The real story on the digital push

[John Smith]

James ? on your assessment of the digital hype, I agree with you totally. You s ee IMHO everyone is pushing this digital stuff down our throats because there?s far more potential for making money than with traditional processes. With digit al there would be a huge market for capture, storage, and printing devices that even the small Ma & Pa outfits could get in on the action. Furthermore, the mo dern day consumer is quite inured to being on the constant upgrade treadmill to stay compatible with the latest computer bells and whistles. Like a mantra, alm ost everyone chants ?Technology will keep getting better and become cheaper,? so they see little point in buying for the long haul. In fact our entire consumer economy is based on low quality, planned obselesence, disposable or short lifec ycle goods ? people expect this.

Now the flip side, traditional photography, is anathema to those running the sho w in this world of bilk and money. The trouble is that the equipment lasts too long, and there there isn?t the need for constant upgrades; 50 year old cameras and lenses are still making beautiful pictures, as many this forum will attest t o. Thus in the brave new economy, traditional photography must be eliminated fr om the marketplace and replaced with something more lucrative for the corporate bottom line. Frankly, for the most part, those producing the gear and film we now use don?t give a damn about photography, it?s only about making money, i.e., maximizing shareholder wealth and CEO compensation. Ditto the magazine publish ers. These same people would sell their mother?s grave to make a buck if they c ould, e.g., see Enron, the is THE mentality in the business community today.

The quality of digital vs. traditional will not be an issue either. Most people are quite happy with their 8x10 digital prints and the masses really don?t appr eciate the quality we are getting with our beloved LF film and cameras. Standar ds in general are lower these days with everything geared towards one-size-fits mediocrity. It?s not about making a quality product anymore, it?s about market ing and hype.

R.I.P. LF as we know and love it, the masses won?t miss it!

[Mike Mahoney]

I'd wager there is more profit margin in a monorail than in a digital. I commented on another thread that most LF cameras are based on one hundred year old technology with basic tooling and alloys, whereas a digital camera has big R&D bucks behind it, and a short product cycle - increasing everyones risk in the supply chain.

You know who I really pity in all of this ? - the advanced non-pro who is shooting really good stuff with a 2-3 megapixel camera. He's building a library of work with very limited reproduction potential.

With a 4X5 neg or trans, your reproduction avenues are wide and wonderful ....

[Jeff Buckels]

My Deardorff camera is 60 years old; my Schneider, Rodenstock and Wollensak lenses are between 30 and 80 years old. I'm 50. My camera and lenses will be about the same after I'm dead. If (when) Ilford stops making film or goes out of business, I'll go to paper negatives and/or glass plates and continue printing platinum/palladium and such. All I really need is my current equipment, paper and/or glass, and chemicals.... As far as the present or future of art is concerned, digital is irrelevant. Art doesn't improve. Digital is not more artistic than film, film is not more artistic than classic painting, classic painting is not more artistic than cave painting.... Digital may or may not be an issue to professional photographers. I don't really know and definitely don't care. I'm an amateur and I couldn't care less if digital "takes over the world" or walks off the face of the earth tomorrow. It doesn't make any difference. -jeff buckels (albuquerque)

[Jim Galli]

ditto jeff

[fishfish]

You are right, there is more margin in a monorail camera then a digital, but I will sell 500 digitals before I make one 4x5 sale new, which is why the market is going digital. Simple.

[Doug Paramore]

Whether or not digital will replace our beloved LF film and cameras is a moot point. It will. The only remaining question is how soon. Digital is still in its infancy...it has only been around a few years. It is already replacing film in many portrait and commercial studios, and most newspapers have changed already, even the smaller weekly papers. It's a done deal. Equipment will continue to improve along with other advances in digital technology to the point where it will be of equal or better quality. This is not years in the future...it is, relatively speaking, tomorrow morning. For those making a living doing photography it is already at the point where quality is good enough for most uses, the cost of equipment is coming withing reach, and operating cost are cheap. It also takes less time, therefore fewer employees. Digital has everything going for it that traditional photography has not, with the exception of ultimate quality and permanance. That quality and permanance is almost here. It is a lot cheaper for a photographer to do a shoot on digital, plug it into the computer, do all the needed retouching with key strokes, and spit out a print ready to deliver. Put that up against traditional film that has to be developed, retouched, printed, spotted, etc and it becomes plain why digital had made the inroads it has.

I have been a photographer since the late 1950s, and every change has been accepted by some and fought by others. At first the change to smaller cameras was going to ruin photography, then color was going to kill it, then sending processing to outside labs would kill professional photography. I was a photographer when newspapers thought changing from 4x5 Speed Graphics to the Rolleiflex was the worst thing that ever happened. The change to 35mm was purely a work of the devil. Just give a 4x5 five camera with 25 sheet film holders to a photographer now and ask him to shoot a football game. I don't want to change to digital, and will not, but I am at the stage in life where I won't have to. If film and paper manufacture stops, I will just say thanks for many years of good memories and put the old workhorses in the closet or mount them for display. On the other hand, I am afraid to shoot too much digital. I might love it.

Regards,

[Matt_1193]

Eric is right - and all of the LF photographers bemoaning the coming end of film-photography - who have never batted an eye at shelling out $3-4,000 (and more) for a camera less sophisticated and less mechanically precise than a 30 year old 35mm SLR, have no one but themselves to blame.

[Andrew Held]

Traditional photography is an extremely mature industry. Profits are steady but unexciting. From a finance perspective there is no expectation of growth. This is fine for small companies that are happy producing for a limited market with adequate returns, but it will not generate the kind of returns that keep a finance capital economy growing. Digital, on the other hand, is a very young industry. Typically in this stage of the lifecycle of an industry expenses (typically R&D and marketing) are very high, but returns are also very high. Note that this does not necessarily extend to the retail side (as one merchant aptly noted). The expectations of future growth and revenue are also extremely high, particularly looking forward to the period of maturity when prices are still high and expenses begin to decrease.

