Don,

Subtlety? Directness? How about poetry?

The dinosaur
Had a terrible roar
But sad to say
It's heard no more.

G

PS: Steve, actually I agree with your point about these unskilled professionals. Perhaps there's a gap in the market there for former studio photographers.

And Kim, don't forget the Komodo Dragon. At least you can avoid crocs by staying clear of the water.

Good grief, he's back!

So film beats digital when you print 6ft by 4ft? I must admit, that's a real clincher in the anti-digital argument. A body-blow! I'd better throw out all those embarassingly inferior 6'x4's.

How come, Steve, that your sister, whose brother is a college-trained professional photographer of 34 years standing, has no idea what a good print looks like? Have you never shown her? In 34 years?

Or is she more concerned with spontaneity, naturalness and fun than stuffy notions of what makes a good print? More concerned with the subject matter than darkroom technique? More concerned with what a photograph means than its tonal quality?

Film or digital, it's just a choice of medium. More convenient for some, less for others. Whether you swim or take the ferry, what matters is getting to the other side.

George

Don said: My typing can improve when a) i pay attention, b)my two yr old is not on my lap...lol.. easier to reach the shift key when I got two hands..lol

I suspected there was another reason!

G

Don,

With your wife you run your own businesss, have two jobs, and are bringing up six kids. You seem to be coping just fine to me, except for listening to stupid people who tell you you can't do things because of "learning disabilities", whatever they are.

Between your first and second posts you've started using upper case, so that proves you can do it. Now just press the carriage return key whenever you get onto a different subject.

It's far easier than photography!

And I agree about digital (most of the time, for most people, in most situations, except on old narrow boats, in the desert, up a mountain, and when not using b&w, transparency film, etc.).

I have to put in that disclaimer for health reasons. I'm afraid that someone will break my jaw if I don't. But also, I agree with it.

G

John R,

For shooting in JPEG, your advice is correct. I always used to underexpose by a third of a stop.

However, for shooting in RAW, the opposite is true. RAW gives you the ability to recover what in JPEG would be burnt-out highlights. What it can't do is recover information from severely under-exposed areas.

So, under-expose for JPEG, over-expose for RAW. (In moderation, of course.)

G

Guest,

Thank you for your contribution. Please may I bring to your attention two techniques to aid communication:

1 Upper case letters, for proper names and the first word in a sentence.

2 Paragraphs, to break up your text into readable chunks.

Now, what was your point, exactly?

Cheers

George

Kim,

You said: "........in a very small number of cases film can be a better medium or a better choice because of lifestyle."

I said: ".....digital is more convenient than film, for most people most of the time."

So, as broadly we seem to be in agreement, let's go out and take some photographs.

G

PS: Sorry to hear about your narrowboat experiences. I have indeed heard all about quasi-sin wave invertors, and am thankful that my hire boat had the real McCoy (I checked before I went), so I had no such problems, and greatly enjoyed reviewing my pictures each evening.

Kim said:

"As I said in my last post in this thread "Tell you what - You stop trying to put film down all the time and we will stop trying to defend our lifestyle"

Can I just remind you that the thread was started by a film advocate, not a digi person trying to knock film? And please don't accuse me of "trying to put film down all the time" until you have analysed all the 700 plus posts I have made on this forum and demonstrated that at least 75% are "knocking film".

And: "Along with that I am also fed up with people telling me that in all cases and in my particular lifestyle digital is the only way to go and that I must be an ignorant fool if I say that in certain circumstances that 35mm film may have advantages."

I sincerely doubt that anybody has ever told you that, and certainly I haven't. It would be helpful if you and Bretbysteve would refrain from inventing things.

Kim again: "The very large majority of print film is sold to the point and shoot market. I suspect that the proportion of slide to print film in the sector we are talking about is very different and perhaps you should include monochrome in that percentage."

I accept your point, but I have always maintained that digital compares well with print film and less well with monochrome and b&w. For that reason I don't, and didn't, argue that digi would be better for Bret, who is a slide man. It was his other arguments that don't add up, no matter how hard you tried to make them do so.

" I spend up to 6 weeks a year on a Narrowboat, quite often for 2 weeks at a time."

Narrowboats, eh? I was on one in May, on the Cheshire Ring. Most have 240V nowadays, but again I accept that for older narrowboats or hikes in the Himalayas digi is not the best choice. That's why one keeps a film camera in reserve.

"When photographing railways my most used lenses are the 15/3.5A and the 20/2.8A. As far as I am aware I cannot get these angles of view using prime lenses on a D." Really?

http://www.sigmaphoto.com/lenses/lenses_all_details.asp?id=3301&navigator=6

[Since posting this, I have noticed that it's not yet available in Pentax fit.]

"However, I do not believe, and I think that there others like me, that digital is the best and the only answer in all cases."

Nobody ever said that "digital is the best and the only answer in all cases". You are inventing things again, you naughty man.

