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Thread: is there any traditional photography digital can not replace?

  1. #1

    Join Date
    Oct 1999
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    52

    is there any traditional photography digital can not replace?

    is there any traditional photography digital can not replace? platinum printing?

  2. #2

    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Posts
    105

    is there any traditional photography digital can not replace?

    Replace? With the same sharpness, smoothness, detail, accuracy, what? Traditional can not, will not, and should not be so cheapened or replaced. It may be an alternative method, but never a replacement.

  3. #3

    Join Date
    Mar 1998
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    1,972

    is there any traditional photography digital can not replace?

    It is not the "winner take all" proposition that your question implies.

    Given enough money, probably not. But until you get into spending something like US $30-50,000 (and this level on investment has remained pretty steady through the past 5 years while the quality bought for that money has increased) the answer is yes, there are quite a few traditional tools, techniques and imaging possibilities that cannot be replaced with digital work. I say this as someone who works regularly with both media.

    There are also many things that at least a partial digital workflow allows one to do that cannot as easily or as quickly be done with traditional tools.

    Dan Burkholder makes great platinum prints from digitally output collage negatives, but he shoots on film, scans the negatives, combines them in Photoshop and outputs the result as the negative he uses to make his prints with.

  4. #4

    is there any traditional photography digital can not replace?

    The fun part!

  5. #5

    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Location
    Timber Cove, CA
    Posts
    24

    is there any traditional photography digital can not replace?

    Well... we could wait 150 years and see if the digi files are still printable?

  6. #6

    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Posts
    31

    is there any traditional photography digital can not replace?

    The stains on my clothes, the fumes in my nose, the black fingernails on my left hand, the running water, trips to my supplier for my fix of paper and film.

  7. #7

    is there any traditional photography digital can not replace?

    Ack. The answer is YES. There is traditional photography that digital cannot replace, ALL OF IT. There is a quality that you get from a real hand printed image on real photographic paper made with real chemicals that can never be replaced digitally. No matter how much my friend at nikon tries to persuade me to " crossover " I feel that the beauty of traditional photography will never be replaced by digital. If it ever comes to pass... Luckily I will be long gone and will not be around to see it.

  8. #8

    Join Date
    Oct 2001
    Posts
    68

    is there any traditional photography digital can not replace?

    i don't understand why any of you are threatened by this question. i dont even understand why you think this is a troll - it sounds like a reasonable question to me, and, IMHO, the answer is, given a few more years of technological development, no. film is a damn good hard=copy way to capture and store information, but at some point, digital capabilities will equal film in its ability to capture and store visual information. there is no doubt that film processing is a relatively messy and time consuming process, and it requires considerable specialized knowledge. if i recall correctly, it takes something like a 600MB file to equal the amount of information on a 4x5 negative (please correct me if i am wrong) - personally, i doubt if it will be even 5 years from now before digital photography will reach that type of capability. i dont think scanning backs are the answer - it will require actual large scale CCDs to capture near- instantaneous images and facilitate very long exposure times if needed. if i guess correctly, it will not be the photographic industry that pushes this development - it will be NASA and the high- end astronomical institutions who pump billions of dollars into R&D efforts like this. but we will be the beneficiaries. i do, however, believe that a digitally-created "negative" on something akin to a 4x5 sheet of film will long remain the primary method of long-term archival image storage. i can only hope that technology can make this possible BEFORE all the companies who currently make large format film products decide that it is a losing proposition and terminate those products.

  9. #9

    Join Date
    Mar 2001
    Posts
    74

    is there any traditional photography digital can not replace?

    I shoot film. My images will be around long after I'm gone (provided they still make photographic paper, but I can go back to alternative printing if they don't). I shoot digital. In one or two decades, something more advance comes along. Replacing whatever digital systems we have now. Will my digital images be locked forever in current storage? Or do I spend more money making conversion to new technology? Will digital ever fully replace traditional? Just a thought.

  10. #10

    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Posts
    105

    is there any traditional photography digital can not replace?

    I don't think we are "threatened" by digital so much as annoyed by the "resistance is futile" attitude that so often goes along with it. I like film. Period. I like loading the camera with rolls or sheets, I like developing, I like printing. Everything about it. I really like the way the finished product looks. I've used film for years an have a fair idea what it can do. I'm also an electronic engineer and have a better idea than most what digital can do. I'm fluent in Photoshop. Why spend 10K to 50K dollars for a "decent" digital back, when a box of film costs so much less, and does not require a computer to view the pictures? Just because some of us prefer film, does not mean we are a bunch of Luddites.

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