Marilyn Dalrymple writes: before I dive in, the post I cited made mention of the computer fair losing interest. I recall computing courses were run for secretaries, mums & dads and others when it was all fairly new to us. People did go to trade fairs to learn things about what they were using - but now the courses no longer run and few people seem to care what goes into their computer, where the bits were made or who puts it together and hopefully optimises everything.. : ******************************************* : Where does the serious student interested in a particular subject start his : or her study? With the history of that subject, and the more learned about : the beginnings of a subject, the better the student will be at his : profession or craft. not sure, my fist efforts with a camera were initiated by asking a few questions then jumping in the deep end, finding faults and then by trial and error, navigating my way to the very few books that really taught photographic theory. It took me quite some time before I made the HUGE leap in photographic knowledge which came about when I started printing my own black and whites. Another large step came about when I learned to print colour, the other big step was when teaching the subject to others ;) : Math is how many years old? Papers with mathematical problems from 1650 : B.C.E. have been found, yet, those interested in math ask the why, when, : where and how and history of mathematics. True, and math is a wonderful subject - very analytical, very precise and with zero margin for error. Compare this to literature where words often change meaning across time, or have no meaning or little association to the meaning you know when they are spoken in the same language but in a different country. I read a book that constantly referred to a man with a squint. It was only toward the end that I realised in that incarnation of 'English' a squint meant what we call here in Oz, cockeyed (ie, the eyes point in different directions) and what I thought. Comparing - the film based technology was a minefield of potential errors but through care and attempting to control as many variables as possible one could achieve a degree of constancy. Now digital, where no one person seems to know just *precisely* what is going on inside the camera - neglecting for a moment the fact that digital cameras are still analogue up to the point when the image information is digitised and stored, and analogue variations are natural but are largely untestable by the user - we have a device that just 'does things' inside. We all know the theory, but unlike wet process where we could test the films (etc) and work out precisely what this batch was doing and why, no one *knows* why the curve is being laid down this way this time, and a different way the next time. The algorithms are doing much of the work and too few people understand the algorithms which are the basic underlying building block of digital imaging. To put it another way, trying to determine how sharp a given lens is (lpmm). Put it on digicam 1 and 2 and shoot a target getting you two different indicators of sharpness. Increase the light level, change the iso or alter the sharpness setting and get even more variations. Decide to approach it differently by importing the data into a raw converter to see how that handles the interpolation and get yet another variation. At this point folks will also realise that raw is not entirely raw - the results with raw converter twiddling will be very different form the camera output in jpeg or tif. camera is doing *things* and we don't know precisely what or precisely how. We'll also realise that the lens can be extraordinarily sharp with one subject and lousy with another - resorting to exceedingly sharp film will answer the question as to how sharp the lens actually is of course.. That's just an example - I'm not trying to be number or lens sharpness obsessed, just using it to illustrate a deviation from the actual which cannot be tested methodically to yield a definitive answer. One cold also try testing the lens contrast to find variations beyond explanation when moving from setting to setting or from camera to camera and equally discover how little we really know about what the camera is doing. : There will always be those who want to know the where, when, why, how and : history of photography. Photography may become a more specialized field : just like mathematics is a specialized field, but math isn't going anywhere : and neither is photography. I hope so :) : People will learn what they need to/want to learn. They only limit : themselves by limiting their knowledge. If one were to burn all the books that leaves everyone struggling alone in the dark trying to discover it all for themselves. A hard task. As it stands trying to find a course that teaches photography in depth here is hard - locating 'old' books like Clercs harder, and finding a reference to a book to get started is pretty hard too. The local state library ditches books regularly. There are none of the old scientific texts left on photography and no bookstores carry anything of merit. Most of the scientific photography lecturers have retired from the local college which used to be recognised internationally and trained doctors, dentists, forensic photogs, police, aerial shooters, medical photographers the military and others in technical fields - and the remaining lecturers are past retirement age with no one to replace them - and the college no longer trains those mentioned prior, instead they go it alone and fumble their way along with Photoshop to resurrect the resulting images. : This seems like it would be a good thing for the serious photographer. : Those who wish to pursue photography as a profession will learn what is : needed to get the best photographs. : : Just rambling. nice ramble :) And appreciated. My background is a little different, I'm not a commercial shooter - in fact I've pretty much turned away from trying to make a dollar from photography in the current climate. However my background is the sciences and I guess I have a different appreciation (not better or worse, just different) for the cogs and the gears and the wetbench ;) I'm told one of the local hospitals has heard something about using IR photography for recording deep tissue bruising. Old technology really, but apparently they're thinking of trying it (!!) It was a pretty mainstream activity once. Reflecting on why the college's digital corse was so popular initially, so few people had computers, scanners or digital cameras. Over 1000 students would line from 5am to try to get into the 30 part time places available. Now the corse can't make the numbers.. everyone has a PC, a digicam, access to the web tutorials on PS (and a dodgy copy of the program) and there seems an utter lack of interest in what makes the images work. TO shoot myself down in flames now, I attended the last student exhibition where one of my former students was blowing everyone away with the 5 foot images on FB shot an 8x10 he borrowed. It gave me a warm feeling :) karl (floundering in the dark)
