BS thread...

[terri]

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

I disagree! Film is film; you shoot it, develop it, make prints from it. It's the older analog processes done with negatives that are considered alt these days: solarization, bromoil, platinum/palladium prints. Or even glass plates. Alt is in, and that's always a good thing.

I don't disagree about hybrid approaches, Charlie; we've been scanning our images to pop them online for years now. Nothing new about it.

PS And don't be so cranky!

 

[mysteryscribe]

Me cranky not a chance.

Alternate process by it's name is anything outside the normal prevailing and accepted photo practice. I can see a time when film photography is considered an elitist foto process. Just like the guys who shoot glass plate photography.

Only time will tell. But I'm not signing any death certificates and this thread wasn't about that. It was about being able to continue shooting film and still take advantage of technology. Also about the shift in attitudes with the rapid shift in numbers from film to digital.

All things that might not have an alternative implication at the moment but thats what makes all alternative processes. Making a process work with modern technology.

They don't coat the plates with antique chemicals produced in 1890. They might or might not be the same types, but the actual chemicals where manufactured more recently and probably for totally different purposes. In alternate process on a different thread we have discussed using chemicals from a swimming pool company to make fixer.

Anyway I don't want to argue.. this is a very laidback thread. Do whatever you need to do about it. I had forgotten you told me to stop doing this on this thread to be honest. I didn't intentionally do it to spite you.

 

[Seefutlung]

From the photographer viewpoint (as opposed to the snap shooter) I believe that film is the alternative medium. Camera makers are closing down their film lines and going strictly digital. More digital cameras are sold than film (not counting film throw-away cameras.) Just look around ... when I was growing up every town had a camera store. Those stores were able to float just on film developing sales only ... cameras, paper and film was pure profit. Brick camera stores are on the endangered species list ... with no help on the horizon. Pretty soon the only place you can see a music store or camera store will be in a zoo or a third world country. All because of digital. That's realty ... digital has torpedo the film industry. Film is the alternative medium. We are still in a transition period. People still ask if my SLR is digital ... but in a few more years they will probably be asking if my SLR is film.

All of this doesn't make film dead ... or film bad ... or film good. The direction the photographic industry is taking does make film the alternative medium for photography in terms R&D, in terms of equipment and in terms of total marketplace.

Gary

 

[blackdoglab]

I think the camera store has become endangered not because of digital, but because of stores like Walmart or BestBuy. Both of my camera stores went under a good few years before digital gained ground. As for processing, WalGreens and other chains have become strongest mainly because of their marketing. Hey, they can put out more expensive and more widely seen ads than most local camera stores. Granted that most operations do crappy jobs with your prints and camera stores actually take the time to look over each print and correct it.

 

[mysteryscribe]

To be perfectly logical about all this, scanning negatives and digitally editing them, as if they were in a darkroom (more or less), then printing from them is not the same as scanning a finished print to post directly to the web. The true marriage of the two technologies is in the scanning fo negative to post process. That technology is a bit of a blessing in most ways.

It gives the average freelance and wedding photograher a lot more control over his/her product. Many of the reasons you chose a specific film are gone. Post digital processing means a cool film can be warmed, a warm film can be cooled. Sometimes you can kill the grain on a high speed film so yeah I do like some of the benefits a lot. All the while you maintain what I feel is a different look.

I would like to take what good there is from the process, and keep right on using technology I understand. I liked it better when us film guys were the majority, but even then real knowing photographers were a small minority. The other guys just didn't have the voice they do now.

Since digital photography and the wide spread use of forums like this derive from the same source, maybe we have painted digital photography as the culprit in watering down photography. When in honesty it is the ease with which the majority of snap shot makers can flood the market with inferior images and change the public's level of crap acceptance.

Then again maybe I'm worng. Take a look at the wedding and portrait thread and give me your honest unbiased opinion. No naming of names and no examples, as that isn't fair to the posters, but ask yourself would I have seen this type of photographer ten years ago. At least would more than a dozen people have seen it.

On the old throw aways 35mm maybe half a dozen people actually saw those images. Now with the ease of digital hundreds see them and that can't help the perception of new photographers. Especially when people who may or may not know better tell them how grand they are.

 

[terri]

"Alternative photographic practices" have been called such even when film was king; so it's semantics to me. Certain processes come in and out of vogue, sometimes due to product availability (bromoil comes to mind) or what is a new 'discovery' and relatively easy to learn (Polaroid transfers).

You guys can talk about this stuff till the cows come home if it pleases you; I will always dislike seeing the word digital show up in the alt forum, and have a history of transferring these threads to Photo Discussions because it suits them better. It's my quirk, and I cling to it. :mrgreen:

 

[mysteryscribe]

It's also your right... In which case the thread will fall into the hands of hot heads who will turn it into a us vs them thing. It is at this moment a very civil discussion with no one shouting GET OVER IT OLD MAN... seems a shame to toss it to the wolves.

 

[terri]

It's also your right... In which case the thread will fall into the hands of hot heads who will turn it into a us vs them thing. It is at this moment a very civil discussion with no one shouting GET OVER IT OLD MAN... seems a shame to toss it to the wolves.

Oh, it's staying here. I just had to pout about it. I like my alt forum all pure and stinky with chemicals.

Have fun.

 

[mysteryscribe]

thanks, and I have the feeling most of the comments so far are from people who are familier with the stick of fixer and stop bath.

 

[blackdoglab]

I love the smell of fixer in the morning. It smells like... creativity. (it also makes me think of a salad bar)

 

[mysteryscribe]

rotten mayonaise?

 

[blackdoglab]

hey, it could always be the refreshing scent of oxydized d-76 and it's perfume of stale kitty pee.

 

[mysteryscribe]

Sounds likely to me. I aways thought stop bath was the worst.

 

[nealjpage]

As a fairly new face to the photography world (granted, i remember getting my first set of B & W prints from my Kodak Instamatic back in the late '80s), I'm always amazed at how people look at me with my film cameras as some sort of Luddite. I'm always called "old school" and somewhat dismissed as a kook. So, yes, perhaps analog has digressed into the alternative process. I still love it, though!:heart::heart:

 

[nealjpage]

As a fairly new face to the photography world (granted, i remember getting my first set of B & W prints from my Kodak Instamatic back in the late '80s), I'm always amazed at how people look at me with my film cameras as some sort of Luddite. I'm always called "old school" and somewhat dismissed as a kook. So, yes, perhaps analog has digressed into the alternative process. I still love it, though!:heart::heart:

By the way: I got B & W prints from that old 124 Instamatic not for artistic reasons but rather because it was cheaper than color prints. So maybe even back then black and white photography had already moved towards the alternative processes...