BS thread...

[mysteryscribe]

Something struck me today and I was wondering about it. Since this is the alternate thread, and lately it seems more and more that us film shooters are headed toward being an alternate form of photography, I decided to put it here. I might be the last person on this site to embrace digital cameras.

It is, in my opinion, a far cry from being a film shooter, to being stuck in a rut. Like I used to say, I got no use for it, don't mean I won't use it.

I do almost total digital editing once the negatives are finished. I don't use photoshop because I just haven't bothered to learn it. So does using a different kind of editing mean I'm stuck in a rut. I find this amusing. By the way I do own photoshop and the cd is around here somewhere. I just don't bother to learn it. Maybe that's what it means to be stuck in a rut. To choose to do things differently. I might not mean doing things the same just not doing them everyone else's way.

I doubt that anyone on this foreum could possibly be here without using the modern technology to some degree. So here we are using a hundred year old technology to capure an image, then to one degree or another using bright shiny new technology to share it with others. I have to admit that even now my last wedding and next ones will be printed from digital files. It just makes sense.

What doesn't make sense to me personally is to go to digital cameras. I love film period. I love film cameras. They are versitile and god knows right now I can afford to buy them and convert them to single purpose use. I have a camera now that is glued down so I can't accidentally knock the shutter speed off flash sync. I couldn't have afforded that back in the day.

So what is the big deal? last wedding I had a cd made instead of prints. I copied the low res cd for the bride. She picked what she wanted I had prints made. If she had wanted a larger picture, I would have scanned that one negative for her. It turns out the 5x7 album suited her just fine. The prints were fine and everybody was happy.

So I guess I'm asking where is the sin in a hybred system. I just don't see how starting with film is all that much different. Unless you just have to have a digital camera for cost effective issues. I don't, but my son in law does and I was the one who sent him that direction three years ago.

I'm not just venting, I hope I'm providing another view of how to use the technology. By the way I am pretty far behind the times, but sometimes the olds ways still work equally well with a little tune up. Modern methods and models are springing up all the time. In my opinion it's like clothes you buy what suits you, not what your friend next door likes.

 

[Seefutlung]

.... oh oh ... you've started down the evil path ... in another few months a P&S just for personal use ... so much more economical ... and fast ... just go home and pop in into the computer ... and ... viola!

Then you'll use the P&S as sort of a back-up for informal stuff ... then a dSLR for informal stuff ... (after all it is easier and so much more economical and did I say Fast??? like whoosh ... I can crank out a preview CD the same day of the wedding...) Soon, you film cams will have dust ... then cob webs ... then rust ... and one day you'll wonder what's on that half exposed rolled in the camera ...

I think that film photography is like being pregnant ... just like you can't be a little bit pregnant ... hybrid photography is digital.

lol - Gary

PS- Photography is all about the final image ... doesn't really matter how you get there.
G

 

[mysteryscribe]

I agree with most everything you said. I know if i needed speed in production I would force myself to buy digital and suck it up. I do have a ebay pns but I have easily resisted the urge to use it for almost anything else.

I don't see how anyone can ignore post processing in digital any longer, but I can't see any real advantage in ME personally doing the capture with a digital camera. I know it's a fun toy no doubt. Before the screams come in, I know it isn't a toy to those of you who use it, but I ask myself this often, do I need to buy one just to be cool.

My son in law and I have this argument weekly. Since I can put my hands on him and strangle him, he has at least been respectful about it so far. He has yet to call me senile but that I am sure it is what he thinks.

I think I can avoid the slippery technology slope, but I do have one foot in each world though it sounds like I don't.

It is always about the image for sure....Just hate to see the us vs them mentality pop up. Since i'm one of the out numbered thems I suppose.

 

[PNA]

I understand your dilemma completely, however, senile or not, you will convert sooner then later. Your son-in-law is pointing you in the right direction.

