Obsolete Skills?

[dave_reichert1]

"Buying a roll of film...Loading film into a 35 mm camera...Mustache waxing..."

 

http://obsoleteskills.com/Skills/Skills

[tibz]

I'm 15 and I buy kodachrome...

[steve_dittmar]

I don't comprehend.I just took 50 shots with my Nikon F3HP, and about 70 with my "new" digital. Guess which ones came out best?

[don_e]

This is where the hyper-consuming, gullible suckers call us 'luddites'.

[aplumpton]

Not another boring "identify the dinosaur" bate. Get a life! If you do, you might even

enjoy the pleasure of traditional photography, in between the preening of your latest

mulipixel wonder.

 

Now where did I leave my "cire de moustache"....

[geoffs1]

I'll go to my grave remembering how to load my Exacta, OM-1, OM-2, steel developer-tank reels, 4x5 holders, and a myriad of other photographic skills.

 

Does it make me a better photographer that I spent 10+ years doing that almost every day?

 

Does it make me a worse one that I don't even know where all that stuff is anymore?

[bruce_mattes]

Don E

 

Hyper-consuming is right!

 

As soon as each new iteration of digital camera is released to market the majority of the people owning the previous generation of camera rush out to replace the old with the new..

 

A certain amount of this has always gone on in the photographic world, but never at the frenetic pace that seems to dominate the average dSLR camera owner today..

 

In the past the owner of an SLR film camera from Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Minolta, Leica, etc, etc. knew with absolute certainty that barring accident, theft, or catastrophe their camera would last for decades with only minor periodic maintenance..

 

The evidence of that is the growing number of people turning to film as a viable addition or alternative to digital..The youngest camera that qualifies for inclusion on this forum will be 38 years old..Many members are routinely using cameras that are 50-80 years old..

 

Does anyone here realistically think the the average dSLR that is regularly used will be in working condition 20 years from the date it was purchased?..I don't..My first real camera was a Pentax MX..I recently purchased another to replace the original that was lost in a fire in 1982..That MX will still be capable of taking excellent photos long after the Pentax K10D that I purchased in 2007 dies..

 

On several of the Pentax dSLR forums that I frequent people with 5 year old dSLR's are beginning to report problems as their cameras approach, reach, & or surpass 100,000 shutter actuations..In many instances the high costs of repairing such complex cameras doesn't make sense when weighed against putting several hundred dollars in repair costs towards a new camera..

 

In the past it was only the extremely enthusiastic amateurs & the professional photographers that reached 100,000 shutter actuations with their film cameras..Nowadays, with the myth that digital is cheaper than film, as well as the propensity for burst shooting; the average amateur with a digital camera will reach 100,000 actuations long, long before they ever would with a film camera..

 

The average SLR film camera was a relatively simple machine compared to the complexity of the average dSLR camera..

 

The modern day 21st Century Photographer realizes that their dSLR is a fantastic tool that is also incredibly complex compared to a SLR film camera..I think that most of us also realize that a dSLR is planned obsolescence at it's worst..These cameras have a limited lifespan..

 

Knowing that, the enthusiastic amateurs & the professionals are willing to trade up to newer cameras long before they would have thought about replacing their film cameras under the exact same circumstances.. I believe that there is a prevailing attitude that "I may as well get the new model because my digital camera is such & such old & I KNOW it's NOT going to last forever"..So they do get the new model..

 

Thus, the hyper-consuming, frenetic willingness to rush to purchase the newest models..

 

I'm glad to be a Luddite!..

 

Just my 222 cents worth..

 

Bruce

[don_e]

The hyper-consumers have managed to drive up double the past year the prices of the primes for my manual slr, mainly because they need something to replace their crap kit zoomers. Just buy "L glass", folks. Okay?

[Matt Laur]

I don't mention here (because it doesn't matter!), but I loaded countless feet of film into cartridges, shot it, processed and printed it myself for years and years. I did a stint in a studio environment where I processed racks and racks of large format portrait negs, assisted the master printer in the darkroom, and worked untold 8x10s through a giant drum drier. I've cut and pasted camera-ready layouts the old fashioned way. I've burned halftone litho plates, fussed with everything from silkscreen images to industrial projection equipment, and watched the desktop revolution evolve from very early on.

