Digital vs film / color vs b&w?
William D. Tallman
because the latter has been "done" many decades ago. The former still
needs doing, it seems. Yep, it's all photography, but the arguments are
not about where to go, but about how to get there. Maybe there should also
be an argument about where to go, as well.
Where to go = color vs b&w. How to get there = digital vs film. Does that
make sense? Maybe. Well, let's pretend it does....
I've just got back into photography after over a decade of absence. The wet
darkroom is still packed up in the corner of the garage, having avoided
repeated attempts to be put in storage. I got a digital to do stuff for a
web site (Canon G2). Decided I may no longer be agile enough to do manual
focusing rapidly (was that a rationalization?), and set aside a Spotmatic
kit for Canon EOS gear: Elan 7 and four lenses. Then got a flatbed
scanner (Epson Perfection 3200) and a printer (Epson 2200). And then
decided to start scanning in old negatives, which turned out to be quite a
bit more b&w....
Yeah, obviously I had no game plan here.... lol!!!!
The flatbed scanner won't max out the abilities of the EOS glass, but a
Nikon LS4000 might, and it's got digital ICE... which won't work on
b&w.... and maybe I really should think about having a second body for
b&w, 'cause I still really like the medium....
I'm getting confused!!!
Heh, now the latest: niece needs some camera gear, so she gets a Ricoh with
a Tokina zoom, 'cause somehow I'm too skin-flinty to part with my Pentax
glass (a few SMC lenses...), but I'm left with no body! Mirable' dictu!!!
A Pentax LX shows up on consignment at the local photo gear shop, and it's
just had a sticky mirror fixed and it's been inspected and it's only
&400US... and so now I've got a working Pentax system again.
Rationale? Well, I do really need a b&w system as well as a color system...
my wife saw through that immediately but was to polite to say so... lol!!!
I'm really confused!!!
Suddenly, it dawns on me: b&w and color really are two distinctly different
disciplines, regardless of the fact that the format is the same and the
same gear is used. (Yeah, I knew that...) But now I see why, I think. At
least for me....
There are guys who lose interest in photography once the shutter clicks, and
are content to have others process and print for them. And there are guys,
like me, who like the entire process from visualization to completed image.
So why haven't I been doing this all along? The answer was not exactly an
epiphany, but was valuable nonetheless.
I ****HATE**** color darkroom work!!!!! Yeah, I could do it, but there was
no magic in the process, unlike b&w, where one watches the print come up in
the developer. As far as I'm concerned, I will ****NEVER**** have a wet
darkroom for color ever again. Enter digital!!!! Now I can process color
whilst watching the process step by step in image manipulation software!!!
Does this work for b&w? Well, yeah, but..... so far as I've been able to
tell, digital b&w kinda sucks. I expect there are those who produce
marvelous digital b&w work with panache, but I don't know those folk, and
have no reach to how they do that. But I *do* know that b&w works
wonderfully well using film and a wet darkroom.
So now order reasserts itself. I've got a color camera kit and a b&w camera
kit, and I've got a color darkroom (digital) and a b&w darkroom (wet lab).
At the moment, the EOS gear is film dedicated, but all that great glass is
going to fit on a digital body one of these days. Maybe the Elan 7 will be
for b&w....
Result: Digital for color; film for b&w.
Color photography will never, ever, ever replace b&w photography. Digital
photography will never, ever, replace film photography. Or am I missing
something here?
Discussing this with the wife: Color photography is nearly the sum total of
commercial photographic work. B&w photography maintains a strong and
compelling presence in fine art photography. Commercial photographers are
moving to digital in droves, I hear (so sayeth Joseph Weed in "For Better
of for Worse"), and it's pretty obvious why this is so. How many fine arts
photographers working in b&w use digital? Dunno, does anyone?
So what's the point of this post?
Well, having larded it liberally with references to 35mm photographic gear
(with a couple of digital devices thrown in) in order to stay topical,
maybe the point is that there should be a differentiation between color
photography and b&w photography to go along with the differentiation
between film and digital.
