Someone please assure me that this will not happen anytime soon.........
Seeing this coming, I sold all my darkroom equipment a few years ago and now do all my post-exposure work on my computer.
Someone please assure me that this will not happen anytime soon.........
Seeing this coming, I sold all my darkroom equipment a few years ago and now do all my post-exposure work on my computer.
Digital has almost completely taken over in colour printing. It will, in time. But the real question back to you is: In what areas? No matter how good digital prints get they do not have the same visual qualities as a silver or platinum based print. Silver chemical based photography will I am sure become more marginalised, but will still be around long after your hard drive has gone soft. LF photographers are well placed to exploit the exceptional qualities of the medium. Just do the work and let the future look after itself
Robin
Silver based photography is a durable creature but it has had a turbulent history. Tintypes were still widely used 40 or 50 years after good paper products were available. Pyro came and went and came back strong. I attended a seminar in the 1970's where Karsch lamented the rapid decline of good black & white products. They are declining again but I always seem to be able to replace a lost product with something as good or better.
Until the Xerox machine, almost every business and government office had a copy shop which produced photo copies of records on silver based material. My first driver's license (1959) was duplicated on silver based paper. The Xerox technology and the rapid rise of the type C direct color print in the 1970's hammered the black & white market so that such giants as Dupont, GAF (Ansco) and others abruptly discontinued their black and white products. Eastman has been slower to leave the field but their recent actions have been pretty speedy.
On the upside, almost every new Photoshop worker eventually gets the bug to learn and try the older processes, in other words to become photographers instead of image handlers. I believe that nitch market manufacturers will expand for years to come and we will have access to some fine black & white materials--Bergger is making some exceptional film and paper and can't seem to keep up with the demand. Many retiring baby boomers intend to build elaborate black & white darkrooms in their dream homes and these are the consumers who have been driving the markets for many decades. Now is a great time to be building a black & white facility, great bargains are out there on discarded darkroom gear that is far from obsolete.
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My personal feeling is that the decision to work in digital or conventional photography is really driven by what you want to do. The fact that you can still get the chemicals to produce cyanotypes despite the fact that they're almost ancient technology shows that new tech very seldom completely replaces old tech. Of course, if you do catalogs or advertising people are probably going to think that you're stupid for not using digital within a few years.
The fact of the matter though, is that there are going to be people willing to buy film, paper, and chemistry for a long time into the future. I know that once we get to the point when film is no longer available I will have been in my grave for a long time, and I'm only at the quarter century mark right now.
Everyone, thanks for all the thoughtful and well put ideas about this change in photography.
It is interesting to know that some say yes, some say no. There are a lot of unknowns out there right now concerning the future profits and production of traditional photographic methods (I apologize for using the word analog, after the first poster I realized "traditional" would have been a better choice). Mr. Jarvis mentioned that photography did not kill painting, which is true, but the companies making film and paint were different. There probably was not much of a decline in paint sales because painters and photographers are usually a different breed, with some exceptions. The current problem more closely resembles the music industry, who ditch old methods when a new and perhaps better method becomes available. The big photo companies who make traditional cameras and materials are in the strange position of having to make products that directly compete with their core old-line products. As the new products become more popular, their old ones will decline in profitability. If the level of profits continues to decline, the board members may decide to drop the old products because of stock holder complaints. Money has no passion for history, culture, or beauty, money only begets money. Mr. Boutilier-Brown stated that smaller companies like Bergger may see an increase in profits if the big companies reduce the quality and quantity of older methods, and this makes sense. I think the specialized, smaller companies will thrive, and that gives me hope that traditional photography will continue into the future, but the bigger companies like Kodak may become digital-only, which I hope does not happen. Mr. Zandecki mentions that poorer foreign countries will most likely continue to produce the traditional products because most citizens cannot afford the newer technologies, which will allow a photographic import business to thrive if the American photo companies move exclusively into digital.
I guess I still have reservations about it, but life is a gamble, nothing is secure, and if I ever do find that I cannot practice traditional photography because the materials no longer exist, I still have some tubes of paint and some brushes waiting for me in the studio.
