FA Limited
missing in action
what will you do with your gear when cameras the size of a cell phone produce images with the high ISO abilities of a D3? you know it will happen eventually ...
deep inside i know that part of why my pictures are better than the average joe is because i use better equipment.
deep inside i know that part of why my pictures are better than the average joe is because i use better equipment.
Merkin
For the Weekend
100 years or so ago, there were very few automobiles, and the primary methods of transportation were the horse and the train. Today, we use cars and planes, although horses and trains are still around, to varying degrees and for varying purposes. Even though (in the developed world, at least) loads of people have cars, not everyone is a professional driver, and not everyone drives as well as professionals(everything from racing drivers to long haul truckers to chauffeurs, etc...). Not everyone could drive a formula one car or a Kenilworth big rig. You even still have a small handful of professional horsemen (and women). I think the transportation analogy is very apt to the future of imaging, as I think this is the model that imaging will most likely take, where film is the horse and/or the steam train and digital is the car or the airplane. If this analogy is an accurate one, the use of film will become more uncommon, more expensive, and more specialized, but I don't think it will go away, at least not for 35mm, 120, and 4x5. 220 and 8x10 might disappear, though. Also, I don't think that phones will kill interchangeable lens digital cameras, at least not for a long time. For one thing, physical sensor size is still important, and until the next huge innovation comes along that we can't even think of at this point, it will continue to be important. You can't put an aps-c sized sensor in to a phone.
retnull
Well-known
Way tangential, but I can't let that comment go. Art criticism is, at its worst, useful, and at its best, revelatory. For example, read Peter Schejldahl in the New Yorker: possibly the best prose style of any living journalist, and deeply insightful.
OK, back to cameras now.
My Digital Cameras are older than half of the membership of Facebook.
Dfin
Well-known
Digital is here to stay,the proletariat have cell phones,The Revolution is happenig NOW. I was just watching a program on Australian ABC tv, about the protests in Iran. Even though most foreign media have been banned, images are still getting out via courageous citizens and their cell phone footage. The BBC`s Persian lanuage channel is broadcasting footage shot by protesters,same for youtube,facebook,twitter etc. Professional journalism/photography may not be dead, but you gota be there to record/report. The technology is moving so fast and becoming better/cheaper, we film users will become an interesting if expensive sideline. I suspect that most digital p&s shooters, like the film p&s shooters before them, are just happy that they can see the faces of the people they photograph or recognize the scene and that they can upload it to the net with minimum outlay. Storage and retrieval of digital images, that will improve as well, depending on demand. But how many of us have bother to transfer all our video tapes to dvds ? I`d be more than happy too jump into the digital whirpool, I just cannot justify spending all that money to get the same results that I`m getting from film. The current price for a D700 is approx. $4000AUD, that`s a lot of HP5, 35mm&120
AgentX
Well-known
Multi-function digital devices will end up taking the place of a separate camera for most people in most situations.
Only those who consider themselves "photographers" for the sake of making images (professional or personal), or presenting a fashionable self-image, will carry a camera as a separate device. Film will be a counter-cultural mark or tiny professional niche. And since film processes requires an industrial base, we may even see film-based physical photography go away as the film market dies an economic death. Non-digital photography may return to its birth as a highly technical but home-grown pursuit. (Paper negatives, glass plates, possibly contact-printing from computer-produced transparencies onto home-prepped sensitized papers...)
Only those who consider themselves "photographers" for the sake of making images (professional or personal), or presenting a fashionable self-image, will carry a camera as a separate device. Film will be a counter-cultural mark or tiny professional niche. And since film processes requires an industrial base, we may even see film-based physical photography go away as the film market dies an economic death. Non-digital photography may return to its birth as a highly technical but home-grown pursuit. (Paper negatives, glass plates, possibly contact-printing from computer-produced transparencies onto home-prepped sensitized papers...)
