Film to Digital

[matt_needham]

<p>In the transition from film to digital I found my concerns about the gear and process became less, and my concern about whether I was creating an intriguing photograph became more important. When I shot film I thought 35mm was not good enough compared to 4x5. Now I don't care much how big the camera or print is. I just want the finished photograph to be interesting.</p>

[mike dixon]

<i>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.</i><P>

Even with film, I never thought of photography as "capturing the visual reality." Photos are not reality. And I never thought of what I had when I clicked the shutter as being the final result--it was always just a start.

[StuartMoxham]

<p>I don't see what I used to see either and sometimes I don't really like what I see. Now I am trying to shoot alot more film and I may start to do alot more tradtional B&W darkroom printing.</p>

[tonmestrom]

<blockquote>

<p>Even with film, I never thought of photography as "capturing the visual reality." Photos are not reality. And I never thought of what I had when I clicked the shutter as being the final result--it was always just a start.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>greatly put. Worth repeating and chiseling in stone</p>

[StuartMoxham]

<p>Here are to shots that I like one is film the other is digital. I prefer the film shot.</p><div></div>

[steve_swinehart]

<blockquote>

<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.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Are you going to do this with a long telephoto so the moon and landscape are out of scaleto replicate the moon illusion? Or, are you going to depict the actual size of the moon as seen by the camera with a normal focal length lens? If you choose the first rendering (replicating the moon illusion) - is using the lens choice for distorting the image different than choosing to use compositing techniques to achieve the same effect? What type of image manipulation is allowed? Lens choice for distortion is okay but compositing the image you can see in your mind isn't allowed? </p>

<p>Compositing was standard practice for photographers using ortho plates / film as it was the only way to get around totally white skies. Pure photography is every bit the illusion equal of the moon illusion...</p>

[stp]

<p>Steve, the moon will be at the same scale of Rainier, regardless of the lens that I use. I will use a lens that will enable the moon and mountain to appear as the primary components in the image.</p>

<p>I'm not advocating "pure photography" (and I'm making assumptions about what you mean by that term). But I do think there is a difference between a campfire and a forest fire.</p>

[GerrySiegel]

<p>I see more. Looking at a computer image is more like a backlit transparency once was. Reveals more than any paper print. I can also be more let's say playful about photography. More adventurous even to put a finer spin on that. Film always had this nervous expensive never know what you got quality. And the Polaroid test film, when things really got tight that way, was a nail biter at a buck and a quarter apiece. Digital transition was easy slide from scanning to all digital. I guess like hobbies to be easy. Call it lazy if you like. Digital can be lazy and less structured or less disciplined a plus and to many a minus. Lazy can be liberating though and I think it has been. Aesthetically, nothing really has changed. That I can tell. Yet. Not adventurous in digital fussing. Come back in two years and I will make an update, providence willing.</p>

[fate_faith_change_chains]

<p>"Looking at a computer image is more like a backlit transparency once was. Reveals more than any paper print "</p>

<p>Until you look at your computer images on 5 different monitors, and find that what it mostly reveals is that their quality or the way you might have envisioned the final image is all over the place. This is frustratingly apparent when I go from my Imac screen where I process images on to an older laptop screen. Newer screens are better, but there are still alot of older and lesser ones out there too.<br /> Not so with a paper print or a bookprint, where the base or "infrastructure" of the image always stays the same, controlled, even when viewed under different and less than optimum light conditions.</p>

[stp]

<p>More directly to the OP's question, for me personally not much has changed. I do take more photos, and often I still feel I haven't taken enough. I still have the same measured pace when I walk through a landscape, and I still have the same measured pace when I decide on a composition. While I like the immediate feedback of digital, I've probably become less proficient in knowing my light meter; I used to bracket, and 98% of the time I was wasting film because my first shot was right on. One of the biggest benefits of digital, IMO, is the promise of HDR to be able to overcome the inherent limitations of film or sensors regarding their abilities to record a range of light. I've seen some HDR images that were simply amazing in this regard -- much more like the human eye would see a scene, and made so much more easy to accomplish with digital processing. Finally, digital photography for me has been so much more expensive than film ever was. The technology is changing and improving so fast that camera upgrades are relatively common (by my choice). I don't like the time spent at a computer, I lament the loss of many films, but I do prefer digital to film (that has been a relatively recent shift in preference).</p>

[steve m smith]

