Bill. That is the most anti-digital photograph that I've seen in a long time.
Pure Analog, Baby.
Pure Analog, Baby.
I don't think you'll see anyone explain "how I was absolutely unable to use a digital SLR camera in manual mode." Why would anyone explain something that is unexplainable? 
"Because that's what the author was saying" -- where exactly?
What I read that the author said was "I often will put the camera on manual exposure or manual focus to keep those neural pathways oiled."
Nice digital photo of an analog circuit, BTW.
"Because that's what the author was saying" -- where exactly?
What I read that the author said was "I often will put the camera on manual exposure or manual focus to keep those neural pathways oiled."
Nice digital photo of an analog circuit, BTW.
bmattock
Veteran
The irony was not lost - it was taken at an annual audio festival that I like to attend here in Michigan. Lots of the newest - lots of the oldest. I'm working with friends on an amp designed by a friend using NOS 'compactron' TV sweep tubes for the output. Six watts of analog power, easily eclipsed by the latest greatest, but I like it. Of course, I also like my surround-sound home theater, so there you go. Balance.
bmattock
Veteran
"Because that's what the author was saying" -- where exactly?
That's pretty clear. You can't make 'great photographs' with a digital camera. It is a statement.
I didn't read that. I read this:
I think I've just demonstrated that you can be just as 'hard' with digital, if that's what you want. It can be as unforgiving as film, if that's what it desired. But no - the author makes it clear that if auto-everything is available, it will be used, due to laziness. And that somehow is the camera's fault.
Thanks! I think I did better work at last year's audio fest, but I managed to seriously injure my knee and until I get surgery or whatever is required to fix it, I had to cruise back to my apartment, as it was murdering me. Still, I did what I could. Next week is (I think) a tulip festival if I can bring myself to drive that far (Holland, MI).
I debug my custom embedded computer boards at work using a TEK2465B and C4 scope camera at work. Balance.
Trius
Waiting on Maitani
Bill: very nice shot of a cool subject, one of my faves.
But still, that's NOT what Doug said in the blog! OMmmmmm.
But still, that's NOT what Doug said in the blog! OMmmmmm.
WDPictures
Established
Although I didn't throw an 8 gig card into my D2x and "spray and pray" as its too difficult to chimp that way with the slow buffer and all... I was goofing around one day with lighting and such with this result. Totally cheesy but I thought these circuit boards have a kind of architectural order to them so more goofing and here is my "street scene". Never thought these silly images would see the light of day but like with film sometimes contact sheets are made public.
Attachments
climbing_vine
Well-known
I think that's damn nifty.
Al Kaplan
Veteran
I have faith that my exposures will be just fine and my compositions at least decently useable. I've never had a camera that I could chimp.
faris
Well-known
I too love the process...here is what I do..
use my dslr to take a shot ( if that is what I want. ) chimp it, redo, to my satisfaction.
Then I use my film rf with the settings from the dslr and press the trigger.
I find I don't waste a lot of film..
If I miss the decisive moment during the switch, I have it on my dslr and my mac has, cs,nx2, nik software... never had a problem.
I really enjoy the process, and pass my time. sometimes, I manage to sell a few pics too. All good fun.
of course YMMV.
use my dslr to take a shot ( if that is what I want. ) chimp it, redo, to my satisfaction.
Then I use my film rf with the settings from the dslr and press the trigger.
I find I don't waste a lot of film..
If I miss the decisive moment during the switch, I have it on my dslr and my mac has, cs,nx2, nik software... never had a problem.
I really enjoy the process
, and pass my time. sometimes, I manage to sell a few pics too. All good fun.of course YMMV.
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bmattock said:
Nope. It says nothing about whether digital (or film) is capable (or incapable) of anything.
The subsequent sentence is "I still dream every day of trying to make something meaningful that will stand up to time."
If he is still dreaming every day of making something meaningful, that will stand up to time, while at the same time stating that digital is incapable of making great photographs, then why does he also state at the end that he's sticking with digital, and just approaching it with a film methodology?
