What is it about film that makes you or another photographer choose it?

[Asher Kelman]

Everyone,

We still own film cameras. How many of us ever put in film and shoot something for fun or for a serious project? Do you still have a workflow? Have you given away or sold off your darkroom or just send film out for processing and then scan it yourself first to see how it is and then get a drum scan for professional output?

I have still a serious investment in film. I am gradually setting up my darkroom again but with a noes Jobo processor for up to 20 x 24 film.

My largest camera is 8x10. I have a Saphir 600 dpi scanner and a much better and massive Topaz but it needs a technician to help me get it up and running!

For me film is a special romance and the lenses have a unique character. I certainly do not have the skills in the wet darkroom that I have gained in digital processing and that moves me towards either contact printing or else scanning the film.

I'd love to know what are the reasons you might choose to shoot film and what system from camera to print you might use or intend to employ.

Also, if you are familiar with the works of photographers who can choose digital or analog and are successful with their gallery/client work, share that insight.

Asher

 

[Maris Rusis]

Asher, I'm not sure if I'm notorious for championing the cause of photography conducted according to its original principles but I do know I have annoyed people who make pictures some other way. At the risk of being thought impolite I offer the following tract, perhaps it's a manifesto, which accompanied a recent exhibition of mine. I don't expect to convert many to my cause. Consider it a thesis to ponder or searing evidence of a private madness.

In Defence of Light-Sensitive Materials​

The word photography was invented to describe what light sensitive materials deliver: pictures that offer a different class of imaging from painting, drawing, or digital methods. True photographs are pictures made out of light sensitive materials.

The content of such pictures is the visible trace of a direct physical process. This is sharply different to painting, drawing, and digital imaging where picture content is the visible output of processed data. Some other imaging methods that do not process data include life casts, death masks, brass rubbings, wax impressions, coal peels, papier-maché moulds, and footprints.

There is a general idleness of thought that assumes any picture beginning with a camera is a photograph. Most casual references to digital pictures as photographs are motivated not by deceit but rather by the innocent or uncritical acceptance of the jargon “digital photography”; a saying which has become so banal and familiar that it largely passes unchallenged; except perhaps here, now, and by me.

I use light sensitive substances to make pictures because of the special relationship between such pictures and their subject matter. The wonder of this special relationship is also available to the aware viewer. Non-photographic means of making realistic looking pictures include photo-realist painting, mezzotint, gravure, offset printing, and analogue and digital electronic techniques. These pictures may resemble photographs but they do not invoke the unique one-step physical bond between subject and true photograph.

The physical and non-virtual genesis of pictures made from light-sensitive substances has far-reaching consequences:

Light sensitive materials are utterly powerless in depicting subject matter that does not exist. A true photograph of a thing is an absolute certificate for the existence of that thing; an existence proof at the level of physical evidence. Quite differently, data-based pictures are at best a form of testimony rather than material evidence.

Light-made pictures require that the subject matter and the substances that will depict it have to be in each other’s presence at the same moment. True photographs cannot be fashioned to depict times past. The future is similarly inaccessible. Since true photographs can only begin their existence at the time of exposure in the fleeting present they constitute an absolute certificate that a particular moment in time actually existed.

Light-sensitive materials are blind to the imaginary, the topography of dreams, and the shape of hallucinatory visions. The option of making a picture from light sensitive materials is an infallible way of distinguishing delusion from reality. A true photograph authenticates the proposition that the camera really did see something.

Light-sensitive substances do not offer discretionary editing or augmentation of subject matter content. There is a one to one correspondence between points in a true photograph and places in real-world subject matter. This correspondence, also known as a transfer function, is immutable if only the subject matter changes.

The sole energy input for a true photograph comes from the subject. The internal chemical potential energy of the light-sensitive substances is sufficient to generate all the marks of which a photograph is composed. External energy sources are not obligatory. Remember, photography was invented in, described in, and works perfectly in a world without electricity.

Pictures made from light sensitive materials are different to paintings, drawings, and digital confections in that their authority to describe subject matter comes not from resemblance but from direct physical causation.

It is these unique qualities of true photography, its limitations and its profound certainties, that keep me committed to the medium as an integral and original form.

My light-made pictures are produced one at a time, start to finish, and in full by my own hand. The work flow is mine. No part of it is down to assistants or back-room people toiling to flatter my skills so I will feel good about paying their fee. I’m committed to making pictures out of light-sensitive substances even if these materials cease to be commercially available. I can synthesize them myself.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Asher, I'm not sure if I'm notorious for championing the cause of photography conducted according to its original principles but I do know I have annoyed people who make pictures some other way. At the risk of being thought impolite I offer the following tract, perhaps it's a manifesto, which accompanied a recent exhibition of mine. I don't expect to convert many to my cause. Consider it a thesis to ponder or searing evidence of a private madness.

Maris,

As far as I'm concerned you are correct, (but the world has moved on!)....t but I'd add that it's not light that writes but an ejected electron. It's that haphazard scattered path that creates unique local reactions with the silver in classic photography or silicon in digital; cameras.

I love you for your photographs and the method of making them has my respect and awe. However, pictures have a purpose. How does the (true) analog method of writing an image serve you better.

Surely you don't do film photography just because it's more true to the word photography. surely you choose to do it for esthetic, personal or practical reasons?

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

I use light sensitive substances to make pictures because of the special relationship between such pictures and their subject matter.

