dilute photography

Do you think digital photography has weaken/diluted your craft

I know i was taking better images with a 35mm pentax camera 10 to 15 years a go.

why

the digital camera has made use lazy and trigger happy.

yes digital is cheaper and automatic you can see the image you've just taken(but how many shots did you take to get that shot you was after and did it happen by accident)

how many photographers out there get a great shot but don't plan for it.

James

I may be waffling as I've not been to bed/sleep for two days now
distressing about the wedding i have to do in two months with out a back up

James

Suggest you stop stressing about the wedding and spend your time constructively - organise yourself a back up. The minimum requirement would be a body roughly equivalent to your main camera. Plenty of sources, get to it!

stevef

thank you for your comment

I have shadowed three photographers for wedding and come out on top
I have a lot riding on this gig three more wedding in 2010 and my new studio. The middle wedding i was the best man but still out performed a £2000.00 wedding photographer.

And the last one they didn't order any images from the photographer but just had my images (for free(this was my sister, and i do feel for the photographer as he was in the end a friend and may i add a cannon freak))

I see a lot of photography when I'm judging competitions and in the sense of images the standard has increased very significantly sice the advent of digital. Imagination and skills have IMHO increased because the feedback from our images is instant - we can see immediately what we have achieved rather than waiting for a film to be processed.

There is also no cost, so we all learn and improve much quicker than with film.

Then we hit a ceiling and to get beyond that we need to be a bit more dedicated or single minded about it. Turning technical competence into truly great images is not easy, but with superb facilities for improvement such as forum discussions and ePHOTOzine as well as clubs, magazines and a wealth of photography on the web, we have every aid to improve.

What is now being lost is the craft of photography such as the traditional black and white darkroom print. At their best they can be truly staggering, but only in the flesh, so to speak, no good on a monitor screen or printed in a book.

I used to be quite a good printer, a friend of mine printed 300 pictures a day as his job and he was a superb printer. But even he was surpassed by some 20" x24" prints I once handled that were so utterly fantastic that I realise that we will never again experience that level of pure, lucious quality.

So in summary I would say that we have lifted our game generally and by some margin, but the very top 1% or 2% has probably gone for ever.

Nice and true comments john

I did some of my best work in film and most of the photographers on this site that shot in film will find they did too, if you don't believe me go in to your attic and look at your 24/36 Exposures and i bet you only wasted 1/2% of your shots

James

I'm putting images from that archive into the Gallery currently, and have been doing on and off for a few days.

I guess we can then judge for ourselves whether or not I've improved!

Not me.

I improved enormously after I went digital. No comparison whatsoever... I have a very few pictures from my film era that I'm quite pleased with, but not many as a proportion.

For me, it's the instant feedback. I've learn a lot from the mistakes I make, and having to wait (sometimes weeks) before seeing the results meant that I forgot a lot of what I'd done to make the mistakes in the first place.

Yes, I know I should have taken notes... but I was never disciplined enough. Thank heavens for EXIF... roll on auto-GPS tagging

I'm glad someone else stepped up to the plate first I completely agree with Chris. I also improved a lot after going digital. Film was okay considering there weren't any alternatives. But now we have digital I wouldn't consider going back to film in a million years. For one thing I took too many lousy photos but didn't know it for weeks

No offence meant John (and this isn't directed at you personally), but while I agree the darkroom had a nice cozy feeling, I completely disagree with this idea that we have somehow 'lost' something by going digital. Photography is now far more available to the masses than it used to be, and I think that annoys some of the old guard. Viva la revolution, I say!

Sometimes I wonder if I perceive an element of this, but I'm not sure. I'm not good enough either as a digital or film photographer to judge really.
Digital sensors do not yet have the dynamic range of film, so it is not yet possible, even theoretically, to get a picture with as dark darks and light lights as it was with film and paper, at least not with only one exposure.

So I don't think JR's assertion in relation to the potential quality of an actual darkroom print (created by the right pair of hands and eyes) was unreasonable.

Personally, I'm just as good or bad as I was before. I think digital is quite liberating, though. I don't think I take many more exposures than I did on film except in snapshot situations where I might take a picture where previously I wouldn't have bothered.

There are now more cameras in circulation than ever before, think phones, and I bet the pictures are hardly ever printed. Having said that cameras of one kind of another, most often made by Kodak, were in every household, D&P was readily available and most have families have a biscuit tin filled with photographic memories. I don't think photography is much more available to the masses than before; we have George Eastman to thank for that.

I gave up on a darkroom for printing, not developing the film, way before digital. I can print quite well but discovered a professional printer of amazing skill who could do a much better job than me and taking into account the amount of paper I wasted, not much more expensive.

It used to be that you had to learn certain aspects of photographic craft before venturing out with your camera but now, only if you are so inclined, you can learn them afterwards.

Incidentally, the best prints I have ever seen were by Ansell Adams, almost edible.

Ken

I think you may have misunderstood the point I was making. I wasn't talking about cozy darkrooms and a longing for that red light - I would never want to go back to that - but about the very very highest standard possible. I have only ever seen that level once and wouldn't have the patience to try and emulate it, but it was a quality level that far exceeds the levels of digital photography. What we have lost is the skills that make that level of printing possible. We've also lost the ability to make stone tools as well....

The trouble is I can't show you what I mean so the real point is that for most of us, me included, digital will be the only way to go.

I have evolved from developing and printing my onw black and white prints, taken with my first camera, the ME Super.
I used to think that digital had taken some of the craft away, but with Photoshop you can still dodge and burn, plus there are so many other creative features to get stuck into as well.
If anything, I would say that digital makes you take lots more pictures which has to be a good thing?
The only thing I miss is the printing part, so I guess I should be looking for a truly great black and white printer to produce top quality prints on quality paper. Any recomendations?

Even if you subscribe to this theory just look at how much we have gained

But this is true for many advancements in many fields, music is a classic example, how many people do you hear bemoan the loss of the hiss and crackle from vinyl

I was never any good in the darkroom anyway

I think I should add to that that I was referring to photographic technical quality, not content. The prints I saw were staggeringly impressive, but the content was extremely boring. On a monitor screen they would have been poor.

What we have gained is massively better in so many other ways and the quality is very very good also. Content has improved beyond any possible doubt, just as one example.

I did understand what you meant John

I too think digital printers have a long way to go to match a good wet print, but they are getting there.