emulating film

elven

So, it's monday, I know, but I got thinking about this earlier. Forgive me for copying from the blog but I don't fancy paraphrasing my own words

There’s an awful lot of toing and froing about the labelling of photography these days, and the legitimacy of pixels, as opposed to film, being regarded as photography at all. Some people seem to think that we should give it a new name, like “digital-imaging”, just so the stuff they do in a darkroom won’t be tainted by the swarms of oversaturated, oversharpened efforts that they so despise as being touted as “photography”.

It seems there’s a heavy price to pay for digital photography having come as a development from a craft that struggled for so long to be recognised as ‘real art’. Everyone is making the comments about the same kind of uproar happening when it became accessible to the masses through 35mm, fully automatic cameras but it seems the real bone of contention with this development to digital is the scope for manipulation.

The ironic thing is, though, that most of the manipulating being done is generally an imitation of darkroom processes. Bleach bypass, cross processing - we’re even struggling to produce the most realistic grain effects possible! Why is it, that even though digital is a development, we are looking backwards and trying to justify techniques by imitating the processes of the past? Why is it, that in digital black & white processing, we are trying to match the darkroom equivalents?

It would seem that most people have simply made the move to digital because of cost, control, speed and convenience (not having to own a light-tight room full of noxious chemicals is always a bonus) and we are collectively mourning the loss of that ‘magic’ you get from film, be it a particular tonality, the way the bokeh is rendered, of course the grain, and possibly even the satisfaction of mastering something that is generally considered to be be more difficult. Is there a possibility of going somewhere with this new technology that doesn’t just try to be ‘authentic’? Is there anyone who is actually making use of the characteristics of digital images as a positive aesthetic? All I have seen is how to minimise the side effects of shooting digitally like posterisation and noise, which is again just trying to mask the fact that the pictures have been shot digitally.

I purposely haven’t mentioned HDR and other merging technologies like helicon focus, because I see those as more of a way of overcoming technical challenges rather than enjoying a particular visual attribute that a digitally captured photograph has.

Is that just what it’s all about, or is there more?

ThOnda

It looks too complicated for me, I am just a simple man.
As far as I know, people were trying to get interesting pictures vi analog process since it had been invented. They had more than one hunderd years to find really good technologies, materials and workflows to get some good techniques perfect.
And it had been influenced by painting too.
So, in the "didjital" era, people are trying to approach the same effects, pictures, styles and techniques, because time have already shown that they are good, interesting and mind focusing.
I really do think that most photographers are not trying to imitate film, but they want to move the raw data into really impressive picture. And what would be better start than using "film" techniques? :-) And after that (sometimes even vefore), they start to make up new combinations, effects and techniques to get different pictures, different styles and different feelings.
I do love film, but I can't wait to get didjital camera too. They are only tools and I would like to learn what tool and what process will be the best to get the result I will pre-visualise (imagine, or whatever word is appropriate).
It could be picutre from pinhole camera directly onto the paper or picture captured by 5D with L lense, but both of them will be just and only "a" pictures. Esthetical and personal feeling will be independed from process, they will be based only on the picture.
I've just realised that I do type the same idea all the time, I should give up typing...

elven

Don't give up, you need to repeat yourself a million times before it starts to really sink in

prox

I think I need a glass of djin.

magicbastarder

part of the reason why there has been a backlash - if that is the right term - against digital photography is that it has made it easy to do what was once difficult. what was once seen as a skill is now achievable (or, at least the general processes are, if not the talent to use them effectively) by anyone with a computer and a cracked copy of PS.

ThOnda

Are you talking 'bout me?

elven

*looks shady in the corner*

Ahem, anyway...

Less about the whole photoshop is evil thing though, and more about trying to use photoshop to make digital pictures more like film. What is that all about? I even do it myself, ffs.

ThOnda

Maybe that we are used to it? Most of the pictures we have ever seen (we - older than broadband) were printed in books, magaznies or in exhibitions. I think. That's the influence of your learned experience.

Spyral

sometimes the look of a certain type of film can help tie things together. eg if I put the 'velvia' look on a set of pictures it subliminally ties them together.

Valentia

I find that when I print my pics they look exactly like film. Maybe we don't print enough?

JMcL

I reckon it's definitely a perception - "what we're used to" situation. Velvia dominated at least landscape photography for what, 10-15 years? Therefore practically every photo in every magazine or book published in that period would have that look. This is even quite often still the case, the Joe Cornishs of the world aren't going to abandon their 5x4s for the immediate future as they want to be able to produce enormous prints.

The result of this is that what we aspire to has a look that we want to try to emulate. There are exceptions, there's the guy Andrew Nadolski who produced a gorgeous book all shot on negative film on a beach in Cornwall over a 10 year period, usually on wet and dreary day. The result is a set of lovely soft, subtle, images. There's also a guy interviewed (can't remember his hame offhand) in one of the magazines this month who did a similar thing on a 200 day trek across the UK, this time shooting 10x8 (!!!) negatives, and trying to avoid long exposures. Looking at his images in the magazine didn't really move me, though they'd probably have a lot more impact blown up to the size of a wall.

These two though are very much in the minority though - practically every other reference will have that saturated contrasty look