Historic Parallels Glass Plate to Film... Film to Digi

[schafphoto]

I stumbled on an interesting article at a hotel that noted that professional glass plate photographers were reluctant to use film because they saw it as an amateur medium.
Much like the reluctance I remember when digital first was introduced and film photographers ( like myself) were not impressed by the technology, resolution, color, etc... of the new medium in its infancy.
Anyone seen this kind of parallel written about or have old issues of History mag lying about? I think the mag was American History or history Magazine, definitely not a photo mag - what photo mag does history articles :-(
The article was something like History of Photography (or the history of Kodak), around six years ago.
Thanks

[MDR]

Strictly speaking the glass plate guys were right. Glass stays flat in the holder = sharper pictures, glass gives you a reason for having an assistant/mule with you during a landscape shot. Carrying a case of glase plates helps you build muscles and attracts babes. You probably had the same discussion during the transition from wet to dryplate. I know some photographers used wetplates well into the 1890 because they prefered the wetplate look.

[jp]

It's their medium of choice, so of course they are going to prefer it to film or digital. Journalists like to fabricate drama between old and new, where practicioners were pleased to have a choice between old and new.

Wet plate has a huge advantage in terms of grain size over film; the silver is wet and isn't in the form of big crystal grains at the time of exposure, so it's essentially grainless. Not a big deal for contact printing, but it's something to brag about in the megapixel wars climate. It can also be wiped clean and redone in the field if you don't like the shot and don't want to throw away another sheet of film. The aesthetic is of course a matter of debate; some people like factory perfect film like we get from Kodak or Ilford. Other people like the inherent unpredictable defects (aka unique character result from craft) of something handmade. I've got some glass plate negatives here (old ones) and it appears to be a mix of commercial dry plates and wet plates. I'm guessing it spans a time period and/or the original photographer re-used some glass plates to experiment with wet plate. Some are neutral tinted gray, and some have a brownish tint, perhaps indicating pyro and normal developer use as well.

[jp]

Along a similar topic, Eastern Illustrating was a huge postcard company a hundred years ago. They used glass plates long after people converted to film. They could write (in reverse by hand) on the negative to label/caption it, and the glass negative was sturdier than film for the purpose of contact printing. http://www.penobscotmarinemuseum.org...tions/eip.html is a local museum that has the massive collection of glass plates.

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

And before that Daguerreotypists complained that wet-plate collodion cheapened the art (they still do). Of course, don't forget that Daguerreotypy cheapened painting, and became the refuge of failed painters (Baudelaire).

[Jody_S]

Is there any principle that can be generalized here? Can we get a bunch of gun nuts to give up their semi-auto scoped rifles in favor of pointy sticks and rocks, because the technology has cheapened the act of killing some poor defenseless animal meandering about the forest?

[John Kasaian]

Is there any principle that can be generalized here? Can we get a bunch of gun nuts to give up their semi-auto scoped rifles in favor of pointy sticks and rocks, because the technology has cheapened the act of killing some poor defenseless animal meandering about the forest?

There lots of black powder and archery guys in my neck of the woods, and fly fishing is still very popular---more sporting some would say.

[Jay DeFehr]

Is there any principle that can be generalized here? Can we get a bunch of gun nuts to give up their semi-auto scoped rifles in favor of pointy sticks and rocks, because the technology has cheapened the act of killing some poor defenseless animal meandering about the forest?

It's funny you should make your comment -- my late brother-in-law was an avid hunter, and once expressed to me (a non-hunter) his desire to do just what you suggest -- hunt deer with a spear. He said he'd walked up on so any bedded-down deer in his life, he was sure he could be successful, but, ironically, spear hunting deer is not legal in Oregon. He never mentioned bear hunting with a pointy stick.

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

... He never mentioned bear hunting with a pointy stick...

Apparently the benefits of old technology are fetishized, but the limits rarely mentioned.

[K. Praslowicz]

Wet-platers also bemoaned dry-platers for the same reasons. http://www.apug.org/forums/forum50/3...gy-coming.html