Your position that he's stating 'one can't make great photographs with digital' doesn't make sense in the totality of the article.
digitalintrigue said:
bmattock said:
Why not? It's a direct quote from the article.
charjohncarter
Veteran
It is more than Zen.
robklurfield
eclipse
Thought I was on the wrong board for a moment, seeing those nice audio valves. A double entendre... or trompe l'oeil here? Digital vs. analogue music or pictures? I hope there is nice turntable attached somewhere in that audio signal chain with some good vinyl spinning on it.
Nice shot regardless of what you were holding when you made it. If there's still room for vinyl in a world of CD's, there's no reason that film and digital can't co-exist peaceably. Shoot what ya got and enjoy making pictures of what you see. Love my M8. Miss my M4 and M6. Think I need a IIIF or IIIC to feel whole again.
Nice shot regardless of what you were holding when you made it. If there's still room for vinyl in a world of CD's, there's no reason that film and digital can't co-exist peaceably. Shoot what ya got and enjoy making pictures of what you see. Love my M8. Miss my M4 and M6. Think I need a IIIF or IIIC to feel whole again.
Whilst all this was going on yesterday, I went out to take photographs. It is, after all, what I like to do.
Not the world's greatest photo, but I took it with my new Pentax K200D, an Auto Sears 50mm f/1.7 manual focus k-mount lens, a Vivitar macro-focusing 2x teleconverter, and a Sigma EF-500 flash set to manual output. Manual focusing, manual control, and I used the LCD screen for feedback to make sure I was in the zone for exposure. I shot in JPG, but if the lighting had been wonkier, I might have gone for RAW.
I got all the 'advantages' of film, in that I was in full control of the camera (meaning, blame shortcomings on me, not the kit), and I used some of the positive aspects of digital (setting ISO and internal sharpness, contrast, etc as I liked it and relying on LCD for histogram feedback advice).
Somebody explain to me how I was absolutely unable to use a digital SLR camera in manual mode. Because that's what the author was saying - dSLRs make us lazy, and one cannot produce great photos with a dSLR. Funny how I - a lesser photographer than him - was able to surmount these incredible difficulties.
Oh, and the other commonly-heard argument - that I had to scroll through menus and so on - hah. I set the rotating knob on the camera to "M" and then used the thumbwheel to select my shutter speed, which showed up on top of the camera. I set the f-stop on the lens itself. I set the flash to manual with a switch on the flash. The only electronic button I pressed was for the LCD to chimp my shot afterwards. How terrible - lost in the menus, eh?
DougFord
on the good foot
Finally a topic we can all agree on. Let’s talk tube theory! Class A vs A/B, biasing, plate voltages, distributed capacitance, microphonics etc.
robklurfield
eclipse
class a, single-ended 300B's. this topic could get to be ugly as anything on RFF. better stop here.
larmarv916
Well-known
I see this subject in a more factual matter. A photograph is not defined by how artistic it may or may not be. Rather it is a defined by the point of origin of the medium of chemical based creation. A photograph must have a physical negative or positive that is permanently "fixed" in a unalterable final form. This statement while paraphrased from a explanation by Erwin Puts recently in his discussions on this subject.
So .... a digital image captured is not a photograph because it is never fixed and forever be altered and according to several studies may not be archival as the systems for making that a possibility are themselves allow for data loss and decay of unknown rates of decay.
That does not mean to say that if you capture a single frame image via a digital process it is not a artistic product but rather not a photograph by factual definition. the other problem with the digital age is that now HD Video capture is hiding in the background so a file may run for long periods of time just the same as a security camera would and then down the road the owner get home downloads and throws away several hundreds of single frames of images from the video file and each is very possible to produce a single image print. But editing out images while in "auto pilot" is not a creative process that of birth. It is the subject process of harvesting files that have a image that can make a final print.
So again the photograph is a unalterable fixed, chemically produced final product like glass that has been blown , drawn and cooled and hardened never to change it's final state. Digital is like plastic that can be remolded over and over again by anyone for a new version.
Technical but factually honest is the negative ...good..bad or otherwise constant and faithful to that single moment of exposure.
All the Best.....Laurance
So .... a digital image captured is not a photograph because it is never fixed and forever be altered and according to several studies may not be archival as the systems for making that a possibility are themselves allow for data loss and decay of unknown rates of decay.
