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

[Don Petter]

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

I've become much more interested in photography since going digital. The ability to try several different compositions, exposures, etc without having to think I might be running out of film (not to mention the complete lack of film and developing expense) is a great boon.

I very rarely have my photos printed, apart from the occasional one I do want to frame and hang on the wall. I go through them and choose the better ones to process to some degree (resize, crop, maybe colour balance, etc) and then keep these copies in a 'Wallpaper' sub-directory on the hard disc of our computers. Then I have a short programme I wrote a while ago which selects one of these at random to use as the screen picture, with a new one every five minutes. So unlike the old albums which I have and never look at, the current crop are being viewed fairly regularly, and the stock is increasing all the time.

[teamsaint]

To be serious, digital certainly is a boon to the "tree sticking out of the kids heads on the holiday snaps" school of photography .....ie people like me.

took our brand new , very expensive first digital down to the cricket when i got it. faffed around loads, but finally got one perfect shot of Dimi Mascerenas in his delivery stride.
I was very,very pleased !!

[John Wright]

Well, mention of Coronation Street and black-and-white photography in same thread:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/images/VioletCarson.jpg

[Nick Armstrong]

Well, mention of Coronation Street and black-and-white photography in same thread:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/abouttheb...oletCarson.jpg

Eeeee, I want to be alone...

Hope she had her thermals on

[amateur51]

Well, mention of Coronation Street and black-and-white photography in same thread:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/abouttheb...oletCarson.jpg

You can see where they got the idea for Darth Vader, I reckon

[Lateralthinking1]

You can see where they got the idea for Darth Vader, I reckon

I nominate that woman as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

[amateur51]

I nominate that woman as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

My father died in 2003. He had been a professional photographer, but he used to get very annoyed when Kodak brought out new film formats, each one inferior to the previous one - 126, 110, Disc.

However, he could see the merits of APS, and welcomed digital photography, though as he said towards the end of his life - "It hasn't quite got there yet." Well it certainly has now, and I'm looking forward to buying a Nikon D800 or even a Nikon D4 in the near future - both using the still rare full-frame sensor. (and both very expensive )

[umslopogaas]

Fascinating! I have been thinking along these lines for some time. I own, but no longer use, an ancient shoulder bag full of very expensive and, I fear, now obsolete, Canon F1 kit and lenses. I was worried, when the thought came to me recently, that it would be no longer possible to buy film. So I rang a photographically-savvy friend and she said no, you can still get it in Boots. So I checked and you can and I bought some. Admittedly you cant get the range I recall from my youth and Kodachrome seems long gone, but if you just want ASA 64 (I think) slide film, its still there. So my kit is still usable. Trouble is, I've moved on and no longer need it. I dont do digital, though a friend (the same photographer-savvy lady actually) put a lot of my 35 mm slides onto CD in digital format, so if you want a presentation based on the stuff I know, heigh ho, we have the resources. I've a lot, an awful lot, of 35 mm slides gathering dust under my bed, the record of all the places I've been, a forgotten but not lost memory of my professional life. Some of them are nearly forty years old, but they show no signs of deterioration. It was a wonderful medium and I've still got a slight lurch in the right shoulder to prove I did carry that bag.

[handsomefortune]

a very splendid 'coronation street' portrait upthread.

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.

my brother went to an evening in san francisco recently, where the photographs and remaining contemporaries of robert altman were gathered together for a party/exhibition. he enjoyed the nostalgia, people, and olde photos (of sf in the 60s) immensely. later the same week, he went to a gallery displaying contemporary photo subjects, but using olde style processes, created mainly by people with double surnames, which he apparently found 'pointless, pretentious and $$ orientated'.

whilst digital has its numerous advantages, i don't think it is actually comparable to olde photographic processes. perhaps it's two completely different, separate things really? maybe one is to do with unique unrepeatability....the other the opposite. if you have a scanner you can have 'the best of both worlds' ... to an extent: to duplicate, post virtually.

