The "Herd Mentality"

Are photographers "upgrading" from film to digital and getting better
images, or are they just following the crowd, which has continually heard
the "film is dead" argument for several years?

I wonder what percentage of former film users would argue that their images
from digital gear are significantly "BETTER" than the ones they produced
from film?

Is there anyone asking what all the digital hoopla is about, or are we film
users just a bunch of dogs that can't learn new tricks?

--
Unfortunately nobody can control the disruptive behavior of sociopaths who
wish to post to an unmoderated newsgroup such as this one. Informed readers,
however, will have no trouble at all sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Jeremy wrote:

Are photographers "upgrading" from film to digital and getting better
images, or are they just following the crowd, which has continually heard
the "film is dead" argument for several years?


I am sure many would like to consider a high dollar purchase an upgrade. Of
course, these are also imaging computers, so much like getting the latest
version of PhotoShop, in many ways they are indeed upgrades.

A check of the used digital SLR market brings in some reality. A Kodak body
using a Nikon F5 for a basis of construction, now sells for less than a film
only F5 on EBAY.


I wonder what percentage of former film users would argue that their images
from digital gear are significantly "BETTER" than the ones they produced
from film?

Be careful with that one . . . the reality is that if anyone continues making
new images, at some point they are likely to get better. This is down to
practice, and some to learning editing. The camera is only a tool to express
creative vision, and can merely help or hinder that vision.



Is there anyone asking what all the digital hoopla is about, or are we film
users just a bunch of dogs that can't learn new tricks?

I see them as complimentary technologies, and use both systems of capturing
images. The problem comes up when people try to make either seem to exclude the
other.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com

Jeremy wrote:

Are photographers "upgrading" from film to digital and getting better
images, or are they just following the crowd, which has continually heard
the "film is dead" argument for several years?


I am sure many would like to consider a high dollar purchase an upgrade. Of
course, these are also imaging computers, so much like getting the latest
version of PhotoShop, in many ways they are indeed upgrades.

A check of the used digital SLR market brings in some reality. A Kodak body
using a Nikon F5 for a basis of construction, now sells for less than a film
only F5 on EBAY.


I wonder what percentage of former film users would argue that their images
from digital gear are significantly "BETTER" than the ones they produced
from film?

Be careful with that one . . . the reality is that if anyone continues making
new images, at some point they are likely to get better. This is down to
practice, and some to learning editing. The camera is only a tool to express
creative vision, and can merely help or hinder that vision.



Is there anyone asking what all the digital hoopla is about, or are we film
users just a bunch of dogs that can't learn new tricks?

I see them as complimentary technologies, and use both systems of capturing
images. The problem comes up when people try to make either seem to exclude the
other.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com

In article et,
Jeremy wrote:
Are photographers "upgrading" from film to digital and getting better
images, or are they just following the crowd, which has continually heard
the "film is dead" argument for several years?

I wonder what percentage of former film users would argue that their images
from digital gear are significantly "BETTER" than the ones they produced
from film?

Is there anyone asking what all the digital hoopla is about, or are we film
users just a bunch of dogs that can't learn new tricks?

Assuming you want color (b/w is a completely different story), in most cases
you have to scan and print digitally anyway. Maybe if you really know what
you are doing and you have a good pro-lab nearby, it is possible to get analog
prints. I doubt that many people will be making analog color prints themselves.

Anyhow, assuming that most film has to be digitized, you have to spend the
learning all that digital stuff anyway.

And if you know all the digital stuff, a DSLR is much more convenient.
Analog may provide higher quality in some cases, but the immediate response
of digital makes many experiments possible that would be unrealistic with
analog.



--
The Electronic Monk was a labor-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video
recorder. [...] Video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving
you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electronic Monks believed things for
you, [...] -- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

In article et,
Jeremy wrote:
Are photographers "upgrading" from film to digital and getting better
images, or are they just following the crowd, which has continually heard
the "film is dead" argument for several years?

I wonder what percentage of former film users would argue that their images
from digital gear are significantly "BETTER" than the ones they produced
from film?

Is there anyone asking what all the digital hoopla is about, or are we film
users just a bunch of dogs that can't learn new tricks?

Assuming you want color (b/w is a completely different story), in most cases
you have to scan and print digitally anyway. Maybe if you really know what
you are doing and you have a good pro-lab nearby, it is possible to get analog
prints. I doubt that many people will be making analog color prints themselves.

Anyhow, assuming that most film has to be digitized, you have to spend the
learning all that digital stuff anyway.

And if you know all the digital stuff, a DSLR is much more convenient.
Analog may provide higher quality in some cases, but the immediate response
of digital makes many experiments possible that would be unrealistic with
analog.



