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From: "Larry N. Bolch" 
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Subject: Re: Advantages 
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2003 22:26:00 -0700
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Carl Cook at clcook{at}olywa.net wrote:

> I'm teaching photography this quarter, and a discussion came up about the
> advantages and disadvantages of traditional vs. digital photography.
>
> For example, traditional: negatives/slides -- something tangible - that
> will last a long time and are easily accessed, while the jury is still
> out on digital's file logevity, black and white darkroom prints "look"
> and "feel" better at this point in the technology's development.

Digital files CAN last a lot longer, providing they are backed up at
intervals. Zeros and ones are indestructable, but the medium on which they
reside can become obsolete and unreadable due to the onrush of technology
and the actual substance used. On the other hand, the same technology makes
backup more convenient and quicker every day.

Colour dyes fade in time and colour negatives are almost impossible to
adequatley back up - other than digitally. While they could be separated,
with the separations being done on silver based film, few people have either
the skills or time to do so. Slides can be copied, but again it is not easy
to do an exact replication and since they are backed up onto other slide
film, they begin their fade all over again.

The tapes used during the early days of the space program are said to hold a
true historic treasure of data, and documenting the beginning of an era. The
equipment they were made on has long since gone to the junk yard. Since
first hearing about this, some agency may have funded hand building a
reader, but I have not heard of it.

Books are printed on acidic paper and libraries are full of paper flakes.
Some of my colour prints have faded dramatically, and the negatives are
thousands of miles away - if they still exist. (Shot for hire.) We generate
incredible quantities of information each second, most of it upon fugitive
media. Very little of it is carved into stone tablets, except over the
little bit of ground that folks occupy while they too disintegrate.

> Traditional photography has a long and rich history, and has a lot of
> soul.

It has been in existance roughly two centuries, compared to the less than a
decade of digital. With the number of practioners shooting tin-types, glass
plates and film, it is reasonable that someone is eventually gonna get it
together. The photographers - not the medium - have the soul.

> Digital: instant feedback, easier to make large color prints, digital
> darkroom, traditional photography's next logical step in its evolution,
> etc.

There have been some landmarks in photography Thomas Wedgewood's first
exposures on paper saturated with silver-nitrate in 1802, but images could
not be fixed. It was not until 1826 that Joseph Niépce actually made
something that could be called a photograph. Again a long period of
development where photography was pretty much limited to the pros. In 1889,
George Eastman produced the first roll film, which eventually brought
photography to the masses. Another long period of development until the next
milestone, in 1935, with Leopold Godowsky and Leopold Mannes and Kodachrome.
While there were other colour processes before them, this was the first
colour film a shooter could buy over the counter and take to the drug-store
to be processed. Again a long period until the mid 1990s when the first CCD
cameras came on the market.

I am quite sure at each milestone, there was some crusty old "purist" that
said "There goes the neighborhood". "This will be the end of
photography!" I
remember grumps complaining that with built-in lightmeters, if they broke -
you were out of business. (Like you could not just fish out your Weston and
keep going.) When the light meter was linked to the aperture and shutter,
that was the end as well. No one would need photographers. Same with
automatics.

What these dolts can not get through their thick heads is that cameras don't
make photographs, photographers do. Whether a glass plate, a roll film or a
CCD, it is far more similar than different.

In the era of glass plates, one did not go to the one-hour lab for
processing. Everyone did their own or had an assistant to do it. Eastman
said something to the effect "You push the button and we will do the rest",
eliminating perhaps the most essential step of the process.Many people half
a century back had home darkrooms. Colour pretty much put a stop to that.

As Ansel is quoted, "The exposure is the score, the print is the
performance".

Digital has put us back in the era of the glass plate, we once again do our
own processing and it has liberated us from the tyrany of having out work
interpreted by an overworked lab-tech. Putting the whole process back in the
hands of the shooter, is probably the most significant part of digital
photography.

I close my last fume-room in the mid '80s and my personal work dwindled and
almost ceased. I could never feel that the prints I picked up and stashed in
the shoe boxes were really mine. The results were consistent - consistently
bland. Unless there was a pay-check at the end of the shoot, I rarely picked
up a camera. The little Nikon CP990 and the digital darkroom ended that.

Now I am extremely fired up, with an enthusiasm I have not felt since the
first years of discovery. My only regret is that I am not starting out now
in the digital era. I have found my comfort spot and my pictures show it.

I have run into an interesting thing in the past couple of months. Digital
camera users who declare themselves "purists", who refuse to do any image
processing. Nothing could be less pure. Wedgewood back in 1802 was desparate
for some means to fix his image which quickly faded. Doing photography has
always involved processing.

The exposure is the raw materials gathered in the field for the banquet.
However, just like a banquet, you do not serve the ingredients - no matter
how fine - until they are properly blended, seasoned and cooked to
perfection - or as close as possible. I strongly suspect that the "purist"
is using it as an excuse to avoid the learning curve. A slacker who takes
the moral high ground to humble those around him with his virtue, is none
the less just a slacker and no more.

Digital is not about silicon vs silver. Digital returns the whole process to
the shooter, conception, exposure, processing and presentation. That is the
true significance of digital - liberation from the one-hour lab!

larry!
ICQ 76620504
http://www.larry-bolch.com/

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