Are we nearing the end of Photography as we used to know it?

[Guest]

Soon, roll films will cease to be manufactured. Colour transparency slides will be a thing as much in the past as the beautifully made Sanderson Plate Cameras. Millions of pounds' worth of equipment will be unusable.

Home developing and printing will be a thing of past. Even now, to get a roll of Pan F or HP3 developed is prohibitably expensive, so have we lost the art of photography and the pleasures of hours in the darkroom in the face of competition in this digital age?

Yes, I'm as guilty as anyone, but I still yearn for my Agfa Karat, Rollieflex, Praktina SLR with detachable Pentaprism, the f2 Biotar lens (probably the finest lens that Zeiss ever made) and the versatile Olympus OM2.

I have some more to say on this subject, but it would be interesting to seek the views of others before I post again.

Hornspieler

A flash in the Pan used to mean something quite different to we darkroom boys at one time. Is there any way that we can, or should, return to those days?

[John Wright]

Yes, I'm as guilty as anyone

Eh, you feel guilty when using a digital camera?

I welcome the digital age. Our digital family albums I think go back to 2005, and consist of hundreds of photos taken. If we had film cameras we would not have such a large collection of photos.

My work relies on rapid communication. I conduct inspections with the digital camera and can create full reports to customers overnight. The quality of the photos allows me to explain findings easily, and the editing (cropping, resizing, adding text/labels) makes my job much more professional in its presentation.

[french frank]

I haven't gone completely digital, in that I only have an Olympus compact which is okay (especially with image enhancing software ). But I do wonder whether to get the odd roll of film for my OM1 just to get some better pictures. I'm sorry to say, I think my solution will be to get a bigger digital camera.

I never did much processing myself (and then only colour), whereas using a programme like GIMP to 'create' is quite fun. But it isn't photography.

[Nick Armstrong]

As an enthusiastic amateur, particularly when travelling, I see nothing whatever to regret about the old days of fiddling around in sun or dust changing film rolls every 36 pictures, having to get films 'developed', storing reams of strips of negatives etc.

If only I had all the pictures I took from the late 70s to the late 90s stored digitally rather than in bags full of unclassified negatives (or just plain lost), I would be very happy. (In fact I got a lot scanned and am glad to have them in digital form - but it was a huge and dusty and expensive task, and only scratched the surface... )

Huge advantages with no loss of quality. Thank heavens for digital photography, I say, and why didn't they invent it before?

[teamsaint]

Just an observation......Many people never print out their digital stuff.

I recently printed off 7 years of holiday snaps, and ALL my colleagues said that they never get round to doing it.

This leads me to something that does concern me. Increasing digitisation of everything......books, Libraries, photos, music , work, is often a good thing.

However there is a "what if" scenario. What if governments switch off the web? What if some horror bug runs amok in our digital storage.?what if e libraries are suddenly "inaccessible"?

Its something we need to be very aware of.

Sorry if this is a bit off topic........

[John Wright]

However there is a "what if" scenario. What if governments switch off the web? What if some horror bug runs amok in our digital storage.?what if e libraries are suddenly "inaccessible"?

Its something we need to be very aware of.

Sorry if this is a bit off topic........

Very on topic teamsaint, some catastrophic electronic disaster could wipe out the world's recent recorded history, or somehow prevent us viewing it.

I suppose in pre-digital days the disaster what if.... was FIRE or WAR. The world lost a lot of recorded history in 1939-1945.

[teamsaint]

Very on topic teamsaint, some catastrophic electronic disaster could wipe out the world's recent recorded history, or somehow prevent us viewing it.

I suppose in pre-digital days the disaster what if.... was FIRE or WAR. The world lost a lot of recorded history in 1939-1945.

and a lot of music scores.........

are mega solar flares a problem? they seem to be a danger to the grid, at least .

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I suspect that twenty years or so down the line, "proper" photography (with monochrome images developed by enthusiastic amateurs in a darkroom) will be the "in" thing, just as (and for similar reasons) vinyl is currently the preferred medium amongst the young who have just discovered it.

[Nick Armstrong]

Very on topic teamsaint, some catastrophic electronic disaster could wipe out the world's recent recorded history, or somehow prevent us viewing it.

I suppose in pre-digital days the disaster what if.... was FIRE or WAR. The world lost a lot of recorded history in 1939-1945.

Exactly. I don't see the threat to digital archives as being any worse than the old 'analogue' threats - and probably a good deal less grave.

[Lateralthinking1]

However there is a "what if" scenario.

Yes, absolutely. I would welcome advice on printing methods.

I was very anti digital photography. Now I'm very pro. I still have an aesthetic preference for old black and white photography and the very special colour on slides which I have never seen replicated in other forms.

[Anna]

My eldest brother has always been into photography, as a young teen onwards he had his own dark room (I thought it rather thrilling that when the red light went on outside that I would be in danger of death or worse if I entered!) However, whilst he still hankers for those days of messing about with chemicals he has now gone completely digital but he does have those he wants to keep printed off, he just puts them on a cd and sends them away, it's incredibly cheap to do this compared to buying and having a film developed where you may only want to keep a few exposures and, doesn't it feel wrong consigning unwanted photos to the recycling bin?

[Stunsworth]

Film will be along for a long time to come, though as an increasingly niche market. I certainly expect black and white film to live longer than I do. Simple to produce and process it lends itself to smaller scale manufacture.

I too am now using digital rather than film, but I know there are still a fair number of people using film. I find the photographs from my digital Leica just as interesting as those from my M6. Different certainly, but still highly enjoyable.

[teamsaint]

Yes, absolutely. I would welcome advice on printing methods.

I was very anti digital photography. Now I'm very pro. I still have an aesthetic preference for old black and white photography and the very special colour on slides which I have never seen replicated in other forms.

actually, I used to work for a chap who had some nice black and white photographs. Very artistic.
I think he is out now.

Sorry, its late in the day !!

[Stunsworth]

Yes, absolutely. I would welcome advice on printing methods

If you want to print at home and also print black and white, I highly recommend the Epson pro stylus printers that use pigment rather than dye inks. They print black and white images very well indeed using the advanced black and white mode. After years of trying (and failing) to print b&w photos at home without a colour caste my Epson 3800 does the job to my complete satisfaction.

The pigment inks - also known as "ultra chrome" are much more resistant to fading that the more normal dye inks that most manufacturers use.

[Lateralthinking1]

actually, I used to work for a chap who had some nice black and white photographs. Very artistic. I think he is out now. Sorry, its late in the day !!

Black and white is far more atmospheric. I could say Doisneau, for example, but equally Coronation Street was more real before colour.

What I really don't like are all the modern enhanced skies that look like they were made by Athena. It isn't that the colours are a bit ludicrous - Turner shows how odd colour can be used in painting to unusual and striking effect - but that there is something very mock-sentimental about them. Cheap.

The same applies to other things. If I look at prize winning digital photographs of pets, I tend to think too obvious, too textbook. Still, many like them.

A lot of what I see as my successes are what others would definitely see as failures. I have a lot of bizarre high corners of the Glastonbury pyramid stage that I enjoy because they could easily be somewhere else entirely. Like in space.

Stunsworth - Thank you very much for that excellent advice. I will give it a go, even if it is that daunting thing technology.