Maris,

This is a good point in that, in general, there is far less leeway to correct things in post as with digital work. This is truest with Polaroid prints: what you set up is what appears, blemishes and all. In fact, Photographic artists like Learoyd from England and the dear lady from munich.. (I'll edit and add her name shortly), both make pictures with positive paper material directly. It's either perfect and it's kept, or else it's a failure and is destroyed. With Learoyd,the models bumps and even a pustule are there to be discovered. There's a special presence of a sheet of finely detailed rich Cibachrome print that is simply a special experience to be appreciated. Now perhaps a digital back could do the same if the focal lengths and aperture were made corresponding to have the same razor thin DOF. Still, the craft of doing this with a single shot is a great commitment and technical achievement of monumental proportions.

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

Light sensitive materials are utterly powerless in depicting subject matter that does not exist. A true photograph of a thing is an absolute certificate for the existence of that thing; an existence proof at the level of physical evidence. Quite differently, data-based pictures are at best a form of testimony rather than material evidence.

Light-made pictures require that the subject matter and the substances that will depict it have to be in each other’s presence at the same moment. True photographs cannot be fashioned to depict times past. The future is similarly inaccessible. Since true photographs can only begin their existence at the time of exposure in the fleeting present they constitute an absolute certificate that a particular moment in time actually existed.

Light-sensitive materials are blind to the imaginary, the topography of dreams, and the shape of hallucinatory visions. The option of making a picture from light sensitive materials is an infallible way of distinguishing delusion from reality. A true photograph authenticates the proposition that the camera really did see something.

Light-sensitive substances do not offer discretionary editing or augmentation of subject matter content. There is a one to one correspondence between points in a true photograph and places in real-world subject matter. This correspondence, also known as a transfer function, is immutable if only the subject matter changes.

The sole energy input for a true photograph comes from the subject. The internal chemical potential energy of the light-sensitive substances is sufficient to generate all the marks of which a photograph is composed. External energy sources are not obligatory. Remember, photography was invented in, described in, and works perfectly in a world without electricity.

Maris,

As Picasso has done and many other artists, one can draw with a light in the darkness. There is no object, just the path of a light source in an imaginary 3D place. One can also use one's fingers or other objects to create fantasy images on film in the darkroom, we've all done that. So film can be used for imaginary objects. Consider a laser printer for writing directly on film!

I think, while your devotion to the factual "truth" of the word "photograph" is well grounded in facts of logic and history,all words are merely metaphors and by their nature, have to evolve with the times. Metaphors get set in new circumstances. When I was a child, we had a maypole and we sang and danced around it holding bright colored ribbons. we all said how gay we were. Now that today would have an entirely different meaning. When one is "thunderstruck" we do not hospitalize them, LOL! We just accept the evolved meaning. These are just all evolving ever shape-shifting mental constructs. It's useful to think of digital image making as photography as the end product, (the wedding album or the Victoria Secret's catalog are indeed made with a similar looking camera with controls that are quite analagous to the real analog film lineage.

Are we going to stop using the word "marriage" since it has now moved to include couples of the same sex? No we just adapt and get on with doing what we like! Only deeply doctrinal, an IMHO, mistaken fundamentalists would refuse to allow gay couples who have been "married" to deny them use of that title!

So, you have holidays, go to another city and want to take a camera with you or you are asked to take pictures in a classical concert. Would you use your film camera?

Here, I think that simplicity moves us to a digital sensor. For me, my dream is to use only film and have help in mixing the chemicals, keeping the bath warm and getting ready my tea! Meanwhile, this sunday, I will shoot the Santa Monica Orchestra and will use a slew of digital cameras for stills and overlapping video. However, when it comes to taking a photograph of the entire orchestra, I'll use my 8x10 with my Schneider 150mm f/5.6 Apo-Symmar L Lens. that will be a treat. Why? I feel it's just a beautiful experience to load a sheet of film and set everything up and know you have it, invisible, waiting to come to life!

There is something of physical beauty in the film camera, especially LF, pinhole, or something like the Mamiya RZ. But what are other people's reasons?

Asher

 

[Maris Rusis]

Maris,

As far as I'm concerned you are correc, (but the world has moved on!).

The world always moves on but some things must, of moral and logical necessity, always remain as they are. Oil painting is the same now as it was when the Van Eyck brothers invented it in the 15th century. If it were different it wouldn't be oil painting. The same goes for marble sculpture; unaltered since ancient Greek times. And photography too must stay the same or it gets muddled with other ways of making pictures which, in the course of time, may largely replace it.

Photography is not a description of a process but the name of a particular one. The description is "the application of the Chemical rays of light to the purpose of pictorial representation". It is an iron-clad principle of modern philosophy, thanks to the great American philosopher Saul Kripke, that names are recognised as rigid designators. They are the same in all possible worlds and consequently do not change. For example Asher Kelman will never become Barack Hussein Obama II no matter what changes afflict the universe

People may vote in the house of popular opinion that making pictures via digital technology is the same as making them out of light sensitive substances. But even a unanimous vote doesn't make the equation true. To think so is committing one of the grand fallacies of argument. The fallacy is so well known and ancient that Aristotle listed it among many others in about 340BCE. In formal philosophy it is known as the argumentum ad populum.

...t but I'd add that it's not light that writes but an ejected electron. It's that haphazard scattered path that creates unique local reactions with the silver in classic photography or silicon in digital; cameras.

No. I'll reaffirm light as the efficient cause (see Aristotle again) of a photographic exposure. There are several ways of ejecting an electron from a silver halide crystal. These include mechanical impact, heat, the presence of a strong reducing substance, and spontaneous disassociation. None of these generate photographs; just light.

I love you for your photographs and the method of making them has my respect and awe. However, pictures have a purpose. How does the (true) analog method of writing an image serve you better.

