Just some Random Thoughts

[gregf]

<p>OK, I've been shooting for over ten years now. Long enought to have started in film. I think having learned with film I learned better techniques than those who started with a DSLR. I remember back in the day where you had two choice in film (100 and 400 *or* kodachrome for 25 and 64, or grainy TMAX 3200), you had 36 slides, many times you had to burn through them just to be able to switch to a different speed. Back then the 50 f1.4 was a must for all cathedrals and museums.</p>

<p>Follow me here, hen you got your slides back, they all looked great on the light table under the 4x lupe. If you got them printed, it was usually 8x12 at the largest, maybe sometimes larger.</p>

<p>Speed forward to today. People seem to be always complaining that lenses are not sharp (and how sharp can you get if you are doing landscape work with a ND and longer exposure). And for all the complaints that "the corners are not sharp", can you really tell on a monitor where the photo is at 20%, or a 4x6 print. Even on my 13x19 prints, it really does not bother me. And don't even start on dynamic range, digital blows away what E6 is capable of. And I would bet you dollars to doughnuts that the optical quality of the lenses than Ansel Adams used were so inferior to what we have today that most DSLR users would never consider such.</p>

<p>It just seems that many people today have forgotten the art of photography (and I love how HDR has added a new dimension), it seems that many people want the technology of optics and sensor design to do all the work. Whilst I love digital, nothing pops like a transparency on a light table, and seeing the perfect shot out of the camera, not thanks to post processing.</p>

<p>Just my thoughts after 10 years of shooting and perusing message boards.</p>

[PuppyDigs]

<p>10 years ago you had a lot more choices for B&W than TMAX 3200! In fact, even today there are many surviving B&W emulsions for the harden film shooter. Heck B&H still carries dozens of different B&W emulsions not only from big green 'n yellow, but off brands like Hoga. I shot Pan-X and grain was about as fine as it gets.</p>

<p>As for "you had 36 slides, many times you had to burn through them just to be able to switch to a different speed"--that's just not true. All my EOS had a CF to leave the tail out after rewind so I could dump at mid-roll and reload later when the light was right.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>It just seems that many people today have forgotten the art of photography (and I love how HDR has added a new dimension), it seems that many people want the technology of optics and sensor design to do all the work.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yeah, most of them had some zit faced teen in a drug store do all the work printing their pictures! I recall OF photogs saying similar things when aperture priority debuted in the 60s! And again when AF reared its ugly head in the 80s. Photography had gone to hell in a hand basket long before your time (I'm sure great-gramps bitched about the lemmings gripping tiny SLRs instead of view cameras!).</p>

[johne37179]

<p>George, I could not agree more. I have been doing this since the early '60s and did it professionally for a number of years and spent a summer in Yosemite with Ansel back in '68. Digital absolutely blows away anything I had in film. Ansel shot mostly 4x5 and rarely made large prints. The top of the line digital sensors today are vastly superior to any film I ever used. You nailed it on dynamic range. To get a print that comes close to producing what the senor can capture and your computer can process you are going to spend thousands on the printer, and have a steep learning curve.</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>When the printing press was invented, people complained about it driving out hand-illuminated mss.<br /> Photography would kill painting, when that happened.</p>

<p>Automatic aperture would mean that the deliberate pace of pre-set apertures would be lost with resulting decline in the quality of picture taking, ditto for AF.</p>

<p>Learning on digital is not only easier, but encourages people to try things that they would have been reluctant to do given the high cost of film, etc. and the long gap between doing the experiment and seeing the results....</p>

<p>By the way, I developed my first roll of (620 ortho) film sometime around 1955 or earlier, so I know both film and digital pretty well.</p>

[gregf]

<p>Wow John, to work than Ansel, just damn! I can't fathom being so lucky (hell, I wish I lived in California just for the photo oppurtunties!)</p>

<p>Probably them best thing about digital is is really eases the learning curve. No waiting for the film to be processed, and wondering what was done to make one photo better than another. Digital excels in showing the final result (reasonably well) and a histogram to determine in you need to over/under expose.</p>

<p>But when people just start pixel peeping lenses, it just seems too much. The fact is that my 5D2 can't even be printed out at 100% on my pro9500 printer. I just can't understand why people are want Hasselbad quality photos.</p>

<p>I totally agree that digital offers far better quality (better DR, toss what you don't want, look at the LCD and fix the composition). But I am amazed that people still complain that Canon's best lenses are "soft". How many people really take pictures that they print at 100%, if you are doing studio work for magazine spread's that's one thing, but most people who complain about the lenses not resolving for the sensor are not pro's doing the highest quality work.</p>

