For those that do, why do you shoot film? (Page 8): Which of my photographs is my favorite? The couple I'll keep from the couple thousand I'll shoot on my digital camera tomorrow.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Which of my photographs is my favorite? The couple I'll keep from the couple thousand I'll shoot on my digital camera tomorrow.

User ID

Charles 46277 wrote:

Henry, when I first got a digital camera (a point and shoot with Schneider lens) I used it to take sketches, then come back with 4x5...

Got my first camera phone less than a year ago. I had it for several months before it suddenly dawned on me that it’s a really great sketchbook !

Your film camera slows you down and makes you think ?!? Okay for whoever but way too retrograde for me. Phone camera sketching gets me to hurry up and avoid thinking !!!
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BebuLamar

Scruples wrote:

My teacher, Mr Glynn did use the phrase Exposure Triangle.

I only heard/read of that term in the 21st century.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

BebuLamar wrote:

I only heard/read of that term in the 21st century.

It's more useful as a construct of the digital realm. Generally, in the film world, we had two variables (time and aperture) and one constant (ISO or ASA sensitivity, or artificial push-pull Exposure Index). Digital introduces the option to much more easily vary the sensitivity by ramping up the gain and reducing the dynamic range, color depth, and signal-to-noise ratio of the digitized signal.

I always thought the triangle was a bit dubious, because it leaves out the most important variable: LIGHT. It assumes a fixed amount of it, and only deals with the relationships among aperture, time, and sensitivity. Yet the intensity, spectral quality, direction(s), ratio(s) of sources, scene brightness range, specularity, and shadow-edge acuteness all interplay with the exposure.

User ID

BebuLamar wrote:

I only heard/read of that term in the 21st century.

More than likewise ... never heard of it outside UHH. Which makes me suspect it’s popularized (but not developed) by some Yootoob Photuguru and then the Photo Wisdom Parrots all spread it like the Black Plague.

Charles 46277 Loc: Fulton County, KY

burkphoto wrote:

It's more useful as a construct of the digital rea... (show quote)

Burkphoto, do you think people like what digital looks like because that has become all they know? A great film photo exceeded our expectations by artful science, while digital exceeds by scientific art. "I can do everything with digital, and much, much more," can be true, with mastery of software and a truly artistic eye or spirit; but isn't the digital venue designed to make everything look like postcard sharpness, without so much old-time effort? To deviate from the Oz look takes effort--the processing "filters" are hit and miss. Just as the postcard look of a scene required a certain amount of taking control of the light, so getting away from that look requires a reverse engineering of light. The ability to do everything with digital images may rest largely on our choice to do what digital pictures do. My own skill in digital processing is nowhere approaching my skills in film cameras and film darkroom (which in itself was humble)--I can spot them, take out power lines, increase or decrease overall contrast, adjust a sort of sharpness, brightness, and hue.

Here is one comparison for me:
When I shot film, 35mm was good enough for color (especially Kodachrome); but for b/w, 35mm was only good enough for capturing-the-moment pictures. Medium format was a revelation, and large format the promised land.
But when I shoot digital, the cropped sensor is good enough for color; but for b/w, the color digital (converted to b/w) is not good enough when printed on paper. (On a screen, it is fine, because the eye does not expect so much on a screen.)

So I dream of a Leica Monochrome--maybe there are others, but I would like to see if it does for b/w what film does in deep, rich blacks, etc., on paper prints. I don't think there is a medium format monochrome digital...

You could reduce Kodachrome harshness (if you wanted to) by many devices--fill light, reflectors, lower contrast paper, or cameras and lenses with a healthy flare in them, etc. With digital, we go to the contrast control, but this is quite limited if the image is not crisp enough (or too crisp) at the start. You don't have those controls very much in the camera itself, as you did with film.

User ID

Charles 46277 wrote:

Burkphoto, do you think people like what digital looks like because that has become all they know? A great film photo exceeded our expectations by artful science, while digital exceeds by scientific art. "I can do everything with digital, and much, much more," can be true, with mastery of software and a truly artistic eye or spirit; but isn't the digital venue designed to make everything look like postcard sharpness, without so much old-time effort? To deviate from the Oz look takes effort--the processing "filters" are hit and miss. Just as the postcard look of a scene required a certain amount of taking control of the light, so getting away from that look requires a reverse engineering of light. The ability to do everything with digital images may rest largely on our choice to do what digital pictures do. My own skill in digital processing is nowhere approaching my skills in film cameras and film darkroom (which in itself was humble)--I can spot them, take out power lines, increase or decrease overall contrast, adjust a sort of sharpness, brightness, and hue.

Here is one comparison for me:
When I shot film, 35mm was good enough for color (especially Kodachrome); but for b/w, 35mm was only good enough for capturing-the-moment pictures. Medium format was a revelation, and large format the promised land.
But when I shoot digital, the cropped sensor is good enough for color; but for b/w, the color digital (converted to b/w) is not good enough when printed on paper. (On a screen, it is fine, because the eye does not expect so much on a screen.)

So I dream of a Leica Monochrome--maybe there are others, but I would like to see if it does for b/w what film does in deep, rich blacks, etc., on paper prints. I don't think there is a medium format monochrome digital...