--
The Electronic Monk was a labor-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video
recorder. [...] Video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving
you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electronic Monks believed things for
you, [...] -- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

"Gordon Moat" wrote in message
...

I see them as complimentary technologies, and use both systems of
capturing
images. The problem comes up when people try to make either seem to
exclude the
other.


I agree completely. But it seems that the discussion always goes back to
"Film vs. Digital" and the advocates of each technology typically speak out
in favor of one over the other.

I should have been more precise when I posed my original question. I didn't
mean to include professional photographers, who have good reasons to use one
technology or the other. What I really meant to ask was, "I wonder how many
advanced amateurs chose to "upgrade" to digital in search of making
significantly better images, only to find that they were producing images no
better than when they were using film?"

I have found that I spend a lot of time editing my digital images--time I
could have been spending doing other things, like taking photos. If I shoot
48 images on Saturday, I can plan on spending about 4-6 hours editing them
on Sunday. Then there is the matter of printing them . . .

I restrict my digital shots to utility things, like home inventory shots, or
images that I intend to upload to one of my web sites. I do not have a
DSLR, I have a P&S, and I have no plans to commit any funds toward a DSLR.
My wimpy 2.3 MP digicam, state-of-the-art when I bought it in late '99,
handles my "utility shots" just fine.

I don't like the need to constantly be aware of power requirements, I hate
the autofocusing function, where I have to lock focus on the object in the
center of the viewfinder and then recompose, I miss the control I have with
depth-of-field on my manual focus (film) lenses, I dislike having the lens
rack down to its widest angle (38mm) every time I turn the camera on, and I
feel uncomfortable not knowing exactly what focal length I am using when I
zoom (there is a rough guide--a thermometer--on the LCD, but I cannot, for
example, shoot at exactly 50mm if I want to do so. I can only guesstimate.)

The dynamic range of my digicam is much less than that of film, and I am
turned off by the tendency of the camera to blow out highlights. The
shutter lag, while not really a problem when shooting static subjects, is
still unsettling to someone used to an SLR.

I am actually thinking of moving toward MF (I already have a TLR, but was
thinking of Rollei or Hassy), in an attempt to produce better images, rather
than follow the crowd into more digital gear. For all of the convenience
that digital offers, in some ways it forces the photographer to go
backwards, at least in terms of image quality. For an intuitive type of
photographer like me, the money spent on a MF SLR will result in better
images than it would if it were spent on a digital SLR whose images can't
even equal those of my film 35mm gear.

I'd still have my 2.3 MP P&S for those times that i just HAD to be digital .
.. .

Anyway, this all raised the question in my mind of whether the folks that
left 35mm for digital had any remorse about having done so, after they saw
their images . . . ?

"Gordon Moat" wrote in message
...

I see them as complimentary technologies, and use both systems of
capturing
images. The problem comes up when people try to make either seem to
exclude the
other.


I agree completely. But it seems that the discussion always goes back to
"Film vs. Digital" and the advocates of each technology typically speak out
in favor of one over the other.

I should have been more precise when I posed my original question. I didn't
mean to include professional photographers, who have good reasons to use one
technology or the other. What I really meant to ask was, "I wonder how many
advanced amateurs chose to "upgrade" to digital in search of making
significantly better images, only to find that they were producing images no
better than when they were using film?"

I have found that I spend a lot of time editing my digital images--time I
could have been spending doing other things, like taking photos. If I shoot
48 images on Saturday, I can plan on spending about 4-6 hours editing them
on Sunday. Then there is the matter of printing them . . .

I restrict my digital shots to utility things, like home inventory shots, or
images that I intend to upload to one of my web sites. I do not have a
DSLR, I have a P&S, and I have no plans to commit any funds toward a DSLR.
My wimpy 2.3 MP digicam, state-of-the-art when I bought it in late '99,
handles my "utility shots" just fine.

I don't like the need to constantly be aware of power requirements, I hate
the autofocusing function, where I have to lock focus on the object in the
center of the viewfinder and then recompose, I miss the control I have with
depth-of-field on my manual focus (film) lenses, I dislike having the lens
rack down to its widest angle (38mm) every time I turn the camera on, and I
feel uncomfortable not knowing exactly what focal length I am using when I
zoom (there is a rough guide--a thermometer--on the LCD, but I cannot, for
example, shoot at exactly 50mm if I want to do so. I can only guesstimate.)

The dynamic range of my digicam is much less than that of film, and I am
turned off by the tendency of the camera to blow out highlights. The
shutter lag, while not really a problem when shooting static subjects, is
still unsettling to someone used to an SLR.