That does not mean to say that if you capture a single frame image via a digital process it is not a artistic product but rather not a photograph by factual definition. the other problem with the digital age is that now HD Video capture is hiding in the background so a file may run for long periods of time just the same as a security camera would and then down the road the owner get home downloads and throws away several hundreds of single frames of images from the video file and each is very possible to produce a single image print. But editing out images while in "auto pilot" is not a creative process that of birth. It is the subject process of harvesting files that have a image that can make a final print.
So again the photograph is a unalterable fixed, chemically produced final product like glass that has been blown , drawn and cooled and hardened never to change it's final state. Digital is like plastic that can be remolded over and over again by anyone for a new version.
Technical but factually honest is the negative ...good..bad or otherwise constant and faithful to that single moment of exposure.
All the Best.....Laurance
Pickett Wilson
Veteran
Defined by what? Puts is nuts. You've taken an opinion as fact and built your entire definition on it.
bmattock
Veteran
First, I was unaware that digital images could not be printed. Are you sure of this? I've seen many prints, including those made by optical enlargement and chemical development and fixing, that originated with digital capture. Are these, then, not photographs? And if not, what tortured explanation will you find to explain them away?
Even presuming that a photograph needed to be printed before it could be considered a photograph, digital photographs can indeed be printed, even using traditional chemical means. QED.
Second, the oft-repeated sad song of the 'it is not permanent' preachers has been stilled for some time - by me. Allow me to beat you about the head and shoulders for a few moments for presuming to raise that nonsense again.
Digital images, like everything in the universe, will decay and are not permanent. Noting is permanent. However, even allowing for one's personal definition of permanence, digital images will easily outlast every single 'traditional' photograph ever taken.
Oh, not by taking a CD-ROM of images and putting it in a vault next to a strip of Kodachrome, I suppose. But who does that? Banks keep all your money in digital format, so they know quite well how to avoid losing it. As data formats change, they make copies onto the newer format. As data archival mechanisms are imperfect, they make multiple copies and re-store data on a scheduled basis, ensuring nothing is lost. A digital copy is identical to the original in every way - it essentially is the original for all intents and purposes.
On the other hand, a frame of film is subject to entropy in all the ways that everything is, and cannot be easily duplicated with extreme high fidelity - something is lost with each new generational copy. The original always remains the source and best copy, and it represents a single point-of-failure. The classic example is the attack on the towers during 9/11. Tens of thousands of priceless negatives taken during the JFK administration were lost. How much of your money was lost? That's right, none of it. Nothing stored as electronic data was lost during that attack - there were backups stored all over the place, and the data was immediately recovered.
Film and digital images, left to their own devices, will degrade. If digital degrades faster than film (which is your premise), then it is incumbent upon the owner to make note of that and devise simple schemes to create duplicate copies, keep the storage technology used fresh, and keep copies in more than one geographical location, if they wish to go to that extent.
Film, eh, not really possible to do all that; at least not easily, cheaply, or well.
So let us again retire that sad refrain about film being more archival than digital. First, it has nothing to do with what is and is not a photograph, and second, well, you're just wrong. Consider yourself educated.
This is called 'going off on a tangent.'
notturtle
Well-known
bmattock,
Why do you have to repeatedly break down threads into legalistic pedantic battles of words/definitions etc? The subject is an interesting one and people have differing opinions which are not always articulated perfectly. After all this is not a court room. I can't help but feel it is you that has turned this into a 'film is NOT better than digital' debate when the article posted makes some very valid points which some, but perhaps not all, will be able to relate to (while in no way determining that film is always better and digital satan's work). Its his opinion and his solution to his imaging issues; just like some people work better slow off a tripod and some die creatively speaking if forced to do the same. One man's philisophy! why does that have to be turned into 'the rights and wrongs?'
Why do you have to repeatedly break down threads into legalistic pedantic battles of words/definitions etc? The subject is an interesting one and people have differing opinions which are not always articulated perfectly. After all this is not a court room. I can't help but feel it is you that has turned this into a 'film is NOT better than digital' debate when the article posted makes some very valid points which some, but perhaps not all, will be able to relate to (while in no way determining that film is always better and digital satan's work). Its his opinion and his solution to his imaging issues; just like some people work better slow off a tripod and some die creatively speaking if forced to do the same. One man's philisophy! why does that have to be turned into 'the rights and wrongs?'