dilute photography

Okay I get it now

Digital has bought advantages and disadvantages to photography. It is different.

I for one did not really gel with film photography years ago. Digital was the doorway, precisely for reasons stated above. Immediate feedback and freedom to experiment - it suits my character. I think digital has enabled many to improve to a level they would not have attained with film.

Digital has though, bought some regression to the craft. Just like digital design which in some respects is much less sophosticated than letterpress printing, which in turn could never emulate the illuminated manuscripts of the medaeval scribes.

Back to photography, it seems to me there are two distinct areas where differences occur: the capability of the instrument which records images - camera - and the medium by which we present those images. Digital cameras have the benefits noted above but are less sophistcated in other respects, such as dynamic range compared to film. We can believe that with time technology will improve to the point where digital surpases the capability of film.

Concerning presentation, digital print has not yet reached the capability of older methods. Again we can hope that eventually it will, maybe with a completely new method we have no idea about yet.

If we are optimistic then the technological journey of photography will improve to a quality we have never yet seen, even if sometime there is a temporary step backwards. If we are pessimistic, technology will arrive at a baseline quality which is merely acceptable to the majority of consumers. It remains to be seen where photography will end up.

Excuse me if this is a bit rambling, it's after a few pints of Friday night Guiness - which itself has changed over the decades

Similarly, television ditched film as a medium in the 1980s for video tape, in everything except high-end drama, for cost reasons. The results were hellish to look at and even worse to work with. Linear editing meant you couldn't really go back and change an edit once done. However in no time at all technology/computing power changed all that and now you really cant tell if something is shot on film, tape or SD card. The same will happen in stills without doubt.

One of the downsides of course is that people are far less discipled about shooting ratios.

Ken

There are a few people out there who can make top-quality BW ptints, and a few people who can still knap stone tools. I find it interesting that there is a growing interest in salt, albumen, platinum and other 'alternative processes'. Part of their growth in popularity is that one can make large negatives digitally which are needed for making contact prints without having to invest in a large format camera. Film will become (is already?) something that a few people use because they want to, just as people still print books using lead type, frame their own pictures, make their own bread or, dare I say it, knap stone tools. Digital has long won the 'quality' argument. Doesn't stop me using film for the fun of it.

Kris.

I don't think that digital photography has led to an overall dilution of photographic work, I do think that it has diffused it.

Technically, today even a novice can turn out good work from day one. One person's work looks much like another's.

It means the one or two per cent of highly talented people shine out like beacons from the mass. The five or ten per cent under that who would once have been notable are now submerged in the noise of the rest.

When technique was tricky only the keenest bothered. There was that percentage who bought 'proper' cameras and the rest with their snapshot cameras. You could immediately tell their pictures apart. The people who bought 'proper' cameras would also be the ones who took an interest in the 'art' of photography and would rise above the 'mass' in that sense too.

It's easier to be good now but a lot harder to be outstanding.

I don't think we can blame the DSLR for that, I believe internet is to blame here more than anything else.
It's so easy to show your photos now to a public you would never had without the internet.

With digital we have besides the full atuomatic mode (which Lemmy speak off?) also the half automatic modes like AV and TV, have those change on the digital camera?
Besides that with digital the lightroom has come to us, almost no one leaves there photos untouched so we need to learn more about that now to get good results.

I don't think digital have diluted the art of photography but it has changed it though, make it more accessible for some but also harder for some others.

Lemmy - I'm not sure that digital does make it that much easier to produce technically competent photographs. It probably should but a trawl through Flickr will show a vast array of poorly executed images.

Otherwise I take your points which are as usual interesting especially with respect to the outstanding and good.

Mike

Thanks Mike. Yes, you're right, there are some awful images out there. I don't know how they do it, you would almost have to wilfully work at making them so bad.

A mate of mine has a little £79 camera from Tesco. Stick it on auto everything and it's almost impossible to mess up a picture. But, as you say, people do.

One thing I notice with compacts is that people frame their pic on the screen on the back of the camera, holding the camera more or less at arms length. Then, when they press the shutter, they 'stab' at it and because the camera is held in such an insecure position, it visibly moves, tilting sharply downwards on the shutter release side.

I've advised my daughter to put her Canon compact on the 2 second delay when taking pictures and it has made a tremendous difference to her holiday snaps.

I dont know about that. I look around photo exhibitions, like the Vanity Fair exhibition in the NPL a while back, and I see extraordinary quality print work - some of the larger ones were exceptional even though they started as slide or neg. I have also looked at a lot of Charlie Waite's work close up and considering he still uses 6X6 slide film, the prints are wonderful.

I dont think the skills have gone, I think they are morphing into digitized scanning and photo-printing skills instead of direct analogue printing skills. Its not the same but the flexibility offered and potential output quality is if anything even greater.

My own eyesight tells me that current colour reproduction (generally digitised then printed) is WAY better than anything I saw 20 years ago.

B&W, possibly not however. I think there is still a technology issue with greyscale. Somehow digital prints still look lifeless.

As for the OP question, the quality of my output is miles ahead of where I was 10 years ago. I can print A3+ at home. Sure I took the trouble to learn photoshop, colour management etc.

Are the original shots better? Yes, because I can now learn from my mistakes and see where I went wrong. I actually take far LESS shots now that I used to because I know when I nailed it.

Digital gave me back control of the whole process - something I lost when I lost access to a darkroom and only regained when I got my first neg scanner in '98.

To me learning the craft and techniques of darkroom work was like serving an apprenticeship. It took a number of years to achieve the skills, to produce prints that would be accepted in exhibitions. Darkroom work was a solitary craft requiring long hours in dark, smelly and often cold conditions. (mine was in the loft) Not many people were prepared to endure that level of dedication.

With digital printing, the photoshopping and printing can be performed in any room where the computer is set up. The process can be halted at any stage and come back to the next day or week. This makes it far more accessable for the masses.

I personably believe that ordinary colour printing has improved with digital. When you compare a digital print to an RA4 process print, I yhink the digital is now better. However, if you look back at Cibachrome/Ilfochrome prints from slides, they still have a wow factor.

I think that digitally printed monochrome work is now almost on a par with darkroom prints. The latest injet printers with black and several grey shades, along with fibre based papers, produce some very high quality monochromes. But it has taken until the recent generation of injet printers, to get there.