Film:
Brassai
Brassai
Mine (film)
Couldn't help putting Brassai's in there. Have to say it, I have a digital and I'm not against it for some things, but I never seen one single digital photo that was life-like, (abstract colors & shapes etc. are a different horse).
And Photoshop never gives any afterward, fact on some scanned film that has life it takes it away.
And I know that great photographers of the past certainly used the darkroom to post process, and art form in itself.
Nevertheless, not one single....
I wish I was the only one who had this perception, would be isolated. But the coin of the realm somehow doesn't work - but technically. And these photos above aren't even as they could be, they're digitalized film. But still life is present though not as direct as an original print. ..... ("m speaking of Brassai's, just his presence up there swept mine out of my consciousness)
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More than personal, more than life-like, they have life, most would say brassai is a "great" because of that. But so is Ansel Adams shooting in Yosemite, a tree can have life. Digital is fine with many applications where a record of something is needed, works for advertising based on speed and manipulation of image for commercial effect. But for incisiveness, nuance, what ends up being called art that starts with the eye and light, it is obviously lacking, if one is involved in both. If all you were to see and use were old polaroids, well, that'd look good too after awhile.
Digitalization does something, perhaps lack of depth of field, lack of actual and subtle color but corrections to always vivid in the very act of translating light, lack of curve from black to white - perhaps that there is no actual image anywhere, it's "information" only. And thus they seem impersonal, static, manufactured by a machine. Really don't know.
But there has been far more arguments about the two than good photographs since those first started -and everything that could be said was decades ago. I started this as a reaction from seeing some brassai while preparing to post a photo of my own and made the comment.
Boooo on me.
Whenever these discussions come up the pioneers like Adams get brought into the mix like they are the final say in the matter. However, photography as a medium was looked down upon. It was what Adams DID with the medium that was art and brought legitimacy to photography as an art form, not the medium itself. If you limit what you call art to film and make this a digital vs film debate, then more power to you. I can appreciate both and each has its place. Personally I like the clean look of digital. This is how my eyes see the world. It doesn't see grain.
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
I know there is a difference, I don't know if life-like is the word, perhaps your feel when you see a good film shot and just see with digital. I think the fundamental difference is what I already mentioned: there is no image in digital, so every digital photo is manufactured, nor does any exist except the illusion of one dependent on the receiver, whatever it is, a print, a computer screen, that picks up only information and creates an image.
This is true also when looking on your screen at digitalized film, but there is an image that it all starts from, the impression of light, the very light "out there" outside of the lens, on a section of a negative. And that light impression, the image, if dark roomed and printed, is also the same impression of light all the way through.
Digital creates an approximation.
GaryB
“The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it!” - Ansel Adams
But there is no image in digital, there is in film though it will be slightly different in appearance dependent on some film types ( and not enough to be noticeable in others). But my point is there is an "IT" in film.
But anyway, I just spent $600 not to have an IT in one camera so I'll check it out for its positive attributes
(a good deal from a SONY sale, camera is usually $800)
No its not the same, rather they are not basically the same. The processing of film to negative brings out the image, it doesn't create it. it's not like the film was blank and the chemicals invented an image on top of it. The light has created the image though without processing it is not workable.
Also light is not 1s and 0s. No matter how much you blow up or alternately use a stronger and stronger magnifying glass right up to a microscope on a dark roomed and printed film photo, you will not find squares. Light is not squares either.
What light is is photons and what photons are I believe is a mystery, photons behave as particles or waves dependent on the activity. But what a photon is.......?
But it's a misnomer for describing the sub-atomic word to use language, for language always divides and makes discreet and particularized something that isn't, at least for this topic. Even the word "they" ("they behave") or "something" ("something that isn't") both in the above sentence, create an object, a thing. But from what advanced sub-atomic physics I believe concludes is that reality is all process.
"There is only change and nothing to which the change happens"
What all this has to do with my new $600 digital camera or my Rollei 6008i film camera, I lost track of about 5 min. ago.
Unless the viewer is in the presence of the original analogue medium, all bets are off (imo) as regards viewing what was actually captured on it.
Artistic expression can be exhibited in all manner of ways / mediums /materials - whether in this world of 2D representations or 3D objects.
pp
Flickr
According to the theory of Quantum Mechanics and the Standard Model of Particle Physics, photons and other quanta
occupy discrete energy states - thus "quantum (a quantity)". These states are separate and quanta change states without an analog transition,
and so, an argument can be made that they are "digital" in nature - on or off, here or not, high or low, one state or the next, etc...
Quanta always behave like a wave and a particle (not either/or)... what varies is the manner in which we measure/perceive the phenomenon.