Surely you don't do film photography just because it's more true to the word photography. surely you choose to do it for esthetic, personal or practical reasons?

Asher

The reasons for making pictures out of light sensitive materials is to get pictures that have a particular set of properties than cannot be assuredly gained in any other way. See: In Defence of Light-Sensitive Materials. More explicitly I'm moved, shaken, inspired, and exhilarated sometimes to the point of horripilation by the properties that photographs have that paintings, drawings, and digi-pix don't have.

To be sure there is a psychological (psychiatric?) aspect as well. I have been making photographs consciously and deliberately in an art context for several decades. Everyone who invests their life in doing art discovers the same thing. Apart from very sporadic attention the work is carried out in profound isolation, ignored by most, valued by few, and at the cost of many other things not done. To sustain the long term effort artists tell themselves powerful stories, theories, mantras, and manifestos as to why the work is worth continuing with. Some of that stuff I post on OPF.

 

[Asher Kelman]

The world always moves on but some things must, of moral and logical necessity, always remain as they are. Oil painting is the same now as it was when the Van Eyck brothers invented it in the 15th century

How could any human activity be more central than that of marriage. It's far older a word than photography. Essentially, photography was made up yesterday. Marriage is at least 5,000 years of tradition in every known culture, AFAIK.

If we cannot enshrine "marriage" as some pure truthful inviolable well defined understanding in our society, (and I'm not advocating that we should), then why on earth should photography, a game we've only played for over a century, should even more rigid moral protection of its meaning? It really doesn't make sense. No one is disparaging analog film, it's just that the name has been stolen, just like the entire continent of Australia, the ancient civilizations of South America, all stolen. What do we do, give back the gold from Spanish Cathedrals and the British Royal Family and reinstate it all in South America? We can't go backwards. The stealing of words ain't half as bad as the stealing of culture and freedom! We should enjoy the pictures and just know in our hearts the debts we owe to the first picture makers in their kitchen laboratories.

I admire workers in film, especially when they mix chemicals and actually do the whole work by themselves. That's a devoted artisan and skilled artist at work. However, I'd argue that as much as I love film, and I do up to the highest mountains, in most cases, outside of 3 Meter original Polaroids or direct positive black and white or film, digital can produce an image which I swear you would not be able to distinguish, as long as we took care of technical parameters, which might show our deception.

I know what's in it for me, a feeling of working with magic with my own fingerprints on the edges of the sheet of film, and as much detail as digital for a lower price, when using MF or LF. Also if I want the effect of my soft portrait lens, then LF it has to be.

However, these are my sentiments. The actual name of "Photography" is only a metaphor, nothing holy or moral about it, but, of course, historically you are correct. But why should we get strict on this word when everything else has shifted. If we know it's a crafted analog silver gelatin image, then that's what it is, something to admire in addition to the actual content of the image.

So Maris, can we put aside the moral outrage of the usurping of the word "Photography" and share what is it about the analog processes that still have some practical advantage over digital and in what circumstances.

An easy one is group shots in a wedding. Having a Fuji 6x9 rangefinder camera with film makes a lot of sense and it's resolution will allow giant full detail pictures of a 50 family members in a group, easily! I can also see shooting everything with a DSLR then adding a few rolls of color film to provide an different character of image too.

Also, in a VIP shoot, to also have a LF camera is a delightful presence and a treat for the family being celebrated. Besides being a professional tool, it also is a friendly discussion point that has nothing to do with religion or politics, just beautiful wood and bellows and lenses!

To me, a film camera is to a portrait photographer as a stethoscope is a to a modern physician, (who also really uses digital technologies to get all the details), but the patient sees just the friendly stethoscope and is reassured.

Asher

 

[Jerome Marot]

Photography is not a description of a process but the name of a particular one. The description is "the application of the Chemical rays of light to the purpose of pictorial representation". It is an iron-clad principle of modern philosophy, thanks to the great American philosopher Saul Kripke, that names are recognised as rigid designators. They are the same in all possible worlds and consequently do not change. For example Asher Kelman will never become Barack Hussein Obama II no matter what changes afflict the universe.

Actually, people can change their surname and, although the process is difficult, it does not necessarily imply serving in the French foreign legion for a decade.

Same goes with language. Names evolve and one word is used to different successive meanings. The oldest use of the word "computer" in English dates to 1646 and it should be obvious that it was attached to a different meaning than the present one. "Photography" as a name has obviously evolved and is routinely used today to describe processes which are essentially digital.

I am sorry, Maris, but I can see little more in your insistence that "photography" implies analog processes than an attempt to shut off potential competitors from your particular line of business. But I won't develop that argument further, as I am still waiting to see what happens to my posts from yesterday.

Note that I am only discussing words here. As to photographs as actual objects, I know very well that analogue technology has some properties which cannot be fully recreated by digital photography. Which answers the original question in the thread, by the way.

 

[Doug Kerr]

It is interesting that at a certain desk at our local hospital, the attendant answers the telephone "diagnostic imaging", "radiology", or "x-ray", depending on how rushed she is.

They of course create "images" using a wide array of physical principles and mechanisms.

Still, until just a few years ago, the images derived by such techniques as positron emission tomography (PET) were delivered by having a (very expensive) film image writer blow them onto 14 in × 17 in acetate-based transparencies so the physician could stick them on the wall on the light box viewers.

Of course today the physician accesses them over a network with his tablet computer. And the light box viewers hold pizza orders for the ED staff.

And of course those responsible for the creation of cinematic works with Red Dragon-brain machines are called "filmmakers".