<blockquote>

<p>Finally, digital photography for me has been so much more expensive than film ever was.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I think it could be argued both ways (and has been many times!). The costs are probably similar in the long run but for digital, most of the cost is upfront whereas with film its spread out over time.</p>

[DickArnold]

I just photographed a three day swim meet at Harvard. I brought a couple hundred pictures home and edited those down to 70 and had them edited and on the internet after about an hours work in Lightroom this morning. I also cut a disk for another use. I quickly went through each picture doing minor exposure edits, some cropping and correcting white balance from the indoor lights that are pretty weird in indoor pools. I had my raw images converted into properly sized jpegs for the net in about two minutes. I don't do much to my swimming pictures. When I did sports for a local paper with mostly TMax I would have had t go into the darkroom and develop several roles of 36, make contacts and then decide with my editor which ones to print for layup. Minor exposure corrections had to be done in the enlarger. Other than that we didn't retouch. The difference in effort is enormous. When I did film and had my own darkroom I was very sparing with the amount of images I took knowing I had to look forward to spending time in the darkroom although i farmed my weddings and big jobs out. What I see in sports is more of a proclivity to take a lot of pictures with digital. I also see a lot better color outcomes than I got with film particularly with improved high ISO capabilities today.. With weddings film was easier for me because I sent my proof printing out. However, there is not much I could to without a lot of effort and expense with film to alter backgrounds and save pictures that today can be used with digital after some correction in photoshop. However, IMO, when wedding photographers who go well over a thousand pictures improve the odds of getting memorable pictures.Although that can also breed carelessness. As someone said you really can't distinguish between my film prints and my digital prints as they hang randomly in my home. I have used medium format, 35mm and digital both full frame and crop. I think all the equipment I have used has been capable of the job at hand and I refuse to make judgments about which is better. The outcome is still mostly a product of what goes on between the photographers ears. I do think digital has greatly expanded my capabilities as a photographer particularly in the area of speed of process. I am still just an average photographer doing average acceptable work regardless of the medium. .

[kenneth_smith7]

<p>As a film shooter, I have no issue with digital equipment. But as a result of what I have seen of the digital revolution I am especially compelled to maintain a realistic approach. What I want to capture is what is there in real life, in all it's subtleties and unexpected nuances. Of course there is manipulation in film based material to obtain the best rendition, but I eschew anything that stands out. I can't even live with high contrast treatments. I want the photograph to be a window, to disappear from thought and reveal only the subject, like a mirror. There is a wonderful little shock to viewing a photograph that is cleanly and clearly showing a real scene. Remember looking at them when you were a kid? </p>

<p> I find the largely digital trend towards hyped imagery to be disconcerting, but there are too many great examples and good uses of it to rule it out.</p>

<p>The cream will always float to the top. It's just a little disheartening to see that so many people seem to prefer a Disneyfied version of reality. An artist is trying to show you the depth that a superficial viewing will overlook. If it becomes all about the superficial, there will be no chance of that. </p>

[stp]

<p>It's my impression that many photographers, and people in general (I'll limit this to the U.S., as I'm not that familiar with other cultures), seem to have the attitude that if some amount is good, then a little bit more will be that much better. I see that to be especially true with saturation within a photograph. Sometimes we don't know when to stop, and we sometimes don't know that subtlety can be a good thing. And when adding saturation is so easy to do, we just can't seem to resist the temptation to make it "that much better."</p>

<p>It's also my impression that if colors are clearly super-saturated in a photo, sometimes even in a bizarre way, the most common comment will be "Great color!" It's as if we are so jaded with reality that it takes hyper-reality to catch our eye or spark our appreciation. On the other hand, maybe the primary ones commenting are those who like it, and those who think the photographer has gone overboard are keeping quiet -- often people would rather compliment than criticize. So I realize that the comments may be a very biased sample. Still, that bright, neon green algae on the shadow side of an intertidal rock as the sun sets on the opposite horizon still makes me shake my head. Just because we can doesn't mean that we should.</p>

[swilson]

<p>I shot film for a lot of years before digital came along, and in a very real way I wish I have shot film more like I shoot digital now. When I was shooting film pretty much every shot had to be "worth" shooting. When I started shooting digital I started shooting a lot more of the date to date things in life that slip by, the kind of shots I mostly missed getting with film. </p>

<p>Whereas I loved the range of photos I was getting with digital it was pretty rough going in the beginning. I had a 1.3 mp camera that would take at least 2 seconds to take the photo once you pushed the shutter button. It was only good for print up to about 4x6, and not great at that size. It was not until I got a DSLR that photography really felt that same again, that responsive feel that I use to get with my film SLR.</p>

