It’s not that I don’t get the appeal of having larger artwork. But the medium itself in the way it’s used and produced doesn’t make sense. The whole audio production pipeline is digital. Producers take analogue audio, introduce quantisation and digitisation errors immediately to be able to use their fancy computers to produce the music (which introduces even more errors due to all filters being digital) just to then dump that digital piece of sound into an analogue medium at the very end. Nothing is gained except the digital-analogue-conversion happens before creating the medium whereas with CDs you do it after reading from that medium. Which is a stupid idea, as dust and other issues will then mess with the result you’re hearing.
Now, if you’re a producer that actually uses an all-analogue workflow, ignore this, I don’t mean you. You also have my deepest respect for enduring that pain. Please point me towards some records that actually did this though.
This comment somehow seeks to erase the entire history and development of digital photography that isn’t related to movies or cell phones. TIL the Canon R10 sitting on my desk right now apparently doesn’t exist.
The digital still camera has the same issue as digital movie cameras highlighted in that video: it lets you defer too many decisions to post. You can sit there for hours in Lightroom, tweaking everything to “perfection.”
It’s fine if you’re using the camera as a tool to make money (such as a wedding photographer) because it makes your job genuinely easier than shooting film. For amateur photography it takes away a great deal of the serendipity and intentionality of the process of actually taking the photograph.
Or you could just… not do that? I certainly don’t. Practically none of the bird or wildlife photos I’ve posted here are edited. Most of the time I don’t even bother to crop them, and when I do I usually mention it. I take them out of the camera, I show them. (To be fair, I also watermark them with marching penguins first. But that’s not an aesthetic modification. It’s more for my own amusement and also tracking my images when the get stolen. This is the internet, after all.)
Don’t pretend that in the film era, photographers did not go to heroic efforts to edit their photos after the fact using analog means and especially development techniques, which were hassles and problems that digital explicitly set out to solve. When you develop your film photos, you make decisions during the development process that determine what the final output will look like. This is exactly as much of a “tweak” as what most digital photographers do to their photos and is done for the same reason.
“But I don’t do that,” you say. Awesome! I don’t do that with my digital photos, either. See above.
No, we’re right back to where we started. You’re claiming that intentionally shackling yourself to the limitations of film allows you to hold yourself aloof in some way from the mainstream which is doing it digitally. That is a textbook argument from hipsterism. Using a digital camera instead of a film one does not automatically detract form the “serendipity and intentionality” of your photography. I have an entire album I posted recently that proves this. Likewise, shooting film does not inherently make your actions any more “pure” or “authentic.” That’s down to the operator, not the equipment.
Now, now next job is to not come at me all pissy because you think I’m attacking your preferences, because I’m not. Any workflow is valid provided it produces the output the artist (I’m using that term rather loosely, especially in regards to myself) wants in the manner they want to. But conversely, an intentionally high effort workflow does not invalidate the work produced by others via some other means.
Oh yes, I’m well aware of darkroom techniques such as push processing, dodging and burning, masking and airbrushing. The hassle is the point. Even if you want to do it, the limitations of the process prevent you from doing most of what you’d imagine possible.
Film has a much narrower dynamic range than digital. Slide film even more so. With digital you can take a test shot, look at a histogram, and dial in a perfect exposure right there on the spot. With film you simply cannot do that, so you are forced to figure it out before hand. You can use bracket exposures, but that gets expensive. Shoot on 4x5 sheet film or plates and it quickly becomes cost-prohibitive for a middle class hobbyist.
Look, I’m glad you’re happy doing digital photography. But seriously fuck off with the “film photographers are hipsters” thing. Do you shit on people who paint with oil paints or water colours instead of Procreate?
I see you didn’t read my last paragraph. Thank you for proving my point.
I read that paragraph. It doesn’t undo the fact that you dismissed a hobby by calling all its practitioners hipsters. It’s like insulting someone and then saying “no offence” after the fact. It’s pure cowardice and I let it slide until you drew attention to it.