Medium Format Dinosaurs

[graham_patterson1]

Personally, I work with computers every day, so it is pleasant to have something in my life that does not even use a battery, let alone an operating system!

 

Besides, I studied geology 8-)

 

Seriously: Never buy technology until you really need it. As yet, *I* don't.

[nick_wilson2]

Someone, on see a photograph in the 1800's, said 'painting is dead'.

Photography did not kill painting, colour did not kill b + w and digital will not kill film.

 

At least not for a long time, although we are beholden to a small number of film manufacturers only. (Maybe the best thing is for non-film companies to dominate the digital scene).

 

Thinking ahead to then, maybe digital camera makers will 'program' in film-like characteristics, in the same way the digital music recordings sometimes fake the pop and crackle of vinyl. And many more try to find the warmth of analogue recordings.

 

Also, how long do CCDs last. Hate to replace one. I've idly wondered this before.

 

Nick

[raymond_petty1]

Because I love the way B&W MF film prints onto fiber base paper. Digital has a lot of advantages but still can't produce that "look".

[classcamera]

What I see as being the real drawback to digital is, the same drawback to owning a computer; they have been designed to be obsolete in 2 years! I have a friend that has purchased six digital cameras (in the last 3 years)and is now in the process of upgrading his computer system, some of the opperating software (that he uses) will run just fine on the new system, some won't...oh well. <P>

 

In the history of photography there were several methods that produced direct positives on a plate or paper, after working and slaving in "darkness" the negative process became standard, this was the 1850's (correct me if I am wrong), and with some improvements, it is still the standard process for making photographic images (slides considered).<P>

 

The negative (film) process has survived because it embodies the best solution to several probelms: How do I get many prints from one pictures? How do I correct for less than ideal light conditons? How do I store the image for decades at a time? These seem like simple questions, but they are the basis of most all photgraphy--and film has answered them for more than 100 years.

 

Can anyone imagine your grand children finging a CDR and saying-- wow, I can't wait to see what is on this. They won't be able to see what is on it, the computer companies will have made that technology obsolete years ago. <P>

 

Other than the artifically fast change in technology, there is one other problem with digital; most of it is a passive process! Sit in front of the computer and let photoshop fix the problems that the Auto setting on your new digital camera created. Some photographers still like to be active in the darkroom. <P>

 

One interesting note to this is; when I meet a working professional photographer, I always ask them what they think about digital. I have not, as of yet, met one that liked it! Most use it because there customers demand it, but if they could avoid it they would.<P>

 

In closing I think digital is a solution to only two problems, how do I print color at home without knowing anything about photography, and how do I e-mail my pictures to grandma. Once that market is gone, so will be digital.

 

<P>Mark

[clark_yerrington]

getting back to basics may be the only place to go from here. a lot of the older equipment is elegant, durable and capable of great imagery, potentially. we use a digital camera at work (architect's office) to photograph buildings we will be remodeling - and find that convenient, practical... because we like having the pictures right away and it's not necessarily important to archive them... and they don't have to succeed artistically in order to be useful to us. but for anything else i prefer the MF TLR, or even the old trusty 35mm SLR. i do like how the digital camera does in low light situations. people have become infatuated with new technology for its own sake, abandoning perfectly good older equipment without well-founded reasons. some people are, anyway... not everyone feels like one has to wholeheartedly embrace every technological breakthrough that comes down the pike. some technology can be pretty unappealing, let's face it. i predict that old TLRs and other MF cameras will gain popularity.

[john_dixon5]

Because digital is crap compared to medium format, way too expensive, about the worst investment you will make in your life.

[desmond_kidman]

5 years from now, how many of those extolling the image quality of today's digital will look back and say:

 

"Wow, what idiots we were, shooting MF lenses with tiny 36 x 36 mm arrays, what were we thinking?"

 

"Now THIS digital finally is killer quality, we sure fell for that "over-sharpened, over-contrast enhanced" look. We were trying to compensate for something we were told was great, but something inside us was not fulfilled, so we kept upping the contrast, playing with color saturation......boy I wasted a lot of time."

 

"I sure wish I could use those files from 5 years ago with all the new standards. It is so difficult, and so imcompatible, that it just does not see like it's worth it."

 

"The film guys were right, early digital did stink. Why am I such a sucker for marketing?"

 

"How did I spend $18,000 for something inferior to what I can get for $1,000 now?"

 

"How come I don't have as many 'images of a lifetime' in the last 5 years as I had in the 5 years prior to that?"

 

"It seems like I don't make as much per hour now that I spend my life in front of the computer. How can I get the client to pay me for that?"

 

"How did I stop thinking so much about composition, light-play, the meaning of a photo while I was creating an image, replacing those thoughts with thoughts about what type of manipulation I could do when I got home, and if my battery would hold out?

 

"Why did I get into digital when I now think so much about emulating the qualities of film?"