i love the instant mechanical click of my olde second hand pentax,.... whereas digital camera button is less responsive, in this specific sense .... so, capturing a nano second is more difficult..... (using digital camera i usually capture 2/3 seconds later instead especially if using flash). i'm not convinced that money does improve this particular aspect either. i think digital photography has way to go tbh, but ferneyhoughgeliebte's prediction is more than likely correct...'everything old is new again' sooner, or later.... but possibly 'the 20 yrs' ferney mentions, 'into the future', is actually nearly upon us now perhaps?

umslopogaas's point Some of them are nearly forty years old, but they show no signs of deterioration. as with vinyl verses cds, little comparison durability-wise. however, i wish someone would scan umslopogaas's photos 'from under the bed' into a pc ...so we can all see, as they sound like tantalising 'one offs', in an era when multiple copies rule the day, yet lessen unique importance.

and don't start me off about floppy epsom print paper

[Hornspieler]

=handsomefortune;138085

...whilst digital has its numerous advantages, i don't think it is actually comparable to olde photographic processes. perhaps it's two completely different, separate things really? maybe one is to do with unique unrepeatability....the other the opposite. if you have a scanner you can have 'the best of both worlds' ... to an extent: to duplicate, post virtually.

But see my text later on
A very interesting selection of replies. Yes, digital photography has so many advantages and we must say goodbye to the old ways; but what about those treasured colour slides of our past?
handsomefortune said:

...Ii love the instant mechanical click of my olde second hand pentax,.... whereas digital camera button is less responsive, in this specific sense .... so, capturing a nano second is more difficult..... (using digital camera i usually capture 2/3 seconds later instead especially if using flash). i'm not convinced that money does improve this particular aspect either. i think digital photography has way to go tbh, but ferneyhoughgeliebte's prediction is more than likely correct...'everything old is new again' sooner, or later.... but possibly 'the 20 yrs' ferney mentions, 'into the future', is actually nearly upon us now perhaps?

umslopogaas's point Some of them are nearly forty years old, but they show no signs of deterioration. as with vinyl verses cds, little comparison durability-wise. however, i wish someone would scan umslopogaas's photos 'from under the bed' into a pc ...so we can all see, as they sound like tantalising 'one offs', in an era when multiple copies rule the day, yet lessen unique importance.

Scanning colour slides is not the answer, because the resolution of a scanner is far inferior to that of a camera lens and although it is fine for an enlarged print it will not do for a format of 36mm x 24mm.

So photography is the answer. In 1965, a colleague lent me the IMHOF Magazine and in it was an article entitled "New Slides from Old" It addressed one of the greatest disappointments suffered by the amateur photographer - under exposure and pointed out that the image is there on the film, but the colours are insufficiently saturated. Typically, this problem occurs with the slides which you most want to keep - Weddings, with the lovely bride in white coming down the aisle - and all you can see is the white wedding dress! By photographing the slide with added light coming through, those details can be resolved. Okay, it's not just that simple because the different colour emulsions saturate at different rates, so colour correction filters must be employed to balance the result. I set up a system to do this in 1965 and advertised in the "Amateur Photographer" that I could duplicate colour slides; cropping if neccesary and correcting under exposure. The name I used was "Reprotrans". I set up my Practina camera, minus its lens and removable pentaprism
on my enlarger's base board; put the colour slide into the enlarger's negative holder; focussed the slide and took the picture.
The camera was loaded with Kodak special transparency copying film (no longer available) and I developed and mounted the film myself.

Enough of that; but the purchase of my first digital camera gave me an idea of how to rescue all my own many boxes of colour slides.

