Digital technology ruined photography for me, or did people ruin it? (or both)

[gsgary]

I've shot enough film (both positive and negative, b/w & colour) and have enough prints to fill many boxes, picture albums and shelves. I've developed my own film and printed thousands of prints. But in the end, digital was the tool that helped me improve my photography the most, as it provided instant feedback and shortened the cycle of trial and error and eventual success. I learned how to bounce flash and how to combine ambient with flash by using digital to give me instant feedback as to what worked and what didn't. Digital also allowed me to re-shoot on site when my first try didn't work. With film, I've missed many opportunities because I had the focus off, or the exposure, or something else. So from a learning perspective, it's hard to do better than digital.

I bet you don't print as much now you shoot digital most at our club just have them on the hard drive, when your hard drive fails or in 10 years when they are not readable you will still have your box of negs

 

[Garbz]

Gary how is not looking after your bits and different from not looking after your negs?

A house fire will kill your negs, just like a lightning strike will kill your harddisk. If anything it is easier to now ensure your photos will last longer than ever before. Just use open standard formats, and use redundancy + backup + checksumming to store them, and diversify their locations to protect them from weather and environment.

 

[gsgary]

Gary how is not looking after your bits and different from not looking after your negs?

A house fire will kill your negs, just like a lightning strike will kill your harddisk. If anything it is easier to now ensure your photos will last longer than ever before. Just use open standard formats, and use redundancy + backup + checksumming to store them, and diversify their locations to protect them from weather and environment.

House fire are not very common over here, digital will cost more in the end plus I find editing on the computer very boring

 

[Fred Berg]

I've shot enough film (both positive and negative, b/w & colour) and have enough prints to fill many boxes, picture albums and shelves. I've developed my own film and printed thousands of prints. But in the end, digital was the tool that helped me improve my photography the most, as it provided instant feedback and shortened the cycle of trial and error and eventual success. I learned how to bounce flash and how to combine ambient with flash by using digital to give me instant feedback as to what worked and what didn't. Digital also allowed me to re-shoot on site when my first try didn't work. With film, I've missed many opportunities because I had the focus off, or the exposure, or something else. So from a learning perspective, it's hard to do better than digital.

I don't agree that digital is better to learn with. With film you have no EXIF details available at a click of a mouse, so you have to write things down and make notes. This very process is a crucial link in the learning chain, IMO, and it is missing in the digital age.

A similar phenomenon occurs when people google for information. On the one hand it is very quick and useful, but this stuff is forgotten again in no time at all. Going to the library and using the index cards to find the books you need and then jotting down notes when you find what you're looking for is slower, but that info will still be in your head in 10 years' time.

 

[Village Idiot]

Gary how is not looking after your bits and different from not looking after your negs?

A house fire will kill your negs, just like a lightning strike will kill your harddisk. If anything it is easier to now ensure your photos will last longer than ever before. Just use open standard formats, and use redundancy + backup + checksumming to store them, and diversify their locations to protect them from weather and environment.

House fire are not very common over here, digital will cost more in the end plus I find editing on the computer very boring

I have to disagree with this, well about cost anyways. Beyond the initial cost of the computer, a 2TB HDD can be had for $100. That will should store about 40,000 25 MB, assuming that my math is correct and going based on the conversion of 100KB = 1MB, 1000MB = 1GB instead of the actual conversion. Even buying two 2TB HDDs as backups, you couldn’t even shoot 40,000 frames of film for $300 anymore, let alone print or store.

Now editing on the computer may not be exciting to people, but the ability you have to edit and the ease is much greater. I find myself sometimes having to walk away from more time consuming edits for a little while. It took me about 3-4 hours over the course of a couple days to edit out the car rig suction cups and pole from a photo when I was first learning. It’s a very tedious process. I don’t see how that could have been done pre-digital days though.

