Photography courses

mikeanywhere

In another thread it mentioned about a photography course but it focused purely on 35mm cameras, darkroom etc.

For us digi camera users is it good to do this kind of course to help broaden your skillset or focus on a course that works with digi media only??

abetarrush

wha county are ye in?


The main courses in Dublin are DIT and IADT, and I'm sure they've gone digital too

Theres loads of PLC courses for Digital Photography

mikeanywhere

abetarrush wrote:

wha county are ye in?

The main courses in Dublin are DIT and IADT, and I'm sure they've gone digital too

Theres loads of PLC courses for Digital Photography

Galway & is there a list of colleges/uni's that offer this??

digitalbeginner

Get ready to set the cat among the pidgeons!

Film photography and it's needs has absolutely NOTHING to do with digital photography. You can learn nothing of relevance from film. I don't mean exposure, I don't mean composition. Film is dead, I mourn it's passing, there is no experience like watching a 10x8 come up in the developing tray, I did it for 15 years, but I haven't done it in 10. I tried to get T-Max BW film for a friend a few weeks ago. Not in stock, only available by special order.

The only reason film still appears in any prospectus is because it's what the teachers know how to teach, and colleges only put on courses that their teachers can give. When they retire things will change.

I saw something similar in the early 90's. While desktop publishing software was taking over the world colleges were still trying to teach their students how to use a scalpel, cow gum and spray glue to lay out artwork. The justification was that 'it taught the basics'. Well they don't teach it any more. Why? Because those teachers were replaced by ones who know how to teach graphic design through computer software.

I know this will upset many in this forum, but don't shoot the messenger!

Valentia

Agree with you digital unfortunately. Digital still doesn't come near the depth and range of film but there ya go. I do think that a grounding in developing and processing would help though, if only to stop this crap about about Photoshopping being in some way cheating and not, as it is, a natural part of the photographic process. Just like processing a print.

311

I've been wanting to do a photography course ,but I'm afraid of getting dragged into something that will put me off the whole thing.
I don't want to be a picasso at the end of a course ,for me it would be as much a sharing process as it would be a learning process.
My sister done a course in Griffith college and has some of the best black and white prints I've seen from anyone I know ,for her the beauty in photography is watching the pictures come through in development and she also liked dodging and burning images.
I'm not really into photography that way ,I like colours and depth of field more than processing and wasting tons of paper.

abetarrush

I think the older pro's are tryin to keep film around because digital makes ye lazy

with film, you have to get it right, there and then

with digital, you're way more relaxed as you can PS the fvck out of a digital image

But yeah, im all about the new age, so digital for me


to the OP

http://www.qualifax.ie/?Mainsec=courses&Subsec=search_courses&CRAsort=&action=search&display=&CSH_ID=18&keywords=digital+photography&QUA_ID=0&CTP_ID=0&COL_ID=0&points=&CRS_CODE=&CRA_ID=0&CRT_ID=0&ATT_ID=0&PRV_ID=0&COU_ID=7&DST_ID=0

Roen

Very true DB, the lecturers I had in college were as you described. They've by and large been replaced with new heads and the course has changed dramatically. Some of what they had to teach will always be useful to any photographer, but I wish there had been a bit more of a concentration on digital. The writing had been on the wall for a few years previously in the industry but the people simply weren't there to teach us what we needed to know.

Whether it's for the good artistically is a matter for another day, but from a working point of view if a graduate is to stand a chance in the cut and thrust business world as a pro photographer they need to be able to get an image to a client as quickly as is required by the brief. And if that client happens to be a newspaper....they want their stuff delivered yesterday.

As for film being dead, I have to agree also. As counter-intuitive as it sounds the film emulsion industry was always driven by Joe Public and not by pros. The truth of the matter is that Kodak (or whoever) may sell 2 rolls of film a year to Joe Public and 1000 rolls a year to Joe Pro. But Joe Public out numbers Joe Pro by a factor of many thousands. It's business sense to look after your largest market. And now it has become affordable for the majority of people to own digital cameras the bottom is dropping out of the film industry, almost all the R&D spend has been on digital for the last number of years.

Sad I know, I loved my 5x4" and I had the back to carry it wherever I needed to go in the day. I still do, but why the hell would I?

DotOrg

abetarrush wrote:

because digital makes ye lazy

with film, you have to get it right, there and then

digital doesn't make you lazy, the total opposite, i spend far longer working on each image compared to when i shot on film as digital has a whole other set of challenges

and with film, you often end up scanning it and doing PS work on it anyway. plus neg film is more tolerant to bad exposure than digital is so in my experience you have to get it right with exposure far more in digital

masteroftherealm

digitalbeginner wrote:

Get ready to set the cat among the pidgeons!

Film photography and it's needs has absolutely NOTHING to do with digital photography. You can learn nothing of relevance from film. I don't mean exposure, I don't mean composition. Film is dead, I mourn it's passing, there is no experience like watching a 10x8 come up in the developing tray, I did it for 15 years, but I haven't done it in 10. I tried to get T-Max BW film for a friend a few weeks ago. Not in stock, only available by special order.

The only reason film still appears in any prospectus is because it's what the teachers know how to teach, and colleges only put on courses that their teachers can give. When they retire things will change

Wow what a narrow minded viewpoint,
And for someone who is running courses, such a badly informed and well... WRONG one.