And after all, "camera" just means "room".

I hope you guys can figure all this out.

Without bloodshed.

χωρίς αιματοχυσία.

Best regards,

Doug

 

[Asher Kelman]

So, we have a persistent resentment of the use of the word, photography in this thread! There's no need to resolve the argument.

Can we share why we use film still or where there could be benefits over digital media.

Asher

 

[Jerome Marot]

Can we share why we use film still or where there could be benefits over digital media.

The main reasons why people (including myself) use film are:
-they like the particular colours
-they like the particular grain
-the like the particular grey tones of B&W films or analog B&W papers
-they want the rendering that comes from using a "sensor" of much bigger size
-they need the resolution of 8"x10" large format, which is still unmatched by non-stitched digital sensors
-they may want to use a particular camera for its capacities (e.g. for movements or because the models will behave differently in front of an "antique" camera)
-they market themselves as users of film.

 

[Theodoros Fotometria]

So, we have a persistent resentment of the use of the word, photography in this thread! There's no need to resolve the argument.

My opinion Asher, is that there is no "persistent resentment" of the word "photography"… not in this thread, not in any thread… words can't change, nor their meaning can… otherwise it is "Babel" (which may be the real excisting and growing problem in communication already) …but "Babel" only leads to the end… Photo-graphy will always mean what it does, as Geo-graphy will, or any other (….)-graphy will. IMO, the question on Maris' well supported position, should be if capturing the photons and then creating a graph (i.e. a photo-graph) either if the "graph part" is analog or digital, -if doing it digitally- is enough to still be considered as photo-graph… IMO, it is… IMO, "capturing real photons" is irrelevant to the process of recording it on a print… I do respect the alternative opinion, (especially if it is well supported with reasoning as with Maris) but I feel the opposite is well supported too… Provided that we agree on photo-graphy and photo-graph being stable fundamental meanings...


"Can we share why we use film still or where there could be benefits over digital media."
(Asher)


[/QUOTE]…which brings us to the problem,
1. With (vast majority of) digital, colour is created with interpolation… So one treats, colour created out of an "electronic mind" (a processor) not out of a (inaccurately made but within mankind limits) "true colour" process…
2. With film one records on the light sensitive area a "real S-slope curve", with compressed HLs and LLs during capture... a very similar process to real vision, which (when photography is used as an art) helps visualisation… but it leads to higher contrast in the linear mid part too… which leads to different "look"...
3. There is the technical part of image area size… which leads to narrower view angles with digital as well as the problem of limited compatibility with lens movements… the problem is also related with resolution, since the smaller the pixels, the less the lens movements ability…. (I believe a major reason why many photography artists use film with their view/tech cameras)
4. The LOOK (again): Digital is too "clean", it's "superhuman", … Art is a human creation, it being too clean is a negative... People (and artists know that) don't want art to be technically superficial …they find it robotic, they want more of the artist's soul... they want art media to be imperfect... they find it (we all do) more communicative! Perfection (of an artist) is far more visible if the media is imperfect, the same artist perfection if is accompanied by a perfect media, it brings up an "internal competition of perfection" inside the subject itself… It's like having a second but destructive subject into the (artistic) creation's original subject.

 

[Maris Rusis]

There is a danger in a wordy post that it may fall victim to longa, reliquit intactum; too long, did not read but I'll venture anyway.

If I clear my mind of cultural hype, advertising cliches, technical fads and just look at digital picture-making with a cold clear dispassionate eye I see two different things. And neither of them is photography as such.

First, there is the viewing of electronic files via display devices. Display devices include computer monitors, digital projectors, high res LCD screens, and the like. The fundamental entity here is the electronic file which consists of a set of instructions for the display device to generate a visible picture.

This is new, truly new. Nothing like it has emerged before in the history of the world. I think it will lead to a spectacular burgeoning of picture-making. And centuries of creativity could follow. At the moment there is no defining word for this kind of picture-making that reliably distinguishes it some older methods. If people need to call monitor displays photographs to sustain their creativity I say go ahead. Creativity trumps etymology. If these image-instruction files survive and can be displayed in the mid to distant future the scholars of those times will figure out if they are photographs or not.

The other opportunity for digital picture-making lies in hardcopy; usually coloured spots placed serially on a flat surface by a machine. The most familiar example is an ink-jet print. When analysed at the engine-room level this process unfolds as computer assisted painting. Not that this is a bad thing. Quite the opposite. The creative possibilities that have made traditional painting a premium medium in Western art are all available in inkjet printing. In the last 800 years a large proportion of the great treasures of art have been paintings. There is no fundamental reason why the art treasures of the next 800 years should not be ink-jets. Again, the scholars of the future will decide if they are photographs or not.

The world being what it is there are serious advantages in calling digital pictures photographs whether they are or not.

A commercial illustrator selling pictures to a paying client needs to speak the same language. If the client wants to call the pictures (whatever they are) photographs don't argue. Sell the pictures, take the money, feed the family.

If mainstream thought inclines to calling digi-pix photographs join the mainstream and feel comfortable. It's no fun being a renegade or a misfit. Better to be conservative and normal. If anxiety has to be endured then there are more momentous things to be anxious about than the identity of photography.

If one's colleagues and friends choose to call digi-pix photographs then you should do so too. There is a contentment and a security in being among like-minded folks. People are gregarious and survive better in harmonious and mutually supporting groups. And it doesn't matter if the group philosophy is wrong or even crazy. I offer as examples some extreme religious cults, conspiracy theorists, and even a few political parties.

