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D-Day, Omaha Beach: And Why Film and Eye Best Digital And Photoshop
We just had the Anniversary of D-Day: All Honor, Praise and Peace to these common heroes.
ROBERT CAPA'S PHOTOS (only 11 survived, many others were mistakenly destroyed in the Dark Room in London where he delivered the rolls of film after the battle of D-day. Capra was killed in Vietnam War doing his brilliant job as a war photo-journalist.)
(click Full-Size)
And in terms of photography, digital could never do this, because there is no image anywhere, it is merely data, and data collected and projected onto a reception device: Iphoto, screen of a laptop, a printer. The image is created by the receiver, no image is transferred. All data when collected into a pattern moves towards some numerical average, so these photos would lack soul, they would be "perfect" or made near perfect after on photoshop. Or the data would be impossible do be interpreted as an image of what it is, it would be a nonsense shot and deleted. But B&W film photography (especially B&W,) on a basic camera makes the photographer work from the image, with light, shadow, and image "stamped" on a negative, it exists. The photographer is linked thru his eyes by light, contrast, form which his intuition and a few controls or shifts in camera position register. And so some of the most evocative pictures of a seminal war event are wrong - in terms of what's usually scene in digital photography. But they are true, because they are based in simplicity - of instrument, the camera, and directness: the eye to the image to the actual print of that union on the negative.
ROBERT CAPA'S PHOTOS (only 11 survived, many others were mistakenly destroyed in the Dark Room in London where he delivered the rolls of film after the battle of D-day. Capra was killed in Vietnam War doing his brilliant job as a war photo-journalist.)
(click Full-Size)
And in terms of photography, digital could never do this, because there is no image anywhere, it is merely data, and data collected and projected onto a reception device: Iphoto, screen of a laptop, a printer. The image is created by the receiver, no image is transferred. All data when collected into a pattern moves towards some numerical average, so these photos would lack soul, they would be "perfect" or made near perfect after on photoshop. Or the data would be impossible do be interpreted as an image of what it is, it would be a nonsense shot and deleted. But B&W film photography (especially B&W,) on a basic camera makes the photographer work from the image, with light, shadow, and image "stamped" on a negative, it exists. The photographer is linked thru his eyes by light, contrast, form which his intuition and a few controls or shifts in camera position register. And so some of the most evocative pictures of a seminal war event are wrong - in terms of what's usually scene in digital photography. But they are true, because they are based in simplicity - of instrument, the camera, and directness: the eye to the image to the actual print of that union on the negative.
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Canon 50D, 30D and Digital Rebel (plus some old friends - FTB and AE1)
Long-time amateur.....wishing for more time to play
Autocross and Track junkie
tonyp.smugmug.com
You may be right about digital in the future, what bothers me is what seems incessant preoccupation with photoshop, and camera doohickeys, as if this was photography. Most don't realize, for example, that the fastest way to take a series of pictures is not with anything digital or electronic. It's simply by using Depth of Field, which cameras today don't even show. They used to. Set speed at 1/60 (think it's that) and apperture at f8 and everything after 30' to infinity is within depth of field (in focus), click away, photos as fast as your finger moves. Change speed and aperture and everything from 10' - 30' in proper D of F and in focus, shoot away, and so on etc.
On the main topic, the pictures are very powerful. I've watched 100s of WW2 documentaries and it still is hard, if not impossible, to wrap your mind around.
On the film topic; depth of field is optical and has nothing to do with the film. It only has to do with the optics of the light and relation to the size of the plane it is captured on.
With all settings, lenses, and image plane sizes being equal a 35mm film planes DOF = 35mm digital sensors DOF
Photography today is no different from the days of film. Film photographers used doohickeys to get the results they wanted, like filters and masks. They would use tricks in the darkroom to get the desired effect for their prints as well. I take it you haven't seen a dSLR camera, as they are exactly like a film SLR camera, only digital, with a few features that they could never put in film camera. Most lenses from the film cameras can be used on the dSLR's as well. And as far as Photoshop/Lightroom goes, think of that as a modern day darkroom. Only difference is in Photoshop you are working on the photos digitally, where in the film days it was done with chemicals, and for touchups they used dyes. The advantage of digital, you can see your photo immeadiately, and nif it doesn't suite you, you can delete it and shoot it over. Something that can not be done with film cameras.