<p>I have digitized many of my old film photos, when I go through the years I much prefer the photos I have taken with my digit camera. </p>

[kenneth_smith7]

<p>There seems to have been a steady progression of desensitization by media throughout the 20th Century. It would be an interesting graduate thesis to chart the effects and attempt to gain an insight into whether or not it all comes down to the steady growth of industrial apparatus into our environment. The inevitable evolution of the machine into the silicon human hybrid that Kurtzweil espouses. By our increased appetite for what the machine can do for us, supplanting what we once innately held within ourselves, we have guaranteed our own obsolescence. </p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>Digital has profoundly changed my approach in how I make an image.</p>

<p>It gets me to mimic with software the look of film, saved as a preset in ACR that I apply to images captured on my DSLR. And because this is a flawed way to mimic film, I get so many unexpected glorious accidents with regards to ambience and color that I could never possibly imagine shooting film.</p>

<p>It has allowed a way to come up with unique ways to stylize an image, intuitively and very quickly over painting a picture which is what I used to do.</p>

[steve m smith]

<p>All of these threads seem to prove that everyone is different and that we are all capable of producing photographs/images/artwork which we are pleased with regardless of the medium we choose.</p>

<p>Film has had many years to be perfected and digital is now at the stage where it can compete in terms of resolution so now it is equally possible to produce good (and bad!) images either way.</p>

<p>I think the time has come to stop comparing them in terms of one being better than the other and think of the differences in much the same way as a painter would compare oil to watercolour.</p>

[leo_papandreou1]

<blockquote>

<p>By our increased appetite for what the machine can do for us, supplanting what we once innately held within ourselves, we have guaranteed our own obsolescence.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I think in practice what happens is the bar gets raised on accomplishment. The Night Watch and Toy Story are comparable accomplishments in my book, whereas you'll have to do better than a day at the zoo with a camera <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1253935/Photographer-captures-amazing-images-lions-watering-hole-submerging-months.html">to impress me</a> at least, I don't care how long it took in photoshop to get the monkey just right.</p>

<p>(Yes yes there are many unexplored niches in between Toy Story and a parasite infection, where a person can still be original and creative. There are many places, too, where a person can just be content. Watever --- no worries! It's just pictures. The world will make some more after we die.)</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>Not too happy about the bokeh in that last du Toit shot.</p>

<p>Another month in the sick pool and he probably would've nailed it!</p>

<p>But hey, I imagine his immune system is strong and hearty for it.</p>

<p>Good grief, man. It's just lions for god's sake!</p>

<p>Thanks for the link, Leo.</p>

[kenneth_smith7]

<p>The bar gets raised by the exponential computational power of technology starting probably even before the Clovis Culture 11,000 years ago. We integrate with technology because we ourselves are technology. Or so goes Kevin Kelly's argument in "What Technology Wants". But the speed of that exponential growth has now become so fast we are unable to adjust it to ourselves, and are more likely to adjust ourselves to it. We are being absorbed, yes Borg -like. It's been joked about a million times, but thats what makes it so benign. As the digital vs. film forums foment , it's usually all about the stuff. Not the effect of the stuff on us, beyond of course that guaranteed enticement of easier, faster, more this, more that. </p>

<p>That it what technology wants, and we are more and more in it's service. It becomes the tastemaker. It raises the bar, and it provides the high. We are no longer in control as much as we pat ourselves on the back with" look what I have done" imagines. </p>

<p>I don't recommend raging against the machine, as we are too integrated and dependent. But we have different needs that are being swept away without protest. Our enthusiasm and natural tendency towards the positive has become precarious.</p>

[myattphotoandfotoart39]

<p>I not shooting with a camera. I'm shooting with a PC. </p>

[swilson]

<p>To Kenneth Smith</p>

<p>Dude, it's just a camera.</p>

[jim_gibbons]

<p>I'm with Charles. I've lost the anticipation of getting the shots back a week or so later. Although being able to see them right away is handy it feels a bit cheap to me. The digital revolution has actually made me use film more oddly enough. I even put a B&W darkroom in my basement. My sister gave me all the gear and I figured why not do it. It is the best/cheapest time to have a darkroom for sure. People are literally giving away enlargers/trays and so on. </p>

[dr._karl_hoppe]

<p>Haven't really made the change yet. :-)</p>