It's technically easier to accept digi-pix as photographs because the equipment is readily available. The shops are full of digital cameras, monitors, scanners, and printers. Try going downtown to buy some 8x10 film and a bottle of developer; not so easy. Digital picture making is the path of least resistance and that's a powerful recommendation.

It's financially easier to accept digi-pix as photographs. One can produce innumerable electronic pictures with minimal knowledge, trivial effort, and zero cost. No precious or rare materials are consumed or, heaven forfend, wasted in the case of failure. Time being money, the digital approach avoids hours of exacting labour in a darkened room.

Novelty is a potent fetish in the contemporary art world. And digital picture-making delivers novelty in spades. To a man and woman curators are calling digi-pix photographs so artistic acceptance is pretty well assured. The alternative of using 170 year old photographic technology to compete with flashy digital stuff is a loser especially if you want acclaim and you want it now.

If there is a downside to declaring digi-pix to be photographs it is that digital picture-making is injured more than photography. By subsuming the identity of digi-pix in photography the digital medium fails to assert its own special identity. And it is a very special identity indeed. Digital workers think they are fishing in the same stream as Ansel Adams, Ed Weston, Alf Stieglitz, and the full pantheon of great photographers. But they are not. They fish in the same stream as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Velasquez, and van Gogh. Digital picture-makers are in truly grand company but they don't realise yet. And they never will while they keep clutching at photography's dirty coat-tails.

For and against all of this it may be said that in the history of picture-making no medium has ever become defunct if it is valued for its unique properties. Daresay there maybe some who still place hand prints on cave walls. I make photographs out of light-sensitive materials because of the unique properties they afford. I am part of a tradition and am supported by it. And remember, tradition is not the worship of ashes but the celebration of fire.

 

[nicolas claris]

I'll won't write long.
For me this is a false debate… sorry!
Whatever the medium, be creative, original, do not copy but bring your own vision. So, maybe your work will be recognized.
Use an old Bronica, an iPhone 1, or a Pentax 645D but be interesting! At least for part of your "audience".
Who does what? who cares? you care!
Sorry to be so provocative, but the important thing is the image, not the way one did create it.

 

[Asher Kelman]

I'll won't write long.
For me this is a false debate… sorry!
Whatever the medium, be creative, original, do not copy but bring your own vision. So, maybe your work will be recognized.
Use an old Bronica, an iPhone 1, or a Pentax 645D but be interesting! At least for part of your "audience".
Who does what? who cares? you care!
Sorry to be so provocative, but the important thing is the image, not the way one did create it.

Well, my friend, there are limitations and advantages for one medium over another. Different paintbrushes for different art. From a helicopter it would be a challenge to work with a 4x5 large format film camera!

With a wide film panoramic format, one does not need to stitch or worry about blending exposures or meeting parallax requirements in the setup. If one is making wide panoramic art, one can achieve this with any camera, but with film, there's no barrier between the photographer's eye and the artwork in mind.

It's possible to match with digital and a lot of extra steps. So there are real advantages for art work in certain defined niches we chose to work in.

For flowers and weddings, likely as not it makes no difference!

Asher

Asher

 

[nicolas claris]

Well, my friend, there are limitations and advantages for one medium over another. Different paintbrushes for different art. From a helicopter it would be a challenge to work with a 4x5 large format film camera!

With a wide film panoramic format, one does not need to stitch or worry about blending exposures or meeting parallax requirements in the setup. If one is making wide panoramic art, one can achieve this with any camera, but with film, there's no barrier between the photographer's eye and the artwork in mind.

It's possible to match with digital and a lot of extra steps. So there are real advantages for art work in certain defined niches we chose to work in.

For flowers and weddings, likely as not it makes no difference!

Asher

Asher

Of course!
But you're talking technique, not art…
A good photographer should be able to choose the right technic/technology according to the achievement he's/she's looking for.

As you say each technique has it's own advantage.
Like rules, you've got to know them before trying to bypass them.
This goes for technology as well. But not for the eye!

 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I'll won't write long.
For me this is a false debate… sorry!
Whatever the medium, be creative, original, do not copy but bring your own vision. So, maybe your work will be recognized.
Use an old Bronica, an iPhone 1, or a Pentax 645D but be interesting! At least for part of your "audience".
Who does what? who cares? you care!
Sorry to be so provocative, but the important thing is the image, not the way one did create it.

Hi Nicolas,

I fully agree. I also find the argument for when to call something a 'photograph' and when not, completely contrived and artificial. Any image that's created by the interaction of photons with a recording medium is a photograph in my book. Hopefully the subject matter makes it worthwhile to view, and anything in the presentation that does not distract from delivering the message is a plus. Excellence in presentation may even augment the viewing experience.

Whether shown on metal or glass plates or other rigid surfaces, or on a flexible substrate (paper or film, or even a projection on a cloud of aerosols), all end products are photographs, regardless of the process that led to that final product, as long as light was what enabled the image to be recorded.

Film is just one of many tangible ways to express a photographic vision. There is nothing superior about it.

Cheers,
Bart

 

[Jerome Marot]

Sorry to be so provocative, but the important thing is the image, not the way one did create it.

Indeed and we cannot stress that enough.

As to "digital paintings" versus "digital photographs", since I suppose that you all like ambient music videos with trippy high-def fractals, I suggest that you check this example of "digital painting" which I stumbled upon this morning: Overstepping artifacts by Musicians with Guns. Now, that is what I would call "digital painting".

Interestingly, even if this is undoubtedly digital and no light was involved, they still use one convention that is typical of photography. Let us see if you notice which one.

