making a photography darkroom

[whisky-dave]

There's no such thing as obsolete photography.

[NY]

Digital allows loads of truly dreadful photographs to be taken because the cheapness means that you *might* take less care with composition, exposure etc when you don't have the feeling of "this is going to cost me money so I'd better take a bit more care".

But set against that is the fact that if you *are* willing to learn from your mistakes, the fact that all your photos are free means that you can experiment, and you can see instantly which is the right exposure in a situation where an automatic meter would be fooled. Admittedly, because the exposure latitude of digital is less (it is very easy to overexpose and irrecoverably burn out details in the highlights) you *need* to get the exposure more correct, but at least with a digital viewfinder (or at least the ability to see a picture immediately after you've taken it) you can see if you need to tweak the exposure.

The ability to take multiple shots increases the chance that one of them will capture the action at the correct moment - eg just as the aeroplanes cross if you are photographing the Red Arrows, just as the dolphin is grabbing the fish that someone is holding, or to make sure that everyone in a group has their eyes open and that no-one is pulling a silly expression. It is better to take too many pictures and throw away many of them than to miss taking the perfect picture because you are worried about how much it will cost.

I would never take a "difficult" picture (eg against the sun or looking through a window where I want the outside to be correctly exposed) without previewing in the viewfinder or by taking a trial shot, to estimate what correction I might need. With film I'd need to guess; with digital I can be sure I've got it right.

Because photos are free, I find that I can even take simple record shots of things like information boards in museums so I've got information to refer back to later without having to take in all the information at the time.

Another advantage with digital is that it allows those who want to spend the time, to be able to post-process photographs to correct for things that are unavoidable at the time of taking the picture. For example you can correct for deliberate off-axis photos, where you have to shoot something reflective at an angle to avoid picking up reflections of yourself or your flash. You can retouch objects that you cannot avoid including in your photograph such as lamp-posts - I'm quite proud of a photograph that I took of St Pancras station where the only place that avoided trees obscuring the building involved including some street lights in the foreground: I was able to clone details from adjacent brickwork and windows, spotting a repetitive pattern, to paint over the street lights. Short of digitising a film negative/slide, making digital corrections and then re-photographing the result to film, that's simply not possible with film. Tweaking colour temperature (or white-balancing for whatever the colour of the daylight or artificial light happens to be) is so much easier with digital.

As long as you avoid the dreaded over-exposure and burnt-out highlights (I find it better to under- than over-expose if I'm unsure and tend to set my camera permanently on -0.3 stops) you can produce some stunning results with a modern camera, especially one such as an SLR with a larger sensor and a better lens. Which reminds me of one extra thing that digital allows: correcting for known barrel/pincushion distortion in a lens (something that is present to some extent even in expensive lenses, especially in a zoom lens at some focal lengths): I have a utility that "knows" about the distortions that are inherent in many lenses and can correct for them to avoid rectangles looking curved inwards or outwards.

[The Natural Philosopher]

+100 to all of that.

[whisky-dave]

Yes it could also enable good photos to be taken but the viewer as to be able to tell a good picture from a bad one.

which I've found to be true in the majority of cases.

yes which includes looking around for teh best shop.

and how will you learn this.

of course, but experimenting can only make you better if you know what you're doing.

and how would you know this. Most mobile phone users wouldn't even consider teh term right exposure there's no such thing as a wrong exposure.

yes but who actually does that opnly those that know a good photo from a bad one.

Yes that makes teh camera better not the photographer.

So who is the better photographer yuo with the phone camera or me with teh 20,000 FPS film camera which we used to use here.

All it does is make it easier to get a picture with a digital camera it doens;t make the picture better. Any fool can take 100 shots of a weddign group, but a pro will take far less and tell his subjects how he wants them to pose and he'll decide where they stand.

which proves my point a good photographer doesn;t need to take 1000s of shots to get a keeper.

and that imporves your photography does it ?

yes we all know digitasl has advantages but that not the point which is how to beome a good photographer.

Yes it can be used to add UFO's too.

For example you can correct for deliberate off-axis photos, where you have to shoot something reflective

Fantastic ypu lied in your photo, people have been able to do that before stonehenge was built. Constable did that in the 17th centrury with his hay wain. it wasn't real he imagined it.

all irreliveant unless you think being a good photographer means you are better at covering up your mistakes.

so you don't know your own camera.

you can with some old cameras too.

thre's other thiungs it allows focus staking and all sorts of things.

That proves that digital is better for taking photos doesn't say much about the photographer.

[whisky-dave]

-100 for avioding the fact that we're talking about getting a good picture which is more than just getting teh correct exposure.

[NY]

Agreed. But that has been true of film cameras (eg Instamatic point and shoot and Box Brownies) since photography became cheap enough for the amateur rather than just the professional or knowledgeable enthusiast to afford.