Film has massive amounts of relavance as any professional photog will tell you.
Film is very very vrey much alive.

And I dont know where u were told that tri-x was special order but it was not in any major photo store where the film kept is usually 50% B&W at this stage.

And no if you speak to any of the lecturing staff in any of the photograhy courses film will stay on th prospectues for many years to come.

Im very dissapointed in your opinions to be honest, i expected better.

masteroftherealm

DotOrg wrote:

digital doesn't make you lazy, the total opposite, i spend far longer working on each image compared to when i shot on film as digital has a whole other set of challenges

and with film, you often end up scanning it and doing PS work on it anyway. plus neg film is more tolerant to bad exposure than digital is so in my experience you have to get it right with exposure far more in digital

Thus showing that digi makes you lazyer being able to comenssate in the digital side for your exposure etc

Film teaches you to nail the shot there and then.

Fixing it in post is cheating, just as cropping somthing that should have already been cropped in the viewfinder.
Thats the kind of lazy people are now.

abetarrush

masteroftherealm wrote:

Thus showing that digi makes you lazyer being able to comenssate in the digital side for your exposure etc

Film teaches you to nail the shot there and then.

Fixing it in post is cheating, just as cropping somthing that should have already been cropped in the viewfinder.
Thats the kind of lazy people are now.

Yup, thats wha I meant

311

Managed to buy a framed print off a guy at the exhibition ,a non boards member :eek: ,it was a black and white print the guy did in his own dark room.
Something about the character of black and white I like ,I still wouldn't do a processing/film course ,but long may it stay though.

Roen

I wouldn't agree that film teaches you to nail the shot there and then, as I said earlier the film industry was always driven by the needs of the general public and not the pros.

Colour neg has the greatest leeway for under/over exposure built into it, greater than digital certainly. It was basically made idiot proof by the R&D bods of the film manufacturers.

It had be made this way simply because the majority of it was being used in P&S cameras from sunny beach holiday scenes to dark indoor pub environments. The roll of film that went into the camera at Christmas was the same roll that was being used when the happy snap family got off the plane in Benidorm. Six months in the camera being stored under less than ideal conditions and the results were still acceptably good.

B&W and slide are far less forgiving of course, but again these types of film were used mainly by people that knew what they were doing, they didn't have to be idiot proofed.

Shooting in Raw gives you leeway of course, but no more than pushing or pulling your film did. Is that cheating?

digitalbeginner

Yes Roen, you're dead right on the latitude of Film. To be master of anything you need to know your facts first. Besides, Digital is just another way of capturing the image, nothing more, nothing less. It has it's own requirements and teaching you that the chemicals for developing colour neg should be 37.8 degrees centigrade has nothing to do with it.

I've just finished giving a weekend photography course and the converstion there during the breaks was about this thread. All the students agreed that if my Improvers Course had anything to do with film they would not have signed up as it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with their photography. For me that's enough said.

If the Taliban of the Film Photography World want to go on a Jihad against Digital Users they won't find much support in the wider Photographic community.

Dundhoone

digitalbeginner wrote:

Film photography and it's needs has absolutely NOTHING to do with digital photography. You can learn nothing of relevance from film. I don't mean exposure, I don't mean composition. Film is dead, I mourn it's passing, there is no experience like watching a 10x8 come up in the developing tray, I did it for 15 years, but I haven't done it in 10.

The course I recently attended was given by a film only photographer. It was ten one hour slots and only 2 of these was spent in the darkroom. I considered those two hours a valuable lesson in what are in effect the first principles of photography and while they are not practically useful for a PS& printer scenario they were still a useful intro to the concepts of dodging/burning etc.

IMO photography can be split into two steps; actually taking the photo which needs both a technical knowledge of your kit/environmental conditions and some artistic abilty in concept/composition/capture - and step two being post processing whether this is in PS&printer or a darkroom.

Courses should really be split down this line.

elven

Dundhoone wrote:

IMO photography can be split into two steps; actually taking the photo which needs both a technical knowledge of your kit/environmental conditions and some artistic abilty in concept/composition/capture - and step two being post processing whether this is in PS&printer or a darkroom.

Courses should really be split down this line.

Jolly well said.

As far as learning the craft is concerned, if you're only ever going to shoot digital, if you go on a digital course it's probably going to give you everything you need to work with your own kit, both pre and post capture.

But...

Having learned on slides, I think that there's nothing like the magic of picking up a newly developed roll and seeing the pictures for the first time. Velvia does things that I don't think can be replicated in photoshop. But that's beside the point. Each frame was precious to me, because of the time/money/effort (when I did my own E6 processing that is) that is put into actually producing the slides - and obviously that doesn't even take printing into account. If I could have easily shot as much film as I do digital, and had instantaneous results, it mightn't have been the same, but as it was, it taught me to spend that extra time trying to get it right in camera. Just now, I have to remind myself to stop taking 5 shots of each scene, and put the effort into just one or two, instead of thinking "I'll just tidy it up in photoshop later". And that's something that is very difficult to teach on a purely digital course - unless you limit the storage and make them pay for each exposure

FinoBlad

digitalbeginner wrote:

I tried to get T-Max BW film for a friend a few weeks ago. Not in stock, only available by special order.

What camera shop is this? Its very unusual. What format were you looking for?