Harvey Loc: Pioneer, CA

Digital Photo Editing is nothing more than computerized dark rooms - for several years before digital came along while sitting in a composition night with live pro judges I would often hear them say -"if you had your own dark room you could do ----- AKA this or that.
The night I saw my first demo of Photoshop I knew it was the dark room I had always wanted yep 20 yrs of learning to use it has been greatly rewarding.

Reenie

I don't think I could even call myself a photographer until I learned how to edit. :-)
It made all the difference for me.

Bazbo Loc: Lisboa, Portugal

When I bought my house 25 years ago there was a dilapidated, abandoned darkroom in the basement. I immediately went to work fixing it up so that it could be useful.

My wife was amused. One day she came down and found me struggling with some plumbing problem and she said: "If you want to smell chemicals all day, then rent a darkroom. But in the meantime, check out digital photography..." I never looked back. The half finished darkroom is still there, a testament to my wife's wisdom.

And yes, I consider myself a "true" photographer.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

Exactly. Before I used software I did essentially the same things in the darkroom or using filters. Yes software can be abused or overused, but so could many darkroom processes.

hochocke Loc: Powell, Ohio

I am in no way opposed to digital or darkroom modification/enhancement techniques, but would also appreciate seeing photographs posted on this site that are "straight out of the camera".

Stash Loc: South Central Massachusetts

I started many years ago by developing and printing my own black and white images. I also did color slides. In developing black and white, dodge and burn techniques are used. In this era of digital photography achieving a desired effect is done by computer and software. The technique may be different but the goal remains the same.

Manny Jay Loc: Colorado

According to the dictionary, a photographer is one who takes pictures.


"I was a Professional Photographer" for about three months.
Then my pony died."


Did you know that you can't take a picture of a man with a wooden leg?
You have to use a camera.

Bye.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

The ultimate ignorance is rejecting something you know nothing about.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Why?
What's so magical about SOC?
Can you explain what I'm missing?

arperry Loc: Miami/Florida

Eloquently stated, to the point response. Thank you.

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

If you take the perfect picture in the camera then fine but you still need the computer to get yo print to save or what ever. Then again what is perfect. In a picture all should be in focus in another picture the background should not be in focus. The perfect picture is great to me and can be improved to you or visa verser.
I guess the perfect photographer uses a Polaroid

BuckeyeBilly Loc: St. Petersburg, FL

A photographer takes the time to study light in all different types of situations then sets his choice to capture those situations on his camera's MANUAL dial. The results should be similar to what Adam's or any other photographer would get. He would also process it himself, thus becoming a walking, human Photoshop guru.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

ALL dSLRs can be set to mimic an old film camera. Use a fixed ISO, in full manual mode, with no automatic focus. Set the meter to center-weighted averaging, or use a hand-held meter. Suddenly, you have a the equivalent of a Canon or Nikon from the 1960s — 1970s.

To mimic slide photography, record JPEGs. To mimic a particular slide film, adjust the menu settings to produce the look you like. Oh, you can use the white balance and hue controls to match the color of the light source to the camera's sensor, if you don't have that bag of color correction filters we used to carry.

To mimic B&W or color negative photography, however, you will need to record raw files at the camera and post-process them as you would in your own darkroom or at a photo lab. (JPEGs have the latitude of slide film. Raw files have a latitude that approaches that of negative films.)

It may surprise you that there is a select group of professionals who work this way on occasion. We grew up with film. Our old habits are still useful — on occasion. Of course, we don't use our gear that way very often, because the new tools are too good NOT to use! They open up possibilities we never had with film.

Having spent most of my career in the pro lab industry, I can tell you that many professional portrait photographers FREAKED OUT when digital imaging came of age. They were used to LABS doing all of their processing and printing, including color and density correction. Suddenly THEY were responsible for getting everything right at the camera as JPEGs, OR doing post-processing of raw files and creating perfect JPEGs for the lab, on THEIR computers. (Most had no computers, or they had wimpy PCs that were too old to run post-processing software, or they had cheap, uncalibrated monitors.)