Does having to pay for each picture necessarily make a person who "just wants to take a picture" and doesn't want to be bothered with things he doesn't understand like exposure, composition. focus etc, take better photos? Not necessarily: he just finds that "some of them didn't come out right" without necessarily knowing why. Digital doesn't make that situation worse, it just means they can take more pictures, some of which may be good (by chance!) and lots which will be dross. At least with "free" photos there is the opportunity to take enough photos to be able to experiment and to have instant feedback as to what worked - *for those people who are able/willing to experiment*.

Yes, artists/painters could do it. Film photographers couldn't (except to a limited extent and with crude results such as the Cottingley Fairies). Modern digital photographers can do what painters could - modify what's there.

Obviously there is a fine line between removing unwanted distractions and distorting the truth to pretend that two people met who never did.

Being a good photographer means taking good photos, whether that requires doing all the adjustments in camera at the time of taking the picture or adjusting things after the event, either in the darkroom for film or the computer software for digital. I wonder how many stunning eye-catching photos are precisely as they were taken and how many have had some form of cropping, sharpening/blurring, colour correction, retouching etc applied in a real or digital darkroom afterwards.

I know that its meter generally seems to over-expose slightly if left to its own devices and that the meter doesn't give the correct exposure in every situation, and that the limitation of the photographic medium (in this case the digital sensor, but it could be film) tends to respond better, if in doubt, to exposure errors in one direction than in the other. Most negative film, for example, tends to produce better prints with an overexposure of (say) one stop than with an underexposure of one stop. Most slide film is the opposite, as is a digital sensor.

That's knowing (by copious practice and learning from your mistakes) your equipment and your medium. And the "free" nature of digital and the immediate feedback out in the field makes that learning process so much easier - for those that are willing to learn, and not everyone is sufficiently interested in photography to do so.

Yes I read about focus stacking the other day. I already knew about HDR (taking several photographs from identical viewpoint with different exposures and combining them to add more shadow and highlight detail, but I didn't about taking "identical" photos with different focus settings to increase effective depth of field. I shall have to experiment with that if I can afford software that can perform the merging.

I don't think anyone is suggesting the digital makes a better photographer, but it does make it easier/quicker/cheaper to acquire the knowledge to become one and removes the cost disincentive to experimentation. It improves the *potential* to be a better photographer.

What all is said and done, the best camera (sorry, cliche time!) is the one that you have with you at the time - better to take a worse-quality picture of an unrepeatable event with a compact camera because you've got it with you and can operate it quickly, than to miss taking the photo with a camera capable of taking better photos (low noise sensor, lens with fewer aberations etc) because you've not got it with you or can't get it ready quick enough to take the photo.

In other words, having a better camera, being able to use it correctly etc is only one part of it. Having the patience to wait for the right moment or to get the best angle also play a major part - as does a certain amount of luck sometimes :-)

[tabbypurr]

ow bad it truly was compared to digital.

There's a long string of obsolete photographic processes and equipment. Any one with ay familiarity at all with photography will be somewhat familiar w ith daguerrotype, blueprint and various others. Film has well & truly joine d that list. That its now the darling of art colleges changes nothing.

NT

[dennis]

Photographers tend to note down what they do so it can be repeated or avoided depending on the results.

Its what photographers do.

Colleges do whatever gets them cash. That's why they do stuff like media studies even though they are pretty useless. Darkroom stuff has joined the party.

You can look at the result and if you are satisfied its not a mistake. You could even email them to somewhere that will evaluate the results and critique it.

[dennis]

8<

Are you shooting in RAW? I ask because modern digital sensors have a higher dynamic range than most films available. The range is chopped off to make the JPEGs and you may then lose shadow or highlight detail. Its where the HDR images come from, compressing the middle of the range rather than the ends. If it is consistently over exposed then there is probably a metering fault.

[dennis]

8<

And to which using film adds nothing other than being harder and more expensive.

[alan_m]

Go around Tate modern and you will find it full of art students copying the crap on the walls. Perhaps they are being taught how to extract cash from the gullible rich?

[whisky-dave]

yes they do, where as someone taking photos might take 1000 and pick the on e they like best. You do know why they put smile detection ion cameras don' t you so peole can take better picures, but for me and most people that kno w a bit about photograph such a thing is NOT relivent. A smile in a pciture does NOT equal a good photograph.

Is that why non photographers take more pictures, because they haven't a cl ue how to take a good picture so rely on luck.

Tey are doing it because they are realising that because those thinking the y are photographers can't actually take a good photo, but they know how to take 1000 selfie snaps.

That's where training comes in.

depends who you're emailing doesn't it.

[whisky-dave]

adds plenty, if you employ a photographer you expect them to know what they are doing and how to get the best ressu8lts quickly and effecintly. Which is why people pay for photographers. any brain dead moran can take a picture nowadays, but professonal photographers are still employed.

[dennis]

My company paid for a professional photographer to do some pictures, after he had done it I took some pictures of my own. Guess which ones worked and which were taken with a digital SLR.

And most of them don't use film for a good reason, digital is now better than film in just about everything.

People who insist that it needs film to be a photographer are living in the past. Photography is a wide subject and photography with film is a very narrow bit of it.