Another point: how many of you out there only shoot color, or only shoot
b&w? Not many, I warrant. I'd guess most of us do both, at least in the
long run. Maybe most of us should accept that we can also use both digital
and film media; hopefully, we would do so appropriately.
Comments?
Bill Tallman
Skip Middleton
http://www.biphoto.com/bwforum/
BTW, by wife does some awesome b&w with her Oly E-10 4mp digital.
--
Skip Middleton
www.shadowcatcherimagery.com
"William D. Tallman" <wtal...@olypen.com> wrote in message
news:vffi4h5...@corp.supernews.com...
Tony Spadaro
the chemicals - in fact I'm now allergic to B/W chemicals so I assume colour
chems would prolly take my skin right off. I was a black and white
shooter -- did some shooting in colour but it was never the "important"
stuff. Since going digital for processing I've become a colour shooter. Now
that I can do my own colour prints, with full control I'm in photographer's
heaven.
The 4000 ED is one hell of a scanner BTW.
--
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Mxsmanic
> Suddenly, it dawns on me: b&w and color really are
> two distinctly different disciplines, regardless of
> the fact that the format is the same and the
> same gear is used.
Yes.
> I ****HATE**** color darkroom work!!!!!
Doesn't everyone?
> Does this work for b&w? Well, yeah, but..... so
> far as I've been able to tell, digital b&w kinda sucks.
It does indeed ... but not because it is "digital."
Digital B&W looks bad because it is really just a conversion from color.
You cannot convert color to B&W in a way that duplicates traditional B&W
image capture; you MUST capture the original image in B&W in order to
retain the full flexibility of black and white photography. This is
true whether you shoot film or digitally; the only difference is that
film gives you a choice (you can actually shoot with true B&W film if
you want), whereas digital photography forces you to shoot the original
image in color--because nobody makes B&W digital cameras.
> Result: Digital for color; film for b&w.
Remember that you can scan B&W film for your digital darkroom with
superb results, so you really only need a wet darkroom to develop the
film, and that is very easy in B&W (even I do that, and I hate darkroom
work).
> Color photography will never, ever, ever replace
> b&w photography.
I agree.
> Digital photography will never, ever, replace
> film photography.
For some types of photography, that may be true. Time will tell.
It's virtually certain that digital will not replace film for B&W unless
someone builds a digital camera that can actually capture images in
black and white to begin with. Converting color just won't do.
--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.
Frank Pittel
: William D. Tallman writes:
: Yes.
: Doesn't everyone?
: I agree.
I personally think that digital will replace color film. Since B&W is an
art it'll be around longer.
--
Keep working millions on welfare depend on you
-------------------
f...@deepthought.com
Volker
> I personally think that digital will replace color film. Since B&W is an
> art it'll be around longer.
>
Yes - but I don´t know, which digital media to store the data will last 30
years...
As with slides, I *know* they stay in good condition for at least 40 years
and i always can transfer them to the current media e.g. CD-ROM, DVD....
many things to come in the future,
Do you remeber 5 1/4 floppys? can you still read the data? and this was only
10 years ago!
Volker
DunxUK
>Date: 24/06/2003 13:57 GMT Daylight Time
>Message-id: <bd9hrb$cap$1...@news.fth.sbs.de>
All this stuff about CDRs losing data seems a bit overblown, if there is
/important/ data that you want to keep why not use Gold CDRs which have a data
life in the 100s of years? It is important that people know the limitations of
standard CDRs but this limitation isn't true of all CDRs. For me the greater
concern is file formats becoming obsolete. If you don't think it will happen
just try putting together a proper "Photo CD" without resorting to 3rd party
MSDOS software for compiling the disk.
Also 5¼" floppies have a superb data life - over twenty years and no signs of
trouble with my Atari collection so far... :o)
Tony Spadaro
the past, Leonardo, van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Sloan, Hopper, Turner, Cosindas,
Maisel, Pollock, etc used only black and white media?
