Question: Is film & Darkroom experience still usefull to the beginner?

[alan_zinn]

<p>An emoticon for you Stephens :-)<br>

The really good thing is that the plugin's that emulate those "horse-and-buggy" methods keep them alive. I get a guilty pleasure wantonly using them. As time goes on and I succumb to a more decorative style of working they are great fun. They allow for a lot of personal expression that goes beyond the original method.</p>

[m_stephens]

<p>Alan Zinn,<br>

Right. I see one of the popular crazes now is to run pictures through the palette knife filter and print them out on canvas which gets wrapped into a box shape to look just like a painting. Gosh, there's just no end to the creative ways of using computers!<br>

Place appropriate emoticon here. </p>

[johne37179]

<p>I love digital photography and find it liberating. However, my years with film and in the darkroom developing both film and printing have certainly enriched my photographic experience as well as given me a better appreciation for what I want out of an image. to the extent that Photoshop and similar software program emulate the darkroom process, understanding that process is very helpful. Can you have full understanding without ever being in a darkroom? Sure. I don't know if darkroom experience is important today, or not. However, I think it is still beneficial to obtaining a full understanding of the print -- in particular.</p>

[fred_haeseker]

<p>I've taught a beginners' darkroom course at an artists' co-op. Response was slow at first, then picked up, and the society's darkroom is now booked to capacity. It seems that artists who want to use photography seriously like to learn the techniques that have been basic to the art for a century. Many of the students were also interested in learning to operate a manual camera and finding out what f-stops, shutter speeds and depth of field are all about.</p>

[andrew_ratzsch1]

<p>WOW! I am really impressed and even a bit overwhelmed by the great responses that have been posted to my question. It may take me another week to synthesize this into the article but, increasingly, I am thinking of simply distilling your own remarks. </p>

<p>I'll let you all know when the post goes up.<br>

Thanks Again!</p>

<p>Andy<P>

<b>

[Link removed - Sorry, gratuitous/blog/personal links are not permitted on Photo.net. See <a href="http://www.photo.net/info/guidelines/">http://www.photo.net/info/guidelines/</a>]</b>

[romphotog]

<p>film is dead, buried, and forgotten. in 25, 50 years no one will have even seen a roll of film no more. Darkroom? aha, as relevant as how to use a typewriter, or a rotary phone, or a turntable. stay with the future, forget the past.</p>

[randrew1]

<p>Rom,<br>

I agree that darkroom and film experience is no longer relevant for new students of photography. I compared it to a typewriter and a slide rule. There is a long way between that and a dead medium. People are still making Daguerreotypes after 173 years. The Callotype, Ambrotype, tintype, dry plate, celluloid film, and digital sensors have cut into the market for Daguerreotypes, but they haven't killed the format. I have an Western Electric farm telephone made in 1880 that was connected to the phone lines and working until we moved 4 years ago. (It would still work, I just haven't hooked it up again.) My BSR turntable still works with my vinyl records. The local grade school still uses chalk on slate blackboards. I like my iPad, but I always carry a pencil. I can still buy cornmeal ground by stone on a water powered mill. There are even a few people who still buy buggy whips. Film will never be what it used to be, but I don't envision the death of all film in my lifetime. </p>

[m_stephens]

<p>I'm still mystified by the comparison of art techniques to typewriters and buggy whips. How about oil painting? Is that about to die too? Drawing? When exactly were typewriters, crank phones, turntables, and buggy whips used as art techniques?</p>

<p>I think such comparisons reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of what constitutes art. Art is not contained in the brush, the raw canvas, the microprocessor of a computer camera, or the machined parts of a film camera. Art is the outcome of applied technique and inspiration. Techniques may come and go in fad-like procession, but they don't die because a new tool is invented.</p>

<p>Inspiration partly comes from the process itself. Each process has its own demands, peculiarities and need for mastery. From that comes part of the inspiration to create. Why would film and darkroom suddenly fail to provide inspiration? What about a computerized camera would make the dark room process irrelevant? I see superb photographs in exhibitions all the time, and not one thing about those photographs is inherently attached to using a computer-driven camera. What on earth are people thinking? That because computer cameras are cheaper to operate they will replace all previous art techniques? Utterly silly. Inkjet printers are cheaper than oil painting - right? Is oil painting dead?</p>

<p> </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>M, I'm with you. I don't see a viable analogy between the relationship of a typewriter to writing and the relationship of a camera to a photograph. One of the most intimate connections between tool and art is how much, for example, the sound of a particular violin influences the sound we hear when we listen to the music made by that violin. A camera probably has less directly perceptible influence on a photograph than a violin does on music, but clearly the camera can distinctly influence the look and feel of the photo. The particular typewriter has much less influence on the sound or feel of the poem written with its use. We understand these are all tools that are used in the making of art. But we hopefully all also understand that the type of influence and impact of each tool in each different medium varies a great deal. Though art is not contained in the brush, violin, or camera, the effect of each is a factor, though not to the same degree.</p>