GaryB
“The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it!” - Ansel Adams
Right, depth of field has to do with camera, (and with your eye which also sees via depth of field), specifically the spherical lens and light falling on it similar to the sphere of the eye and light falling in it. My point was that while film photographers used it constantly - as an example: the ability to take fastest series of photos that are possible - now cameras have no rings that show anything and photographers have become ignorant about it, (D of F). Seems to me digital takes away depth of field anyway, everything always looks equally focused and on top of the viewer.
I got (until I screwed it up) much better shots from a '50s Ercona (film) with a Zeiss lens having no ability to focus the taking lens, no ability to take light readings, or automatically set aperture and shutter speed than I do from any digital camera. Yet simplicity itself to use the former and the most effective to render images as the eye and mind see them - and also in the simplest way.
Technology is great. It can provide access to activities in which the average person would otherwise find themselves unable to participate. Would you use a flash if you had to carry magnesium and potassium powder around? I wouldn't. However, most people who use a camera aren't interested in photography; they're interested in capturing memories. They suck at it and have no interest in learning. How does a missing aperture ring hurt these people? Frankly, the more automatic cameras become the less crappy family photos I have to look at. But that doesn't mean that photographers seeking quality are hopelessly without control of their instruments.
I hear next to nothing about working with any of the crucial elements of the initial shot, shadow, light, form, distance, depth of field, contrasts - it's sort of an inconsequential topic, the image; nor do I hear or read any focus on what was seen, it's 90% replaced by focus on the instrument - which is so excessively gadgeted and "automatized" that the photographer is carried further and further away from the eye and light. And then Photoshop, the creation of effects that can mimic coldly only the effect absent from their original photo; so hit "Black and White" and they think they have a B&W photo, knowing nothing about the art of B&W photography, and, most important the brilliant black and white films that digital can't even mimic. Press the button, click the pointer, this is knowledge of photography - in hyper complicated programs that cannot be known in total for years - like the Master, Photoshop.
Capra shot with a simple 35mm Leica of the day while trying not to get killed like everybody else already dead - by the time his film was in the darkroom he might be avoiding another death in another battlefield, his Leica clicking there too. And he plus his little simple camera and film produced some of the greatest images of war in the century. Like Matthew Brady his predecessor in the Civil War - whose war photographs are brilliant with a plate camera.
My predilection - and it is but this - is attraction to film and print from film, both as a taker and viewer. Digital to me produces robotic images, appearing as a computer product, while the former can look like the soul of what I see, and my view also is that digital robs the imagination of photographers, it's a "soul-snatcher". My view, and I know a very contrary one.
Capra's photos and the event they haunt us with - nothing more need be said about either - for we all react together on these.
www.morffed.com
The photos are the main reason for posting of the thread. Far as my views on digital, I kind of put out my "coda" on that in two longish statements, one on the photos, one about 5 or 6th posts down, in a reply to one of them. So, rather than argue with anyone who wants to disagree, which I know is most, I'll just say: I see what I see and my views come from that, not from talk. So, I'll just leave the photos and the event they evoke and my little "coda" about film and simplicity of instrument - all up there and leave them be without me intruding anymore.
Otherwise, the thread will be but another version of the by now old-arguments of digital vs film. And the photos and dead young men forgotten. And I take initial blame for that by including my thoughts on film.
Don't get me wrong. I realize that the photographer also had a grasp of the technology available to him at that point in time. And he made the best he could with it. I'm sure experience and practice played a lot in learning/knowing what to expect even though he wouldn't see those results until in the darkroom. But I also would believe that for every publishable image captured, there were probably dozens more that didn't garner a 2nd glance. Keep in mind that even cave drawings from our ancestors can be emotional and evocative, despite the limited "technology" available at that time.
