Why digital is not photographic

As I see it, Daguerreotypes, and film, and digital, are all
photographic processes with the same goal: to reproduce what
the eye sees. And each generation has done a better job of it.

Digital is not a photographic process. It is an imaging process,
but not photographic. For starters, it would not and _cannot_ be
a different medium, which it is, and still be "photographic." If
it is a different medium, which it is, it must be something else.

Photography was a very precise term selected by the eminent
scientists and photographic researchers of the day to mean
exactly what it is: a photochemical phenomenon that literally
transforms the light reflected from objects onto sensitized
substrates into a physical form. The terms light writing,
photogenic drawing, etc., were deliberately selected to describe
a phenomenon which was similar to drawing with pen or pencil on
paper: a permanent, tangible image remained when light was used
to chemically "draw" an original object projected as an optical
image. Photography literally means Phos Graphos or light writing.

Digital does not do this. Digital is a technological process of
_transferring_ regenerated data through an electronic medium.
Even the term "digital image" is misleading. Digital is based on
photoelectric phenomenon, so essentially there is no image in the
process, not even an optical one (beyond the original analog
image projected by the lens during the scan.)

Digital capture is a process by which photoelectric charges
(electrons, _not images_) are transferred off a silicon sensor
via a voltage, then regenerated into digital signals using an
analog to digital converter, then stored as binary coded data on
a storage card, magnetic hard drive, or CD-R. Again, no image.
When output, the binary information is utilized by software to
create inkjet or sometimes photochemical _reproductions_ of the
stored data. But as data, digital images exist in name only, not
in actuality. What one sees on a monitor's display is not an
optical image, nor when it's reproduced as output are images
"written" by the direct action of light. Digital images and
outputs are software representations and reproductions of stored
binary data.

Now, most people think of digital camera sensors as "recording"
optical images the same as film, then just storing that image in
electronic form. Nope. Doesn't happen. The photodetector sites on
silicon sensors do not inherently record images, or anything
else. Rather, they _sample_ (collect) discrete allotments of data
known as pixels. This is not a photographic process. The term
data sampling, rather than imaging, is a more accurate and
proper description of what silicon sensors do since each
photodetector site collects photoelectron data relevant only to
it's unique area. Photodectors are buckets of charged electrons
("wells") filled and drained repeatedly in order to transmit the
electronic data for each capture. Photons are converted to
electrons, a voltage, digital signals, then read by software and
represented in pixel-image form on a monitor. There is no actual
image, ever.

Why is this so confusing to people? Photography has come to be
defined many ways because photochemical, photomechanical, or
electronic methods of producing images for consumptive
publication have become so ubiquitous in society. But this
doesn't mean anything we call a photo or image is "photographic."
In our vernacular we tend to call any image we see a "photo" --
calendar, newspaper, computer image. But in reality these are
reproductions of photographs created by processes other than
photography (lithography, xerography, digital, inkjet.) The terms
photo, photograph, and photographic have become mere idiomatic
words in our society used for any image or process that produces
an "image," rather than a literal photograph.

I should add that there was a time when "train" meant a wagon train. (I
came across this in a contemporary account of Revolutionary War soliders
raiding a "British train" - no railways yet!)

The word shifted meaning as the technology changed.

"Michael A. Covington" wrote:

I should add that there was a time when "train" meant a wagon train. (I
came across this in a contemporary account of Revolutionary War soliders
raiding a "British train" - no railways yet!)

The word shifted meaning as the technology changed.

Train still does mean wagon train. While typically applied
to locomotives, techncally, _railway_ means locomotive travel,
while wagon train means wagon train. As I say, the vernacular
idomatic expression is rather meaningless, scientifically.