Thanks again to everyone for their ideas, and happy holidays!
Heck, there will always be an England . . . they still make the bellows, they still make the film and chemicals, they still make Gandolfi's, they still revel in their eccentrics (God bless them, every one). Commercial applications will become 99% digital, as will most color applications. Large Format Black & White will live on in some manner. Carbon paper is still available. People stil hand make furniture using solid wood. I expect LF B&W will be marginalized and things will get more expensive with fewer choices. But it will live on.
This subject seems to come up about every month so I will add my updated 2 cents worth.
There will always be a supply of papers and film for silver based phtography. It may be limited to one or two suppliers and a handful of films and papers and the cost will increase but the demand will be there. I know several people in their early 20s that are much more interested in pursuing images with conventional film, paper and darkroom. A couple do output with digital but still work with film.
The demand will be there because a lot of people will embrace a more traditional hands on approach that will gain in appreciation as a fine craft among the general public such as woodworking and engraving. People will embrace it because it will always have certain qualities that cannot be duplicated by digital, and some people will be so sick of the prevalance of computers everywhere else in their lives conventional photography will feel more personal and human.
The good thing will be that non-digital equipment of the highest quality will be easily available and relatively inexpensive on the used market. Chemistry is a non-issue as you can make virtually anything you need from bulk.
Finally, I personally wrestle with this issue from time to time. I start to consider investing in a pricey scanner and printer, that it will save me time and be more convenient. Then I think about my two enlargers both D-2s over 30 years old, my cameras all used, most of my lenses except for 2 were purchased used. I begin to wonder, how many iterations of scanners, and printers and software will I have to purchase and learn and adjust to over the next 30 years, while the D- 2s if taken care of will still be perfectly capable of producing the highest quality prints. It doesn't really matter how limited the tools are. A good photographer will learn to produce the finest images with what he has available.
Cameras for art photography should be judged on how much information that they capture. This can be measured objectively in a lab. Objectively even scanning backs that cost tens of thousands have a long way to go, especially if you are trying to capture a scene with anything that is moving. The latest issue of PhotoTechneques reports that a new emulsion process will improve film by a factor of 4 and will be in production in two years. Last time I was at Motorola they were still using film to make chips so film is likely to be around for a long time.
Once I have a negative that I want to use for something besides making a fine art print, I can really see the advantages to scanning it into Photoshop right now.
However, most of those advantages are advantages of convenience, not capability. I can ?interpolate? my negative by making an internegative, and I can mask, dodge, burn, and change contrast locally with multi contrast paper.
P.S. I believed that ?records are going obsolete? stuff and stored my records and sold my tube amp and turn table, to buy indestructible unscratchable CDs. Anyone priced a MacIntosh tube amp lately?
My big fear for film is that what Rush calls "environmentalist whacos" will begin to ask why we need all these harsh chemicals, film, silver etc, and regulate us out of film.
I am old enough to have lived through several transitions simular to film to digital. Automated check out lines at the grocery store take longer than good casheers with crank registers did. We are still a long way from the promised "paperless office". TV doesn't educate or replace books, it is what someone called "a mind eating device". Computers don't help people think better, just faster. You can be stupid at the speed of light now.
Point is, I wouldn't expect digital convenience to improve photography. I think a book I saw at Barns and Nobel the other days sums it up. It was titled: "Learn Photography in a Weekend"
Two Questions ...
Did TV kill the Movies ??
Why do so many succumb like sheep to the slaughter to the ideology of 'the medium is the message' ??
WG
Walter:
Nice response.
Simple answer: no, silver based photography isn't going to die any time soon.
Even now, for our photo work (catalogs, manuals, etc.) all our photos start as silver. The images are subsequently scanned. While this might change, I don't think it will soon.
But even so, go to your local "big" camera store (not a mall or chain outlet). Look at all the sizes & types of film they offer. Doesn't look like they think silver based photography is going away soon.
Then too, all those wonderful electronic circuit boards start life as a silver-based photographic mask, which is photographically printed on the boards to create the etch-resist mask. Without photography there are no electronics these days
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