"Most pros use film"

I am not a pro and I know a lot of people on here are so forgive the simplistic nature of

these statements. I was having lunch with a friend who works for a big woman's magazine.

I forget her job title, it's some kind of high falutin' monniker but she directs photo shoots

and chooses photogs and locations etc and basically makes her magazine's shoots

happen. I said, mostly to ditsract her from the fact that I was staring at her cleavage, "So, I

suppose all the photogs use digital." And she said no, most use film.

She said that all the 'young, creative' ones hate the fact that it takes an hour to set up

digital stuff everytime they change locations. And they say that digital doesn't have the

'look' they are after.

When digital first came out she thought it was only a matter of time before everyone used

it and for a while they did. But in the last year or so, she has seen a big shift back to film.

She said the only place digital works is in a permanant environment like a studio. Clients

can view every shot as it happens on a remote monitor and edit them there and then

before post production. Great for boring catalog stuff etc. But in the main, her so-called

exciting photographers use Hasselblad and sometimes Leica film cameras.

Do any pros here care to comment on this? Surely if there will always be a commercial

market for film it will never die out no matter what happens at the consumer end.

Seb, I know you're not trolling but I'm questioning the rationale behind what you were told.

 

"She said that all the 'young, creative' ones hate the fact that it takes an hour to set up digital stuff everytime they change locations."

 

What the hell does that mean?! I don't mean this exclamation against you but this sounds like rubbish.

 

"And they say that digital doesn't have the 'look' they are after."

 

This makes no sense to me. I love both media, I really do, but this is ridiculous. The advantages of film have nothing to do with look. That is a matter for lenses, frame size, monitors, chemicals, ink and paper. But not capture media.

Karim, I didn't see how a digital slr could take more time or be more bulky than a film one

but I think she was talking about medium format equipment with lots of cables and stuff.

She said that it seems to be an older generation of photgraphers who use solely digital. It

all sounds very strange i know bit that's why I posted it, I just wanted to get feedback on

these statements from here.

So you have photos of her cleavage?

<i>The advantages of film have nothing to do with look. That is a matter for lenses, frame size, monitors, chemicals, ink and paper. But not capture media.</i><p>

Funny statement. How come everything matters <b>except</b> capture media?

This is just FYI, I'm not a pro. I know someone who was laid off from a retail chain that does their boring catalog stuff using digital. She worked on Photoshop, and her department got outsourced. They were completely on digital, but their work was limited to catalog shoots, in studios with controlled lighting. Seems like a good setting for digital. Regarding aesthetics, it's virtually impossible to work backward using digital and get an image that looks like it was taken with, say Kodachrome. Black and white is a little easier. CCDs and video pickup tubes also lose about 2 stops of contrast compared with film. Finally, if your capture medium is also your output, as with slides and movies, it matters 100%.

 

In my personal experience, BW with digital is very good. Color shots may or may not require some work in Photoshop. Unlike shooting with films, you're never quite sure how the colors are going to turn out with digital. Also, film handles high contrast ratio shots better, but unless you take most of your shots into the sun (bad idea), it's not too much of a problem with stills. With video versus film (movies), film is the preferred medium because of contrast ratio issues, although some high class TV shows are shot in HD video and post-processed later to look like film. The results are pretty good. Still, I doubt you'll see digital movie theaters any time soon. Beyond resolution, which gets better all the time, the contrast issue isn't going away (sorry Mr. Lucas).

In the UK I think it might be fair to say that most pros working for glossie mags

still use film. Most fashion photographers will have, at the very least, tried

digital out.

 

Fashion show photographers, with the exception of the two who shoot for

Italian and British Vogue, shoot digital.

 

Press photographers are almost 100% digital. Sports photographers mainly

use digital.

 

Felix Dennis or whatever they're called are publishers who exclusively use

digital. There are contract publishers (can't say who) who are seriously

thinking about going 100% digital.

 

I'm professional and I shoot film unless the client specifically asks for digital

which has happened on a couple of occasions. Mind you, I've also had clients

request that I don't shoot with digital.

 

YMMV.

Andrew, the link to your website on your photo.net page doesn't work. Needs updating, maybe?

Jonathan,

 

The link has never worked! I guess I'll have to work out how to do it sometime.