I've shot enough film (both positive and negative, b/w & colour) and have enough prints to fill many boxes, picture albums and shelves. I've developed my own film and printed thousands of prints. But in the end, digital was the tool that helped me improve my photography the most, as it provided instant feedback and shortened the cycle of trial and error and eventual success. I learned how to bounce flash and how to combine ambient with flash by using digital to give me instant feedback as to what worked and what didn't. Digital also allowed me to re-shoot on site when my first try didn't work. With film, I've missed many opportunities because I had the focus off, or the exposure, or something else. So from a learning perspective, it's hard to do better than digital.

I don't agree that digital is better to learn with. With film you have no EXIF details available at a click of a mouse, so you have to write things down and make notes. This very process is a crucial link in the learning chain, IMO, and it is missing in the digital age.

A similar phenomenon occurs when people google for information. On the one hand it is very quick and useful, but this stuff is forgotten again in no time at all. Going to the library and using the index cards to find the books you need and then jotting down notes when you find what you're looking for is slower, but that info will still be in your head in 10 years' time.

People still do this in the age of digital. It was mentioned as a great tool on David Hobby’s Strobist blog about keeping a lighting journal to record your shoots so you could go back and look at it. EXIF doesn’t tell you the whole story and for someone that’s not as experienced or even certain photos, you might not necessarily be able to tell where the light sources are coming from in a photo. Also, writing down the flash powers and everything else can be crucial to learning how to set up your lights without firing a ton of test shots.

I did what would be considered a bad thing if I were doing a paid shoot last weekend. I showed up with brand new lighting equipment and spent about 15 minutes dialing in powers and trying to figure out all the buttons on the SB-910 whereas with my Canon flashes, I would have had them set up and dialed in in 2-3 shots. It’s a good thing that was a shoot for a friend and not for a client and that’s precisely why I did it there instead of during a paying shoot. But keeping notes of where the powers are at on the new flashes, I’ll be able to set up and shoot more quickly in the future.

 

[gsgary]

Gary how is not looking after your bits and different from not looking after your negs?

A house fire will kill your negs, just like a lightning strike will kill your harddisk. If anything it is easier to now ensure your photos will last longer than ever before. Just use open standard formats, and use redundancy + backup + checksumming to store them, and diversify their locations to protect them from weather and environment.

House fire are not very common over here, digital will cost more in the end plus I find editing on the computer very boring

I have to disagree with this, well about cost anyways. Beyond the initial cost of the computer, a 2TB HDD can be had for $100. That will should store about 40,000 25 MB, assuming that my math is correct and going based on the conversion of 100KB = 1MB, 1000MB = 1GB instead of the actual conversion. Even buying two 2TB HDDs as backups, you couldn’t even shoot 40,000 frames of film for $300 anymore, let alone print or store.

Now editing on the computer may not be exciting to people, but the ability you have to edit and the ease is much greater. I find myself sometimes having to walk away from more time consuming edits for a little while. It took me about 3-4 hours over the course of a couple days to edit out the car rig suction cups and pole from a photo when I was first learning. It’s a very tedious process. I don’t see how that could have been done pre-digital days though.

I've shot enough film (both positive and negative, b/w & colour) and have enough prints to fill many boxes, picture albums and shelves. I've developed my own film and printed thousands of prints. But in the end, digital was the tool that helped me improve my photography the most, as it provided instant feedback and shortened the cycle of trial and error and eventual success. I learned how to bounce flash and how to combine ambient with flash by using digital to give me instant feedback as to what worked and what didn't. Digital also allowed me to re-shoot on site when my first try didn't work. With film, I've missed many opportunities because I had the focus off, or the exposure, or something else. So from a learning perspective, it's hard to do better than digital.

I don't agree that digital is better to learn with. With film you have no EXIF details available at a click of a mouse, so you have to write things down and make notes. This very process is a crucial link in the learning chain, IMO, and it is missing in the digital age.

A similar phenomenon occurs when people google for information. On the one hand it is very quick and useful, but this stuff is forgotten again in no time at all. Going to the library and using the index cards to find the books you need and then jotting down notes when you find what you're looking for is slower, but that info will still be in your head in 10 years' time.

