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.
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.