<br><br>

I'm deliberately trying to forget how many hours I spent getting the drum drier's temperature perfect (lest I have to re-rinse the prints and run them through again to get rid of the finish spots). I'm deliberately trying to forget 14-foot high shelving units full of thousands of sleeves of portraits in 4x5, all delicately marked up with the blade and pencil of the studio's retoucher. I'm deliberately trying to forget the <i>paperwork</i> we had to do when covering an event in the field (hey, I shot one of the entrance walkways for one of Reagan's inaugural balls - my first customers? Glen Campbell and Tanya Tucker, filling out a clipboard form that I needed to match to film from three cameras as it made it into the bag, off to the lab, and all the way through mounting - all without anything resembling keywords, databases, etc., as those images swam around with hundreds of others from the same evening). And... very little exposure latitude or retouching options. I don't miss it at all. Not for a minute.

<br><br>

I could do it again if I had to. As Geoff says, you don't ever forget how... but you do need to bury it in order to free up your brain to use newer, more efficient tools. Light doesn't change, but the tools do - and good thing.

[fourthst]

I know enough people with PHS cameras who couldn't load a roll of film but who doesn't

remember how to wax skis?

[matt_needham]

I noticed "driving a car" and "exercise" on the list also. It's a silly list.

 

Photographic technology has been changing at a very fast pace since the beginning. I think a photographer only skilled in collodion process would see very little difference between a 35mm SLR loaded with Kodachrome and a DSLR. The changes will that will occur in the next 20 years will be much more radical than anything that has happened in the last 150.

[sionnac]

Nicholas, that is awesome :)

[don_e]

Blowing dust off the sensor

 

Converting crop factor to 35mm equivalent

 

Pixel Peeping

 

Reducing "noise"

 

Increasing "sharpness"

[geoffs1]

Matt Laur, "Light doesn't change, but the tools do"

 

Well put!

[sfcole]

Steve,

I give up. Which ones came out better, the negs or D70?

[chris_waller]

I haven't time to argue, I have to go and coat some glass plates.

[saskphotog]

While I despise "hyper-consuming" at least as much as the next guy, I see no reason to wax nostalgic over the countless hours spent post processing film as somehow more meaningful than the same (I would argue fewer, actually) hours spent post processing digital images.

 

You think dust on a sensor is a problem? Try dust in a darkroom.

 

Pixel peeping? Try peeping at a negative trying to pick the best expression on everyone's face from a whole series of group shots of a large wedding party. THAT requires peeping!

 

Then try to judge the sharpness of the final two you sort out of that group, knowing your shutter speed was marginal. Then play around enough to make sure you get the maximum sharpness out of that enlarger.

 

I can go on and on and on about why I think there is no problem with making the move to digital. It is not inferior because it isn't the old way; it is different. In fact, I argue constantly that, for me, it is a preferred method of practicing my craft/art, and that I would never voluntarily go back.

 

If you like film, great. But don't give me any romantic arguments about what I am missing because I don't use those old skills any more.

 

As Don said, I have new ones. I like that idea too. The photography is just as good or better; I have discarded some things in my life that were not good for me or the environment; I have acquired new skills. Sounds like a win-win to me.

 

Or is that win-win-win?

[bill_stice1]

Larry, I'm a digital supporter and user as well and perhaps I misunderstood your "not good for the environment" comment about film but digital technology is just as polluting of the environment as film technology. It's just different polluting. Take a look at how many toxic chemicals are involved in the manufacture of virtually all technology components and how much junk digital equipment we are creating every year. I think digital technology is great but can't agree about it being more environmentally friendly.

[saskphotog]

Bill, I understand the environmental costs of technology, but the idea of consuming silver to make contact sheets and test prints just doesn't seem right, and dumping large amounts of chemicals down the drain after I breathed the fumes in the dark is not a good idea, if it can be avoided.

 

I was using computers before I was a digital photographer. I can't give you the exact numbers so I may be full of it, but I have a feeling that using the existing computers to do something else like photography probably doesn't add too much to the environmental costs of computers which is already being paid.

 

If I was still working with film, I would be paying all those film environmental costs in addition to the technological costs of being on this site discussing the environmental costs of photography. In that sense, I think we may have a net gain with my switch to digital.

 

That's my rationalization, anyway.

[david_dorcich1]

"If I was still working with film, I would be paying all those film environmental costs in addition to the technological costs of being on this site discussing the environmental costs of photography. In that sense, I think we may have a net gain with my switch to digital."

 

You might want to look into what goes into making modern electronics. Not at all environmentally friendly. Only change is where you deal with the impact.

