Has Photography become more or less complicated

[GDHLEWIS]

Morning, afternoon good evening,

During my last alcohol fueled philosophical discussion with a mate of mine the subject of how complicated has photography become? Is it more or less complicated now in the Digital age or was it more complicated during the film era?

Personally I think the digital age has made things far more complicated when it comes down to after the shot has been taken. Film was more complicated for actually taking the shot, if you messed up the exposure you wouldn't know until it had been processed and printed. But these days once the shots taken you most likely delve in to the world of Photoshop or other such software, then comes the flikr and other such websites, then comes copyright madness. Film from what I understand was a lot less prone to copyright infringement as the photographer has the original negative. Computer files are easier to duplicate, plus law regarding photo's and photographers these days seem to becoming a little gray around the edges to me.
Today just the vast amount of choice that is available for equipment and accessories is just mind boggling, was it the same 20+ years ago? The digital age has from what I understand made things significantly cheaper and far easier for people to give photograph a try utterly saturating the world with a multitude of so called professional photographers making it impossible for the average persons to know who or what to expect when hiring.
These days Photographers are not only expected to be the Photographer, but the Editor, head of Marketing and customer relations officer taking more and more time away from the art of Photography was this also the case 20+ years back?


What does every one else think?

 

[SCraig]

Photography has always been as complicated as one wants to make it. We were able to buy "Box" cameras in the old days or point-and-shoot today. We were able to buy SLR's in the old days or DSLR's today. We were able to do darkroom work in the old days and software work today. As I did all my own darkroom work back in the old days I really think that, if anything, photography is simpler today.

 

[table1349]

I think you should drink less.

Cameras are just tools. The tools may change but the job is still the same.

 

[KmH]

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adob...ly/prophotographer/pdfs/pscs3_renderprint.pdf

Camera rendering
“Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.”
– Donald Knuth

The complexities of traditional photography made advances in rendering automation occur
at a very slow pace. Even as researchers figured out what the “average” consumer wanted, figuring out chemistry and processes that would do this was tedious and inexact. Sometimes only
approximations could be achieved. Also, cameras couldn’t send data about the scene or the
photographer’s preferences with each picture to the printer. An unhappy consumer had to send
a picture back to the lab, with notes, to get a better print. Automated systems couldn’t tell that
you wanted the foreground brighter because of backlighting, and they almost always got this wrong.
The digital camera changed everything. In a blink of an eye, 100 years of world-wide color science
research could be applied with much greater ease. You didn’t need to spend years figuring out the
magic chemistry to change the way skin tones are rendered, for instance. You just programmed
the change.
Changes made for skin tones no longer need to affect other colors. The automated systems created
for the quick labs can now be put into the camera itself. When the picture is taken, the camera
can analyze the scene and choose a rendering mode. Those modes can be very complex and far
better than anything a quick lab could do. Additional information is also now available to make
decisions. A light sensor on the camera can read the color of the predominant light source and
set the camera with optimized outdoor, indoor, or sports photgraphy settings. The autofocus can
inform the rendering system of distance information. If you’re outdoors and the whole scene is at
infinity, the camera might assume you’re shooting a landscape and set the rendering accordingly.

The catch
When a digital camera renders its image and stores a JPEG, what you have in your possession is
an output-referred image ready for printing. If all you want to do is print the image as the camera
created it, all is well. However, if you wish a different rendering of the scene with the same quality,
you’re out of luck. The JPEG is a print; it has already been rendered.
In a film workflow, if you received a print from the lab with blown out highlights, would you
send them the print to fix? Of course not. You’d send the negative or slide to reprint. The outputreferred JPEG no longer contains the highlight data or dynamic range that would have been
present in the raw data. There’s no way to recover it.
Camera JPEG rendering is a destructive process. First, the exposure window is set, determining
which part of the scene highlight or shadow data should be thrown away. Then, the adjustment
curves and color shifts are applied to move the image state from scene-referred to outputreferred. The final step is to reduce the image data from the thousands of shades captured by the
sensor (generally 12 bits per pixel) to only the amount needed for final printing (generally 8 bits.)
Even if we knew the original correction curve that had been used, we could not reverse it. A large
portion of the original scene data is gone.

 

[runnah]

It's so much easier now. No chemicals, no waiting, no expensive film or worrying about exposing or ruining rolls. Time that was spent in darkroom is halved by sitting in front of the computer and it is much more comfortable and relaxing.

 

[Ilovemycam]

OP...don't know. but i can say I would have never been able to blast away as much with film as I do with digital. And for complicated? Try spending 2 days making a dye transfer print when you can make a ink jet that equals or betters it in 5 minutes.

 

[sm4him]

In an interesting coincidence, my answer to your question is pretty alcohol-fueled as well.