Because pro portrait labs don't handle raw files (they certainly didn't in 2000-2005 when I managed our digital production departments), suddenly our customers and employees on the retail side had to learn precise exposure control, precise white balance, lighting contrast control, and that discipline at the camera that only 'chrome users truly knew. The old Kodak Vericolor and Portra films had pretty extreme latitude! We could scan and make salable prints from two stops under-exposure to almost three stops over-exposure of those films. JPEG latitude is about +0.33 stop, –0.67 stop. Raw latitude can be around +/– two stops, so the old film users had to choose what to learn!

Confronted with that choice, some of those guys and ladies reacted like rats in a Skinner box that had just pressed a button and received an electric shock to their feet (after pressing the same button for months to receive food). (In one of B.F. Skinner's behavioral conditioning experiments, the rats ran to a corner of the cage, shook in shock, perhaps tried the button a few more times, then huddled in the corner convulsing until death.)

In other words, some old film photographers ran to the nearest bar and got very drunk! When they woke up the next morning, many of them quit. They had no computer skills. They knew nothing of electronics. They really knew nothing about precise lighting control, exposure control, contrast control, color management, or any of the other parameters TOP pros and well-educated amateurs know and control daily. They discarded themselves, just like our film editors, film inspectors, optical printer operators... and others we had warned — nearly a decade earlier — that the change was coming. We had offered to send them to school FOR FREE to learn the computer! Out of several hundred, FIVE took us up on that offer.

One guy I tried to train for digital portraiture took my classes twice. Then he went home, sold his business, had a complete nervous breakdown, and entered a mental hospital for a while. He could not handle the change! That was an extreme case, but I'm sure there were milder but similar reactions. We had about 340 retail school photographers, over 1000 professional finishing customers and about 100 school portrait dealers. Many of our retail territories experienced 60% to 80% staff turnover. Our school portrait dealers did, too. Some of the "mom and pop" studio customers retired, switched to dying film labs, or sold their studios.

I have long suspected that many photographers who express "film purity" are really hiding their insecurity about learning new technical skills. I do get that. Learning to use a computer when you may have grown up thinking the only people who type are secretaries (a paradigm of the post-WWII, pre-PC era) would pre-dispose one to ignorance of all things computing. We had scores of such people in the lab.

My old boss from the early 1980s was one of those people. I loved that guy. I watched him struggle to learn graphics apps on the Mac in the late 1990s before he retired. I gave Ralph an A for effort. He finally did learn his way around the computer, but never could really type.

Another reason folks continue using film is that digital photography is EXPENSIVE. You may not need film, but you need the computer, software, monitor, color management tools, digital printer... in addition to a camera that will be obsolete in three to seven years. Then, you need the skills, knowledge, and training to use it all...

With an all-film workflow, you just buy consumables.

So (again), I'll conclude with this. I won't knock analog photography (I did it from 1960 as a five-year-old kid until 2005 when I loaded my last roll of slide film), if others won't knock digital photography. I don't see one as less valid than the other. A good photographer can make great images with either medium.

I do find digital a LOT easier, more precise, and more fun... when I have proper tools. But I WAS lucky — to learn to type at age 8, to have an Apple IIe for programming slide shows and writing scripts back in the 1980s, and to have a front row seat to the digital revolution, via my job. Those experiences made the difference for me.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

What is the inane reverence for "Manual"? Your whiz bang D850, no matter what you say does a crap load of processing, before you see anything.
Manual today is a way to try to say you in some weird way are better than real photographers.
I bet not too many people on the sidelines of an NFL game are busy setting exposures and manually focusing.

If you are fully manual, as a couple here are with film view cameras, then perhaps they are the only true photographers.

DanielJDLM

Ok to make another point...I come across many people at my art shows as well as when I am out on a photo shoot. Many of them have very expensive cameras and such...but when all is said and done, they are simply a person with a camera. They have little or no clue about how to make a photo. Case in point: Over several years a gentleman came to visit with me at my art shows and asked me what type of camera I was using. He bought the camera. Next year he came back showed me the photos he had taken. They were awful. He had the same camera but did not have the Nikkor lens. Following year, he had my setup. Photos still bad. Poor color, many out of focus. Little or no thought to composition. Not using a photo printer either. Third year has the photo printer. Colors better, but other issues still evident. I asked if he had done any reading about photography or if he’s had read the camera manual. Nope!