Film to Digital

<p>Did the transition to digital photography change your ovedrall perception of photography? Did your expectations change? The way you look at images? I think for me the answer is yes, to all those and to many other questions. When I look at a photograph (remember film?) I no longer see what I used to see.</p>

<p>No</p>

<p>What changed for me was the learning curve in aspects I hadn't really spent a lot of time with....the introduction of digital gave me nearly instant feedback so I could quickly observe changes. In terms of how I view a picture .... no change.</p>

<p>Andrew, what do you no longer see? How has digital changed your perception of photography? How have your expectations changed? How has the way in which you look at images changed?</p>

<p>Oddly, almost not at all.</p>

<p>About like Stephen Lewis, the instant feedback was great. But I hadn't been crippled without it.</p>

<p>I might even shoot a little less, on a subject where I'm unsure. With film, I'd bracket a little bit, when shooting exposures of odd subjects (white cat in snow, etc). Now, I take my best guess. Take a shot. Look at results, take second shot, and usually nail it.</p>

<p>Not for me. But I would like to hear your answers to Fred's questions.</p>

<p>Related to Fred's questions - I like to quiz people looking at my photos whether they think they're film or digital capture. Since I shoot both, the answer isn't known by the viewer. Usually people try to guess, based on asect ratio (figuring a square or a big pano are old fashioned, and thus, film). But it's more common that they get it wrong.</p>

Not really. Photography us...photography, to me its just a medium of

expression.

<p>Andrew, maybe I'm not addressing the subject you intended, but it seems to me a lot of the.pleasure is gone with digital. My film of choice was usually Kodachrome, the film may have been in the camera for a month or so, then out for processing for a week and when I came home and saw the little yellow box on the front hall table it gave me pleasurable anticipation. Some of the pictures I would have forgotten about, there were hits and misses. maybe a miss on a shot I really wanted, but altogether a positive experience with a sense of closure. Digital photography leads to some time on the computer to try to improve and finalize all my shots but seldom a sense of closure.</p>

<p>Digital did change one thing: It made me a better editor.</p>

My "overall perception of photography" has not changed, nor has the way that I look at images. My expectations have

changed a bit because digital cameras let me do things that I was not able to do before. One example would be the

ability to shoot clean, detailed, non-grainy images at high ISO settings. Film still lets me do a few things that digital

cannot, such as star trails in a single exposure, graceful overexposure of backgrounds, and of course reviewing my

chromes on a light table.

 

My approach to composition evolved and improved when I gained the ability to review images right away. Exposure

has been made easier in some obscure situations, but it has become more tricky in other instances. I still prefer the

look of film for photos that contain a lot of bright white for example.

<p>Digital technology has actually widened my perception of photography. There are lots of options to become creative with the available digital tools. This is not to say I have abandoned film all together. With digital, I have more tools to convey my imagination into images I could share with others.</p>

<p>The only real thing that has changed when I went digital, is occasional multi-frame shooting. Sometimes to assure getting my best shot, I'll burn a digital roll of 24 quickly, with no added cost or consequence except editing.<br /><br />The odd thing is I still feel guilty, like I'm wasting film. On the flip side, being able to quickly review and compensate has saved my butt many times over.</p>

<p> I spend more and enjoy it less.</p>

"Did the transition to digital photography change your ovedrall perception of photography?"

 

Yes. As a result I went back to film.

<p>For me, they're both photography roughly the way stamp and shell collecting are both collecting. I like film. I don't dislike digital, I'm just not into it.</p>

<p>For me, it has changed. But it's not due to digital cameras, but rather the new role of the computer in today's photography. But this is said from my particular point of view. I never printed my own photographs in a darkroom. When I got a transparency that I really liked, I took it to a lab and they made a print directly from the slide. Simple as that. They didn't change the color temperature, didn't change any colors, didn't remove anything from the photo, didn't add anything to the photo, etc. etc. The print looked like the original transparency, and the original transparency was pretty close to the original scene (differences were primarily due to shutter speed, depth of field, use of a polarizing filter, and film characteristics). </p>

<p>Today it is so easy to do so much with the computer that it makes my old process seem "quaint." We've broadened the scope of photography to include the relatively new realm of "digital art." Some photographs owe their existence more to a computer than to a camera. Some photographs depict things that have never existed except in the mind of the photographer / digital artist. While darkroom tricks have existed in the past (e.g., the depiction of "spirits"), it has never been as widespread as it is today. In the past, it required expertise in a darkroom. Today, it requires moving some sliders on commonly available software on a household computer.</p>

