 1975 were obviously vastly superior to that in 1927. Unfair to the 1975 Reds because the argument implies that they needed 1970's technology to even be comparable to the 1927 Yankees as the greatest baseball team of all time.

Suffice it to say that both were great.

You and I are trying to make the same point (see bolded part).

I don't know baseball so I can't appreciate or analyze your example as intended.

In my comparison between Robert Capa and James Nachtwey, I am trying to point out that both of them are passionate and dedicated to their cause regardless the equipments and technology available to them.

As you said, both are great.

 

[d_ross]

I think the time to realize and accept that they are simply different mediums is well and truly over due!

 

[kxl]

You and I are trying to make the same point (see bolded part).

In my comparison between Robert Capa and James Nachtwey, I am trying to point out that both of them are passionate and dedicated to their cause regardless the equipments and technology available to them.

As you said, both are great.

If you are talking about passion and dedication, then it could be argued that every great photographer today is the modern version of every great photographer from the past. But since you named individuals, then you made distnct comparisons between the works and (implied) abilities of those two individuals, which is inherently unfair to both.

 

[shadowfox]

If you are talking about passion and dedication, then it could be argued that every great photographer today is the modern version of every great photographer from the past. But since you named individuals, then you made distnct comparisons between the works and (implied) abilities of those two individuals, which is inherently unfair to both.

I really cannot understand that last part.
I made no reference to their ability, for me, the comparison stops at their inclination (or passion) as reflected by their publicly known body of works.

If you read more into the comparison, that's your choice. Not at all my intention.

 

[Pablito]

bill, I don't know if you're being serious, or whether this is just a bit of tongue-in-cheek trolling, jst to see aht would happen.

If I am not mistaken we even had a moderator plead recently for no more film vs. digital threads.

WHY?

 

[shimokita]

Point: Not enought "time to learn a new medium"
Question: "That seems to me to be an excellent reason for sticking with film. Any others?"

I guess what you are asking is... "Is there any reason to still use film?" Well, I guess I do have some hesitation regarding the use of "still" or "sticking"...

No one is asking if we should stick to painting rather than photography, so I guess painting is dead, and by a similar logic it must be true that film photography is dead. Or at least seriously passed it's prime. Get use to it.

On the other hand I like paintings and film (both) in a limited/ restricted/ specific/ 🙂 way...

I enjoy using film because the devil made me do it (let's ingnore the argument of free will at this point)". Be honest, we want to relive a golden age... hahaha.

Seriously, film has passed it's peak if we consider the bigger picture. That does not mean we need to discard our brushes and sell our canvas... it just means that "we" are the exception to the rule, which isn't bad (or good for that matter). and to be honest, the point raised is getting a little old, even if it was from another website... come on.

Note: the original post is from June, so maybe things have changed since then...

Casey

 

[sanmich]

It's very easy to show that the argument is fallacious.
Of course a good picture can be taken on both media.

But right now the great photographers shooting digital were probably educated on film for most of them.
I wonder if the new photographers, the ones that will be educated on digital only will be differently skilled.
Just like my aestetic sense would have been totally different if the gear available was the one of Atget.
35mm has revolutionized our way of looking.
Maybe digital will also have a serious impact on it?

 

[Chris101]

...I guess painting is dead, and by a similar logic it must be true that film photography is dead. Or at least seriously passed it's prime. Get use to it.

On the other hand I like paintings and film (both) in a limited/ restricted/ specific/ 🙂 way...

I enjoy using film because the devil made me do it (let's ingnore the argument of free will at this point)". Be honest, we want to relive a golden age... hahaha.

Seriously, film has passed it's peak if we consider the bigger picture. That does not mean we need to discard our brushes and sell our canvas... it just means that "we" are the exception to the rule, which isn't bad (or good for that matter). and to be honest, the point raised is getting a little old, even if it was from another website... come on.

Note: the original post is from June, so maybe things have changed since then...

Casey

No Casey, not much has changed since June. Painting really hasn't lost much popularity for nearly 20,000 years. Film is a bit different. Besides being 200 times younger, it also requires much more in the way of technology to produce pictures. So it will suffer much more at the hands of advancing time.

But there will continue to be new - and advancing practitioners of both media. Just as practitioners of digital imaging will advance. Advancement in the area of film art will be easily observed. Painting advances even more so. Digital will appear to stagnate until the number of digital photographers evens out. Once there is some agreement on exactly where the boundaries lie (as has been established in both painting and film photography) it will be easier to determine who is merely repeating what has been done, and who is pushing at those boundaries.

 

[thegman]

I think that often art gets more respect if it is also seen as a skill or a craft. Rightly or wrongly film photography is seen more as a craft than digital. It's hard to argue the opposite when digital photography can be so automated, and you barely need to be sentient to take a photo and upload to Facebook. On the other hand watching Ansel Adams use a large format camera with all the associated faff and inconvenience, and then developing in chemicals whilst dodging and burning the paper just looks more like an art form.

Similarly would the Mona Lisa, or The Night Watch get such attention if they were photographs, not paintings, and even more so, if they were digital photographs.

Would the Sistine chapel be so remarkable if were not made of stone, but instead was a 3D model on a computer screen?

I'm not interested in what is art and what is not, but I do think that most of us have a greater respect for art if it is clear that time and effort went into it's creation. Digital photography, perhaps mistakenly, is considered to require less effort than film.

Similarly, to someone not "art savvy" like myself, I don't need to know a thing about painting to know that the Mona Lisa required enormous skill, talent and patience, which engenders respect. On the opposite side, I can look at a HCB photograph, and forgetting any artistic concerns for a moment, many of his shots could have been taken by accident, and even if they were not, did not require any great skill, craft or technical expertise. I'm not entering any views as to whether this devalues it as "art", but it certainly takes away the "Wow!" factor.

 

[robert blu]

i see this debate in a different way: on one side we have a subject, interesting for us or for our audience. On the other side we have the final product, an image which should give some information or some emotion. In between we have a support which can be analogic (film) or digital (sensor). If we manage to transfer the emotion from the subject to the image should only depend on our capacity to use the available tools and not on what kind of tools we use.
robert
PS sorry for english not being my mother language, difficult to explain...

 

[rogerzilla]

In the future there will be great digital photographers. I do think stuff like zoom lenses and digital capture detracts from quality though, because it's far too easy. If you gave me two sheets of 10" x 8" film per day like Ansel Adams, I bet I'd put a lot more effort into each shot. Zoom lenses = not moving yourself to get the right POV. Digital capture = if this is rubbish it doesn't matter, I'll take another one. The latter is fine for sports and catwalk models but not for pictorial stuff.

 

[newsgrunt]

Really good photographers will rise regardless of the medium they use. Film or digital ? Doesn't matter imo. Christopher Morris uses a 24-70 zoom and his stuff is above par I'd say. Most photojournalists I come across here and there use zooms on dslr's and these would be Pulitzer/World Press level journalists. Some use film as well. Like many, I use both, all depends on the subject at hand.

 

[Al Patterson]

In 100 years when everything is 3D holographic imaging someone will state that the "greats" always worked in 2D.

Exactly. If I had a TARDIS and took an excellent digital camera back and let Ansel Adams play with it for a while, I'm sure the shots would be excellent....

😀

 

[Al Patterson]

In 10 years, maybe film cameras will be obsolete, but so will be your current digital cameras.

When we are all using smart phone or iPad cameras, I'm sure the DSLR purists will be highly upset.