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mrisney
Well-known
If you want to put this issue into historical perspective, a 1956 headline on page one of the daily trade papers published in Hollywood announced, ‘Film Is Dead!’ The story predicted that the introduction of the first videotape system would make film obsolete within a year. More than 50 years later, it’s that videotape system that is dead. Film lives on.
amateriat
We're all light!
Indeed, that was Ampex' invention, born the same year I was. Funny how, with all the film/digital huff n' puff we go through from time to time here, few have noticed how magnetic tape has become the true dinosaur in the digital world, save for, ahem, some music studio-recording diehards who'll have little to nothing to do with hard disks or ProTools in anything other than post-production, if that. In the video realm, though, you don't hear too many people sniffing about the death of tape.
Funny world, this is.
- Barrett
Chris101
summicronia
I believe the reason that videotape died such a clean death, while film lingers and refuses to go quietly is because tape has no advantage over digital video storage. Film and digital media however, are qualitatively different. Although similar in many respects, they do not produce exactly the same result.
I do understand though that this discussion is not a "film shall rise again" kind of argument. We are indeed looking at a fad. Eventually people will tire of looking at image after image of strangers hamming it up for cell phone cameras, and the social networks will become more communication oriented and less ... adolescent.
Eugen Mezei
Well-known
More MP is becomming unnecessary for the average digital photographer, senzor size was never a thing most thought about. Companies will develop bigger sensors, more sensitive senzors, more resolutive senzors but we can see this today too that our (as in "civilized countries") markets are almost saturated. Soon tehnological advance and dropping price will not be an argument as the users will be satisfied with the camera they have.
But than.... cameras being cheap and easily to produce in humongous volumes it will happen what cellphone producers do today: they discover the slums of the third world. Milliards of new customers who maybe can't buy a meal but would buy a cheap camera just they do today when buying a cellphone that makes their lives easier.
Eugen
But than.... cameras being cheap and easily to produce in humongous volumes it will happen what cellphone producers do today: they discover the slums of the third world. Milliards of new customers who maybe can't buy a meal but would buy a cheap camera just they do today when buying a cellphone that makes their lives easier.
Eugen
Chris101
summicronia
Chris, does that seem kinda sexist and condescending to you?
Some of the chicks I know in photography are doing non-nostalgic art, male and female nudes, events for big bucks, and high end portraiture. Nary a kid-pic nor pregger in the lot. And guys actually pay for their work!
Prosaic
Well-known
Some good points. Personally I predict less still photography, more video for the forseeable future.
And for the first half of 2009, production of digital cameras ceased by almost a third.
http://www.cipa.jp/english/data/pdf/d_200905.pdf
Chris101
summicronia
Not just video, but digicam quality stills from video. You know, where you sift through thousands of vid-frames for just the right one.
Larky
Well-known
Personally I hope loads more people take up photography, loads more people buy those fake huge ugly 'pro' cameras, and loads more people demand hosting and sharing and book making stuff. Then, it will become cheaper and easier to get your hands on good stuff and the people with real talent will shine through.
It's like guitars. I remember when I started playing, not all that long ago really, that if you wanted an instrument that didn't sound like a Frog being tortured by a Cat, you had to spend upwards of a grand. Now, you can buy a £100 guitar that if played correctly can sound incredible. There are more shoddy guitar players around, but there is a ton more gear to be had at good prices, and the people with talent who couldn't afford the expensive lump of wood can now shine.
As long as there are a ton of people wasting money on crap they don't need or know how to use, the companies making it can afford to develop it and make it better, for those of us who do know how to use it.
It's like guitars. I remember when I started playing, not all that long ago really, that if you wanted an instrument that didn't sound like a Frog being tortured by a Cat, you had to spend upwards of a grand. Now, you can buy a £100 guitar that if played correctly can sound incredible. There are more shoddy guitar players around, but there is a ton more gear to be had at good prices, and the people with talent who couldn't afford the expensive lump of wood can now shine.
As long as there are a ton of people wasting money on crap they don't need or know how to use, the companies making it can afford to develop it and make it better, for those of us who do know how to use it.
