On 3/26/06 4:57 PM, "Bruce Dayton", <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Somehow, I get the feeling that some, myself included in the past, > didn't ever do the darkroom part. So they just shot the film and let > the lab do the remaining part of the work flow. At my lab, that is > still available in digital, if you want to pay for it. Basically I > can take my jpgs in just like they were film and they will correct and > print them, just like film. Let me chime in. 1. As one becomes experienced in photography (and I am still talking about the amateur enthusiasts in general), above may not be quite so. Many of average shooters, experienced or inexperienced, shoot what is termed here the "snap shots" for the family or travel record etc, then go to labs (or one hour photo etc) and get the prints back. That was good enough and still so. Most lab do pretty good jobs in this regard. Problem is that when you chose particular effects when took a shot, but a lab just averages it out to make it into an ordinary photo as the hobbyist shooter has no control over the development phase of the process. This is particularly true for colour negative. If you wish to develop a shot captured as a silhouette for example, you should work with a lab who takes your instruction but commercial "snap lab" won't to do it. Nevertheless, to the most amateur enthusiasts, they do not take up the chemical process part as a hobby. This is an individual choice. 2. Fast forward to digital era, I have a feeling that what people talking about here as "art" is mostly the post-processing work flow, particularly the PS manipulation. I am not sure if this is truly the "art' part. Most people do this to condition the shots for viewing or printing. Not many even print many these days. I guess more than half or more shots would be just stored after viewing. Very easy to hide the "culls". I still consider that the photographs should be enjoyed and viewed in print as a final form. Sometimes, it is almost ridiculous to jump up and down on discovering some minute fault (slight CA, purple fringing or slight banding etc) which you never see in even A3 size print just because you could see them in 1:1 or sometimes even 1:2 pixel peeping which you never did in the film era. Sure we want to enlarge some shots beyond A3 size but we carefully choose those and take time to process them. Now the digital enabled something not many people could dream of in the past, such as picking what one considers good, post-process them and print large etc. But when people refer to post-processing, they normally mean fairly basic manipulations, barely touching the true capability (and the original intention) of PS. Digital enthusiasts shoot raw like machine gun (well, not quite but you know what I mean) without much regard to the ambient light etc (AWB) , as they (we) determined that those could (and should) be processed later on computer. There lies some grief by film enthusiasts (or traditionalist, I should say). Craft of taking good photos are now transferred to the mechanical post-processing in what is called the work flow. Now people call it the "art". Perhaps, but I have to wonder how much creativity is included in that (in general terms). PS allows real creative manipulation of the photo but how many people are doing it, using the real capability of the PS? Most are just scratching the surface of the software. 3. I have been using the PS since version 3 (which I believe was more than 10 years ago), but those days, it was not really for the true photo processing in today's sense. I sort of picked it up a separate hobby, manipulating various scanned images etc. I am no artist but I thought I experimented far more than just "post-processing". I used those manipulated images for the business presentation documents and web creation etc. Then the digital camera tide suddenly swelled and particularly with the popularity of DSLRs, the PS skill almost became mandatory. But it is like shifting the photo skill part from the moment of pressing the shutter (i.e., dialing in several parameters to get the desired effects) to the computer keys. This is quite fine and it is actually very convenient. But some people started doubting if that's really what they wanted. In Japan (not that Japan is any special, but simply because I watch more posts in Japan), this trend (coming back to film) is also a big tide. I cannot quantify it but there seem to be more and more of those people and even the resurgence of film is being talked about in some quarters (Fuji are officially forecasting this and it may not be just a commercial wishful thinking). People who desire this are almost without exception the most experienced group of people. I do not know how people who just jumped in the digital photography without the long experience in film photography are even aware of the things go into prior to pressing the shutter (knowledge of which are very useful in post processing anyway). There is indeed the joy of using your tool to "create" good photos being taken away by the digital process, and perhaps that's what the experienced people are feeling. 4. And then, there is an aspect of "pride of ownership" of fine photographic instruments or tools (you could call it a gadget factor :-). Today's digicams, particularly DSLRs are like computers in early '90s. You know that the moment you purchased a model, it is going to become obsolete in a very short time, even 6 months, so the manufacturers keep pumping out expensive toys using cheap materials, whereas the film cameras are matured technology and once you bought a decent one (and at some $500 to $1,000), it will last almost a lifetime. Unlike digicams, all film cameras produce the same decent images in the hand of the experienced as much depends on which film is used. I can go on and on like this and know I have not even touched more critical points (which I usually remember AFTER posting :-). I just thought that, after the original post of this thread, suddenly people all became self-acclaimed artists of some kind (I respect many are), promoting as if the post processing is the sophisticated art. I believe there is an increasing group of appreciating the old craft, and make a pause. I am not saying that those people suddenly are dropping the digital photography. They are not. But some people are increasingly beginning to pick up more film photography as they used to. They know the advantage of both digital and film photography (I know it cots more if we keep shuttering away like we do with digicams). We'll see. Duck and hide! Ken
