Letter of the week

I include here a letter that won the prize of letter of the week in

my favourite photo magazine (AP). I hope you like it, I really

recommend it.

:o)) quite funny. In the same time, it does reflect a (sad)fact. Most of the people who try to convince everybody about the superiority of digital, don't know much about the film and film based photography...

Funny because I read a similar letter over a year ago in a different photography magazine (or was it AP as well?). Just shows that not only photographers have to worry about their ideas being recycled...

 

Interesting that once again, a ludite is trying to mock and deride an alternative technology. I can just imagine how the photographers using glass plates must have reacted when cellulose based film came along! troll, troll, troll... :-)

I don't think the writer is trying to mock new technology, rather he is describing the properties of film in the same glowing terms usually reserved for digital. There is certainly not a level playing field in this area.

 

He also doesn't mention another advantage of film conveniently ignored by the digital faction - the ability to produce transparencies.

There are undoubtedly advantages and disadvantages to both mediums that make both better or worse for different purposes. However, the issue that I see is like the change that occured with the creation of colour negative film. I look at the photos taken when I was a child, and the slides and B&W photos are like new, while the colour shots naturally are fading, and in another 20 years will probably be unrecogniseable.

 

The problem with digital is that this will be accelerated. The millions of photos across the world held only on people's hard drives are just waiting to be wiped, if not by accident or virus, then through technology advancement. We can still print shots taken by Ansel Adams from his original negatives, but digital information collected just 15 years ago can in many cases not be read by current systems.

 

Now there will always (probably) be someone able to convert those ancient images on your antique CD's to the latest and greatest memory chip, but personally, I would prefer to be able to simply pick up the data on a transparency and just look back in time in wonderment.

 

Digicams are great for instant gratification in a world where waiting is no longer tolerated.

 

Finally, it just appeals to me to be using old stuff - it's just cool to have a camera that I can repair myself, and that I know will be running for another 20-30 years, and still capable to produce state of the art images. This even applies to AF technology. The manual focus lenses I am using now that are 20 years old will still be capable of working perfectly on the day the last roll of film is made - can you say the same thing for a plastic AF lens made today?

 

Anyway, enough being an old fart - at 36 it is unbecoming.

 

Cheers,

 

Antony

can you say the same thing for a plastic AF lens made today?

 

Got to go with that one.