The eye for the art, IMHO, goes beyond understanding of fundamentals or the range of gadgetry. Being in the right place at the right time plays a big part.
Canon 50D, 30D and Digital Rebel (plus some old friends - FTB and AE1)
Long-time amateur.....wishing for more time to play
Autocross and Track junkie
tonyp.smugmug.com
GaryB
“The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it!” - Ansel Adams
Posted earlier:
"The photos are the main reason for posting of the thread. Far as my views on digital, I kind of put out my "coda" on that in two longish statements, one on the photos, one about 5 or 6th posts down, in a reply to one of them. So, rather than argue with anyone who wants to disagree, which I know is most, I'll just say: I see what I see and my views come from that, not from talk. So, I'll just leave the photos and the event they evoke and my little "coda" about film and simplicity of instrument - all up there and leave them be without me intruding anymore.
Otherwise, the thread will be but another version of the by now old-arguments of digital vs film. And the photos and dead young men forgotten. (And I take initial blame for that by including my thoughts on film.")
And Now: BACK TO THE PHOTOS:
Which brings me to my second point...
the soulless nature of the internet, or for that matter even books. I distinctly remember how invigorating it was to unroll those leather scrolls that people had been using for millenniums, the odd fingerprint here and there, the smell of animal skin preserved in a musty cellar, the skill and effort that went into hand inking each word...
On shooting films side if Capa had been shooting digital he might have looked at his cameras screen and gone for a faster shutter speed and we wouldn't have the images we have today, the shots he took convey what was happening brilliantly but technically they are awful.
I still shoot film occasionally but not very often.
Can't agree, there were tons of photographers in WWII and Capra was regarded as tops. I think the images themselves pull me in at least - and the event, the background of course gives them emotional content, but such was true of many photographers.
Isn't this essentally removing equipment (used) from the equation, since all of the photographers of this era would've been using the same / similar kit?
Then - as now - effectiveness / quality / emotive 'hit' etc of results is primarily down to the user and his/her 'creative eye' / skill?
pp
Flickr
If you say Capra was tops I'll take your word for it as I have no reason to dispute it. That does mean however that the images having a crooked horizon, being out of focus, underexposed and grainy was intentional. Personally that's a hard sell for me.
Some may have been, but at the moments some of these shots were taken he most likely was in the water getting shot at - raised the camera and took some shots while ducking. Still, the instinct on when to shoot, what to shoot, made for the sensation - as he had- that the viewer was there. If you see the first 25 min of PRIVATE RYAN, you will see intentional mistakes to create that sense.
The graininess was sometimes due to high speed film, which I've used. It gives an impressionistic effect to capture the essence, rather than each pimple - like a "gesture life model". Some was due to exposure "errors" due to the circumstances - but which also make the heart of some of his photographs But do without "mistakes" - which are called the "hand of God" - and you would be without half or more of the great photographs of the 20th Century.
Especially war photography, "in-action" war photography.
Seems the intent and the effect of these shots you are missing and expecting what those that done like at on outdoor wedding, not Omaha Beach in WWII, (which was in the beginning and for a long time, a slaughter) the photographer in the same wave as the men he's shooting - and on the verge of being killed - as he ultimately was in action in Vietnam.
Forum for Canadian shooters: www.canphoto.net
Seems like this entire thread has been about "gear" and not the image. The medium with which the image is captured has nothing to do with the lasting effect on the viewer...nor would the majority of individuals who will be affected care about the medium used to capture it...Canon, Nikon, Sony/film, digital, medium format, prime lens, zoom lens, L series. The former are terms for photographers...not those who will bear witness to riveting images created by masters of all eras.
Because we like to romanticize the past and think it's pure. You can't tell me a war photographer during WWII would shoot film if digital were an option.
Excellent!
I'm sure he wouldn't invade Omaha Beach with electronic equipment. Doesn't do well in water, mud, sand and a lot of other things people meet daily in war -
Waterproof camera or casings.
Yes, that's very famous, an icon of D-Day.
What did your Dad say?