AgentX
Well-known
Don't forget that, not actually so long ago, "real" photographers might have looked down on this new-fangled "film" as something for the unwashed masses...an industrial watering-down of the true and individual craft of photography, which was properly done with 1) a sensitized silver plate 2) a sensitized glass plate and sensitized paper or maybe 3) a paper negative printed to yet more paper.
And who buys photographic chemistry, seriously? These pre-mixed developers and pre-coated albumen papers are for cheats and those who have no appreciation for the process! Not to mention these ghastly new miniature-format cameras...eugh!!! (As someone said earlier...did photography die with the brownie??)
I had a long and frustrating argument on this issue with a guy on the Leica forum, an M shooter who was lamenting the loss of studied craftsmanship in photography due to digital or some such nonesense. He refused to be reminded of the fact that his M3 was purpose-designed to handle as easily and and make images as rapidly as possible, and was regarded as heresy by some Leica traditionalists at its unveiling...whose own cameras were in turn heretical to the pre-miniature format people.
And who buys photographic chemistry, seriously? These pre-mixed developers and pre-coated albumen papers are for cheats and those who have no appreciation for the process! Not to mention these ghastly new miniature-format cameras...eugh!!! (As someone said earlier...did photography die with the brownie??)
I had a long and frustrating argument on this issue with a guy on the Leica forum, an M shooter who was lamenting the loss of studied craftsmanship in photography due to digital or some such nonesense. He refused to be reminded of the fact that his M3 was purpose-designed to handle as easily and and make images as rapidly as possible, and was regarded as heresy by some Leica traditionalists at its unveiling...whose own cameras were in turn heretical to the pre-miniature format people.
mfunnell
Shaken, so blurred
My thoughts exactly! The only valid print is a contact print. Enlargement destroys quality. If you want to put a photo on a billboard, you should be forced to get a REALLY BIG camera!
...Mike
Larky
Well-known
notturtle
Well-known
Digital wont be shrinking, but neither will B&W analogue either I suspect. I think a lot of digital users will dabble with film too. Some will end up doing both because of what they have to offer. I would shoot more digital if I could get it to look like good wet prints from classic films, so when this nut is cracked I might move over. However, until there is a replacement for the Leica M in digital format (and no, the M8.2 is not a replacement doe to crop factors etc) I have no real substitute.
AgentX
Well-known
We're at a point in time where most experienced photographers have made a transition from digital to film and thus have an appreciation and a fondness for it.
Thinking people in general will still dabble in film within another generation would be like thinking, pre-1900, that people in the future, in general, would still dabble in daguerreotypy for the unique image it offers. Yes, it happens and people are still making daguerrotypes; however, that's a homegrown process, including even the required electroplating. It remains to be seen if film, which requires an industry to produce it, will survive the economic conditions of an almost-purely digital world. I sure hope so, because I'd love to pass on the little I know about b/w work to another generation, but it may just not be possible.
Thinking people in general will still dabble in film within another generation would be like thinking, pre-1900, that people in the future, in general, would still dabble in daguerreotypy for the unique image it offers. Yes, it happens and people are still making daguerrotypes; however, that's a homegrown process, including even the required electroplating. It remains to be seen if film, which requires an industry to produce it, will survive the economic conditions of an almost-purely digital world. I sure hope so, because I'd love to pass on the little I know about b/w work to another generation, but it may just not be possible.
emraphoto
Veteran
the most boring photograph in the world is still just that regardless of how big your camera is or what format. the logic that a "bigger" format or "bigger" camera breeds better photographs is thin.
it's odd that the feelings and sentiments of nations have been changed buy photographs taken on digital cameras yet here they're still not "valid"? nonsense. so much brilliant work is being produced by very brave and very talented people and to have it labeled so makes me shake my head in wonder.
regardless of the box you use to capture an image, the image itself exists outside of it. it exists in your mind and in a split second in time. the camera or medium used to capture it effects the validity of said event in no way whatsoever.