<p>Personally, the only reason I upgraded from the 5D to the 5D2 was sensor cleaning and better ISO. The fact is, I would guess that 21.3MP is very close to what ISO 100 slides can offer with the best scanner.</p>

<p>@Puppy Face<br>

You are right, I could rewind the slides back into the canister...but I really never had the nerver to do that. I would rather spend the couple dollars in lost shots than risk anything going wrong</p>

[daryl_sawatzky]

<p>I find it ironic that we will spend $2000 on a lens, and $800 on Photoshop, and thousands of dollars in computer equipment and hard drives... when the end product of all our efforts (at least mine) is to dumb the pictures down again to make them look like they were taken with a 1950's Russian Lomo camera!<br>

Of course I NEED the $2000 300mm IS lens to capture the initial sports image in a poorly lit gymnasium at 10MP's so I don't have to crop down from my 50mm f1.4...</p>

 

[dan_south]

<p>My general solution is to avoid worrying about what other people do.</p>

<p>In fact, it actually HELPS me when luddites go out and purchase expensive L lenses, complain about "softness" and then trade their gear in for different expensive L lenses, then become disgruntled, sell everything and switch to Nikon, and then later sell all of their Nikon gear and switch back to Canon. All of that money is funding Canon's R&D department as they work on great new products for ME to use!</p>

<p>So...thank you, camera complainers! Muchas gracias, frustrated fanboys! Your dissatisfaction is an excellent source of venture capital for the development of my next Canon body.</p>

<p>:=)</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>I agree with Dan. The only more fruitful source for high-quality used lenses and gear than the "luddites" (maybe not quite the right term, but there's something there all the same) is high-income professionals (often M.D.s, but also lowyers, etc.) who need the latest thing, but only actually use the equipment for 2 weeks a year. ;)</p>

[matt_needham]

<p>People take up photography for many different reasons. I have known plenty of photographers who were obviously much more interested in the gear than making photos. I worked in a camera store/lab in the 90s. I don't see much difference in the gear obsession between then and now. Except then you had to go hang out at the camera store or photo club to hear it. Today it is brought into our homes everyday with the internet. From studying the history of photography I don't think it's anything new.</p>

<p>"The lens is always considered the most important of all the tools the photographer employs. So it is, but I should like to say boldly that, within limits, I do not care what make of lens I use. It is as well to have the best your means will allow, but there has always been too much made of particular variations in the make of lenses. It has been the fashion to think too much of the tools and too little of the use made of them. I have one friend who did nothing last year because he had made up his mind to buy a new lens, and could not determine whose make it should be, and he was tired of his old apparatus. His was of the order of particular and minute minds that try to whittle nothing to a point. I have another friend who takes delight in preparing for photography, and spends a small fortune in doing so, but never takes a picture." - H.P. Robinson, Letters On Landscape Photography, published <strong>1888</strong></p>

[dcstep]

<p>I started as a "serious" photographer in my 7th grade "Graphic Arts" class in the late 1950s. We made our own penhole cameras, loaded them in the dark room, took pictures of each other and then developed our images for a grade. This led me to buy a Yaschia 44 TLR before that class was over and that led just a few years later to a Pentax Spotmatic and a 200mm f/3.5 preset telephoto lens and a 2x TC.</p>

<p>I stayed serious, but frustrated for a decade or so, but ultimately became only an occasional shooter because I didn't have my own lab and processing equipment and was constantly dissapointed in things as simple as getting an image cropped.</p>

<p>In 2006 I needed to replace my film P&S camera and decided to go digital with a G7. The camera was great, but I really woke up to the realization that I could now do all the things I'd hoped for back in the 1960s and 1970s and not even get my hands wet. Also, I think that digital colors are far more accurate most film. There are some minor shortcomings of digital, but they're more than offset by the many advantage.</p>

[jaydesi]

<p>I always had a camera as a kid. Film, because digital wasn't around. I only took snaps, really. When I graduated from college, I decided I wanted to try photography as a hobby, and bought an SLR, a Rebel model. I read some books, but didn't really understand anything at the time, and ended up shooting on automatic. The SLR was frustrating to use, big to carry around, and the batteries were expensive and seemed to wear out awfully quickly. So the camera got put away in favor of some AF P&S model or another. Eventually, digital P&S cameras came out, and the convenience of them won me over pretty quickly. As one wore out, i got another, and was generally satisfied.</p>

<p>Then my daughter was born, and I wanted to get more creative with photography. I knew DSLRs had gotten better over time, and the research I did showed me there was nothing to be lost in getting one, and in a week of reading on the internet (much of it here on this site), I learned and understood more than I ever did before. I became quite passionate, and was really enjoying photography, and taking creative pictures, not just snaps, and never using full auto.</p>

