Hi David,
I guess to each his own with regard to digital or film, but concerning
printing I'm really only referring to B&W as I do very little with color
photography; and I think only recently has the technology truly arrived for
B&W printing - considering ink saturation, and the papers available and so
forth. That said, I can appreciate your romance with digital - it certainly
is an exciting alternative.
You're also dead on about the ease of PS compared to the darkroom: It is
much faster and more precise, and far more powerful. But, while I even
prefer to use PS, I'd hate to see mankind throw away 200 years of technology
to the digital age; and there still is the romance aspect, that I mentioned
before...
Many years ago I used to be a furniture designer - high-end, commercial
furniture, mostly - executive chairs and so forth. The photographer we would
hire to photograph my designs, for brochures and whatnot, was truly a
professional, and quite a well-known architectural photographer. He
understood his craft extremely well - manipulating light, timing exposures,
calculating f stops with a notepad and stubby pencil; taking test shots with
a Polaroid back to make sure everything was perfect before shooting on
transparencies. And the final result was a gorgeous print with tremendous,
vibrant color. No Photoshop, no editing, just complete cause and effect,
thoroughly in, predictable, control.
This is the type of photographer that I hope to aspire to. Present company
excepted, but it seems today that anyone who can afford a nice digital SLR
and decent lens can call themselves a photographer; that they take a
mediocre picture and change it later to make it perfect is all that matters.
Call me old fashioned but there's no magic in this for me. I feel like this
is what we're becoming with our technological advancements...
No offense intended to anyone, by the way.
PW
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Dyer-Bennet
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 11:51 AM
To: List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students
Subject: Re: Nikon Proud?
Paul Weyn wrote:
> For me, there's a romance about film that I just can't get with digital;
> but having said that, there are advantages to mixing both in processing:
> Because I market my images on-line, I make hi-res scans of the negs, do
> my darkroom editing in PS, then send to my lab for printing. The quality
> of the final printed image is excellent - as good as optical with
> today's technology, and the consistency from print to print is awesome.
> I also bypass the longevity problem completely because I still have the
> negs.
While for me, there's kinda a romance about digital that's just missing
with film. But then, computers have been my life's work, mostly paying
for the photography (it pays for a little of itself now and then).
I find the prints I can make from digital far better than what can be
achieved optically. You can only do so much dodging and burning in the
length of time the exposure takes, and the precision with which you can
do it is also limited. And I never got to the point of using contrast
masking in my darkroom printing (which was mostly B&W, anyway). And,
yes, the consistency of multiple prints is much better, and the ability
to make matching prints in different sizes is *immensely* better.
People might be interested in Galen Rowell's article on his conversion
to digital printmaking. Go to
<http://www.mountainlight.com/articles.html> and search down for
"World's Best Prints" (from *1999*!!!). (I can't find a way to make a
link directly to the individual article; something fairly clever seems
to be happening.)
As for longevity, I'm counting on digital scans to preserve my ephemeral
chromagenic color images. I'm seeing clear signs of changes in my older
Ektachrome slides, and some of the color prints I got from my mother are
simply not restorable as color images.
My prints these days are either of the same longevity as current prints
from negatives (made on the same materials by my lab), or else
considerably MORE stable (according to independent testing laboratories;
Epson pigmented inksets at the moment).
Some stuff is just a matter of personal preference; the "romance" part
for example. But I think, in many objective ways, that digital color
*printing* is just clearly better in all ways than darkroom printing
(with chromogenic materials; last I heard from Ctein he found dye
transfer printing from negatives still did a better job in the shadow
tones, and the prints look pretty convincing to me).
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/dd-b
Pics: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum,
http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
