"PANORAMIC formats- nothing except a Seitz out there (and I think Red has one). "
Apparently you missed the Anagramm back for the Linhof Technorama 612 PCII shown at Photokina last September.
"PANORAMIC formats- nothing except a Seitz out there (and I think Red has one). "
Apparently you missed the Anagramm back for the Linhof Technorama 612 PCII shown at Photokina last September.
I agree there's been some reshuffling, but too much as disappeared on the whole. Just a quick search to B&H's store only provides 25 varities of 4x5 sheet film for negatives. Agfa is kaput, Kodak's catalog has shrunk for LF, and we almost lost Ilford in the last year to liquidation…but they are giving it another go. It's a bear market when it comes to film these days.Originally Posted by Van Camper
This thread alone justifies my membership in the LF list. As in a hand-held phone snap at ISO 1600, there seems to be useful information and interesting perspective surviving through the noise.
I am surprised that in all the discussion of digital versus film, no one has pointed out how physics teaches us all information is digital. At the quantum level, if I am not too grossly mistaken, perhaps the only analog measurement is the probability of momentum or location of some fundamental particle. String theory postulates that even mass, distance, and time exist in finite "digital" quanta, rather than across in infinitely small analog scale.
"Painting with light", whether on film or electronic media, relies on discrete photons impacting some recording medium. Furthermore, aside from personal memories (which would appear to be stored "digitally" in synapses of the brain), we generally perceive stored images by utilizing the millions of individual (i.e., "digital") rod and cone cells in the retinas of our eyes.
If all images are digital, then film is digital, albeit in a smaller, molecular, increments than current electronic recording pixels. Ask any astronomer. So from my point of view, this conversation is not about digital versus film but rather different methods - work flows - for recording, manipulating, storing, and viewing images.
I have no doubt at all that electronic recording technology will soon (15 months; 15 years?) enable a higher density of information capture than today's films (I won't venture any guess as to what films might then exist). Perhaps we will write image files to individual molecules.
To me, the stark objective difference between film versus electronic capture is that the proximate result on film is itself an image. While that image can be scanned, photo-chopped, archived and printed digitally, none of those steps are necessary for an image to exist in visual form. There are some who can scan a PSD file in hex, just as there are a few people who can read music in the groves of a vinyl record; however for most of us there are multiple technology components and processes between the electronic sensor and the image we examine.
On the other hand, the most important subjective difference to me is precisely the labor, care, and tedium imposed by my large format process versus the hyper-instantaneous mode which digital capture invites (but in no way requires). For me, after 40 years of photography in many formats, I find that looking for photographs has made it often superfluous to make photographs.
The images which matter most to me - far more of them than I have ever printed - are stored in the most accessible format I have: my brain. Since I photograph primarily for the pleasure of seeing, and not publishing, my images, my simple 4x5 cardboard visualization frame is the most effective "camera" I've ever used!
On the other hand, using my aging brain as a primary storage medium does expose me to another important objective criterion, the question of which work flow is suitable for which images. My memories are ephemeral. So far, in the course of 64 years, the images which matter most have been adequately durable (or the ones which have endured seem most important?). But human physiology predicts that my images will fade as surely, though not as predictably, as my Agfa slides from 1965.
Forty years of professional experience with computer technology warns me that electronic storage is at much more risk than my memories, and far more than well stored film. I purchased my first personal hard disk in 1981, spending $15,000 for 5MB. At that time my enterprise had an entire floor of large scale IBM disk drives housing a whopping 12GB! Five years later, neither my personal disk or those IBMs were readable. The hardware was fully functional but the disk controllers, operating systems, and data software had moved on.
Who among us today can retrieve data from a 1/2 tape, 8" floppy, 5 1/4", 3 1/2", Zip disk, or any of the countless other "high density" archival media of the last 20 years? In fact, many CDs have been written in a format not recognized by some current computers. So regardless of digital electronic stability (which does not exist) or archival rewrite protocols (which are all subject to statistically frequent failures) even perfect media cannot be read with non-existent equipment and software
On the other hand, I can pick up any piece of film ever shot and immediately see its contained image to the limits of the chemical stability of that film.
I concur, as others have already said, that personal choices of "digital" versus film ought to be made, and re-visited from time to time, in light (pun intended) of personal values placed on work flow and intended uses of the images.