I'd say it's easier, at least when you consider the ENTIRE process. Having shot film back in the 60s and 70s, I'd definitely say it's far easier for ME today, than it was back then.
As Scott mentioned, it was then, and now, as easy or as complicated as you want to make it.

But for me, some of the major differences that make it easier today:
1) Not having to concern myself with how many shots I have. Back then, I was a kid, a teenager, a young adult--I was broke. Film cost money, and I often only had a roll or two with me. Even on vacation, I might have a total of 3 36-exposure rolls. So, I had to consider every time I went to actuate the shutter whether THAT was a shot worthy of the limited number of exposures I had. Today, I just snap away, with no concern about running out of "film."
2) Post processing. I find it FAR easier to process on the computer than I ever found it in the darkroom. For one thing, I couldn't see a thing in there! (My eyesight was ALWAYS bad--wore glasses since 2nd grade!). So, once I processed a photo, that was it. It was going to look that way FORever. Today, I process a raw file, post it here and then sometimes, based on what others say about it, or based on my own mood at the time, I decide to change it. I can go in and change it completely...AND--and this is really critical, imo--I can do it WHILE STILL WATCHING THE FOOTBALL GAME. :lmao:

Edit: I had a #3 when I started typing...but I've forgotten what it was, and I've also typed way too many words twice and three times trying to spell them right (see reference to alcohol-fueled response, lol), so I quit.

 

[runnah]

Not to mention that setting up a dark room was expensive and a pain in the ass. Now it's just a PC or a laptop.

 

[usayit]

Its easier.

It has resulted in opening up the hobby to more people of a all sorts of interest, commitment, and skill levels.

From a learning standpoint, seeing immediate results and experimenting is far easier.

 

[limr]

I'm the first to admit that when I read discussions about various techniques used in post-processing software, I go all cross-eyed. When I read the technical specs for a DSLR, I go all cross-eyed. This stuff can seem quite complicated to be sure.

But does it all make photography more complicated? I'd say no. When talking about higher quality art or commercial photography, the process from start to finish has probably stayed at the same level of overall complexity; it's just changed the details of the process. Instead of types of mechanical shutters, film emulsions, developers, and printing processes and materials, etc., you're dealing with sensors, pixels, layers, vectors, curves, and noise reduction...And of course that's not even talking about glass on either the film or digital side. Either way, it's going to seem complicated once you go beyond a novice stage and start getting into more substantive skills.

But when you're talking about the average person picking it up as a hobby or just taking snaps of family and vacations? Then the process has become infinitely less complicated for sure.

 

[TCampbell]

Absolutely no question that photography has gotten much easier. You can do things with digital (which make digital complex) but you have to consider how complicated it would have been to do those SAME things with film. We do things today without a whole lot of thought that would have been pretty daunting to do with film cameras and darkrooms.

It's definitely a LOT more "instant" now. In the days of film, the film had to be developed. Some film had to be prepped, sensitized, shot, and developed fairly quickly (wet-plate Collodion process) or it was ruined.

Dry film eventually replaced that so you weren't on a race against the clock, but still... you HAD to know how to get correct exposures otherwise you'd develop the film (long after the event where you shot the film was done) to see your results -- and it would often be too late to do anything about it if you screwed up. You tended to learn from your mistakes a bit more quickly because a mistake was a much more time consuming and expensive than it is today.

Recently I checked the numbers for the cost to buy, develop, and print a roll of film using a service to process the film. It was around $15/roll. After about 30 rolls you've spent enough money to buy an entry level body and lens. In the long run, digital is certainly a lot less expensive.

 

[molested_cow]

Instead of "then" and "now", you mean "film" and "digital"? Cus if you practice film photography I think the same rules apply then and now.

So to me it's not the matter of more or less, but simply different. Time wise, there's less waiting, but like mentioned earlier in the thread, it's as complicated as you make it.

 

[peter27]

Recently I checked the numbers for the cost to buy, develop, and print a roll of film using a service to process the film. It was around $15/roll. After about 30 rolls you've spent enough money to buy an entry level body and lens. In the long run, digital is certainly a lot less expensive.

You aren't comparing like with like in this equation. An entry level DSLR with kit lens is going to have issues with build and image quality and will only have a crop sensor. How many rolls before you hit a high-end camera with good glass, a full frame sensor and that will still be working 30 years from now? I'm not so sure that digital is less expensive when you compare on an even field.

 

[gsgary]

It's so much easier now. No chemicals, no waiting, no expensive film or worrying about exposing or ruining rolls. Time that was spent in darkroom is halved by sitting in front of the computer and it is much more comfortable and relaxing.

And boring and you end up with smooth plastic looking shots

 

[gsgary]

Brian Duffy could do some fancy things with film Google Image Result for http://default.media.ipcdigital.co.uk/11134/000001f4d/2363/BH-bird-cage.jpg