Digital Photography And Digital Darkroom Software
Entry posted by xxmikexx
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Over in his blog skylab and I had been having a rambling discussion in a single thread. Most recently the subject of digital photography came up, and after that that skylab created a pair of photo albums. It's such a complex and wide ranging subject that I felt a new thread should be opened. This is that thread.
skylab,
I hear you regarding the benefits of no film. I too shoot my head off because in the digital world the "film" costs almost nothing if you have a high capacity image capture card in the camera, and if you have a computer for receiving images from the card. However, this approach can be hazardous to photography health ...
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In the old days I shot everything on the then-new Fuji 35mm ASA 100 color slide film using an OM-1, and I developed the film and mounted the slides myself. I figured that if slide film was good enough for National Geographic, and since they imposed this rule on all their staff and assignment photographers, I decided to do things the NG way. As a result I became really familiar with that film's response to light and development technique. There was one difference, however. NG used Kodak film excusively. I used Fuji exclusively because it was much lower cost and just as good, though somewhat different in its response to light and color. (But had I been able to afford it, I too would have used only Kodak film.)
Because I couldn't afford either darkroom equipment or a dedicated darkroom I had to develop everything in the kitchen sink using a light-proof bag and a hand-held development tank. This actually worked quite well. I got good and consistent results provided I did a final rinse with distilled water, more consistent results than if I had left the film with a drugstore or camera store to be sent to a consumer film lab for processing.
However, this approach was a royal pain, and anyway the cost of film and chemicals was a burden. As a result, to economize I had to become very selective about what material I shot. Furthermore, because of camera limitations of the day, and because there was no consumer-level digital darkroom software at that time, I became very conscious of composition, depth of field and shutter speed.
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Interestingly, as a result of digicams my camera technique has become sloppy. When I compose a shot on camera today it is only an approximation of what the final picture is going to look like because when I shoot I'm conscious of the fact that through software I'm going to be able to rotate, crop and resize the parts of the digital image frame that are of interest. (In the old days a darkroom and enlarger would have given me the same capability, but I was never able to afford these things, so I had to compose on camera very carefully.)
Similarly, except in the most extreme lighting conditions, I no longer bracket exposures and play with shutter speeds. Instead I simply shoot, almost always with flash whether indoors or out, knowing that I will be able to adjust the gamma and the white balance of the image via software. (Except that the colors captured by the CCD are much more true, and with greater dynamic range, than those captured by the old slide films. There is usually no need to correct for white balance.)
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It's for these reasons that I'm neither in a hurry to purchase a high end consumer digicam nor bothered by by the fact that I can't afford one. The results I would get with such a camera would be no better or worse than the results I get today with my four year old Lumix. The big benefit would be losing the LCD camera back display in favor of SLR, yet this is more a matter of convenience than necessity. (Another benefit would be the ability to mount high quality lenses of varying focal length. Yet my Lumix has 10x optical zoom, and a macro mode, so my desire for addon lenses is greatly reduced.)
It is these aspects of digicams that comprise the digital revolution, rather than the cameras themselves. It's like the changeover from manual transmission cars to automatics. My wife drives the new, modern car. I drive two ancient clunkers, one of them with a manual transmission. The stick shift car is sometimes fun to drive, but generally manual transmission has become a nuisance. Similarly, thirty years ago I had a lot of fun using the manual controls of my OM-1 in sophisticated ways, but today I don't have to bother.
And you know what? The absolutely best photographic results require an investment of $25,000+ for the kind of equipment used to shoot magazine ads ... and at the high end that stuff is film-based even today, though the writing is on the wall. This is because of the low graininess of high end film, and because of the large film format. For similar reasons, the glass plate photography of the civil war era produced higher resolution black and white images than can be produced today on all but very expensive equipment. (Truth.)
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Today, like skylab I have essentially every frame I ever shot with the Lumix saved on disk. Therefore I can return to the original images anytime I want, just as in the old days I could return to the original slide images anytime, typically for printing purposes.
However, where in the old days I figured I was doing well if one shot in ten turned out reasonably well in terms of esthetics, today it's more like one shot in twenty-five. Because the equipment encourages you to shoot, shoot, shoot, there are more images to wade through, and to discard. I've always been a ruthless picture editor, today I have to be even more so.
Edited by xxmikexx
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