You could reduce Kodachrome harshness (if you wanted to) by many devices--fill light, reflectors, lower contrast paper, or cameras and lenses with a healthy flare in them, etc. With digital, we go to the contrast control, but this is quite limited if the image is not crisp enough (or too crisp) at the start. You don't have those controls very much in the camera itself, as you did with film.

Burkphoto, do you think people like what digital l... (show quote)

Go listen to the song by Paul Simon.
It was written pre-digital.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

User ID wrote:

Go listen to the song by Paul Simon.
It was written pre-digital.

I have it. I also have thousands of Kodachrome slides. Good as it was, it was not easy to make good prints from K64 until high resolution digital scanning and high end inkjet printers became available.

Elle C

burkphoto wrote:

I have it. I also have thousands of Kodachrome slides. Good as it was, it was not easy to make good prints from K64 until high resolution digital scanning and high end inkjet printers became available.

Amen to that.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Charles 46277 wrote:

Burkphoto, do you think people like what digital looks like because that has become all they know? A great film photo exceeded our expectations by artful science, while digital exceeds by scientific art. "I can do everything with digital, and much, much more," can be true, with mastery of software and a truly artistic eye or spirit; but isn't the digital venue designed to make everything look like postcard sharpness, without so much old-time effort? To deviate from the Oz look takes effort--the processing "filters" are hit and miss. Just as the postcard look of a scene required a certain amount of taking control of the light, so getting away from that look requires a reverse engineering of light. The ability to do everything with digital images may rest largely on our choice to do what digital pictures do. My own skill in digital processing is nowhere approaching my skills in film cameras and film darkroom (which in itself was humble)--I can spot them, take out power lines, increase or decrease overall contrast, adjust a sort of sharpness, brightness, and hue.

Here is one comparison for me:
When I shot film, 35mm was good enough for color (especially Kodachrome); but for b/w, 35mm was only good enough for capturing-the-moment pictures. Medium format was a revelation, and large format the promised land.
But when I shoot digital, the cropped sensor is good enough for color; but for b/w, the color digital (converted to b/w) is not good enough when printed on paper. (On a screen, it is fine, because the eye does not expect so much on a screen.)

So I dream of a Leica Monochrome--maybe there are others, but I would like to see if it does for b/w what film does in deep, rich blacks, etc., on paper prints. I don't think there is a medium format monochrome digital...

You could reduce Kodachrome harshness (if you wanted to) by many devices--fill light, reflectors, lower contrast paper, or cameras and lenses with a healthy flare in them, etc. With digital, we go to the contrast control, but this is quite limited if the image is not crisp enough (or too crisp) at the start. You don't have those controls very much in the camera itself, as you did with film.

Burkphoto, do you think people like what digital l... (show quote)

I was a manager/trainer in a huge portrait lab twice in my career... once in the film era, then again as we replaced that workflow with digital gear. So from an image quality standpoint, part of my job was to get Canons to make JPEGs look like Kodak Portra 160NC film.

So I’m not in one camp or the other. It’s all imaging to me, and all imaging technologies come with baggage — advantages and disadvantages.

For us, workflow advantages outweighed all else. But we did get the look we wanted, by changing our light modifiers, lighting ratios, and changing many of the camera defaults.

Digital made sense to me from the beginning. I got into computers in the late 1970s, ten years after my photography hobby got addictive. So watching the change from inside the industry made it seamless.

It takes time to learn digital methods if your world is all film. The controls are all there, if you look for them.

Elle C

I have to reply to watch this very interesting discussion. So, please the interruption. 🙏🏼

BebuLamar

User ID wrote:

More than likewise ... never heard of it outside UHH. Which makes me suspect it’s popularized (but not developed) by some Yootoob Photuguru and then the Photo Wisdom Parrots all spread it like the Black Plague.

I always thought that the term was first used by Bryan Peterson in his book "Understanding Exposure". I don't know for sure when the first edition was published but I guess it's 2004. He stopped using the term in his 4th edition of the book and called it the "Photographic Triangle".

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

BebuLamar wrote:

I always thought that the term was first used by Bryan Peterson in his book "Understanding Exposure". I don't know for sure when the first edition was published but I guess it's 2004. He stopped using the term in his 4th edition of the book and called it the "Photographic Triangle".

There has to be a simple way to get LIGHT into the equation... The triangle motif sort of works, as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough for me without including the influence light's characteristics have on it.

rkaminer Loc: New York, NY

burkphoto wrote:

There has to be a simple way to get LIGHT into the equation... The triangle motif sort of works, as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough for me without including the influence light's characteristics have on it.

I think the whole point of the equation is to adjust for the light. The light on a given subject is mostly fixed and the only variable is the triangle, which resolves the equation to get proper exposure. Making the light another variable doe not fit here.

BebuLamar

burkphoto wrote:

There has to be a simple way to get LIGHT into the equation... The triangle motif sort of works, as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough for me without including the influence light's characteristics have on it.

Bryan Peterson in his book talked very little about the amount of light and how to measure it. His emphasis is on the assumption you're already know just the matter to choosing the right combination of his triangle.