--
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"Volker" <n...@y.look.at> wrote in message
news:bd9hrb$cap$1...@news.fth.sbs.de...
Mxsmanic
> I personally think that digital will replace color film.
It will for most uses.
> Since B&W is an art it'll be around longer.
I agree, although it's not inconceivable that dedicated B&W digicams
might be eventually developed and marketed. Interchangeable sensors
would be a huge step in this direction.
William D. Tallman
> Are you saying colour is not an art? Is that why all the great artists of
> the past, Leonardo, van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Sloan, Hopper, Turner,
> Cosindas, Maisel, Pollock, etc used only black and white media?
<snip>
Mr. Spadaro, while often a resource of uncommon value in this venue,
sometimes fetches aground upon the reefs of unspoken assumptions. Here,
the assumption is akin to the "zero sum game", where anything asserted to
be true requires something to be asserted as false. In this case, it
presumes to falsify what is not asserted. To assert that b&w is an art
form does not imply that color is not an art form; the assertion says
nothing about color at all.
It might be fair to extend my original comments that color is now the
industrial standard to imply that the value of color as an art form is
somehow denigrated, but the same logic applies. In fact, it's now becoming
recognized that some amount of the older b&w advertising and documenting
images are, and so presumably also were at the time, readily classifiable
as art. Ansel Adams certainly did some marvelous commercial b&w work, and
now Margaret Bourke White is asserted to have produced genuine photographic
art in her depiction of technology's advances.
If this holds true for color, and I see no reason why it could not, we might
expect that the future will be more able to see current commercial color
photography as art, at least than we are accustomed to recognizing. So,
whilst I gently chide Mr. Spadaro for his foible, his point has merit: How
do we recognize what is, and is not, art? Specifically, does the fact that
an image is intended for commercial purposes disqualify it from
consideration as art? Must an image be intended as art to be so evaluated?
Bert Stern produced some really lovely images in his over-the-top
advertising shoot junkets: The image of a pyramid inverted in a wine
glass, where the image was that of one of the Giza pyramids... and at
dawn, yet!! It's said that he charged extra for having to get up that
early; does that denigrate the artistic quality of the image?
Oops, wrong topic: this ain't rec.photography.35mm.art.history. Sorry....
lol!!!
Bill Tallman
Frank Pittel
:>
:> I personally think that digital will replace color film. Since B&W is an
I have no trouble watch twenty year old video tapes.
Frank Pittel
: Are you saying colour is not an art? Is that why all the great artists of
: the past, Leonardo, van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Sloan, Hopper, Turner, Cosindas,
: Maisel, Pollock, etc used only black and white media?
If I want color prints I'll use my digital camera.
: --
: http://www.chapelhillnoir.com
: home of The Camera-ist's Manifesto
: The Improved Links Pages are at
: http://www.chapelhillnoir.com/links/mlinks00.html
: New email - Contact on the Menyou page.
: "Volker" <n...@y.look.at> wrote in message
: news:bd9hrb$cap$1...@news.fth.sbs.de...
:> >
:> > I personally think that digital will replace color film. Since B&W is an
:> > art it'll be around longer.
:> >
:>
:> Yes - but I don´t know, which digital media to store the data will last 30
:> years...
:> As with slides, I *know* they stay in good condition for at least 40 years
:> and i always can transfer them to the current media e.g. CD-ROM, DVD....
:> many things to come in the future,
:> Do you remeber 5 1/4 floppys? can you still read the data? and this was
: only
:> 10 years ago!
:>
:> Volker
:>
:>
Tony Spadaro
longer". The statement infers that there is somethign else which is Not and
art and will dissapear sooner. I know of two forms of film photography B/W
(aka monochrome) and Color. So the statement (as I read it) definately
implies that colour is not an art.