The website itslef itself is about three years old and could do with a kick up

the backside.

 

Back on topic, I've just remembered a conversation I had with a camera

technician last week. He told me that loads of pros, who do advertising, have

gone digital. What's interesting is that a lot of them are using high end

'amateur' digi SLRs rather than 22 meg backs for medium format. One guy, in

particular, had a 16 sheet poster using a D70.

That sales of digital photography equipment, materials, support technology has eclipsed film technology is, to my understanding, a fact... supported by sales figures. That many professional photographers (photojournalists, for example) use digital as their primary image capturing medium is also an easily identifiable fact.

 

Nevertheless, digital technology, in its present iteration, must still have some limitations, at least in the practice of some professionsls, as film technology was not rendered totally obsolete by digital... and, reportedly, some professionals continue to use film (usually though along with digital).

 

What I wonder is what digital technolgy will look like in ten years.. and whether present digital technolgy will be rendered obsolete by some other devlopments in technology. Think for example, what happened when 8-track tapes were introduced and cut a big chunk out of the record industry. Then cassette tapes came along and rendered 8-track obsolete. I suspect that before EVERYONE goes digital there's going to be some new breakthrough in digital technology. Only then may film technolgy go the way of vinyl records... but not yet.

"Only then may film technolgy go the way of vinyl records."

 

I hope so! My local film labs and darkroom supply stores have all closed up, and now there is only one left, but in the last 2 years a half dozen stores have opened up that sell vinyl records.

I've tried digital and have nothing against it but have plenty of film cameras and enjoy developing my own b&w. For as long as I can buy film at reasonable cost and get it processed (color) I intend to keep shooting film. Just yesterday I was in a newly-opened CVS pharmacy (a huge national chain that recently bought out Eckerd's) and there was a rack full of Tri-X and Elitechrome 100, not to mention B&W 400CN and an assortment of consumer C-41 color film. (It was all cheaper than the prices at the town's mom&pop pro camera store, which might possibly mislead the owner into forming the opinion that nobody is buying film.) By the time film becomes impractical or unavailable I expect digital technology to be far ahead of what it is today, and a lot cheaper. So as someone who doesn't shoot tons of film, I can't see any economic benefit to me getting into it now, and only an upside to waiting. If I did have a need for digital now, I'd get into it. So what I don't understand is all the panic, all the people who seem to be grabbing for every glimmer of hope that digital is just a passing fad and reassurance that film is still king of the hill. It's not like any of us have any control over the outcome of a war between huge corporate giants in multi-trillion-dollar market sectors. I figure I've got 2 choices, sit around growing an ulcer over the future of film, or just shoot it as long as it's there.

"...but in the last 2 years a half dozen stores have opened up that sell vinyl records."

 

Matt... it's crazy how things go, huh? And like Ben said, it's not like we even have any control over the situation.

Hmmm? Of course you do. Those shops wouldn't have opened if you weren't buying.

...about the slow digital setup time...it may be that young digital photographers are so technically trapped that they are slower to deal with lighting and other visual matters...film is a lot simpler intellectually imo.

 

Let's not waste bandwidth on that...let's get back to her cleavage...

"...but in the last 2 years a half dozen stores have opened up that sell vinyl records."

 

Well, antiques are popular among a certain type of people.

So all the <a href="http://www.hiphopsite.com/?p=%2Findex%2Ehhs%3FP%3D2">new hip-hop releases on vinyl this week</a> are antiques? Does that mean I can charge more than list price for them on eBay?

**Well, antiques are popular among a certain type of people.**

 

Yes, they certainly are, and a few folks buy them for that reason.

 

But most who purchase vinyl do so for the sound. On a GOOD rig - not necessarily an expensive one - good vinyl will simply crush CD's.

 

Ever get "listening fatigue" listening to CD's? It's your ear/brain getting tired of filling in all of the little gaps between the bits in the high frequencies, which are sampled at a pathetically low rate on red-book CD's. The music might have changed key, but the upper frequencies are still cranking at the old pitch until they get re-sampled. Listen to a drum kit sometime on CD; often, the striking of a cymbal sounds more like a 'phfft' of air than a clean, sharp hit.