<p>Eventually I checked out the classic camera forums, and they sparked an interest in me for B&W film with fully manual cameras. Now that I understood aperture, ISO, and shutter speed, these cameras had a fair amount of appeal for me with regard to creative expression. I shoot only B&W film, and that led to learning how to develop and print it myself. I still kept and most often use my DSLR for color shots, so i didn't set it aside in favor of film, I just use them for different kinds of shooting.</p>

<p>Then I found the medium format forums, and gave that a go. I far prefer the 6x6 negative to 35mm, and now shoot that nearly exclusively (when it comes to film). I upgraded the lens in my enlarger to be able to handle the bigger negatives, and really enjoy the time I spend in the darkroom.</p>

<p>Just this week I got a 4x5 large format camera. The size and weight will keep it from replacing the MF camera for most uses, but the appeal of it for landscape shots is undeniable. I'm looking forward to my first packs of film being delivered so I can go out and take some first shots and further expand my photographic knowledge.</p>

<p>So in a way, I've stretched my legs across generations with my photographic interests, and have delved backwards in a way with creative photography, starting with a DSLR and then adding film. Both have their appeal, and I use both. I don't really think the DSLR hampered my ability to learn, it drove my learning. I could experiment without spending money on processing film and getting bad results. It wasn't discouraging, like getting a roll of film developed and finding most or all of the shots were terrible...I could look at my shots in the camera and decide what to change, and see the impact of that change.</p>

<p>Both film and digital will be part of my gear, and I thoroughly enjoy them both for very different reasons, but the process of making an image that makes me say "wow" is very rewarding, regardless of which process I use to make that image.</p>

[rogernoel]

<p>Nice bit of nostalgia here. Only a year ago I gave a young waiter at a restaurant all of my trays, bottles, enlarger, dryer etc and I still have two slide projectors and a ton of 8 mm movie film somewhere in a closet. I think we have been very fortunate in the migration from plates and Speed Graphics and Kodak Brownies etc. I enjoy photography and all aspects of it. <br>

I agree with most of the writers as well. I started with a French box camera on the streets of Vienna, Austria in the Spring of 1946 and have had a camera in my hand for pleasure virtually all of the years since then. Retinas, Voightlanders, Argus C 3, Russian Leicas, East German cameras, and then after Korea, Nikons and Canons replacing for the most part the Contax and Leica cameras. I still have a Leica IIIg with four lenses plus Nikon F Photomic T with four lenses, and 14 other cameras. It iis very interesting to read the younger set's outlook on the subject as well. </p>

[scottelly]

<p>Gregory, today you can view your photos on a light table that is vertical, so you don't have to bend over and hurt your back. It's called a computer screen. The nice thing about it is that you don't have to use a 4x or 10x loupe to see the detail. On top of that, you can zoom in to pixel level detail and even further! You couldn't even dream of doing that with film. Today's digital "RAW" files contain so much data that you can adjust exposure and bring out detail that you could never have done with film (once it was already processed a certain way).<br>

-<br>

If you want your images to pop more, set your saturation on your DSLR to a "stronger" setting.<br>

-<br>

So while you are missing some of what advancements have given us, you are also seeing something else . . . the laziness that has been breeding in many modern photographers. That was there with film though. The thing is, it didn't show up as much, because film was so expensive that lazy people did not usually have the money to blow it on lots of film. Digital has made it possible for the lazy people (or just the people who couldn't stand to spend all that money) to shoot lots of photos and "become photographers" now, when they wouldn't have done so before. I am one of those people, though I am probably not so much lazy as poor. I do shoot much more these days though, because it is much cheaper to do so. Yes, I have seen the difference in quality, which I didn't notice in the past so much, because of the Web and the different lenses that I have been able to afford, because I have more money to spend on equipment now, rather than blowing all my money on film. That makes me and many other people more interested in equipment these days. Another reason we are more interested in advancements in digital camera bodies is just the nature of the technology. I the past a camera body was more of a device to hold the film, rather than a high-tech device that would become obsolete soon. Not so much anymore. With new sensors and other technologies coming on the scene all the time now, we have become much more tech-savvy, with good reason.<br>

-<br>

So while it might seem like people have forgotten the art of photography, the fact is probably more that we just talk more about the technology now, because it has become more important, in the search for the "perfect image." Of course, I do remember many people talking an awful lot about various types of developer, film stock, and photo papers in the past. Maybe the focus of the tech talk has just shifted a little. Don't forget all the attention Ansel Adams paid to the developing process.</p>