People still do this in the age of digital. It was mentioned as a great tool on David Hobby’s Strobist blog about keeping a lighting journal to record your shoots so you could go back and look at it. EXIF doesn’t tell you the whole story and for someone that’s not as experienced or even certain photos, you might not necessarily be able to tell where the light sources are coming from in a photo. Also, writing down the flash powers and everything else can be crucial to learning how to set up your lights without firing a ton of test shots.

I did what would be considered a bad thing if I were doing a paid shoot last weekend. I showed up with brand new lighting equipment and spent about 15 minutes dialing in powers and trying to figure out all the buttons on the SB-910 whereas with my Canon flashes, I would have had them set up and dialed in in 2-3 shots. It’s a good thing that was a shoot for a friend and not for a client and that’s precisely why I did it there instead of during a paying shoot. But keeping notes of where the powers are at on the new flashes, I’ll be able to set up and shoot more quickly in the future.

What about when you buy new cameras + I wouldn't want a hard drive for more than 5 years before I moved them to a new one will your hard drive be compatible with computers in 10 years time

 

[Village Idiot]

Gary how is not looking after your bits and different from not looking after your negs?

A house fire will kill your negs, just like a lightning strike will kill your harddisk. If anything it is easier to now ensure your photos will last longer than ever before. Just use open standard formats, and use redundancy + backup + checksumming to store them, and diversify their locations to protect them from weather and environment.

House fire are not very common over here, digital will cost more in the end plus I find editing on the computer very boring

I have to disagree with this, well about cost anyways. Beyond the initial cost of the computer, a 2TB HDD can be had for $100. That will should store about 40,000 25 MB, assuming that my math is correct and going based on the conversion of 100KB = 1MB, 1000MB = 1GB instead of the actual conversion. Even buying two 2TB HDDs as backups, you couldn’t even shoot 40,000 frames of film for $300 anymore, let alone print or store.

Now editing on the computer may not be exciting to people, but the ability you have to edit and the ease is much greater. I find myself sometimes having to walk away from more time consuming edits for a little while. It took me about 3-4 hours over the course of a couple days to edit out the car rig suction cups and pole from a photo when I was first learning. It’s a very tedious process. I don’t see how that could have been done pre-digital days though.

I've shot enough film (both positive and negative, b/w & colour) and have enough prints to fill many boxes, picture albums and shelves. I've developed my own film and printed thousands of prints. But in the end, digital was the tool that helped me improve my photography the most, as it provided instant feedback and shortened the cycle of trial and error and eventual success. I learned how to bounce flash and how to combine ambient with flash by using digital to give me instant feedback as to what worked and what didn't. Digital also allowed me to re-shoot on site when my first try didn't work. With film, I've missed many opportunities because I had the focus off, or the exposure, or something else. So from a learning perspective, it's hard to do better than digital.

I don't agree that digital is better to learn with. With film you have no EXIF details available at a click of a mouse, so you have to write things down and make notes. This very process is a crucial link in the learning chain, IMO, and it is missing in the digital age.

A similar phenomenon occurs when people google for information. On the one hand it is very quick and useful, but this stuff is forgotten again in no time at all. Going to the library and using the index cards to find the books you need and then jotting down notes when you find what you're looking for is slower, but that info will still be in your head in 10 years' time.

People still do this in the age of digital. It was mentioned as a great tool on David Hobby’s Strobist blog about keeping a lighting journal to record your shoots so you could go back and look at it. EXIF doesn’t tell you the whole story and for someone that’s not as experienced or even certain photos, you might not necessarily be able to tell where the light sources are coming from in a photo. Also, writing down the flash powers and everything else can be crucial to learning how to set up your lights without firing a ton of test shots.

I did what would be considered a bad thing if I were doing a paid shoot last weekend. I showed up with brand new lighting equipment and spent about 15 minutes dialing in powers and trying to figure out all the buttons on the SB-910 whereas with my Canon flashes, I would have had them set up and dialed in in 2-3 shots. It’s a good thing that was a shoot for a friend and not for a client and that’s precisely why I did it there instead of during a paying shoot. But keeping notes of where the powers are at on the new flashes, I’ll be able to set up and shoot more quickly in the future.