[Matt Laur]

Or, as Larry says, the impact is actually greatly reduced because a computer is a general purpose information appliance that is used by most people for many things. Consumables like chemicals, of course, have to be continually shipped where they have to go, and tons of water goes down the pipes after them. I doubt that most people take into account the ecological impact of manufacturing the packaged chemicals that darkroom users end up purchasing (which includes the into-the-earth mining of silver, and all the rest - and all of the fuel that gets burned in that pursuit).

[bruce_mattes]

Virtually none of the things that make our 21st Century lives so comfortable & convenient have been designed or engineered to be friendly to the environment..

 

The only example that comes readily to mind would be organic gardening & farming when practiced according to the dictates of Sir Albert Howard, J.I. Rodale, & other pioneers of the organic movement..

 

The relative levels of toxicity between a fully equipped photographic wet darkroom & a computer driven photographic lightroom differ only in the direct threat to the photographer..There can be no denying that inhaling the chemical smells of a traditional darkroom are injurious to one's long-term health..

 

I make the following statements based on the premise that the two set-ups, darkroom & lightroom, are going to be equipped so that the end result will be the production of high-quality archival prints that can be viewed & displayed..

 

I would be willing to wager that if every single piece of equipment, chemicals, & disposables in a wet darkroom were compared to & weighed against the comparable equipment & disposables in a lightroom; then the direct & indirect environmental pollution generated by both set-ups would be pretty similar..From the mining of raw materials necessary to manufacture the equipment, chemicals, & disposables right along to the impact of disposing of the chemical wastes during processing as well as the degradation of everything that ultimately ends up in a landfill..

 

Just because we already own personal computers & use them for a variety of purposes other than photography does not, IMO, negate or lessen the environmental impact of owning the electronics in the first place..In order to be fair in comparing the environmental impact between a darkroom & a lightroom we must factor the computers into the equation as if the only purpose for owning them was photography..Otherwise we are comparing apples to oranges instead of one species of apple to another..

 

Bruce

[edgreene]

I still get a thrill out of going to the local lab, renting production space @ $11 an hour and printing 16 x 20 color or B&W prints for which any professional photographer would charge me big $$$.<p>I still enjoy watching my work come to life as I ``<i>dip and dunk</i>`` blank photo paper.<p>Whatever my DSLR delivers is, at the same time, quality products that nonetheless need ``peeping``, if not post processing.<br> The problem with that is as a print person, I still do not have product I can touch.

[saskphotog]

"I would be willing to wager that if every single piece of equipment, chemicals, & disposables in a wet darkroom were compared to & weighed against the comparable equipment & disposables in a lightroom; then the direct & indirect environmental pollution generated by both set-ups would be pretty similar.."

 

Likely true.

 

Many people buy a new refrigerator and spend a lot of time trying to get one that uses as little energy as possible to help the environment. Then when they get home, they take the old inefficient one, put it downstairs to use as a beer fridge, and think they are getting greener.

 

No one is arguing that the new fridge doesn't represent a lot of environmental damage. I'm arguing that by switching to digital, I at least stopped using the beer fridge altogether.

 

I also want to make it clear that I'm not certain we come out ahead. I just think that, for me at least, there is no longer any reason to do both kinds of photography, and create both kinds of environmental costs which would, I'm certain, be more costly than just one kind.

 

And certainly I have no desire to keep practicing the old methods, just because I had the skills (to return to the real topic).

[edgreene]

Matt Laur: <b>Or, as Larry says, the impact is actually greatly reduced because a computer is a general purpose information appliance that is used by most people for many things</b>. <p><p>Bulldung. <br>``General purpose`` appliances or no, dead Computers have ghastly consequences on the ecology.<br>Motherboards alone are poster children for nasty polutants.<br> There are motherboard graveyards in Third World countries where daily, tens of tons of noxious pollutants are leached into the air and streams, and all for the valuable gold being mined from the motherboards.<br> But then, who really shives-a-git when its not our ``First World`` shores being inundated with the crud?<p><p><b> Consumables like chemicals, of course, have to be continually shipped where they have to go, and tons of water goes down the pipes after them. I doubt that most people take into account the ecological impact of manufacturing the packaged chemicals that darkroom users end up purchasing (which includes the into-the-earth mining of silver, and all the rest - and all of the fuel that gets burned in that pursuit).</b><p><p>Who really believes we don't pollute as much or more with computers, in that everything needed to feed their greedy maws: ink, paper, inkjet paper, abandoned computer cases, the plastic/steel in my 2 disposible HP laptops, my DSLR, Digi P&Ss, the obscene plethora of BILLIONS of dead, leaking <b>BATTERIES</b>-et al don't pollute as much or more than the diminshing number of analog imaging devices and supplies?