karl shah-jenner <shahjen@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: >> Seems to me you're implying, and carefully avoiding actually >> arguing, that digital photography is inherently more mechanical, >> more mass-produced. Whereas I *will* argue that the opposite is >> true; to make the same amount of personal adjustment to any given >> photo in digital form takes *far* less time than in the darkoom, so >> any given photographer can give far *more* individual attention to >> each photo with digital than with with film, or can make more >> photos with the same amount of attention per photo as with film. > > no, I'm saying I'd prefer a cheaper *product*, I'm saying as a > customer of the motor companies, I'd prefer the cheapness of a car > that is easier to produce than a difficult one, just as here in > Perth many photo customers are asking for what they expect.. nay, > demand -a cheaper image - the digital one. they're forcing prices > down heavily (!) > > Having said that, there has been a resurgence in the wedding photo > industry to see it all go down on film, and even some companies > after magazine content want it this way too (and they are paying > more ;-) but on the whole the bulk of the industry consumers want > cheap digital pics. It's natural for consumers to want cheap whatever, of course. And the less they can see the difference, the more important "cheap" will be. Since the Brownie box camera, photographers have had to work to distinghuish themselves from the amateurs. > Funny thing though is that I always argues 'horses for courses' and > talked customers into choosing the appropriate media for the final > product. When half baked art directors had insisted on 6x7 chromes > were needed for a final product destined for newsprint I'd always > suggested 35mm B&W was the better choice. In this respect digital > is king, even a low res bad jpeg is perfectly acceptable for such > situations, and many images consumed these days go into similar > publications. People get strange ideas. I've noticed this a lot :-). >> We'll see how the CDs do. Probably more permanent than color >> materials. Epson Ultrachrome prints, and a number of other inksets on >> the right papers, are essentially certainly more permanent than any >> current chromagenic system (they're rated at 3 times the life-span by >> the top independent testing lab). > > cd's are failing in under 3 months in some instances - there's a list member > here who'll attest to that, and one of the most frequent things I find > myself doing for photographers these days is data recovery from flaky CD's. > DVD's are looking better, but this debate has raged for years among people > with more to lose data wise than you and I (hope I'm not being too > presumptuous here!) Personally I prefer hard drives :-) I'm sure some CDs are failing nearly-instantly. But the claim of 120 years wasn't for *any* CD, it was for Kodak Gold Ultima CDs. So far mine are doing just fine. I don't have anything that's dependent on a single CD, either. Except for the last couple of months, pretty much everything I've got in digital form fit onto 9 DVDs. I don't have a huge collection, am not shooting at professional rates (not hundreds of photos *every day*), and only started doing digital in February of 2000. (Lots of film work not yet digitized, and lots that never will be.) My experience with hard drives over the years leaves me not considering them a safe or stable place to store *anything*. [snip] >> Let me make an excursion into audio. The fact that audio recording >> (and editing) went from analog to digital seems to have had absolutely >> *zero* impact on the appearance of new talents or the recognition of >> old ones. It's probably improved the demo CDs of a lot of basement >> bands, though. >> >> I think the path digital imaging follows will probably be more like >> this than like what you are afraid will happen. > > ah. The college has a film and TV department that went completely digital. > I used to lecture in basic photography to their students but it was deemed > cheaper to teach them on digital video cameras so that component was dropped > some 3 years back. Since the last of the film taught students have left > they've had such a dramatic decline in skills, the students themselves have > demanded photography be reintroduced. They have realised they need the > basic B&W course to gain perspective, to learn about film curves, colour > sensitivity, development etc so they can relate it to video. > > the audio industry is different. The desk jockeys who mixed down the tracks > sit in front of digital mixing desks which look and behave *exactly* like > the analogue ones. The puter programs that digitise still have AU meters > and sliders on them, to all intents and purposes it behaves exactly the same > as before. the transition from tape/hard drive to vinyl/CD is still handled > by a factory somewhere and is something they never went near anyway.. Lots of stuff with filtering is completely different on a digital console; or at least on a digital computer editing program it is. Actually, my point is that digital imaging is really pretty close to that similar to darkroom imaging, too. Except without funny smells and corrosive solutions. I still use dodging and burning tools, still need to *see* the color cast before I can correct it, and so forth. Out at the camera, the similarity is even greater -- I still use ISO numbers, f stops, shutter speeds in the old familiar sequence, and so forth. >> > damn - I'm getting too close to the realms of phenomenology ;-) >> >> I'll agree that their value is decided by *us*, yeah. > >> Well, *should* we value things just because they're hard? Especially >> should we value doing things the hard way by choice, when a much >> easier way exists? What *is* the value of that? > > the rarity of the effort? I think that makes more for an object of curiosity rather than an object of actual value. >> Me too, very much. But I think working hard to achieve something >> *that can be achieved more easily* is pretty dumb. Hard work should >> be directed to producing something of interest, of value, something >> that's actually hard to make. > > like a multiple print? ;-) Why is it "better" to do it the hard way? Wouldn't that effort have been better spent on something else? -- David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@xxxxxxxx>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