 

Maybe we don't want to be asking these questions.

[syd]

I'd love to send this thread as an open letter to all digital and SLR camera manufacturers not to mention film manufacturers and photography magazines. I have long been sick to my back teeth with all the digital marketing and hype everywhere I turn. Just leave me alone with my MF and 35mm film units and I'm as happy as a pig in muck. Digital seems more and more like the plebian approach to image making in the 21st Century and I actually have no respect for it at all...I make no apologies for that. For the last time, I hate the look of the things, the mode of creating the image, the aesthetic generally, the lack of magic involved, the lack of imagination required to create something. It seems to me that digital is like fast food photography; I love my food and when I eat I want a substantial meal with substance not something that goes through me in a few hours and leaves no trace of nutritional value! I have no use for anything akin to this at all...

[j.w.]

Great responses, all of them. I love MF also because the image sensor size is almost ideal for bridging the gap between 35mm/digital and LF.

 

Regarding the issue of archiving images, I was reflecting on how many historical images we are blessed with from the pre-electronic days of photography, that came about merely by accident, or were under-appreciated until the negatives were viewed at a later date, within a different context from when the images were shot.

 

Photo critics and historians alike should be troubled by the fact that most folks will be "cleaning" their hard drives and media cards of "unwanted" images way too soon before the long-term context of the images has been felt. Yes, we seem to be losing an entire generation of images.

 

50 years from now, will someone be rummaging through an antique store, looking for old, anonymous photos from a bye-gone era? I doubt it. If someone does go to the trouble of buying outdated CD-R's, will there be any drives still around to play them? Remember the 8-track, or the RCA video disk technology, or consumer Beta VCR's, to mention but a few dead formats? I still use micro-cassette to record audio journals and other sounds. I still have a library of tapes dating back to the 1970's on micro-cassette. They still sound better than the digital voice recorders of today. And I once thought they wouldn't make an audio format sound worse than micro-cassette!

 

100 years from now, will there be such a thing as a photographic history? I hope so. Will photo-historians note the demise of the medium around the mid-1990's? I hope not.

 

So I still continue shooting film. Not that my images are necessarily worthy of remembrance, but I hope to continue documenting this time we live in, in hopes that those in the future will be able to access those images, and re-interprete them within a new context. If nothing more, mere anonymous snap-shots in some dusty antique store.

[h._p.]

>>how do I print color at home without knowing anything about photography, and how do I e-mail my pictures to grandma. Once that market is gone, so will be digital<<

 

This is the market that is increasing because it's what a lot of people want to do with photography. Don't forget that MF was born when Kodak realised they could sell cameras with roll films in them for the masses to take photos that could be printed cheaply and sent as postcards to grandma.

 

People will go on using MF and LF and for that matter 35mm for a variety of reasons but film's share of the market will inevitably decrease as the affordability of digital improves. It won't be as fast as some have predicted but it won't be as slow as some would wish. Personally, I will be sad to see the choices diminish.

[roger krueger]

Delta 3200 pushed to 25,000 + a camera (Mamiya Universal) that is so stable and jump-free I can handhold to 1/15 + a 6 x 9 neg that makes even delta 3200 seem pretty grainless and sharp.

 

A lot of the places that that this combination is magic are places I wouldn't want a $4,000 camera around my neck, or even an E-10. But to a thief, my beater antique looks pretty much worthless.

 

If you're shooting several rolls a day, high-end digital makes perfect economic sense. If you're shooting a couple of rolls a month, 8 x 10 Polaroid would make better economic sense.

 

Don't get me wrong, I love my E-10. But I love it like a brother. My funky old Mamiya I love like a mistress. (Which is pretty much how my wife sees its demands on my time and money!)

[jonathan brewer]

Same old argument.....a guy tells you, 'look at this woman I just picked up, she's young and pretty, don't she make you just want to dump that "old bag" you've got your arm around, how long you been with that nag, 20yrs.?'

 

Never mind that he's only known her for a week and she may not even be around in 3 months, he cannot see the value of the tried and true, your lady may be a little older, but everything still works, she's got a mature mind, and she'll stick by you through 'thick n thin'.

 

The opening question is a loaded question which also suggests its own answer from what is really a faulty premise, my Mamiya 330 and Minolta Autocord are not Dinosaurs, how can they be, they still work!!

 

The Dinosaurs are the digital gear of just a few years ago, as will the digital gear of today, 'here today, gone tommorrow, and for big bucks'.

[roger krueger]

Almost forgot--no shutter lag on mirrorless rangefinders. I once tried shooting golfers at a company event, trying to get the ball in the frame after it left the clubhead. 0-for-80 with my Sony DSC-770. 0-for-10 with 35mm (Minolta XD-11). 2-for-4 with my Mamiya Universal.