So, in 2005, I copied all my slides onto jpeg files and used the computer to crop, clean and generally rescue my irreplacable treasures.
I wrote an article accompanied by photographic examples and sent it to "OlympusUser" magazine, who published it under the title "Give a New Life to those Old Colour Slides"

If you've stayed with this long post so far, I can now tell you that I naturally hold the copyright for this article and I would be very happy to send it, with accompanying photographs, to anyone who would wish to have it and who, like handsomefortune, have a load of treasured memories stored under the bed. Don't pay some commercial outfit to copy them. You can do it for yourself and derive great pleasure from cleaning, cropping and enhancing those pictures.

Then you can forward them by email to you relations and friends all over the world.

Hornspieler

BTW Do keep posting on this thread. It's fascinating to read of others' photographic triumphs and mishaps.

[Bryn]

Funnily enough, a few days ago, while browsing in a fairly new charity shop in Windsor, I chanced upon an unused Jessop "Video Slide Copier camera attachment", replete with box and 37mm Series VII adaptor ring, but no instructions. I have not had the time or inclination to try it out yet, but at £3 I thought it worth a gamble.

[gurnemanz]

Lieber Hornspier,

Thanks for your post. I for one would be very interested to read your article. I have thousands of slides, some of which I would like to digitise. I have already done some as a kind of experiment using my Canon flatbed scanner with a slide-scanning attachment. The results are OK but I found the process to be a bit fiddly and time-consuming. Furthermore, my father died recently and we have now got box loads of his old slides which we could not bring ourselves to discard.

I love digital photography, very much as an amateur, mainly as a record of what we have done even if occasionally some genuine artistic or aesthetic merit can be achieved.

The advantages are:
- because you feel free to snap away making a lot more exposures at no expense, the chances of getting something worthwhile are greatly increased
- the opportunity to edit photos post production - lighten, darken, crop etc. (I use a very good freeware program called PhotoScape.)
- being able to share via the net and easily show pictures via the TV, laptop or smartphone
- my marvellous Lumix LX3 is powerful and very portable
- being able to see results immediately without waiting for the film to be developed
- digital storage is an efficient and flexible way of organising your collection
- availability of video (I only use it occasionally)

I always print out and make albums which sit on the shelf with all my analogue ones going back decades. I find the process of selecting which ones to print to be a salutary one, in that you ask yourself which photos actually do make some kind of worthwhile statement. On a recent two week tour of Chile and Argentina I took about 800 photos, of which about 200 found their way into the album of prints. I sometimes print myself at home but at Boots 200 prints only cost about £10 and I even get 10% off for being over 60.

[Stunsworth]

Scanning colour slides is not the answer, because the resolution of a scanner is far inferior to that of a camera lens and although it is fine for an enlarged print it will not do for a format of 36mm x 24mm

That depends on the scanner. I have a Nikon film scanner - all it does is scan 35mm film - and at it's highest resolution of 4000 pixels per inch it can reveal the grain structure of the film being scanned.

If you're talking about a flatbed scanner then I'd agree that in most cases the scanner is by far the weakest link in the chain.

[Hornspieler]

Lieber Hornspier,

Thanks for your post. I for one would be very interested to read your article. I have thousands of slides, some of which I would like to digitise. I have already done some as a kind of experiment using my Canon flatbed scanner with a slide-scanning attachment. The results are OK but I found the process to be a bit fiddly and time-consuming. Furthermore, my father died recently and we have now got box loads of his old slides which we could not bring ourselves to discard.

Thanks for your reply.

You could possibly post me your email address as a Personal Message or perhaps FrenchFrank would be kind enough to act as an intermediary. (That goes for anyone else who might be interested)
For obvious reasons, I will not be posting my email address on this thread.

You have set out the advantages of digital photography very well, but I must point out one disadvantage:

You cannot read what is on the screen in bright sunlight and you cannot hold a camera steady with arms outstretched enough for medium to long exposures (particularly when surrounded by other tourists), so for heavens sake don't buy a camera without a separate viewfinder and preferably one with an electronic viewfinder which shows you exactly what the camera is going to put on the memory card.

HS