Another Reason Why Digital May Be Better

[fjords]

Curtis, driving horses is a real rush, takes talent, and forms enduring bonds with beautiful

creatures. A teamster is much more than a Yugo driver.

[pbizarro]

As someone said before, it is not the "why", but the "when". I shoot a lot of slide film, I like it. however, I use my PS-Pro1 for composing panoramas, later assembled with Photo Stitch. REal easy, and wonderful results.

 

I stopped shooting B&W film after I discovered Convert to BW Pro. Things move on.

 

If people are happy driving old cars/wagons, or using cameras without TTL metering, that is fine. To me, tools that make taking and getting the result I want an easier process, are welcome.

[Brad_]

<I>part of what makes art interesting and awe-inspiring is the difficulty of the craft. the

more simple and automated photography becomes, the more it <B>will lose its artistic

value</B>.</I><P>

 

Hardly, unless you place little or no value on vision and elevate the significance of simple

tool operation.

[Jerry_]

Scanned in 35mm color negative = 25.5 Mb file size.

 

 

 

 

Digital camera = 17 Mb (give or take a little)

 

 

 

 

Is one (digital) really better?

[capocheny]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...........snort..........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!

 

Time to talk about something interesting rather than another borrrrring digital versus film

posting!

 

If you don't want to shoot film.................. then DON'T!

 

If you don't want to shoot digital.............. then DON'T!

 

If you want to shoot both......................... then shoot BOTH!

 

If you don't want to shoot with either digital or film.......... then DON'T!

 

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that there ARE option!

 

EASY!

 

Just stop boring us with this silly debate!

 

Cheers

[vuk_vuksanovic]

brad.

 

when you buy a leica or take a good picture, then we might take what you have to say here seriously. sorry to be pedantic, but this is the leica forum: you either need to shoot good pictures or own a leica (as evidence shows, not necessarily both). admittedly, i also have little patience for teenagers. nothing personal: i'll readily admit that, like everyone else, even i was a complete tosser at that age.

[Brad_]

Not much to say, resorting to insults, vuk?

[vuk_vuksanovic]

brad.

 

there is no longer any value in vision. everything has abeen seen already. photography is mainly a craft and it all hinges on delivery.

 

(can't believe i'm chatting with a teenager)

[vuk_vuksanovic]

oops! brad, i think i confused you with "eric"! this is what happens when people use boybander names on forums.

[Brad_]

I wonder how anyone can take you seriously when you have little but insults to put

forward. But, if that's all you have, it is understandable.

[mike dixon]

<i>part of what makes art interesting and awe-inspiring is the difficulty of the craft. the more simple and automated photography becomes, the more it will lose its artistic value.</i><P>

 

Hardly, unless you place little or no value on vision and elevate the significance of simple tool operation.<P>

[Please note that I own two Leica M3s (not those candy-ass M6s and 7s), and I'm two decades past my teen years.]

[feli]

Mike, are you an XTOL kind of guy?

Nice shots by the way.

 

feli

www.elanphotos.com

[mike dixon]

Thanks, Feli. I am Mr. Xtol. It's the only developer I use for b&w.

[feli]

I figured. For the past year I've been using FA-1027, which is very good by the way despite the bombastic tone of it's advertising, but I am starting to suspect that it is a variation of XTOL.

 

FA-1027 is made by www.fineartphotosupply.com, so you can't just get it at the local shop, but XTOL is of course available everywhere.

 

Feli

[m.c.fitz]

Thank you Feli and Mike for that Xtol exchange, I'll be mixing 5L of it this morning. These

threads are surprisingly useful at times.

[terry_rory]

"Al Kaplan , may 10, 2005; 09:52 p.m.

Ask yourself that same question again in 20 year when your CD's have long since degraded to the point where they're unreadable, or you can't find anything at the computer store to even read the dang things anymore."

 

I was buying CDs when they first came out in 1983. I can still play them on a CD player I bought last year. 22 years later. When exactly are my good quality TDK CD archives supposed to degrade Al?

 

I have my digital printing done on the very same Fuji Crystal Archive paper that my neg enlargments are done on (On the same machine) How is the paper and the Frontier printer going to know that one came from a digital camera to make it degrade quicker?

 

How is my good friend going to find the photos and negs of her children that she took last year that she lost because she is careless?

 

That is it you see Al. It is all to do with the care one takes of these things and the importance of being organised not the medium. Millions (billions?) of negs and prints (B+W and colour) have been lost through neglect. Negs are not magical. Millions of feet of old film stock has been lost to posterity due to the instability of the material used.