The key word in digital photography is speed. With a 1 gigabyte flash card set at raw, I can shoot 178 shots instantly, pop the card into the computer, edit the ones I feel are keepers and print copies while waiting for film to be processed at the local "wal-mart" and then having to scan. Unless you have them put directly on a disk, but then you loose resolution in the jpg format from "wal-mart".

By the way, the learning curve for photoshop is a u-turn. Very time consuming, but the results are great.

As I told you, my F3 and F5 have been hung up with respect and full honers......

 

[danalec99]

So I guess I'm asking where is the sin in a hybred system.

Who said hybrid is sin?
And why on earth would your neighbor's opinion affect you, when you know that your path works for you?
Check out this interview with this very busy 'hybrid' wedding photographer (in his 20's, if I'm not mistaken) from California. He's actually a member here.

Pick any topic, there will always be two or more sides. So what?

 

[mysteryscribe]

Ah the thread isn't so much about me changing how I do things. It's more about how people see things. I'm not quite sure how things got changed. Actually I knew it was going to happen, but it still took me by surprise.

The argument originally went that digital photographers weren't real photographers. At the time digi was in it's infancy that was true. However when serious photographers went to digital for all the right reasons, those mentioned here, somehow those of us who stayed with film started to become old fashioned and behind the times. Stuck in a rut was how I heard it. The point is I think that even if you shoot it in film and don't have a lot of use for fancy digital techniques, you still can't ignore what is happening. We are all involved in digital photography or we might as well hang up all our equipment. It's easier for me to use the parts that fit me.

I like the quote from above, it's still about the image no matter what you did to get it on paper or on the web. It's the final image that counts.

And no I don't really care what clothes my neighbor wears.

So I think rather than what it sounds like it's more a look at where we are now and our attitudes. The tolerance weight has not switched from film users tolerating digital users to digital users tolerating us. I find that switch in just a few years hilarious.

 

[blackdoglab]

I might be adding gas to the fire here, but i see no reason to go to digital.

1. Film is not dead da**it, and I prefer the look of it
2. Digital seems cold and sanitized to me. I like a camera with personality and humility.
3. It's part of my personality.

I don't want to draw fire from digital folks here. I see both as tools with valid advantages and disadvantages. I'll put it another way.... hammers and screwdrivers. They both drive a metal rod into a piece of wood to connect parts of a structure.

Now, I have to explain something. My worst experiences in camera shops and talking to photographers has been with digital folks. I'm not saying that YOU are like this, but these encounters have left a bad taste in my mouth. In summary of these experiences, I have been told the following...

1. Digital is better, film is dead
2. Anything you can get with film, you can do in photoshop
3. it's new, therefore it has to be better
4. you NEED auto everything...

Again, I want to reiterate that these are not characteristic of most folks who use digital.

Sometimes I feel like the world is dictating to me what to shoot and what tools to use. Camera companies put out glossy ads and commercials claiming that it's the camera that takes the picture. If you've seen Nikon's ad for the d40, you know what I mean. I have to be honest that i've felt the same way with film as well. I once had an experience when I asked a big-wig employee of a large camera store in which I asked if they had any kits or paper for cyanotypes. He looked at me coldly and told me to adjust the color towards cyan in photoshop. In other words, I occasionally feel as if I've been offered a club sandwich when I wanted a reuben. Yeah, the club sandwich is fine and good, and many folks like them, but just give me the d**n reuben.

 

[Seefutlung]

It is sad that people get all hung up on equipment. Equipment is fun ... easy to talk about ... but none of that real matters ... in the end what does matters is that one is capable of attaining their pre-visualized image with the equipment they have. (I won't open the Pandora's Box of lack of attainment.)

Gotta tell ya ... I used to be a press photog back in the film only days ... when auto was a car ... not a switch on a lens or camera ... and I love digital. I don't see a significant difference between the two ... maybe I'm not as particular as you film guys/gals ... but I just don't see it.

What is disappointing is that the darkroom really divided the professionals (we're speaking of skill level not an accounting term) from the hobbyist. To quote the avatar of a photog on another forum ... "Nowadays everyone is a friggin' photographer."

