Yet another professional opinion on film...any thoughts?

[Finder]

I know the digital shooters bark and howl at this argument
but I believe it is valid.

The digital shooters say, "I work just as hard shooting digital ...
blah blah blah etc etc ...," but that's just denial in my opinion.

I shoot digital sometimes too. I do it because it's easier and
faster and more convenient. Why lie about it? I don't have to
work as hard shooting digital and I do it when I need a quick
image for business purposes. It's not art. When I want to make
art I use film and take my time.

Funny, when I work in the studio or with microscopes, I have to work just as hard to make good images. The medium has not changed that. All my studio and microscope cameras are digital.

Or are you saying I am somehow in denial?

And here lies the rub in the film/digital debate. Everyone argues from their personal bias.

 

[Keith]

I know the digital shooters bark and howl at this argument
but I believe it is valid.

The digital shooters say, "I work just as hard shooting digital ...
blah blah blah etc etc ...," but that's just denial in my opinion.

I shoot digital sometimes too. I do it because it's easier and
faster and more convenient. Why lie about it? I don't have to
work as hard shooting digital and I do it when I need a quick
image for business purposes. It's not art. When I want to make
art I use film and take my time.

If that's your personal use for digital fine ... no need to chisel it into stone though!

I've seen enough very good digital art over the last couple of years to reinforce to me that the genuine artists choose whatever media they want to interpret themselves and then work within it's parameters.

 

[emraphoto]

For the record I shoot both. Each one has strengths that I turn to on different occasions.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I know the digital shooters bark and howl at this argument
but I believe it is valid.

The digital shooters say, "I work just as hard shooting digital ...
blah blah blah etc etc ...," but that's just denial in my opinion.

I shoot digital sometimes too. I do it because it's easier and
faster and more convenient. Why lie about it? I don't have to
work as hard shooting digital and I do it when I need a quick
image for business purposes. It's not art. When I want to make
art I use film and take my time.

Its not valid, I proved that in my post with all the photos on the first page. They're art. Many of them have hung in galleries and museums. People buy them and frame them and hang them on the wall. They don't give a damn what camera I used, only about the image. My experience has been that film bigots are usually people who's work has little aesthetic merit, so they latch onto gear and materials to justify their work, when all that really matter is the content of the image. I shoot mostly film but I'm not for a second going to tell anyone that digital sucks or cannot be used to make art. I've made great images with digital and seen other work that even surpassed mine done with digital.

 

[emraphoto]

we are tossing out individual experiences like they are gospel truths here. in contrast i have learnt lately people who invest in photographs through galleries do care very much about what was used to make said photo. maybe not so much about which particular camera one used but certainly about materials and capture medium.

film captures and more importantly dark room prints command a premium over digital prints. in the latest dealings with a very well known north american documentary gallery it was explained in great detail to me by the owner.

 

[Mcary]

I know the digital shooters bark and howl at this argument
but I believe it is valid.

The digital shooters say, "I work just as hard shooting digital ...
blah blah blah etc etc ...," but that's just denial in my opinion.

I shoot digital sometimes too. I do it because it's easier and
faster and more convenient. Why lie about it? I don't have to
work as hard shooting digital and I do it when I need a quick
image for business purposes. It's not art. When I want to make
art I use film and take my time.

I completely agree with you about shooting film being much much harder then shooting digital.


I mean with digital you stick in a 4, 8 or 16 GB card then all you have to do is press the shutter. On the other hand when shooting film especially when using a rangefinder you have to manually advance the film after each shot, possible risking a serious repetitive motion injury. Of course one can't forget the risk of breaking a nail due to having to change rolls of film every 12-36 exposures.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I completely agree with you about shooting film being much much harder then shooting digital.


I mean with digital you stick in a 4, 8 or 16 GB card then all you have to do is press the shutter. On the other hand when shooting film especially when using a rangefinder you have to manually advance the film after each shot, possible risking a serious repetitive motion injury. Of course one can't forget the risk of breaking a nail due to having to change rolls of film every 12-36 exposures.

LOL! Good argument 😉 but you did forget that many 35mm cameras have built in motor wind; still, there is the hard backbreaking labor of changing film at the end of the roll. Even the most automated cameras require the user to unlatch the back, open it, and lift out the used film cartridge.

 

[PatrickONeill]

Before I start, I'd like to mention that its dang near impossible to fake a raw file, by the very nature of a raw file and the way linear gama curves and raw bayer pixels behave, there is no practical method to manipulate the images along the lines of cloning or adding people in an image. never heard of it.

Canon (and I'm sure Nikon does too) have an option on their cameras that shoot raw files called "add user decision data". Data is embeded in the raw file and a sort of hashcheck number is generated unique to that file. Any attempt to tamper with file, such as metadata, etc and the manipulations will be detected via DVK-E2 detection software kit. no way to hack it or go around it.

The problem is, journalism is sloppy these days and they play it loose when it comes to fact checking. There is tremendous pressure to be the first to break a story so they get more page hits from readers. last thing anyone does is fact checking an image. So, it is rare that raw images are checked. Raw files are hardly ever sent (esp in remote locations where sending data by sat phone is slow and expensive). No one thinks about checking the files, unless suspisions arise, or part of a verification process for awards. such as they did this year for disqualifying a photographer in the WPP. link

anyways! film vs digital when it comes to journalism!

