When is it not analog?

[Michael Lloyd]

At what point does a photograph cease to be analog?

For instance, if I use ink (Piezography to be specific) to make an 8x10 negative derived from my digital file and then create a platinum print from that negative, using a wet process, is the result analog? I say- yes it is, maybe. But, if I thought that was the only answer then there would be no sense in asking the question.

[ic-racer]

All photographs are analog. Digital files are not visible and produce no image, they are abstractions. You can't see "1" or "0" if they are represented by voltages. You can see "1" and "0" on a CD but it produces no image, just a rainbow diffraction pattern.

[Vaughn]

I would consider that a hybrid process...a major digital component and a major wet-process component worked together to create a print.

The digital component could have an analog component if film was used as the original source material...and could even have a LF component. I think that if anywhere in the process the image information is stored and/or manipulated digitally, then it will have a digital component.

Edited to add: By the same reasoning, I guess I would have to consider an inkjet print created from a file made from a scanned film negative or transparency to be a hybrid workflow, also.

[Michael Lloyd]

The process is hybrid but the end result is a photograph that is made on sensitized paper by exposing it to UV light through a negative and developed in a (expensive in the case of Platinum Palladium) chemical bath, which is analog (as ic-racer noted)

"You can see "1" and "0" on a CD but it produces no image, just a rainbow diffraction pattern." The diffraction pattern doesn't occur because of "1"'s or "0"'s. The 1's and 0's are just calibrated scratches. Vinyl records have diffraction patterns too but not as obvious as CD's do. But I get what you're saying and I agree.

Basically I see the answer the same way that ic-racer sees it. A photograph is analog

But that means that an inkjet print is also analog. The variability in papers, inks, nozzles, and even the minute changes in the way the printer moves the head as it ages makes the process analog

[AuditorOne]

What the camera lens sees and projects onto film or sensor is analogue.

If recorded on film it can remain that way all the way through the process to a print, or it can be scanned into a digital form. It either stays as digital if only projected onto a digital display screen or it becomes analogue again when printed as a color or black and white print.

If recorded on a sensor the signal is converted to digital and it can stay that way all the way to a projection onto a digital display screen. Once printed it becomes analogue, whether that print is a negative which is taken further through the process, or ends there with a physical color or black and white print.

So, by definition, digital is always hybrid where film can be analogue all the way or can become hybrid at some point in the process.

The process from capture to display should only be important to the photographer. Defining it by method of capture or by the format of the negative/digital file is only an artificial attribution and really means nothing. What matters is the display for the use and enjoyment of others.

[koraks]

It doesn't matter. How does it look? How did you feel making the image? For me, that's what counts. The rest is inconsequential.

[Jac@stafford.net]

It doesn't matter. How does it look? How did you feel making the image? For me, that's what counts. The rest is inconsequential.

Of course, your response does not attempt to answer the question.

To me any CRD/LED or other electronic display at this date is digital, and diminished.

I wonder if those who use small cameras might feel remiss when monitors evolve so that, for example, today's Retina display is the very lowest denominator
.

[Vaughn]

I will assume that the common meaning of a photograph used so far in this discussion excludes images on a screen (projected or otherwise), and defines a photograph as a photographically derived image on paper or some other physical surface. With that definition, I will agree that a photograph is always analog, and in the OP example, the photograph was derived from a hybrid process.

I prefer not to separate the process from the object created by the process (the print) in my work, but do not require (but enjoy) knowing the process behind the works of others.

[Old_Dick]

When it is a bitmap.

[Duolab123]

Call it whatever you want. I've got a friend who went to George Eastman house to learn to make digital negs. Her salt prints are FABULOUS .. The only drawback is that the size of the original sensor (and the short focal length lens) of Digital capture. This gives away the fact that you are not using a 16 inch lens on a 11 x 14 inch camera. But if you can do the Photoshop Voodoo and make Platinum contact prints. I'm thinkin that is pretty Damn cool.

I have a Folmer and Schwing 11 x 14 folding camera only weighs about 20 lbs if you don't count the Majestic tripod and holders (about 3 lbs a piece). I'm gonna figure this out, even contact printing to fiber base paper from a digital file sounds good to me. Heck, I've got an old Elwood 8 x10 enlarger maybe I should put an inkjet negative in that??