Duncan Dwelle
maybe we should band together and try to at least convence Imax to stop building new theatres,, say hay you up there on that scaftle ,, didn't you hear.? film is dead!
What other kind of photography is there?
I'm getting back into photography after a 17 year absence.
One thing that really impressed me was a recent edition of Outdoor Photography that was full of perfectly exposed well framed dreck. I could not believe a magazine could publish a whole edition without one good photograph.
All pictures were credited and the digital data was proudly displayed but not one really good shot in the whole mag.
I see no competition at all for what I attempt to do. Make a great photograph.
The digital camera requires immense discipline and a skill set I do not have. All of the negatives I exposed before I got my light meter are pretty close. My eye's have not lost their cunning after all these years.
Film for me. Digital is too hard.
I agree with everything you say EXCEPT for the idea that film's inherent qualities will guarantee its survival. Every material we use was made for a specific commercial purpose which we adapt for our own personal use. Even if there are more than a handful of us doing this, thereby constituting a commercial constituency, we may eventually not be enough of one to make it worth a company's time, regardless of the results film yields; we are only a secondary benefit. If digital can meet all of our economy's visual needs, then film's days are definitely numbered (more than they already are). And even if film holds more resolution at the LF level, interpolation makes things "good enough" for most purposes. In other words commercial and technological viability wins out over quality every time they are pitted against each other. Not to mention that our media will see huge transformations in the next decade as demand shifts evermore towards video. So between what the technology can do and what the market wants, we may become an insignificant minority. Just think of the superior resolution of glass-plate negatives to acetate-back films. That argument eventually just lost relevance in the face of technological developments and commercial expectations, and photographers had to adjust. Obviously we are going to be asked to make a bigger leap one day than the glass-plate folks, but unless individuals an small companies fully take over industrial processes, we will have to say goodbye to analog altogether. I think it will be a crying shame to look at a 645-sized chip as the best the digital world has to offer, but if it is the only way to take pictures, we will all have to do what we can (kicking and screaming the whole way).
The hour we spend reading and writing about the death of film could probably better be spent by buying a big 'ol friggin' box of film right now. Vote with your dollars. Sure the corner drugstore doesn't have it anymore, but the internet is at our fingertips with loads of places to order all kinds of glorious film, right? So buy some film and quit yer bellyachin'!
We're fooled into thinking that newer and better technology must wipe the old off the face of the earth, but it just ain't like that. Not that I know much about the process, but I could go get the stuff I needed to shoot glass plates right now couldn't I? There's probably a ton of old, obsolete things I could still do right now if I looked hard enough. I can still buy CDs, vinyl records, heck I bought some blank cassette tapes not long ago. You can still use old computers and old operating systems if you really want. I bet there's not a whole lot of outdated technologies that were really cool, that people really liked, that you absolutely 100% cannot do anymore. I suppose you can't ride a horse down the main street and hitch him up to a post outside the corner store anymore. I dunno, I could be wrong about that. It seems to me like these are some pretty great times we're living in, in spite of all the cruddy stuff.
I don't think making your own acetate-back film is an option, and that is the main threat to our survival as analog artists.
For the time being it seems as if companies are making "enough" money on us, and the education programs that still teach traditional photography, but there may come a time where, regardless of the demand level, which is bound to decrease, the companies, rightly or wrongly, risk deciding that that "enough" is, well, not enough, and there we go down the tubes.
I for one plan on shooting film as long as I can because I like the quality it yields, as well as the different shapes that various formats offer me, and so far digital has yet to produce either to a sufficient degree. But I harbor no illusions that I will be able to shoot the stuff as long as I want to.
What Claudio writes makes a lot of sense to me. Film was made for commercial uses and folks like most of us are a secondary benefit to the industry. There will probably continue to be a niche market for film and papers in the near future but I honestly can not see it lasting indefinitely.
Also, his point that commercial viability wins out over quality is pretty much self-evident. Digital has already replaced film in many situations not because it offers higher quality but because for one reason or another it is more viable commercially. No one can question the fact that 4X5 LF film is superior to full sensor DSLR of 12-21 mp, but the fact is that many photographers, both amateur and professional, have found that is is good enough for the specific kind of work they do. But if you look at any careful study you will find that MF digital backs don't come close to matching 4X5 film in terms of detail, or spatial frequency and in order to approximate the image quality you have to rez up the digital file.
Sandy King
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