In response to the amenable Bob:- A situation where film might be better than digital?
For me yes, although I do use digital, a 2meg Canon powerShot A40 for experimental panoramic work, often involving many hundreds of exposures. It is quite surprising what can be done with very little - if you have a mind to. If anybody out there would like to loan or buy me a nice digital camera, I could do a whole lot more. I am being serious and funny at the same time. Anyway, back on topic ..... why do I use film? Depends what you are trying to do with it, as digital capture is so good for everything else other than what I actually do - for me - as a practicing artist. Mainly it is to do with the grain structure of film which is a close mimic of the rod and cone light receptor cells making up most of the human retina. The optic nerve hot-wires the brain to the outside world, and the human mind does the rest. Us humans scan the landscape all the time, and the eye's high resolution fovic spot bring whatever detail is out there to our attention. Most of what we see is held in the short term memory of the minds-eye, and most of the time most of the detail is either supressed or ignored - until the tiger leaps out from behind the trees at you. And then you see everything, and I mean every single hair and whisker - all two million of them - all at once. The mind applies its own highly sophisticated form of unsharp masking to impact the full extent of danger apparent, meaning you better run fast. Ever lost something, searched for it for hours, only to have it to suddenly appear right in front of yours eyes as if out of nowhere? Like it stands out with a ethereal prescence for a few moments - quite unlike anything else around it? Only for a few moments mind you, then everything becomes like it it was before again, as if nothing had ever happened. Well, all this happens in the brain, yet we see this through human vision as a continous visual reality. It is this prescence of descriptive detail and colour that fascinates me, and I find that an acutance type of film development makes the silver grain migrate towards and wrap itself around the light's latent image already embedded three dimensionally within the emulsion itself. This is very close to what I believe I am seeing on an organic level, and it all looks real as day to me. It is a very different experience with digital capture, as with digital everything looks like I want it to look, only with film everything looks like what it really is. I am drawn to the really is. This is why I work with film - or more specifically, scanned film. Anyone out there like to give me a redundant Flextight, you know where I am. Anyone with a fridge full of 35mm and 120 Pan F in need of a good home - let me know. That's enough writing for now. William Curwen =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