I don't think it is fair to say that this system is due to greed. The fact is in a free economy money flows to where returns are greatest and that is always in the growth cycle industries - or the industries that have managed to reinvent themselves (e.g. telecomms). If investment is prevented from flowing to the fastest growing industries than returns will decline and the economy will stagnate. We have seen that in command economies such as the old USSR where investment was deliberately directed to industries on the basis of political instead of financial reasons, and to a lesser extent in Japan, where a too close relationship between big business and government allowed old inefficient methods of doing business to remain dominant.

So don't blame greed or stockholders for the new excitement in, and shift to digital. Whether or not companies "give a damn about photography" is irrelevant. They have to sell products that sell and keep customers coming back for more. Although sometimes there is a disconnect, eventually they will learn that quality "sells" - marketing and hype cannot ultimately overcome quality problems. Digital has proven that it can serve most customers needs. The industry is not turning its back on or abandoning fine arts or high end photographers it is simply concentrating its energies on the choicest segments of the market.

The good news, for those who like myself prefer traditional film for aesthetic reasons, is that there is no reason to expect film to go away. As big firms begin to shift resources to the more profitable, growth sectors, like digital, there are small companies that figure out how to make a profit serving a niche market. I am continually surprised and pleased to see how many small, new firms are doing business supplying a small niche market. Look at Really Right Stuff, or Bergger Papers, or even Ilford. We will likely see big changes in the composition of manufacturers, and in the way we obtain supplies and services, but I don't think we will have a problem getting the supplies we need. As a parallel to this, I think the art and science of traditional photography will continue to advance. It has always attracted among the most innovative and inventive engineers and scientists. They will be the ones contributing to small firm's r&d and improving products for the market. The greatest threat to traditional photography, in my opinion, is a tightening of wastewater regulations that could all but eliminate the use of toxic chemistry. We will have to respond by creating more benign darkroom chemistry, or by finding a hazardous waste disposal system that is not prohibitively costly.

As far as standards for photography I think the public's expectations have risen greatly. Compare an old snapshot from a brownie to any machine print from a point and shoot. Of course, we are not adequately educating people as to the aesthetics and quality of really good photography, but our school systems de-emphasize that sort of thing. As people learn to use and like digital they too will begin to demand higher and higher standards for the medium. Ultimately, I think this respect for quality will bring about a new appreciation of the artistry of film, and that will help both mediums to survive, side by side and into the distant future.

[kthompson]

Doug, your post reminds me of working as a kid as a part-time stringer for a pretty large newspaper...one of the old-timers told me once that he could "cover a football game on one sheet of film"...going on to tell how he could stand in the middle of the field (sidelines) and blow off one shot...the neg was so big that he'd get 4-5 plays out of it....well, I never really believed him until years later, working here--I printed an old press neg of the Rose Bowl game during WWII, when it was held in NC during the war....with Choo-Choo Justice. That neg was so loose, it had about 4-5 plays on it, and they were all tack sharp almost even though it was a hell of an enlargement just to get an 8x10 off it....anyways, newspapers have been moving digital for a decade almost. ....that paper I spoke of, had about 75 employees in the backshop who did pasteup and ran the stat cameras. I went back there about 8 yrs. ago, and they had gone all-digital...the whole way. Straight to plate. AP picture desks, the whole nine-yards....gotten rid of the entire darkroom--8 Leitz Focomats, 2 big Durst Labradors...a wetline, and 2 paper processors--one Kodak, and one Ilford--the best darkroom I've ever seen. they had 12 full timers, who each shared their own processing room (2 each) with mini-tank lines and chemistry on tap....all the film labs gone. Scanners & computers in their place. The backshop employees were all gone. This was a big paper, but even the tiny ones now have followed suit. It makes perfect sense in the newspaper business....and in most others.

I also worked for a few years in a small offset printing shop running stat cameras & doing pre-press grunt work like basic neg stripping....we had a couple of typesetters and a bunch of Compugraphics typesetting equipment, as well as paste-up folks who knew all those arcane rules of type & layout that have all but vanished from "good" design now. Well, desktop publishing came along and literally drove that trade under....our typesetteres pretty much laughed this off, and refused to change...so they eventually didn't workl there anymore, and the compugraphic stuff was sold off...and we started running more & more lousy crap and the customers were happy because it was THEIR lousy crap, and they didn't mind because they designed, they laid it out...we just got the plates burned and ran the jobs....

What's this got to do with digital and photography....well, this is where we're at now...the same place the typesetters were about 12 yrs. back or so....typesetting was an age-old craft, older than photography...and yet now, it's pretty much a lost art only to be found in really high-end print houses, or cottage trades like letterpress printing shops.....

Blame it on consumerism, bad taste, stupidity, whatever...it's here to stay, and it's only get worse. My opinions only, as always.

[DJACKSON]

Architect. Dentist. Doctor. Lawyer. Tailor. Engineer. The waiting room. Bland. Incongruity. Dusty wall-mounted prints. Dated magazines in disarray. But the professional wears bespoken suits. Upgrade needed. Thin-screen HDTV. 2 x 3 feet. Digital input. Photographer provides input. Art images. E.g. Doctor's office. 50% of patients have emotional overlay. Alpine light. Serene. Sex organs of plants. That means flowers, Armin. Anti-anxiety images. Tailor. Images show various fabrics and patterns. Holland and Sherry Superfine 120, 130, 140's. Dormeuil cloth. How measurements are made. Making of suit. Architect. Key projects on display. Artistic rende