 

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Bart,

[Emphasis below added.]

Hi Nicolas,

I fully agree. I also find the argument for when to call something a 'photograph' and when not, completely contrived and artificial. Any image that's created by the interaction of photons with a recording medium is a photograph in my book. Hopefully the subject matter makes it worthwhile to view, and anything in the presentation that does not distract from delivering the message is a plus. Excellence in presentation may even augment the viewing experience.

Whether shown on metal or glass plates or other rigid surfaces, or on a flexible substrate (paper or film, or even a projection on a cloud of aerosols), all end products are photographs, regardless of the process that led to that final product, as long as light was what enabled the image to be recorded.

Film is just one of many tangible ways to express a photographic vision. There is nothing superior about it.

Hear, Hear.

Best regards,

Doug

 

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Jerome,

Indeed and we cannot stress that enough.

As to "digital paintings" versus "digital photographs", since I suppose that you all like ambient music videos with trippy high-def fractals, I suggest that you check this example of "digital painting" which I stumbled upon this morning: Overstepping artifacts by Musicians with Guns. Now, that is what I would call "digital painting".

A stunning work. Thanks for the link.

Interestingly, even if this is undoubtedly digital...

You perhaps mean "artificial". Almost every photograph we see today is digital (including the frames of television images).

... and no light was involved, they still use one convention that is typical of photography. Let us see if you notice which one.

Well, there are many. Perhaps you have in mind perspective. Perhaps finite depth of field.

Best regards,

Doug

 

[Jerome Marot]

Exactly: finite depth of field is the convention they use so that we get, more or less consciously, an information about the size of the fractal we are looking at.

Now: finite depth of field is a convention that was invented by photography. It did not exist in paintings (at least before the invention of photography, some painters emulated it later), while perspective certainly was used in paintings still the late middle ages.

Isn't it amusing that a process which has nothing in common with lenses, optics and photons includes a limitation on our vision that only arose from the use of lenses, optics and photons in the 19th century? We have a process which emulates the imperfections of another process as a means to create an image that will be perceived in a certain way by the viewer. At the same time, some photographers go to great effort to use apertures chosen so that their subject is sharp all over...

 

[Theodoros Fotometria]

I'll won't write long.
For me this is a false debate… sorry!

What is a false debate Nicolas? It seems that you've understand the subject as a film vs. Digital debate…

Whatever the medium, be creative, original, do not copy but bring your own vision. So, maybe your work will be recognised.

Sure… who says different?

Use an old Bronica, an iPhone 1, or a Pentax 645D but be interesting! At least for part of your "audience". Who does what? who cares? you care!

I still think there is a change of subject here… The media was never the discussion (I think…), but "be interesting" is the discussion! …yet it's only a comment in your post.

Sorry to be so provocative, but the important thing is the image, not the way one did create it.

You are not provocative…, I think you should "develop" further "but the important thing is the image" which you stated above, by just calling it ..."the important thing" is not enough to show ….your position on the importance of it. At least it doesn't explain a thesis (in contra with the previous posts) on when an image should be considered "interesting" …which is the subject (I think) of this discussion. In other words, your comment doesn't explain why would a creator use film instead of digital for a specific project, although he has access to both and he may agree on the technical superiority of digital.

To go a bit further, i'll repeat my opinion that "he does so to adopt the look of the photograph as to achieve the maximum of impact to the recipient's aesthetics for some specific subjects." Further more, there is a consequence of the choices done on the look of the photo-graph which has a direct relation of the communicative impact of it, as far as photography as an art is concerned. This of course doesn't mean that "art photography is only done with film", but it stands as my opinion that the look of the final product (the photo-graph - the opinion of the creator on how lighting should be presented), is what makes it art or not.

 

[Asher Kelman]

............

Whether shown on metal or glass plates or other rigid surfaces, or on a flexible substrate (paper or film, or even a projection on a cloud of aerosols), all end products are photographs, regardless of the process that led to that final product, as long as light was what enabled the image to be recorded.

Film is just one of many tangible ways to express a photographic vision. There is nothing superior about it.

Cheers,
Bart

Bart and Nicolas,

Of course, you're both so correct, notwithstanding our greatest respect and affection for Maris Rusis. I had hoped the title of this new thread would inhibit further allusion to definitions, but focus on uses. Two examples:


Music Performances: In photographing stage performances of classical music, first, I used an expensive and bulky Blimp® to keep the Canon DSLR silent enough and it worked. I was about to purchase the new 6x7 folding Voigtlander] Bessa III MF film camera. Then I discovered the APS-C Ricoh GXR. The sound of the shutter can be witched off! With it's very sharp 50mm f2.0 lens, I could get pretty fantastic pictures of the stage with no noise at all. That one could turn off the sound allowed me to take more pictures, change my angle and never get tired holding a giant clumsy weight anymore. So the specifics of cameras is very important to actual practical use. Here I could have been using film in MF and for sure it would have more resolution than the APS-C sensor. In addition it could use film at a native high ISO. So all around, film might have been better, but the Ricoh GXR was smaller and less expensive. With your advice, I used a lower ISO and under exposed the pictures and then recovered from the DNG files and got rid of noise. The pictures were artistic and delighted the Colburn School of Music. Had they paid, I'd have purchase that folding film camera in a Hollywood second, but the less expansive identical camera with its Fuji branding.

So this is a very practical approach to my choice of the camera for the job. The best one was the film camera because it used a very quiet leaf shutter lens. The film would have been a better quality with more detail and potential to print large prints as well as 16ft banners on the school walls, but that was out of my budget. So art and choice of instrument are complex and depends on one's end product, budget and skill.