Time and time again I read threads which start "Got my first Wedding to shoot this weekend ... what lens is good for a wedding?" or Equal... digital has lowered the bar for those claoming to be a "Photographer".

Gary

 

[mysteryscribe]

Mostly I was thinking pretty much what someone else just said. The photo world has shifted on it's axis. It has always been about who had the biggest lens, but now it's gotten meaner somehow I think. Now it isn't just a pentax is inferior to a Nikon. It's more, if you don't get with the f'm program, you can't be a real photographer.

Back to the image. Both images from digital cameras and film cameras are acceptable to me, but I do think there is a warmth factor more than just sharpness. Mostly the problem with photographs is the poor composition which has nothing to do with the camera at all.

That said we see more trash because it is easier to post it, not because there is more of it. Most of us worked in the dark most of our professional lives. Now everyone knows everything everyone else does. We can't wait to shove it on line so that we can pat ourselves on the back. Everybody thinks they do everything better than everyone else.

What there is though is a new dummy down mentality. Lower and lower standards as long as the photographer has a big lens. In general people judge the photographer by the equipment he carries.

Weston had to punch holes in cardboard to make apertures for his camera. Imagine me taking a camera I built to a wedding. There would be a lynching. I mean I always wanted to be hung but not that way.

Try to tell someone the image they shot needs this or that and eventually someone will tell you to go to hell. I didn't really want critique, I wanted you to tell me how great I am.

 

[Nein-reis]

I'm a digitral user, but I hate to hear that "film is dead" there is something about film photography that has a certain heart to it. I don't have skill/time to use a dark room and I wouldn't trust my processing to a walmart employee. Yet there is something behind a film photograph that the 1's and 0's of digital cant reproduce. And for you to stick true to film photography professionaly shows me there is still hope to the future of photography.

I have a degree in graphic design, in class I learned what a photo can be, not what it is. Now I'm in my first year of Photography and I'm learning what a photo can be before its taken. It just tells me where photography came from and that we shouldn't pay homage to it, because it shouldn't be dead. But in the end, its the photographer not film, digital, or even the camera that makes the photo... It's the photographer and thats what seperates a user from a photographer.

"Hybrid photo's" as you call them, isn't giving up on film or even you transending into the digital relm. I believe its just a way for you to take advantage of new technology to better your film techniques. You still load the film before you process it. so 90%+ of the photo is done before it hits a darkroom or computer.

 

[terri]

This horse is so dead, he's beginning to reek and draw flies. The biting kind.

Yet, you continue to beat him. I ought to report you to the authorities.

 

[mysteryscribe]

NO terri I respectfully disagree. This isnt about which is better. It's about the reality of the world as it is. There has not been a single harsh word here and we have had both digital and film photographers weighing in. This is probably the most thoughtful discussion of how things really are I've ever been in.

It might not last, but hiding from the realities of life doesnt make them go away. It's finding the common ground that makes for understanding.

 

[blackdoglab]

This horse is so dead, he's beginning to reek and draw flies. The biting kind.

Yet, you continue to beat him. I ought to report you to the authorities.
__________________

Actually, this thread has been rather useful to me. i've had a chance to vent, release my homicidal feelings, and write a pithy letter to a retailer. I think most of the conflict between film and digital is caused by salespeople who don't know a thing about photography, overenthusiastic but somewhat ignorant people who spend more time playing warhammer than making pictures, salespeople who want more in comission, and annoying camera ads.

 

[terri]

Then there's boring old me, who has no argument whatsoever with digital folks, because I don't use it and I don't care.

I just can't figure out why these debates and discussions continue to show up in the alternative photographic techniques forum, when a photographic discussion forum is over there --->> someplace.

Haven't seen a cool image yet!

 

[mysteryscribe]

never mind just shut it down and be done with it.

ps how do you get your images here smoke signal. Like it or not everytime we scan an image for here, we are in the digital world.

And film is quickly becoming an alternate process that was my point at the first of this thread.