Even if you want to learn the basics a digital camera is going to be better, you can try what you are learning and see if it works, without waiting a day or two to see.

[NY]

Whisky Dave, you talk as if to be "a photographer" you need to use film rather than digital. If that's what you believe, can you explain why. You say that [using film] "adds plenty", though do don't elaborate.

Anyone can take bad photos. Some people can take good photos. Whether you use film or digital doesn't really affect that - to be a good photographer you need to know how to get the results that you want, which involves knowing a bit about how to get the best out of your medium (film/digital) and its technical limitations (eg exposure latitude, the need to get exposure right, how to focus). And then you need how to take a good picture which is a matter of composition and what to leave out as well as what to leave in.

When digital cameras first came out, they had such a narrow exposure latitude and such low-resolution sensors that they were only really suitable for quick record shots. But things have moved on a lot since then, to the extent that *if you know what you are doing* you can take just as good pictures with digital as with film. For specialised purposes, you may need the very high resolution of large-format film, but then there are specialised digital cameras which match this with ultra high res sensors. Likewise, specialised digital cameras can "see" infra-red (*) or ultra-violet - just like specialised film can.

(*) To some extent, *all* digital cameras can see IR: the sensor, as manufactured, is sensitive to IR but this is blocked by a filter in camera - which can be removed (at the expense of voiding the warranty!) by astronomers who want to take IR pictures - it's a well-known modification, especially on a camera that would otherwise be thrown away.

I fully agree.

Whisky Dave, is there anything that a photographer who is familiar with both media can do with film that can't be done with digital? Or are you claiming that someone who uses digital, no matter how proficiently, isn't "a photographer" but just someone who takes photos?

[tabbypurr]

The whole argument seems more a baseless ego trip than anything. FWIW I've found digital's ability to autofocus rapidly and accurately a real boon for fast fired action shots where you can't predict what will happen where. Fi lm's equivalents were pants by comparison. I will never go back to film, fo r a whole list of reasons. It would be like going from mp3 & flac back to 8 track cartridge.

NT

[NY]

Yes, I suspect that some of the "film is better than digital" is like the old "LP is better than CD", which relies partly on personal preference and partly on "it's better because I say it's better", the old "stands to reason" defence :-)

I'm not sure about your autofocus reason though. The speed of autofocus response will be a function of the camera's AF detector and (for an interchangeable lens) the speed of the AF motor in the lens. Digital cameras may have faster AF, but that may because they are newer rather than because they are digital rather than film. Unless anyone knows differently in which case I might be about to learn something!

As far as I can remember, my film SLR took about the same time to focus as the digital SLR which replaced it, using the same lens, which suggests that, for my setup, most of the time is taken by the motor in the lens rather than by the AF sensor and logic in the camera. That's for like-for-like focussing rules - eg single-shot rather than continuous and similar sizes of focus zone.

[whisky-dave]

No idea because it shouldn't matter. We had the same thing here we paid a pro to come and take our pictures but the college wouldn't use them for the website. We wanted our pictures to be intresting and relivant they wanted passport s tyle.

Yes I agree but that isn't the point, the point is which is best for teachi ng photography and most peole that teach it seem to prefer film.

yes but teaching it isn't In the same way when I went on a course

30 years ago we were given manual cameras for a good reason. we could have got good pictures just by setting my A1 to P mode No one would have had to learn what an aperature was or what shutter speed or ASA or ISO was, I wouldn't need to know what DoF was or what a correct exposure was, but as we were meant to learn photography rather than how to take photos those sort of things are important even today.

Some can get good images without even using a camera.

Any fool can fly a plane just select auto pilot, many more can fly all sorts of planes and rockets on a computer but does that make them pilot s.

[whisky-dave]

Where did you get that idea. why do peole employ photographers at wedding when you can be pretty sure that the vast majority of those attending will have cameras and have the ability to take pictures that are in focus and of correct exposure ?

How can you tell good from bad ?

I agree.

or what others want.

Really but why not tell the student to set it to auto, surely that's all that's needed.

Yep and that's as easy to do, you don't even need a camera. Artists have learnt how to frame for centuries.

all irrelivant to teaching photography.

well depends what you mean. paramount pictures can't remaster the Star trek Deep space 9 series as well as they can the original with kirk in it. Because the digital media used for DS9 was realively low res. and can;t be imporved even by upscalling.

So here we see film as better, and with the new star wars film they are also using film even though they can apparently emulate how bad film is compared to digital they are using film. Youll have to ask paramount if you want to know why.

Again I'm talking about teaching. if you want to teach someone how to fly you take them up in a small manually controlled plan NOT the latest 757 which can land itself.

[whisky-dave]

nothing to do with that.

If you were teaching sonmeone how to sign would you employ someone that could sing or introduce them to an auto-tuner.

which is best for teaching singing.

Speed is irrelivant if you're focusing on the wrong point. Last weekend even though I have auto focus I used manual focus because it was better for what I was doing, because auto focus was useless.