Film or Digital, it can all be manipulated before the shutter is clicked. The landscape for journalism is not a friendly one. I lurk a lot at on messageboard for working photojournalists. and they constantly bemoan the falling standards of photojouranlism today. There is a lot of pressure for them to "orchestrate" things if you can't get the origional shot. Then there is the competition with other photographers from NGOs, untrained amatures, embeded journalism, Parachute journalism, freelancers that go in looking to sell rather than get the story, goat f*cks (google that if you dare) and a general public that is more and more prone to dissmiss anything that doesn't agree with their point of view (heavy left wing and heavy right wing journism wins here).

All of that all makes it harder and harder for a photojournalist to get enough time to bring all of the facts up to the surface, and doublly so to get those facts out to the people.

we can never put the digital genie back in the bottle, daily news thrives on instant global communcation, and film just cant compete. There can still be a place for film in journalism. personal essays and "slow-journalism." but film just cant be on the front lines anymore.

Is there still truth in photojournalism today? yeah, a great majority is. but you still have to have your BS detector on all the time. but thats just a life skill everyone needs when it comes to reading and comprehending current events.

 

[retro]

Its not valid, I proved that in my post with all the photos on the first page. They're art. Many of them have hung in galleries and museums. People buy them and frame them and hang them on the wall. They don't give a damn what camera I used, only about the image. My experience has been that film bigots are usually people who's work has little aesthetic merit, so they latch onto gear and materials to justify their work, when all that really matter is the content of the image. I shoot mostly film but I'm not for a second going to tell anyone that digital sucks or cannot be used to make art. I've made great images with digital and seen other work that even surpassed mine done with digital.

I didn't say digital couldn't be used to make art. I said I don't
use it for that purpose.

What I did say (or mean, at least) was that I feel it is valid to say
that film requires us to use "muscles" that digital does not require
and so I believe it is a valid argument to say that digital
photography encourages laziness in the craft with the public
in general. This may well not apply to you in particular because
you are an accomplished film shooter and, as you say, you
mostly shoot film. But, I do believe it applies to the general public.

People are getting dumber about photography because their
need to know is lessened by the automation of digital
photography. It's certainly not the first time this has happened.
Every major advance of camera automation has had the same
effect and the digital revolution is simply the latest step in
that progression. At one time the only people who took
photographs were quite knowledgeable about every facet of the
craft. But, as each new "point & shoot" advance occurred that
situation has undergone changes to the point where now most
people who own cameras know little or nothing about photography
really.

The advent of digital photography is simply the latest chapter
in that progression. When you make something easier to do
people will start doing it who couldn't grasp how to do it before
it was made easier for them.

And, that "little" point of seeing the image at the time of shooting
or not seeing the image at the time of shooting has a huge
effect on all of this, which is where I think the denial comes in.
The loss of the skills required in pre-visualization in photography
and all that goes along with it is no small thing.

When one can't see the image until later it forces one to use
certain "muscles" that one would otherwise not be required to
use. And, when you don't use muscles, they waste away and
that is what digital photography is doing to the craft, IMO, just
as every major advance in automation has done.

 

[Keith]

But how many family snappers who stared down into the viewfinders of their box brownies with the camera set on sun or shade or cloudy really knew anything about photography. They knew that the prints they received back would generally be acceptably exposed because the lab that developed them would, if possible, compensate for their mistakes.

Now it happens in the camera for these people and like the millions of snappers with their little Kodaks from fifty or sixty years ago ... they don't need to know!

 

[rovnguy]

I find it interesting that Finder's dissection conveniently avoided the first paragraph.

 

[igi]

I really hate it when someone says "digital images is not real! You can't touch it!"

I can't touch the wind but I know it's real.

The phrase just sounds medieval.

 

[retro]

I really hate it when someone says "digital images is not real! You can't touch it!"

I can't touch the wind but I know it's real.

Of course you can touch the wind. How else do you know it's real?

 

[retro]

But how many family snappers who stared down into the viewfinders of their box brownies with the camera set on sun or shade or cloudy really knew anything about photography.

None of them and that is the point. Every advance in photo
automation makes more clueless "photographers" and digital is
no different in that respect.

A lost art is a sad thing. Keeping an aging art alive is a good thing.

 

[Finder]

I find it interesting that Finder's dissection conveniently avoided the first paragraph.

I don't understand this. Perhaps you can be clearer.

 

[gdmcclintock]

"With digital, you can never put the image on a light box and see the detail via a loupe as it is." Nonsense. Dick Arentz recently published a book of platinum/palladium prints shot with digital cameras. He used to use antique banquet cameras and now uses digital technology to create his negatives. Whether or not we use film or digital cameras, we are limited only by the confines of our imagination.

 

[gdmcclintock]

Or to paraphrase Marcel Proust, a work of art is like spectacles; if they don't fit, try another pair!

 

[Finder]

From the article on NYT, which I couldn't agree with more:

"I think digital is great — for color. I don’t think it’s great for black and white. I think it’s just too much manipulation. It’s not real. There is this kind of grayness. I still don’t get the blacks I want without taking it to such an extreme that it becomes a cartoon of its former self."

I wonder what Greg Gorman would say? Actually, I do lots of color and I think film is much better than digital.

But that is the great thing about the internet, you can find "proof" supporting any position. Did you know the NASA faked the moon landings?

 

[Sonnar Brian]

I could see the first digital images that I worked with. It was in 1981 and we used 7-track mag tape for the data acquisition system. There was an error in the inter-record gap (IRG) that prevented the image from being read off the tape. So I had the tape photographed using iron filings to locate the bits, and determine the problem. Spurious bits near the end of the IRG preventing the drive from starting properly. So I ran the tape to the end of the reel and read it going backwards.

That was an art.

This thread is leaning toward "just venting". Cool it.

 

[Soothsayerman]

From a photojournalism perspective I agree with some "some" of what he says, but from a general photography perspective I think he's a bit naive.