I look upon photographty as being an art -- b/w colour, digital, and all
the "alternative processes" that have been used over the years. By almost
any definition (there are some that are quite unique and somewhat insane)
photography is an art, and has been one from the beginning. Photography is
also a method of preserving history - some pictures manage to do the latter
while being the former - others fail in both regards. There are many
commercial and non commercial uses for photography - but an ad can be art,
and the things in Photo Techniques Magazine that they sell as "Fine Art" are
for the most part hack work. Photo Techniques makes the idiotic mistake of
assuming that the method of producing the work is the "art" -- apparently
they have not heard of craft - lord knows they've heard of science.
The line between commercial art and art is always going to be hazy.
Gainsborough was a commercial artist making a damn good living off doing
society portraits. It's up to later generations to sort the art from the
dreck - in every artistic field.
I think the fact that so many colour photographers are getting thier work
bought by museums is an indication that SOME colour photographey (like SOME
B/W photography) will still be considered art in the future - since ther is
a good chance it will still be around to be viewed in the future.
What's wrong with a discussion of art history here - Strikes me as more
interesting than discussing the "creamy" look of digital vs the "gritty
realism" of film.
--
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home of The Camera-ist's Manifesto
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"William D. Tallman" <wtal...@olypen.com> wrote in message
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Tony Spadaro
ago -- no prob. It now resides on a CD-R. That which is important gets
preserved - digital or analog. 99% of everything I shot from 1966 to 1978
was lost in a fire. Film is one piss poor archiving medium. I currently have
all important stuff on film, and on two CD-Rs -- one set of which is in my
safe deposit box.
To "preserve" my pictures of my home town beyond my lifetime, I'm
preparing CD-Rs to give to the town historical society. They already have a
pile of prints but (like the vatican) they realise the value of off site
digital archiving.
--
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"Frank Pittel" <f...@warlock.deepthought.com> wrote in message
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Lewis Lang
>I personally think that digital will replace color film. Since B&W is an
>art it'll be around longer.
>--
Film will continue. Digital will not replace color film. B&W is an art medium
and so is color, its the use these mediums are put to that makes them an art or
not.
Lewis Lang - a fine art photographer who works in both color and black and
white when/as it suits me. If digital were as long lasting as film (w/o the
need for recopying onto new media/formats/etc. every few years) I'd probably
use that too. I've shot w/ a D30 but its not up to my standards of quality,
neither is the EOS 1Ds. The Fuji S2 is getting there for 11x14" and smaller
photographic prints output. I might one day get a cheap 24MP DSLR but I'm in no
rush. Lots of great films to shoot (and hopefully images to make) for some time
to come. Plus, film has an analog look that can't be duplicated, only emulated.
Either way, they're just tools (film/digital, color/black and white) and all
tools are a means to an end. Iprefer analog. To each their own.
P.S. - You/whoever can comment on these comments but I've most likely will have
put the word "digital" in my kill filters as I'm sick of hearing all the digi
posts. If I want digi info I'd go to a digi ng or Pop Photo ;-)
Check out my photos at "LEWISVISION":
http://members.aol.com/Lewisvisn/home.htm
Remove "nospam" to reply
Lewis Lang
>From: "Volker" n...@y.look.at
>Date: Tue, Jun 24, 2003 12:57 PM
>Message-id: <bd9hrb$cap$1...@news.fth.sbs.de>
Don't you know? Digital _is_ immediate gratification... and immediate
gratification needs no future...
Lewis
Lewis Lang
>Date: Tue, Jun 24, 2003 4:49 PM
>Message-id: <xi%Ja.94644$nr.62...@twister.southeast.rr.com>
>
>Are you saying colour is not an art? Is that why all the great artists of
>the past, Leonardo, van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Sloan, Hopper, Turner, Cosindas,
>Maisel, Pollock, etc used only black and white media?
Yeah, those "diletantes" like Rembrandt and Van Gogh, Henri and Haas should
have gotten w/ the program and done all their work in charcoal or at least all
of it in Tri-X ;-) :-)
Tony Parkinson
news:20030625024018...@mb-m27.aol.com...