I am actually thinking of moving toward MF (I already have a TLR, but was
thinking of Rollei or Hassy), in an attempt to produce better images, rather
than follow the crowd into more digital gear. For all of the convenience
that digital offers, in some ways it forces the photographer to go
backwards, at least in terms of image quality. For an intuitive type of
photographer like me, the money spent on a MF SLR will result in better
images than it would if it were spent on a digital SLR whose images can't
even equal those of my film 35mm gear.

I'd still have my 2.3 MP P&S for those times that i just HAD to be digital .
.. .

Anyway, this all raised the question in my mind of whether the folks that
left 35mm for digital had any remorse about having done so, after they saw
their images . . . ?

Your experience with your digital P&S does not reflect the realities of
current digital imaging technology. I write this sadly as someone fascinated
by film for more than a few decades.

The long term outlook for film is not good. It will not go away completely
in the near future but it will continue to drastically shrink in market
size for all imaging purposes. Kodak is probably in as much of a panic over
losing the market for x-ray and other film based technical uses as it is
over consumer picture taking. Film is simply not viable in most of those
areas in the near or long term.

At present color film, particularly negative materials, are far superior to
digital for latitude and remain superior, although not by all that much, for
high effective ISO use. This will change in the very near future as
technology develops: early reviews of the new Canon 20dSLR are discussing
just that improvement. If one shoots transparencies I see little reason any
longer to stay with film.

Besides its convenience the aspect of digital images that attracts most
photographers is the greater apparent sharpness/lack of grain when compared
to 35mm film images. To some extent this is more appparent enlarged on a
computer monitor than it is in a final inkjet print and is due to the
flatness of the digital sensor compared to the multilayered film image.
Technically the film may be able to store more information than the digital
sensor but people are more impressed by what they see than what they know.

Digital imaging processes, whether using film or digital originals, have the
potential for vastly improving most photographers' images if the
photographer will learn the rudiments of Photoshop or similar programs. The
simple fact is that darkroom techniques cannot in the remotest way compete
with what can be done in Photoshop to improve an image or achieve the
desired effect. The average casual photographer may not want to learn those
skills but surely anyone reading this newsgroup would want to master some of
those techniques.

Your experience with your digital P&S does not reflect the realities of
current digital imaging technology. I write this sadly as someone fascinated
by film for more than a few decades.

The long term outlook for film is not good. It will not go away completely
in the near future but it will continue to drastically shrink in market
size for all imaging purposes. Kodak is probably in as much of a panic over
losing the market for x-ray and other film based technical uses as it is
over consumer picture taking. Film is simply not viable in most of those
areas in the near or long term.

At present color film, particularly negative materials, are far superior to
digital for latitude and remain superior, although not by all that much, for
high effective ISO use. This will change in the very near future as
technology develops: early reviews of the new Canon 20dSLR are discussing
just that improvement. If one shoots transparencies I see little reason any
longer to stay with film.

Besides its convenience the aspect of digital images that attracts most
photographers is the greater apparent sharpness/lack of grain when compared
to 35mm film images. To some extent this is more appparent enlarged on a
computer monitor than it is in a final inkjet print and is due to the
flatness of the digital sensor compared to the multilayered film image.
Technically the film may be able to store more information than the digital
sensor but people are more impressed by what they see than what they know.

Digital imaging processes, whether using film or digital originals, have the
potential for vastly improving most photographers' images if the
photographer will learn the rudiments of Photoshop or similar programs. The
simple fact is that darkroom techniques cannot in the remotest way compete
with what can be done in Photoshop to improve an image or achieve the
desired effect. The average casual photographer may not want to learn those
skills but surely anyone reading this newsgroup would want to master some of
those techniques.

"PieterB" wrote in message
news
Op Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:50:57 +0000, schreef Jeremy:

Are photographers "upgrading" from film to digital and getting better
images, or are they just following the crowd, which has continually
heard
the "film is dead" argument for several years?

I wonder what percentage of former film users would argue that their
images from digital gear are significantly "BETTER" than the ones they
produced from film?

Is there anyone asking what all the digital hoopla is about, or are we
film users just a bunch of dogs that can't learn new tricks?

My results with film are better.


(I don't have a DSLR so how could this be? ;-) )

--
[JID]
LinuxUser: #310384

I struggle to get results from digital that equal what I got from film, and
still shoot B&W film because, despite a couple of years of working on
technique, I still can't get results from digital that are as good as film.
Color is so close as to not stand up to argument, at least up to 8"x10".

--
Skip Middleton
http://www.shadowcatcherimagery.com