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Thread: View Camera Magazine

  1. #1

    View Camera Magazine

    Have always looked forward to View camera and Camera Arts mags, but their latest issues may be the end.Digital lobbyist have invaded their offices.They both have always had (mostly) true forms of photography but now its all so artificial.Have to start my own mag I suppose.Oh,Black and White mag is still about 95% non digital.

  2. #2

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    View Camera Magazine

    I understand your concerns in your post. Even though the digital process won't affect my work for some time, I appreciated the real- life product names and their opinions on how they were used. The large format digital marketplace isn't exactly the easiest place to find out about all of the available tools and toys, due to a small group of people who can afford them.

    Although I look forward to more and more articles on silver-based printing processes, this issue was a welcomed 'new look' at the state of digital for large format. Could there be a more independent view? I suppose so. However, I seriously doubt Steve Simmons would accept any products for article space.

  3. #3

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    View Camera Magazine

    Ignoring for a moment whether there is quid pro quo affecting articles and ads in View Camera, I think the most disturbing thing I saw in the issue was the article on "View Cameras in a Digital World". The images used in the article are fine when viewed from a distance of 3 or 4 feet, but if you look at them from a normal reading distance, all but one are unacceptably unsharp. I'm talking about resolution, not focus. Five years ago this would have been fine, but when you are using a Sinar camera for product photography, and proclaiming ours to be a "digital world", I expect the final image to rival film, and this doesn't come close. The article is not of great length, it does point out some of the limitations of the digital medium, and it underscored the ease of use of the images after they are made as a big plus. However, as an "advertisement" that might attract film users to ditch their film and go over the wall, it fails. This is where I find fault with the magazine: I would not expect them to devote space to less than the best examples of traditional film images, either from an artistic or technical standpoint, so this should apply to digital as well. I don't think that if they are going to feature digital I should have to back up a ways to make it look right.

  4. #4

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    View Camera Magazine

    I belong to a Portland organization that hosted a View Camera Festival last year. It was a neat event, and we had some excellent photographers who presented. One of them was Charles Cramer, an LF photographer who scans 4x5 transparencies to a 250 megabyte file, manipulates them in Photoshop, and then prints them on a Laserlite (sic?) printer. As I understand it, the Laserlite exposes silver based papers that are developed in the characteristic fashion.

    His images were stunning. The color was beautiful, with intense reds, oranges, etc., given the particular photograph being reproduced. They were also large, some of them measuring 20x24 and larger. (See www.anseladamsgallery.com.)

    We also had a commercial photographer, Gregory Ross, who uses the same approach in his work, and they both agreed that they liked having the control that Photoshop provides, but that digital capture could not provide the "zing" which could be obtained from silver transparencies. The point being made is that "digital" can work well with traditional silver to perhaps provide more than either of these mediums is capable of providing alone.

    When digital was first introduced, I was critical of Shutterbug for placing so much emphasis on this new form of photography. But as Monterey photographer Richard Newman points out, the photographer provides that insite into what makes a unique and interesting image. Thereafter, he/she should use those tools that best help him to realize that image in a photographic form.

  5. #5

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    View Camera Magazine

    There's a symbiotic relationship between sellers of photography equipment on the one hand and photography publications on the other. Anyone who stands to make money from sales of photography equipment loves digital because, unlike traditional equipment that was relatively inexpensive and lasted a lifetime, a lot of digital stuff is very expensive and becomes obsolete quickly. Historically sellers of photography equipment had a problem - the equipment was too good, it lasted too long. Digital has solved that problem. Instead of buying one or two cameras, one set of lenses, one enlarger, one set of enlarger lenses, etc. etc. in a lifetime, many digital consumers are in a state of almost constant discard of old equipment and purchase of new equipment. This new equipment has to be promoted and advertising is the principal way of promoting it. Magazines love that for obvious reasons and so magazines love digital. The better digital does, the better the magazines will do. Hence there is an inherent conflict of interest between a magazine's efforts, no matter how sincere, to be objective and its financial well being. This conflict of interest is exactly the same as the conflict of interest that exists when a life insurance salesman sells life insurance or a car salesman sells a car, it's just not quite so obvious. This isn't to suggest that there is a direct payoff in the sense of a publication saying "if you'll advertise here, we'll promote your equipment in our editorial content." I don't know whether that kind of thing goes on or not. I'm optimistic enough to think that it doesn't. However, even without this kind of direct payoff, a photography magazine still has a vested interest in promoting digital equipment.Of course this situation didn't begin when digital appeared on the scene, it existed with traditional photography equipment as well. But digital happens to be the current big new thing that needs promoting and it also has upped the stakes because the profits in promoting and selling digital stuff are so much greater than they ever were with traditional equipment.
    Brian Ellis
    Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you do criticize them you'll be
    a mile away and you'll have their shoes.