 

On vinyl, while there may well be mechanical limitations to the reproduction (i.e. noise), all of the music is there. No gaps to fill in.

<a href="http://www.keithlaban.co.uk">Keith Laban Photography</a><p>One of the lists that I contribute to is a list consisting of some 250 to 300 professional image makers, mostly photographers. At times I feel like the only contributor who's still using film.

Sounds like her job title is either photo editor or art director.

 

As to whether most pros she encounters use either film or digital it depends a lot on the

magazine. it sounds as if she works at a fashion magazine, which has very different needs

than a news weekly.

 

She is right about this : doing digital right takes a lot of work -- much of that work is the

responsibility of the lab that is processing the film and then the production department

and pre-press companies who scan the film and get it ready for publication. Additionally,

with really big files fro mprofessional leveel cameras --11mp to 22mp or more which h

compete technically with medium format film -- it is still much faster and easier for a

photographer and a photo editor to edit several rolls of film comparing one frame to

another --sometiems on different rolls or sheets of film than it is to do the same process

with big digital files.

 

Another concern is that jsut as all photographer s have different talents they also have

different digital darkroom skills and it makes for a production nightmare if everyone is not

o nthe same page regarding color management, sharpening , etc. MAgazines liek to have a

generally uniform look frm one page , article of sectio nto the next, and they desperately

need to do this economically. That means the production departments at magazines want

control of thow the iamges are goignto reproduce to stay firmly in their hands -- which

means having photographers shoot film and having the magaznes make the scans and

color corrections for their presses.

 

There is another psychological factor at work: most creative photographers in the fashion

/ celebrity photojournalism business are just not that technically inclined or adept - not all

of course, I am generalizing from my experience -- this process itimidates them more

than a little bit and we all tend to act a bit like sheep i na herd when we are intimidated. I

fthe leadign photographers are shooting film the guys further down the pecking order --

the " 'young, creative' ones" are going to follow the leaders.

 

All of the technical aspects will be resolved sooner or later of course and we'll all look back

in wonderment at how clumsy and inefficient shooting film is - -as an example -- who

was the last commerical photographer you heard of making color carbro prints or dye

transfers so their color images could be reproduced ? That was the standard through

maybe the 1940s-- but human psychology is an eternal.

three years ago i'd say it was 85% film, today, it's 85% digital. ask any pro lab what they used to run for roll counts then and now.

It's not that difficult to mimick the look of film in Photoshop if you know what you are doing. All images that go into print are defacto digital as they are scanned. The trouble with many pro's going digital is that they simply don't like spending the time processing and adjusting digital files before sending them to the client. It was much easier ( and more profitable) to just hand over the film and get on with the next job. Digital working means you now have to (and are often expected to by cleints) take on the job of the scanner, retoucher and repro house.

The analogy to vinyl is all wrong.

<p>

Vinyl and CDs are <i>output</i> mediums. They are analogous to prints and screen output. I think almost anyone will agree that prints will continue to get made despite the immense popularity of screen viewing.<p>

 

The reason that hip hop records, and quite a few others, are being released is for DJ servicing. This is a huge professional market that relies on an installed base of expensive DJ setups. (The label I worked for brought back vinyl strictly for DJ servicing.) This alsopoints to the other issue - that there are huge numbers of records out there from the last 70 or so years and many haven't been reissued on CDs, or were issued in low volume. People listen to <i>music</i>, not records or CDs, and if they care about <i>music</i>, they often keep things that they can't get on newer formats.<p>

 

The more appropriate analogy is the <i>recording</i> end of things, which is almost all digital now, regardless of output media.<p>

 

Going back to the original post, I always find these recountings of a random single person to be off-target. What "most pros" use can be determined from what "most pros" use, not from what one person at one magazine says.

Here the local paper went digital with the now museum piece Nikon E series digital ; with the relay lens; and about full frame response. They later scrapped out their C41 lab; and just kept a token B&W one for some to play in. Some still shoot film at odd times; and use the local walgreens; and scan the film. This is usually for super wide angle shots; documentarys that have time for this goofyness.

Jeff,

 

I agree with ALL that you wrote, and still enjoy listeneng to the music I have collected that is not available in any other format. In fact, some tapes made from vinyl sound better than some of my CDs.