What about when you buy new cameras + I wouldn't want a hard drive for more than 5 years before I moved them to a new one will your hard drive be compatible with computers in 10 years time

Depends on the cost of the camera and how long you keep it for, I guess. I had my 5D MKII for four years, but I sold it and paid an $800 difference between it and the D750 body. HDDs will be compatible in 10 years time unless there is a HUGE shift in technology and all current connection mediums become obsolete and all current computers become eradicated. My gaming PC is probably 6-7 years old and still has the same drives in it as it did from day 1. Plus with SSDs becoming more available at better prices, I'd be less worried about storing one of those for long periods at a time as there are no moving parts to wear down and break.

 

[pgriz]

I've shot enough film (both positive and negative, b/w & colour) and have enough prints to fill many boxes, picture albums and shelves. I've developed my own film and printed thousands of prints. But in the end, digital was the tool that helped me improve my photography the most, as it provided instant feedback and shortened the cycle of trial and error and eventual success. I learned how to bounce flash and how to combine ambient with flash by using digital to give me instant feedback as to what worked and what didn't. Digital also allowed me to re-shoot on site when my first try didn't work. With film, I've missed many opportunities because I had the focus off, or the exposure, or something else. So from a learning perspective, it's hard to do better than digital.

I don't agree that digital is better to learn with. With film you have no EXIF details available at a click of a mouse, so you have to write things down and make notes. This very process is a crucial link in the learning chain, IMO, and it is missing in the digital age.

A similar phenomenon occurs when people google for information. On the one hand it is very quick and useful, but this stuff is forgotten again in no time at all. Going to the library and using the index cards to find the books you need and then jotting down notes when you find what you're looking for is slower, but that info will still be in your head in 10 years' time.

That depends on how one goes about experimenting and learning. In my case, I DO have a notebook for photography, and when trying something new, I do have a plan of action in terms of what my constants and variables will be, and the shooting sequence I will be using. The difference is that now I can see instantly whether an approach I'm taking is getting me where I want to go, and I can adjust my shooting sequence accordingly. With digital, I can also take many more shots than I would if I was doing film, and discard what didn't work.

The EXIF doesn't help me much, because most of my experimenting these days is about lights and lighting technique, which is external to the camera. I still need to record the light configuration I was using, the relative strengths and contributions, and then see which effects I was able to achieve with each setup. Another area of experimentation is the use of the "big stopper", a 10-stop ND filter. The digital feedback I get allows me to make adjustments after each exposure, since I can see if the approach I was taking was giving me the results i wanted. With digital, I can adapt to changing lighting conditions very quickly, verifying if I have properly adjusted to the variations in the light. I've always used a hand-meter, in addition to the meter in the camera, to determine my exposure range and that hasn't changed when I went to digital - but now, I catch my mistakes at the time of the shooting session, and not that evening or several weeks later, when I develop my images.

 

[pgriz]

Gary how is not looking after your bits and different from not looking after your negs?

A house fire will kill your negs, just like a lightning strike will kill your harddisk. If anything it is easier to now ensure your photos will last longer than ever before. Just use open standard formats, and use redundancy + backup + checksumming to store them, and diversify their locations to protect them from weather and environment.

House fire are not very common over here, digital will cost more in the end plus I find editing on the computer very boring

I have to disagree with this, well about cost anyways. Beyond the initial cost of the computer, a 2TB HDD can be had for $100. That will should store about 40,000 25 MB, assuming that my math is correct and going based on the conversion of 100KB = 1MB, 1000MB = 1GB instead of the actual conversion. Even buying two 2TB HDDs as backups, you couldn’t even shoot 40,000 frames of film for $300 anymore, let alone print or store.