An occasional poster to this forum signs off: "Newly computerised, but thankfully not DIGITISED." You can see that crass and provocative signatures are the domain of the film die-hard, not the digitographer.

I have nothing against film, or its advocates. But, borrowing your phrase, I don't understand why film buffs, including you, are so sensitive about the issue that many of their arguments consist of "statements that are misleading, distorted, irrelevent or untrue". And, I would add, exaggerated.

Digital requires a different way of working. Personally, I take far more pictures, but print far fewer. I manipulate them more (treating colour like b&w). I often use the computer, directly, or through email or on the web, to view and show my pictures.

People who treat digital like film are almost bound to be disappointed, and I suspect it is this failure or unwillingness to adapt to the new medium that leads some people to be unhappy with digital.

Like monochrome printing, digital requires the tog to learn a set of skills. Those who don't wish to do so won't get very far.

Best wishes

George

Kim,

Let's just take a close look at what Bretbysteve said....

"........sorry, but I am on my soapbox." Translation, he's having a rant.

"I am utterley amazed at how many people seem to think digital is more convenient than film......" Note: not "how many people are telling me" as the title of his post says, but "how many people SEEM TO THINK". So he's using a misleading title to suggest other people are telling him things when they're not.

"I shoot transparencies on Fuji film." Before digital, slides accounted for less than 5% of the colour film market. The comparisons between film and digital are almost always a comparison between print and digital, as I am sure Bret knows.

"My camera starts up immediately, with no delay...." So do all DSLRs.

"....my current batteries have so far lasted for OVER TWO AND A HALF YEARS........." He doesn't take many pictures. My Super A and Z1-P used to go through batteries far more often.

".......my images are recorded in a micro second....." but then take two days to be processed.

"I can shoot without fear of filling up my buffer........." Can he take 1,000 pictures without changing films? Can he change ISO mid-reel? Can he in any way alter the finished slide if it's not entirely to his liking?

"....when I finish my film I simply post it away and it returns through my letter box usually within 48 HRS"." 48 seconds with digital.

"I have not spent several very tedious hours on a PC........." Some people do spend quite a lot of time optimising their images. Why? Because they enjoy it! But it doesn't have to take very long, and compares well with the dreary hassle of sorting slides.

"....correcting what the camera is incapable of doing itself......" Ignorance speaks. DSLRs do everything a film SLR does.

".....I have not got a headache from staring at the screen...." Many millions of people work at computer screens all day without getting headaches. If his screen gives him a headache, he needs a new one.

".....nor suffered from repetitive strain injury...." Really scraping the barrel now!

".....I have even more time free to actually take more photos......" Good for him. But how often does he actually look at them? How often do other people see them? Slides are hideously inconvenient to view. I have thousands, going back thirty years, and they hardly ever get seen.

".....I do use digital, but it certainly is not more convenient." It sounds as though he has a little point and shoot, and has never taken the trouble to explore the possibilities of digital because he knows what he likes, and knows he doesn't like what he doesn't know!

This was not a thread about digi people extolling digital; it was a thread about an anti-digi on his soap-box, as he readily admits.

And now I really must finish the films in my Spotmatic and SFX and buy one to put in my 110!

G

(Fed up with people telling me how wonderful film is. I've been using it since 1958, and am very glad something better has come along.)

How I hate these silly threads, when the old reactionaries stagger out from their dark corners grumbling and cursing.

Of COURSE digital is more convenient than film, for most people most of the time. Furthermore, it's cheaper, gives you infinitely more control over the image (which is the most important advantage for many), and the quality is much better.

For which people is this NOT true? The answer is, people who shoot b&w, and people who shoot slides. Digital is optimised for colour, and can't compete with b&w film; and you can't make slides from a digital file without considerable difficulty.

But for all other people and purposes (which translates to 95% of the time), digital runs rings around film. Furthermore, those who choose to view their pictures mainly on screen gain even greater convenience and cost savings.

As for digital encouraging sloppy habits; rubbish. You only have to look at how many photographic magazines there are now, compared to a few years ago, to realise that digital has brought about a renaissance in photography; and you can bet that a goodly proportion of digitographers take their craft just as seriously as any film photographer ever did.

I shall leave you with this little poem by Charles Dodgson, on the convenience of his preferred process:

"First a piece of glass he coated
With Collodion, and plunged it
In a bath of Lunar Caustic
Carefully dissolved in water;
There he left it certain minutes.
Secondly my Hiawatha
Made with cunning hand a mixture
Of the acid Pyro-gallic,
And the Glacial Acetic,
And of alcohol and water:
This developed all the picture.
Finally he fixed each picture
With a saturate solution
Of a certain salt of Soda...."

Personally I'm glad things have moved on a bit since then, but one thing puzzles me. Why is it, for some people, that the world was just perfect when they were 16, and that all further progress has been for the worse?

George