Thanks for the explanation but film is subtle, nuanced and suggestive AND starts with an image, digital is usually (and I have seen not one otherwise) in your face sharp all over, vividly colored, blatant and manufactured and does not exist as an image unless there is receiver present and then that, the receiver, manufactures one - and overall suggests nothing. It's like getting hit over the head repeatedly with an artificial, neon-green Christmas tree.
But I know I'll LOVE my $600 digital and won't notice ANY of that. I promise to give an honest report, really. If I suddenly feel I'm seeing much better than film I'll say so.
Wow ... and ... YIKES!
(Both words used as an exclamatory interjection, which is redundant, but in this thread, necessary.
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
Well, I can only speak from an amateur wildlife snapper's perspective, but this is great news ... it'll stop us all getting up at some daft time in the morning* to catch mist / fog etc ... or go /stay out on days when it's raining / snowing / hailing etc ... because we''l know that we're wasting our time - if shooting digital ...
* or hanging around at the end of the day trying to catch some sort of vaguely evocative image / scene that the dying rays of the yellow orb provides.
pp
Flickr
Kind of the same feeling one gets when reading the musings of someone overly nostalgic too.
Digital is very useful and if I didn't think so I wouldn't have just spent $600 on a Sony.
AND, as a sole tool, digital is very good for those severely handicapped in the Imagination and
Breadth of Sensitivity areas, not their fault... they were born - rather digitalized - that way; Hence on their Cat-Scans only little squares present in the cerebral views.
(sorry, couldn't resist, joke, joke..)
I like the smooth feel the digital gives it, and to me coffee-shops ARE New York City, where I lived for years.
And this a film, shot by a dear friend of mine: THE CROSS, GROUND ZERO, (he's gone from brain cancer at 32)
For me both shots are valid, just different.
... But ...
I have almost exclusively shot digital for the last decade or so. The reason; I have created a number of custom processes to simulate the "film" look, as needed, which is also less and less as the market shifts more into "digital" look. Digital is quite simply much faster to shoot and work in.
... However ...
If you want a DuraTrans (or similar), I do like the look of starting with a positive film image to create the DuraTrans. (... But I test the lighting in digital, kind of like what we used to do with a polaroid back.) The large format view cameras still have value for the film originals in that context.
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
That sounds very interesting. I am ignorant of DuraTrans. If you have a chance, could you describe in detail what you the process is ?- if you have time, I realize you may not.
I've never shot large format, that is a commitment to cameras most of us are unfamiliar with, with a different way of using than just snapping a 35mm shot, and needing real knowledge of the darkroom and an expensive set-up. I've never had the time.
I'd also like a Leica, IF I had the $$$ for a film M, and for one of the great Leitz lenses, but even an old M3 with a very good lens is $1500 to 3 grand, and the M7 ridiculous. I recall a "sale starter kit" Leica was pushing: an M7 and a decent 50mm lens: $7000! good god in heaven save us.... some cars I bought were cheaper than that.
I had a fascinating day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Photography Dept. awhile back. A friend of mine runs a large part of it. They shoot every single item in the Met's collections, plus do all the photography for posters and brochures of the famous shows.
To one photographer I watched shoot, on some medium format digital, I said : "That camera certainly looks
pricey". He replied: "More than most BMWs". (It's the Met's equipment, not his.)
Also stopped in a room for my friend to grab something before we went to another space. Saw an unframed painting sitting next to a trash can and broom on the floor. It looked familiar. On the way out I said:
"That looks like a reproduction of a Van Gough". My friend commented nonchalantly :
"No, Monet --- and it's not a reproduction"
An original Monet sitting unframed on the floor near a garbage can!
I asked if I could take it home as a souvenir of my visit. She said
"Sure, if you want every cop in New York chasing you"
http://duratrans.com/
The primary reason to use a large format film for a DuraTrans display, very much IMO, is simply because it is a conventional photographic based sheet (albeit on a very sturdy substrate) and if you start with a film original the entire process is stochastic (i.e. random grain). This tends to produce the most consistently random "pepper grain" as well, compared to a digital original to DuraTrans display process.
I do suppose that if you use any of the wide-format transparencies printed from a digital printer that produces a fixed array of overlapping dots, a digital original would be preferable too.
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
The most I use is Medium Format 6x9, used to have an old folder: A Zeiss Ercona II shot in 6x9, and now a Fuji 6X9.
Big negative but that's about it size-wise. I also take mine to a place with a some industrial scanner, good scans but I doubt what you're talking about.
I'll read the url you gave on DuraTrans. Thanks so much!