Now editing on the computer may not be exciting to people, but the ability you have to edit and the ease is much greater. I find myself sometimes having to walk away from more time consuming edits for a little while. It took me about 3-4 hours over the course of a couple days to edit out the car rig suction cups and pole from a photo when I was first learning. It’s a very tedious process. I don’t see how that could have been done pre-digital days though.

I've shot enough film (both positive and negative, b/w & colour) and have enough prints to fill many boxes, picture albums and shelves. I've developed my own film and printed thousands of prints. But in the end, digital was the tool that helped me improve my photography the most, as it provided instant feedback and shortened the cycle of trial and error and eventual success. I learned how to bounce flash and how to combine ambient with flash by using digital to give me instant feedback as to what worked and what didn't. Digital also allowed me to re-shoot on site when my first try didn't work. With film, I've missed many opportunities because I had the focus off, or the exposure, or something else. So from a learning perspective, it's hard to do better than digital.

I don't agree that digital is better to learn with. With film you have no EXIF details available at a click of a mouse, so you have to write things down and make notes. This very process is a crucial link in the learning chain, IMO, and it is missing in the digital age.

A similar phenomenon occurs when people google for information. On the one hand it is very quick and useful, but this stuff is forgotten again in no time at all. Going to the library and using the index cards to find the books you need and then jotting down notes when you find what you're looking for is slower, but that info will still be in your head in 10 years' time.

People still do this in the age of digital. It was mentioned as a great tool on David Hobby’s Strobist blog about keeping a lighting journal to record your shoots so you could go back and look at it. EXIF doesn’t tell you the whole story and for someone that’s not as experienced or even certain photos, you might not necessarily be able to tell where the light sources are coming from in a photo. Also, writing down the flash powers and everything else can be crucial to learning how to set up your lights without firing a ton of test shots.

I did what would be considered a bad thing if I were doing a paid shoot last weekend. I showed up with brand new lighting equipment and spent about 15 minutes dialing in powers and trying to figure out all the buttons on the SB-910 whereas with my Canon flashes, I would have had them set up and dialed in in 2-3 shots. It’s a good thing that was a shoot for a friend and not for a client and that’s precisely why I did it there instead of during a paying shoot. But keeping notes of where the powers are at on the new flashes, I’ll be able to set up and shoot more quickly in the future.

What about when you buy new cameras + I wouldn't want a hard drive for more than 5 years before I moved them to a new one will your hard drive be compatible with computers in 10 years time

Media compatibility is an issue. But then, there's good "housekeeping" that needs to be done in any case, in that you have to periodically recopy the older files onto new media and have a filing system that allows you to find stuff. The real issue is in video, in that the cassettes and discs become obsolete and as the readers break down, you lose access to the video recording UNLESS you have digitized them and they already reside on hard drives. I have several years of mini-DV tapes that documented my kid's growing up, which are inaccessible, until I find a mini-DV reader that will allow me to transfer the videos to disk. There are studio mini-DV decks available, but they are very expensive, and I'm looking for a cheaper solution, for what will be a one-time transfer process.

 

[Buckster]

I started making my first digital images 21.5 years ago, when I got my first scanner. It was a hand-held black and white scanner with not a lot of resolution, but it was pretty whiz-bang to me in 1993.

The images I scanned with it have been easily moved and migrated, saved and backed up on redundant hard drives, from system to system, and on web servers and now cloud storage ever since, and because of that, I still have those first digital images, even all these many years later.

They are saved in so many locations, both locally and on the web, that the chances of losing them is pretty much zero.

The myth that digital images are subject to easy loss while shoe boxes full of negatives and transparencies are safe is just that - a myth.

 

[bribrius]

I've shot enough film (both positive and negative, b/w & colour) and have enough prints to fill many boxes, picture albums and shelves. I've developed my own film and printed thousands of prints. But in the end, digital was the tool that helped me improve my photography the most, as it provided instant feedback and shortened the cycle of trial and error and eventual success. I learned how to bounce flash and how to combine ambient with flash by using digital to give me instant feedback as to what worked and what didn't. Digital also allowed me to re-shoot on site when my first try didn't work. With film, I've missed many opportunities because I had the focus off, or the exposure, or something else. So from a learning perspective, it's hard to do better than digital.