  6. #6

    View Camera Magazine

    I recently visited View Camera's web site to see read their submission policies. Low and behold they do NOT except digital submissions in any form. You have to send duplicate trannies. Now this seems to me to be a contradiction in terms. They talk about how useful digital is, but refuse to view conventional portfolios in a digital format?? I wonder why this is.. afterall it is so much more convenient to burn a CD, and cheaper than having say a dozen dupes made.

  7. #7
    Whatever David A. Goldfarb's Avatar
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    View Camera Magazine

    It may be more convenient to send a CD, but it is much easier to view prints or slides, and I can understand their wanting all submissions in the same format for their convenience (and since they are the publisher, they can put their own convenience first).

  8. #8

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    View Camera Magazine

    The publishing industry is very conservative about what they will accept for submission, it seems. While they may be using computer publishing tools internally (ie. scanners, QuarkXPress), they do not accept digital source material.

    This is mainly because they have built a "closed loop" system. They know that from their scanners through to their presses (or whatever output device), they have control over colorspace, resolution, etc.

    This was essential when color management was a "black art". If you didn't build a closed loop, you could not maintain quality and work efficiently.

    Nowadays, color management is far better (profiles in PS 6.0, ColorSync, etc.). However, a publisher with a proven, money making closed loop system doesn't want to invite potential hassles by accepting your profiled PS file. If you send them a trannie or a print, they can send you back a proof and say "this matches the trannie you sent". If they work from a PS file, what happens when you say "That proof doesn't match what I see on my monitor"? Do you ship your computer to them so they can see the evidence? (Of course, it could be possible to send a trannie or print, and the PS file.)

    While it may seem ridiculous to "film out" your digital file for publication, the publishers are 1) covering their asses, 2) avoiding the potential labor and cost of profiling your file into their closed loop.

  9. #9

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    View Camera Magazine

    I to was disapionted with the recent seemingly all digital edition of View Camera. The point on the advertising is that those advertisers who can afford the space in major magazines are going digital, the emphasis in the growth of their business is in the highly competetive digital area, The traditional film is not the competetive playing field, How long has it been since you saw an ad from the film companies that said their film was lowere grain or had more shadow detail or was easier to develope in accordance with zone system discipline, or how their film reacted to pyro? So the world is changing, Maqybe I am not changing but the world is, The magazines need to attract he readers who buy the materials the companies sell, That is who there are so many digital photo magazines out there, I do npot see any magazines for the anacronistic(??) photographer. ther is a revolution in technique and the mixing of film and digital at the levels of image capture, image development and printing is being experimented upon. That is interesting and scary at the same time, The traditional film , paper and wet darkroom photographer is going to become marginalized, In fact that has happened in the commercial environment, No magazine is going to ignore this revolution and survive. I mayself am looking foward to winning a lotery so I can afford the state of the art digital capture equipment, or before that happens the hot stuff today will become obsolete to the commercial high output studio nad will be discounted off to me.

    I do believe that there will be a demand for the very traditional chemical approach to photography and that is and will continue to be appreciated by a limited number of photographers and PATRONS of photography, but it will become marginalized as a fine art.

    There are trends that black and white is strong and there are british publications and austrailian photo phublications dealing with just that in all formats, But the advertisers are different in mix than View Camera.

    I do hope that View Camera has a strong and permanent policy that the chemistry based photography will be addressed and promoted.

  10. #10
    Whatever David A. Goldfarb's Avatar
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    View Camera Magazine

    I don't think one special all-digital issue a sign that Steve Simmons is giving up on traditional and chemistry-based alternative processes. After all, there was recently an all-Polaroid issue, and there has always been a mix of traditional and digital processes in the magazine. If it's a magazine about large-format photography, LF includes a variety of processes, then the magazine ought to reflect those.

    Meanwhile, _Photovision_, I believe, has stated a commitment to focus on non-digital processes.

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