<p>I have great respect and admiration for those who are skilled at using software to affect a digital image. What I struggle with, however, is trying to define the difference between "traditional" photography (yes, I'm well aware of Ansel Adams' work and his declarations) and digital art. There is a long, continuous path from a "straight" photograph and a purely computer-based image, and there are many, many gradations along the way and no bright line separating the two endpoints. In the past, viewers of my photographs never asked, "Is it real?" Now they do. They don't know the extent to which a photograph represents a real experience I had versus the extent to which I created a scene using computer technology.</p>

<p>Some folks react to this by saying it's only the image that counts, that it's only our emotional and/or aesthetic reaction that counts, and it doesn't matter how the image was made. I don't agree with that. I believe there is a difference between an image that primarily represents a real experience and an image that primarily represents work on the computer.</p>

<p>To use an example that I've used in the past: I've been trying for about 5 years to get a photo of a nearly full moon coming up from behind Mount Rainier. This happens only twice each year from my particular vantage point, once in the spring and again in the fall. Because of western Washington's notorious cloud cover, I have not yet been successful. Someday I hope I will capture this scene and my experience of witnessing this scene in a photograph. Now, I could take a photo of a nearly full moon rising on an evening when there is no cloud cover, and I could take a photograph of Mount Rainier in the same manner. If I were sufficiently skilled with the computer, I could merge these two photographs and have my photo of a nearly full moon coming up from behind Rainier.</p>

<p>It might look exactly like the photo I eventually hope to get. People may have strong emotional and aesthetic reactions to the created photo. But when they ask, "Is it real?", I would have to say no. I could tell them how I created the photo, and the photo of the moon is real and the photo of Rainier is real, but the scene which I'm depicting in my created photograph is not real in the sense that I didn't experience it. To some viewers it would make no difference, but to others it would.</p>

<p>This kind of manipulation is ubiquitous, and in that sense the world of photography is very different today than it was before the advent of personal computer. It's not that I no longer see what I used to see, but rather now I'm not sure what I'm seeing. Is it real in the sense of it represents a real experience? Or does it largely depend on the computer for its existence? At what point does a photographer become a digital artist, and at what point does a digital artist become a photographer? Please don't tell me they are the same, because someone who went to school for several years to learn digital art and has a degree in digital art might be offended, and rightly so. IMO, of course.</p>

<p>Archie, well said. And that's my point.</p>

<p>All jobs are still shot on film. Any digital presentation is after the fact.</p>

<p>It made me appreciate film so I went back to it.</p>

<p>Well said Archie - I think the driving force for media is the convenience, being able to transmit images instantly, as well as see what you shot quickly. Aesthetics aside, I can't imagine going back to film and being "limited" to 24/36 shots, digital re-awakened my passion for photography and has made me a better photographer. No offense to the film lovers. I too am amazed at the skills of the Photoshop experts and digital artists. The computer has become the darkroom and a much more complicated one at that, almost TOO many choices!</p>

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<p>digital re-awakened my passion for photography and has made me a better photographer. No offense to the film lovers.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It did exactly the same for me. I was hardly photographing anything before I bought a Nikon D100. Unfortunately, I hated the amount of time spent at a computer so I started buying film cameras from 35mm up to 5"x4", bought an enlarger and built a darkroom. </p>

<p>No offence taken.</p>

Digital has brought back the joy of photography for me, simply put. I had pretty much given up on the cost of trying to

shoot film and wait for days or weeks to figure out whether I had done well. Digital uses tools I know and use every

day at home and at work, adds great cameras and lenses readily available, provides instant feedback and gives me

the ability to "develop" and print at home whenever I have few minutes. It has brought back the pleasure that was

pretty much gone.

<p>In film days I especially loved the visual and physical experience of handling the more compact and reasonably-priced Pentax M Series cameras with their wonderful Super Multi-coated Takumar primes. For film I was mostly drawn to the particular color palette of Elite Chrome 100 and the creaminess of C-41 B&W films, with their seemingly limitless latitude. For me the biggest change is that now I view images almost exclusively on the Mac monitor. I've also developed a deep appreciation for the workflow of raw conversions. I do miss the cult of handling certain film cameras and the personalities of specific emulsions. I try not to think of that too often and then am happy.</p>

<p>I no longer think of photography as "capturing the visual reality". It's much more now about "using the equipment to paint something". That's one thing. And the expectations are different. With film you pretty much took the result for what it was. Now, the result is only the beginning of the process. Now, looking at photographs, I'm not sure how the artist arrived at the final product. Was it blurred? Was it sharpened? Are these the colors that were present? How much of this image is the photograph and how much of it is digital manipulation? And as a result the way you look at a photograph has changed. For me it did.</p>