I don't agree that digital is better to learn with. With film you have no EXIF details available at a click of a mouse, so you have to write things down and make notes. This very process is a crucial link in the learning chain, IMO, and it is missing in the digital age.

A similar phenomenon occurs when people google for information. On the one hand it is very quick and useful, but this stuff is forgotten again in no time at all. Going to the library and using the index cards to find the books you need and then jotting down notes when you find what you're looking for is slower, but that info will still be in your head in 10 years' time.

That depends on how one goes about experimenting and learning. In my case, I DO have a notebook for photography, and when trying something new, I do have a plan of action in terms of what my constants and variables will be, and the shooting sequence I will be using. The difference is that now I can see instantly whether an approach I'm taking is getting me where I want to go, and I can adjust my shooting sequence accordingly. With digital, I can also take many more shots than I would if I was doing film, and discard what didn't work.

The EXIF doesn't help me much, because most of my experimenting these days is about lights and lighting technique, which is external to the camera. I still need to record the light configuration I was using, the relative strengths and contributions, and then see which effects I was able to achieve with each setup. Another area of experimentation is the use of the "big stopper", a 10-stop ND filter. The digital feedback I get allows me to make adjustments after each exposure, since I can see if the approach I was taking was giving me the results i wanted. With digital, I can adapt to changing lighting conditions very quickly, verifying if I have properly adjusted to the variations in the light. I've always used a hand-meter, in addition to the meter in the camera, to determine my exposure range and that hasn't changed when I went to digital - but now, I catch my mistakes at the time of the shooting session, and not that evening or several weeks later, when I develop my images.

still at the point I am using the exif data to look back on and for culling. without even looking into some photos I can delete just looking at the exif data. And this part is much better than film for me as I like manipulating the camera for certain effects on a shot and looking at the exif data occasionally makes it stick. with film I think it was all about getting it "on target". with digital it is about being able to waste five hundred shots to learn your camera more. something I never dared to do with film is blow through countless shutters just to learn something. "i wonder what would happen if I did this?" is something that didnt happen in film. In film I was just happy if I got the shot and it came out but like was mentioned, you didn't even know if it came out until later..

 

[photoguy99]

Negatives survive sloppy housekeeping and carelessness better than digital media. Digital media, especially 'cloud', survive house fires and moves better.

Why, it's almost as if the two media have different strengths and weaknesses.

Me, I embrace the ephemeral nature of life and art.

 

[bribrius]

there is no limit to digital or film, you can shoot both. Have your negatives and have your hard drive and cloud. I have "lost" digital photos before ten years back. I actually ended up going back to a old online account I posted them on to get them (though small crappy sizes better than not having them at all). On the other hand, I have scanned in photos years ago and long lost the negatives, but still have the photos because I had scanned them. so I have old film shots on my backdrive in which I couldn't even tell you what happened to the original negatives they were misplaced over the years.

 

[Designer]

I don't know where this fits, but my wife's family's collection of historical B&W prints and negatives were in a shoebox until her eldest brother burned them.

Those pictures are gone.

 

[Designer]

Last I heard the death toll was 6,

In reading the story, I didn't catch the identity of the lorry driver.

I'm naturally suspicious of anything that seems like it could have been prevented, but somehow wasn't.

They need to study the driver and find out if there was any motive for him to do that on purpose.

Reports are he was slumped over the wheel. In the news here it's suspected that he had a heart attack or other medical problem while at the wheel, though that's not been confirmed yet. I'm hoping it wasn't a pre existing condition. At the moment there is no reason to suspect any other motive and the Police are treating it as an RTC. I doubt they will release the drivers identity until enough evidence is gathered and a decision is made whither or not to charge him with anything.

My concern is that the BBC has become so PC (not police constable) that by the time the investigation is complete in two or three week's time people will have forgotten all about it, and the story will simply disappear.