>
> Don't you know? Digital _is_ immediate gratification... and immediate
> gratification needs no future...
>
that in this NG just now
8^)
Lewis Lang
>Date: Tue, Jun 24, 2003 10:36 PM
>Message-id: <vfhkjpn...@corp.supernews.com>
Some/many? of Rembrandt's group portraits were commisioned. Its not the label
but the contents that count. Fine art can be great crap, commercial work can be
great fine art. Good or bad photography is simply good or bad photography
regardless of what its original use or how it came to be. Money exchanged
between patron (client) and "patronizer" (whether the "patronizer be an artist
who was totally self-inspired or a commercial photographer whose creation was
totally inspired by a paycheck) has nothing to do with it, emotional quality
and depth (even if that depth is all at the surface like in some forms of
fashion photography, photojournalism, landscape or whatever genre) have
everything to do with it.
Lewis (I won't be able to respond to any comments on above because of the word
"digital" being put into my kill filters - also an art, the art of selection
;-))
The above post is...
Š 2003 Lewis Lang
All Rights Reserved
Lewis Lang
>Date: Tue, Jun 24, 2003 11:14 PM
>Message-id: <YL-dnV3jZPv...@giganews.com>
>
>Tony Spadaro <tspa...@ncmaps.rr.com> wrote:
>: Are you saying colour is not an art? Is that why all the great artists
>of
>: the past, Leonardo, van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Sloan, Hopper, Turner, Cosindas,
>: Maisel, Pollock, etc used only black and white media?
>
>If I want color prints I'll use my digital camera.
If I wanted digital I'd use an abacus and calculate real fast or paint stones
different colored pigments and group them to make a picture - lots cheaper and
lasts longer than most digi mediums ;-)
Lewis
Lewis Lang
>Message-id: <YL-dnSLjZPs...@giganews.com>
>
>Volker <n...@y.look.at> wrote:
>:>
>:> I personally think that digital will replace color film. Since B&W is
>an
>:> art it'll be around longer.
>:>
>
>: Yes - but I don´t know, which digital media to store the data will last
>30
>: years...
>: As with slides, I *know* they stay in good condition for at least 40 years
>: and i always can transfer them to the current media e.g. CD-ROM, DVD....
>: many things to come in the future,
>: Do you remeber 5 1/4 floppys? can you still read the data? and this was
>only
>: 10 years ago!
>
>I have no trouble watch twenty year old video tapes.
20 year old video tapes are most likely analog in formats and recorded on a
medium that still exist today (VHS being the most popular analog video format
most likely from then till now).
To bring it back to still film and digital... There is a _continuity_ in the
analog world that is lacking in the digital world. Change is guaranteed in the
analog world or in the world in general, standards change but those changes
seem to take a lot longer in the analog/film world, but how often and w/ what
degree of obsolescence are standards guaranteed w/ digital media/formats? Will
digi formats or mediums we use today even be readable 20 years hence? Will
anybody even be able to read words 20 years hence or will books and computers
be replaced by implants and talking? ;-) Seems that nobody cares about
tommorrow and most barely care about today, whether it comes to digi or video
formats/images or to the longevity/constancy of anything else in life. Small
amounts of dropout wont prevent you from viewing your analog tape, but once
that digital file becomes corrupted or the format or medium "bytes" the big one
or the CD's dyes start to fade or those digital eye implants start going on the
Fritz ;-)...
Tony Spadaro
LP! Nothing digital will ever replace them.
And I was able to buy belts for my turntable last month -- from a place
on the internet I'd never heard of before. None of the local audio stores
knew what a turntable was, let alone a belt for one, and the dealers on the
internet don't sell turntables except direct drive DJ machines. I got two
new beltsas I don't expect to ever find any more and even after I finish
turning my LPs into CDs there might be an occasion or two where i will need
the turntable..
--
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home of The Camera-ist's Manifesto
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"Lewis Lang" <cont...@aol.comnospam> wrote in message
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