 

The Oswald-just-got-shot photo was taken with a Mamiya Press, that's why it's so soon after the bullet hit. Even a good AF digital SLR would have been at least a quarter-second later, and a much different picture. Pulitzer-prize facial expression versus nondescript crumpled man.

 

OTOH digital might have served this guy better the day before--he saw Oswald stick the rifle out the window, but was standing there with an empty camera--a courier had just picked up his film to meet his paper's deadline. Of course I guess handing off your CF card leaves you just as empty as handing off film....

[keith_laban]

Many many reasons, the most important of which is the simple fact that the best picture libraries/agencies and nearly all clients, insist on large transparencies and most will not even look at digital images, let alone use them........yet.<p><a href="http://www.keithlaban.co.uk">www.keithlaban.co.uk</a>

[e_m3]

Four reasons:

 

1. Rotating Back

 

2. WLF

 

3. Can operate in great heat and cold and altitude

 

4. Can be easily cleaned and repaired.

 

I also own a DSLR, as there is no need to break out your 6x7 just to get a family photo.

[david_goldfarb]

I still use medium format because sometimes the 11x14" camera isn't suited to the task at hand.

[classcamera]

Hey People,

<P>

I have a funny story that happend to me when I went to my darkroom the other day.

<P>

 

I was going to get a negative of mine and take it to be reprinted. So, I went to the basement, unlocked my darkroom, turned on the lights, went to the self where the three ring binder is (that stores my color negatives), grabbed the binder and opened it up. Then out of the clear blue sky, a message box appeared and told me that I had perfomed an illegal opperation in opening the file, and that the program would be terminated. The room went dark! My entire binder was lost! I had to go all the way back upstairs and go through the whole process agian! Only after repeating the entire process was I able to retreave some of the lost negatives. Out of complete desperation I invited my friend Norton over and he was able to open the binder completely, However he charged me Fifty bucks!<P>

 

That is why I still shoot film.<P>

Mark

[r.m._pruitt]

Your in the wrong forum John, this is photography.

Manipulation of digital images is not photography.

It's like comparing passing gas to a symphony orchestra.

[hclim]

After shooting I take the film to the lab. The next day I get the prints back and I spend a lot of time admiring the MF prints. Maybe I send some back for correction.

 

They say in digital there is a "digital workflow" you need to do no matter how little (having to turn on the computer or connect to your dye-sub printer I regard as a workflow). Well, I am happy to pay other people to do all the film workflow.

 

So, basically I just shoot and look at prints. Maybe I will keep liking it this way.

[hm]

Because the level of quality achievable in MF film is temporarily less expensive than comparable quality in digital, at least for the fairly low volume I do.

 

The digital revolution is "underway", as you say, but not yet complete in all respects. Ask again in 2 years. You'll hear many of the same responses you got today, but fewer of them, and they'll be more apparently hollow by then.

[syd]

Wanna bet?

[j.w.]

I just remembered another feature of film that future digital image sensors will have to emulate. That is the ability of the silver halide crystals to migrate in the emulsion, during development, toward contrast edges. This effect can be modulated by the choice of developer and method of agitation.

 

Future semiconductor manufacturers will have to figure out how to manage the physical migration of CCD or CMOS transistors within the (silicon?) matrix, toward contrast edges in the image plane. A similar ability to rearrange transistors into a random pattern, to break up the "grid", would be helpful. Doing this in-sensor will help preserve image resolution, contrary to what software does to the image when attempting these manipulations post-exposure.

 

Also, room-temperature super-conductors will help to solve the random electronic noise inherent in such devices. No longer will we have to carry around our dewer of LN2 to chill down the camera head, in order to achieve film-like clarity in low-light situations.

 

Of course, I'm jesting. We all know that 'images' are just that; things of the imagination. They don't really exist, except in our mind. And on film.

[patrick_drennon]

In answer to John's original question........I don't know.

[kevin_kolosky]

It never ceases to amaze me how photographers seem to think that gear shouldn't lose any of its value with use and age. people buy a new car on the showroom floor knowing that after they drive it out and use it a few months the value goes down 4-5000 dollars. yet those same people will complain that their 2000 dollar digital camera will only be worth 1000 in 2 years. gear is gear and time is time. if we all waited for the best deal to come along we would all waste a lifetime waiting and die without experiencing all that life has to offer.

 

As for quality. I haven't done any digital work yet myself. But I have looked at side by side 30 x 40s done by a professional lab from a hasselblad neg and a full frame digital camera. the hasselblad print looked like it came from a hasselblad. the digital print looked like it came from a 5 x 7 negative. so there is no doubt that the quality is there for those careful workers.

 

nevertheless, there is one thing for sure. Image making is about the thing being imaged and not about the gear used. sure, everyone likes nice stuff, but some very expensive cameras have been used to make some very lousy photographs and some very cheap cameras have been used to make some great photographs.