[erin.e]

Any of you old film reprobates that are having trouble coming to terms with the Digital Assualt, go to Australia, ask Peter A to show you where an expert in the Didgeridoo lives, sit down, learn, come back an enlightened person.

[feli]

>When exactly are my good quality TDK CD archives supposed to degrade Al?

 

 

Depends. Most commercials cd-r disks currently on the market use dyes and aluminum,

maybe iridium coatings. Aluminum oxidizes and dyes self-destruct over time and when

exposed to light. The plastic isn't exactly stable either. There are very few cd's out there

that will last more than a few years. Kodak used to make a archival cd that used gold

coatings, but they stopped selling them a few years ago. A Japanese company took over

the production of these CD's, but I can't remember their name.

 

 

By the way a Estar (Polyester based) negative (safety negative) will last a solid 500 years.

 

 

Several conservation agencies are considering the use of Estar based materials for

longterm storage of computer data. The code of vital files would literally be printed on to

what amounts to a high tech microfilm. All you need is a lens and light to read the code

and it is incredible durable.

 

 

Carbon or Platinum prints will last until the paper they are printed on rots away

underneath them. Given that such prints are made on very high quality, acid free stock, it

could take a few hundred years for that to happen. They still are finding scrolls in Egypt

that are thousands of years old.

 

 

feli

[m.c.fitz]

Erin now you're scaring me, both my brother-in-law and a friend came back from Australia

with didgeridoos and regale us with their efforts when we go to visit. And they're not teen-

agers but grown men! ;-)

[bill_thorlin]

I think I know what a troll is but what does one call people who react to a troll ?

 

This is like a thrice heated lasagne - guaranteed to give you at least heartburn if not hospitalisation.

[h._p.]

These discussions are great for people to play their status games in but the fact is that none of it really matters.

 

Photography is a means of communicating and if your image tells the story you want it to tell then it really doesn't matter if you shot it on a cheap digicam or a Leica. Personally, I use both and find they each have their strengths and weaknesses. Most of the time I use film cameras but when I want something in a hurry or I just want the image for the web I'll use a digicam.<div></div>

[philippartridge]

<p>Jeremy: the audience of p.net has changed markedly over recent years; today it is unashamedly populist, and popular taste is, well, what it is. Todays TP crop seem to favour bugs...good for the voters, and Daniel, I guess. The information in truly spectacular <i>prints</i>, from say, MF or LF film gets lost in size/quality by orders of magnitude to be viewed as puny files of 100Kb or so, typical of web images. A halfway decent print of last week's POW, shown here as an OK scan of 6x9 rollfilm, would clearly show individual grains of sand. One can show most folks, who own digital compacts or 6mp dslrs, a 14x11 frontier <i>print</i> from say, a 6x7 camera and watch the wide-eyed stares. And frontiers are cheap print-makers that have poor scan stages. We have not mentioned a whole history of wonderful Leica B&W output, which reproduces poorly as jpgs. Excluding business requirements, I do not know of many serious photographers who do not use film, often for their own pleasure.</p>

 

<blockquote><i>It is all to do with the care one takes of these things and the importance of being organised not the medium.</i></blockquote>

 

<p>Trev, the only thing your careless friend needs to remember to do with film negs/prints is put each envelope in the one place, typically the celebrated shoebox in the wardrobe. Not quite the same as learning how to load files to disk (so learning to work the file system), back up images from disk to disk for new PC adoption, and/or to an external storage system. I work with government employees who use PCs all day and it is amazing how few understand say, Windows Explorer. The importance of the medium is thus far greater than your portrayal of it as irrelevant.</p>

 

<p>I haven't mentioned cost, but I think obvious to readers are the problems <i>most people</i> are having with this neat little digi-archive checklist. And most digi images are not printed, something the profit-hungry industry is <a href="http://www.pmai.org/mktrsrch/mrweb/pi2005.pdf">working to change</a>.</p>

 

<p>Feli is correct re CDs. The early ones were quite good quality, but like most mass market consumer products (e.g. DVD players, cars, digicams) all but the archival CDs are targeted for early obsolescence.</p>

[al_kaplan1]

Thanks, Feli, for replying to Trevor re digital storage permanance. Here on theeast coast of North America I was fast asleep at the time.

[douglas k.]

I agree with Brad and Mike. And I own(ed) a Leica. And I'm not a teenager.

[curtis_newport]

"driving horses is a real rush, takes talent, and forms enduring bonds with beautiful creatures. A teamster is much more than a Yugo driver."

 

Ok. You win.

Young Amish boys are "real" drivers. Dale Earnhardt is a phony.