Panoramas: With trees, tall grasses and flowers, several shots apart, structures can be beyond the stitching programs anti-ghosting algorithms. So a single shot with an easily rented 6x17 Fuji camera is a simple solution. Also there is no issue of parallax so one can move around and not have to set up nodal pints. with that clumsiness out of the way, one has no barrier between the mind, eye and the field of view. It's exact and will not change when the film is processed. There is no more fluid way of taking panoramas than with film. (Of course, one could get a scanning back, but then there is distortion ov moving elements, like waves). The film is naturally smooth, the details are stochastic and there are never accidental seams or poor color or exposure blends.

I actually do a lot of panoramas and frankly they are superb, but I resent the hours spent is stitching and post production, taking care of small details and sometimes having to substitute layers to make things as I need. My pictures are still wonderful and artistic, but, if I handhold a digital camera indoors in low light in an italian restaurant with the chef giving a special cooking demonstration, a lot can go wrong. Of course, I can overcome these difficulties, (to a great extent), with my skill and time, but film would be far better .....maybe next time!

Now these examples are just from my experience. I'd love to here how others make choices based on the blend of mechanical and esthetic considerations of film v. digital for specific needs.

Asher

 

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Asher,

A very nice and valuable essay. Thank you so much.

I'll pull your leg in a couple of places (embedded).

Thanks.

Best regards,

Doug

Bart and Nicolas,

Of course, you're both so correct, notwithstanding our greatest respect and affection for Maris Rusis. I had hoped the title of this new thread would inhibit further allusion to definitions, but focus on uses. Two examples:


Music Performances: In photographing stage performances of classical music, first, I used an expensive and bulky Blimp® to keep the Canon DSLR silent enough and it worked. I was about to purchase the new 6x7 folding Voigtlander] Bessa III MF film camera. Then I discovered the APS-C Ricoh GXR. The sound of the shutter simulated shutter sound can be switched off! With it's very sharp 50mm f2.0 lens, I could get pretty fantastic pictures of the stage with no noise at all. That one could turn off the sound allowed me to take more pictures, change my angle and never get tired holding a giant clumsy weight anymore. So the specifics of cameras is very important to actual practical use. Here I could have been using film in MF and for sure it would have more resolution than the APS-C sensor. In addition it could use film at a native high ISO. So all around, film might have been better, but the Ricoh GXR was smaller and less expensive. With your advice, I used a lower ISO and under exposed the pictures and then recovered from the DNG files and got rid of noise. The pictures were artistic and delighted the Colburn School of Music. Had they paid, I'd have purchase that folding film camera in a Hollywood second, but the less expansive identical camera with its Fuji branding.

So this is a very practical approach to my choice of the camera for the job. The best one was the film camera because it used a very quiet leaf shutter lens. The film would have been a better quality with more detail and potential to print large prints as well as 16ft banners on the school walls, but that was out of my budget. So art and choice of instrument are complex and depends on one's end product, budget and skill.

Panoramas: With trees, tall grasses and flowers, several shots apart, structures can be beyond the stitching programs anti-ghosting algorithms. So a single shot with an easily rented 6x17 Fuji camera is a simple solution. Also there is no issue of parallax so one can move around and not have to set up nodal points.

I assume you are speaking of the center of perspective, which normally falls at the center of the entrance pupil. No nodal point is involved (except by accident)

with that clumsiness out of the way, one has no barrier between the mind, eye and the field of view. It's exact and will not change when the film is processed. There is no more fluid way of taking panoramas than with film. (Of course, one could get a scanning back, but then there is distortion ov moving elements, like waves). The film is naturally smooth, the details are stochastic and there are never accidental seams or poor color or exposure blends.

I actually do a lot of panoramas and frankly they are superb, but I resent the hours spent is stitching and post production, taking care of small details and sometimes having to substitute layers to make things as I need. My pictures are still wonderful and artistic, but, if I handhold a digital camera indoors in low light in an italian restaurant with the chef giving a special cooking demonstration, a lot can go wrong. Of course, I can overcome these difficulties, (to a great extent), with my skill and time, but film would be far better .....maybe next time!

Now these examples are just from my experience. I'd love to here how others make choices based on the blend of mechanical and esthetic considerations of film v. digital for specific needs.

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi, Asher,

A very nice and valuable essay. Thank you so much.

I'll pull your leg in a couple of places (embedded).

Thanks.

Best regards,

Doug


I assume you are speaking of the center of perspective, which normally falls at the center of the entrance pupil. No nodal point is involved (except by accident)

Huh, Doug!

We're back to definitions and in physics and engineering you would generally have to get precedence. However, currently, the terms "entrance pupil", nodal point are used loosely to represent the same point, the center of perspective so as to get adjacent shots to line up at the center.

The important fact of the matter is that many folk who stitch 20-50 pictures have no idea that they'd do better in many case with a 6x7 or 6x17 film camera. I myself, even using a tripod and panorama system, get errors in the very close structures. There's the weight of the camera and lens and everything has some springiness and time to settle down means leaves and branches and clouds move.

But most folk today know nothing of film! It's really sad since artistically, the job is easier.

Still, getting film through airports is a drag!

Asher

 

[Theodoros Fotometria]

If I clear my mind of cultural hype, advertising cliches, technical fads and just look at digital picture-making with a cold clear dispassionate eye I see two different things. And neither of them is photography as such.

First, there is the viewing of electronic files via display devices. Display devices include computer monitors, digital projectors, high res LCD screens, and the like. The fundamental entity here is the electronic file which consists of a set of instructions for the display device to generate a visible picture.

This is new, truly new. Nothing like it has emerged before in the history of the world. I think it will lead to a spectacular burgeoning of picture-making. And centuries of creativity could follow. At the moment there is no defining word for this kind of picture-making that reliably distinguishes it some older methods. If people need to call monitor displays photographs to sustain their creativity I say go ahead. Creativity trumps etymology. If these image-instruction files survive and can be displayed in the mid to distant future the scholars of those times will figure out if they are photographs or not.

The other opportunity for digital picture-making lies in hardcopy; usually coloured spots placed serially on a flat surface by a machine. The most familiar example is an ink-jet print. When analysed at the engine-room level this process unfolds as computer assisted painting. Not that this is a bad thing. Quite the opposite. The creative possibilities that have made traditional painting a premium medium in Western art are all available in inkjet printing. In the last 800 years a large proportion of the great treasures of art have been paintings. There is no fundamental reason why the art treasures of the next 800 years should not be ink-jets. Again, the scholars of the future will decide if they are photographs or not.

I would agree that the image on a screen, is no where near a photograph… IMO for an image to be considered a photograph, it must be printed on a material surface as a final outcome of the whole process that is called photography… OTOH, I see of monitors and printers as being tools of that same process, necessary tools that the photographer "tunes" (calibrates) the way he wants, to achieve the result he wants (the print on material). I clearly don't have any problem scanning my negs, extract a Raw file out of them and end up with a final TIFF stored to be printed on a certain material… I also know, that some masters of photography that are still with us (Kudelka comes immediately in mind) do the same for their exhibitions.

IMO, photography is more a process under control from capture to print, than the media used… As long as there is a capture and a print of it, there is photography. If there is not a print, there is no photograph, therefore no (complete) photographic process… Further more, I think we have to differentiate artistic photography, than the rest of photography… Art, is a process by it self despite the method used (music, photography, painting …etc.), for which visualisation is a fundamental (the painter visualises his final painting before he paints it, the author his novel before he writes it… e.t.c), thus artistic photography exists if the fundamentals of both words are satisfied, both Art & photography.

 

[Asher Kelman]

I
IMO, photography is more a process under control from capture to print, than the media used… As long as there is a capture and a print of it, there is photography. If there is not a print, there is no photograph, therefore no (complete) photographic process… Further more, I think we have to differentiate artistic photography, than the rest of photography… Art, is a process by it self despite the method used (music, photography, painting …etc.), for which visualisation is a fundamental[/I] (the painter visualises his final painting before he paints it, the author his novel before he writes it… e.t.c), thus artistic photography exists if the fundamentals of both words are satisfied, both Art & photography.

Theodoros,

I'd like us to focus on where film is essential or advantageous, as in my two examples above. That's what we'd like to assemble from the diverse experience and tastes we all have.

All parts of photography represent the whole process and it's not useful to stop at a negative and state it's not a photograph. Otherwise much of Frank Cappa's work would not be photography as it was not even developed. So let's not get sidetracked.It serves no practical purpose to demand some version of pedantic definitions, unless there was fraud involved.

My goal for this thread was to discover what's involved with the decisions to use film. Maris has given his strong reasons, but where's your opinions. I'd love you to share the conditions where you'd choose to use analog light sensitive material and eschew digital. Or is this just of historical and sentimental interest to you as to most folk who have a camera. As one who works every day making pictures, are there times you choose film, or is this all in the past?

An answer with examples would be most valued and appreciated!

Thanks,

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

I know there's a presence in Richard Learoyd's life size direct print on Cibachrome.

But is it due to the lack of makeup or hair styling, the timeless appearance, choosing a lens at 600mm or 650mm or else the medium or his lighting and can we do the same with digital? This is not a casual question. I'd really like to know. My prejudice and gut feeling is that it's due to the medium, the rich Cibachrome pigment colors in the direct exposure of the special medium with nothing intermediate and no editing. I'd love to learn from the ideas and feelings of others. Please no more definitions.

Asher

 

[Jerome Marot]

Music Performances: In photographing stage performances of classical music, first, I used an expensive and bulky Blimp® to keep the Canon DSLR silent enough and it worked. I was about to purchase the new 6x7 folding Voigtlander] Bessa III MF film camera. Then I discovered the APS-C Ricoh GXR.

Panoramas: With trees, tall grasses and flowers, several shots apart, structures can be beyond the stitching programs anti-ghosting algorithms. So a single shot with an easily rented 6x17 Fuji camera is a simple solution.

Either with the Ricoh or with the Fuji 617, you are not choosing a medium, you are choosing a camera. I just happens that the particular camera may or may not use film, but you are choosing it for other reasons. Here: either because it is silent or because it offers a unique angle of view.

These are valid reasons, of course.

Still: one can choose between a digital or a film camera just for the capacities of the medium. Between an SLR and a full frame DSLR, you can even use the same lenses.

 

[Jerome Marot]

I know there's a presence in Richard Learoyd's life size direct print on Cibachrome.

But is it due to the lack of makeup or hair styling, the timeless appearance, choosing a lens at 600mm or 650mm or else the medium or his lighting and can we do the same with digital? This is not a casual question. I'd really like to know. My prejudice and gut feeling is that it's due to the medium, the rich Cibachrome pigment colors in the direct exposure of the special medium with nothing intermediate and no editing. I'd love to learn from the ideas and feelings of others. Please no more definitions.

I have never seen the original, so I can't answer the question. But I can say that the digital copy I see on screen above is an impressive picture. Life size, it must be stunning.