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Author Topic: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?  (Read 29162 times)

Alan Klein

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #60 on: January 12, 2014, 04:48:02 pm »

It was a lot easier shooting slides.  You worried about getting in the camera and then went on to the next shot.  More fun for me anyway. 

Rob C

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #61 on: January 12, 2014, 05:42:59 pm »

It was a lot easier shooting slides.  You worried about getting in the camera and then went on to the next shot.  More fun for me anyway. 


Commercially, transparencies were the best bet of the lot: Kodachrome 64 Pro!

I wouldn't go as far as to claim it was easier, though; you had to be pretty careful how you lit/exposed.

From that film I have pulled more pleasing stuff (IMO) using only a simple CanoScan machine as it came out of the box, than faffing about for hours with digital originals. And that most certainly includes better black/whites from Kodachrome, too. There's something very unpredictable with digital black/whites from digital cameras with which I'm familiar; it's something that I can only describe as 'empty spaces' within the tonal range, nothing to do with maximum blacks or burned-out highlights; it happens to some mid-tones sometimes.

Rob C

hjulenissen

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #62 on: January 13, 2014, 09:07:39 am »

In my view, photography has not progressed: it has simply led to a highly complex mundanity where original thinking has been usurped by technical tricks that are nothing more than that: special effects. Even in movies, those now bore audiences to death.
The pictures that exist of myself as a kid have only personal value. It is fascinating to see yourself (or close family) 30 years back. Technically, they are bad. They were taken with a lowcost SLR and compact camera. Specifically:
-Whitebalance is all over the place
-About 50% of the prints have turned yellow or some other disgusting faded color (there seems to be some pattern in that certain films/developments are ok, while others are really bad)
-Focus is slightly or grossly wrong on almost every picture (I can print my current pictures at 10x15 without being annoyed with focus errors. Not so with the old family album)
-For in-door shots, a hideous on-camera flash is often used, bathing the subject in a harsh face-on light.

I think that todays family shots tend to be better. To the degree that parents actually preserve the image files (which is a problem), I think that todays kids will prefer the images of this generation to the one before them.

I have talked about consumer photography, professional photography may be something different.

-h
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Alan Klein

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #63 on: January 13, 2014, 09:25:18 am »

The same is true about movies.  My little 8mm Kodachromes movies that I shot 50 years ago don't compare to today's digital cameras even P&S's.  Of course I still have the film 50 years later although they are also converted to digital now and burned on a DVD for playing on an HDTV, just like some of my 35mm slides.


My wife and I just moved recently.  We found over forty 50-foot movie rolls her dad had taken some more than 50 years ago.  Although I haven't yet sent them out for conversion to digital on a DVD,  I did run a couple on my movie projector. (Well the projector ran the correct speed going backwards but slow going forward!)  The colors are normal.  

Actually I'm sorry I switched over to 35mm Ektachromes years ago.  I should have stayed with Kodachromes they hold colors so much better and longer.

« Last Edit: January 13, 2014, 09:27:20 am by Alan Klein »
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Rob C

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #64 on: January 13, 2014, 09:59:00 am »

The pictures that exist of myself as a kid have only personal value. It is fascinating to see yourself (or close family) 30 years back. Technically, they are bad. They were taken with a lowcost SLR and compact camera. Specifically:
-Whitebalance is all over the place
-About 50% of the prints have turned yellow or some other disgusting faded color (there seems to be some pattern in that certain films/developments are ok, while others are really bad)
-Focus is slightly or grossly wrong on almost every picture (I can print my current pictures at 10x15 without being annoyed with focus errors. Not so with the old family album)
-For in-door shots, a hideous on-camera flash is often used, bathing the subject in a harsh face-on light.

I think that todays family shots tend to be better. To the degree that parents actually preserve the image files (which is a problem), I think that todays kids will prefer the images of this generation to the one before them.

I have talked about consumer photography, professional photography may be something different.

-h


Everything depends on the skills of the people doing it.

I also have old transparencies and b/white silver prints; they look as good today as when I made them. I suspect that my silver will look better longer than the digital counterparts, theoretical ink/paper time-testing notwithstanding. (Less and less do I believe anything from the lips of the photographic industry. All I need do is compare viewfinders of my F3 to those of the D200 and D700 to realise that progress sometimes means going full steam ahead in reverse.)

Regarding longevity, that also depends largely on how one stores things.

Rob C

hjulenissen

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #65 on: January 13, 2014, 10:12:08 am »

Everything depends on the skills of the people doing it.
Sure, but I believe that todays tools are more forgiving for the less skilled people.
Quote
Regarding longevity, that also depends largely on how one stores things.
In this case, pretty standard photo albums stored on the shelf. Like 95% of other peoples family pictures, I would think.

I tend to believe that some mail-order developers used lesser quality tools/chemicals than others, and that this shows 30 or 40 years after, not matter how you store things. I am no expert on film stuff, though.

-h
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RSL

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #66 on: January 13, 2014, 10:18:05 am »

It was a lot easier shooting slides.  You worried about getting in the camera and then went on to the next shot.  More fun for me anyway. 

Hi Alan,

I agree with Rob -- about it not being easier. As he pointed out, exposure had to be right on the money, and with what now seem quite primitive light measuring tools, that wasn't easy.

To me, by far the most important advantage of digital is the LCD screen on the back of the camera. Yeah, the histogram can be a help, but the whole scene on the LCD is even more help. You can bracket and see -- right then -- what the different exposures are doing to the thing. If you're going to shoot with flash, and you want to include ambient light, you can start by making a shot without the flash, see what the ambient light is doing for you, and then plan your flash setup. And as you go you can look at the LCD and adjust things until you're happy. With film you had to use hot lights to get any idea what you were going to end up with.

I'm sorry to hear that Rob's having predictability problems with digital B&W. I get very consistent results with my D3, D800, and Olympus E-P1. When I make a conversion with Silver Efex Pro, at least 90% of the time I can use one of my favorite presets and get exactly what I'm after. That's a single click. If not, Silver Efex has tools to do anything I want to do with the thing, including picking a canned conversion to the characteristics of one of film-days' favorite films. With the B&W capabilities built into my Epson 3880 I get better B&W than I ever used to get with gelatin-silver, but that may be because I wasn't as good a darkroom printer as I thought I was.
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JayWPage

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #67 on: January 13, 2014, 11:20:04 am »


Regarding longevity, that also depends largely on how one stores things.

Rob C

How prints are stored is very Important! People confuse stability with durability. An inkjet carbon pigment on cotton rag paper is far more stable than a silver print, but has far less durability. I have inherited old (~ 1 century old) silver prints that have been stored loose in boxes or drawers for most of their life, the edges are a bit beat up and some have creases but overall they are OK. Pigment inkjet prints are easily damaged by scuffing or scratching.
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Peter McLennan

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #68 on: January 13, 2014, 04:18:13 pm »


I wish that I could agree with you, Peter, but I can't.

In my view, photography has not progressed: it has simply led to a highly complex mundanity where original thinking has been usurped by technical tricks that are nothing more than that: special effects. Even in movies, those now bore audiences to death.
Rob C

To me, that's an inexplicable perception.  I agree that photography's ubiquity has resulted in mundanity. I am in fact guilty of that very mundanity myself by sending images of my meals home to my wife as a form of shorthand, in-depth communication.

"Writing with light", right?



Surely no photographer who has become familiar with LR and PS can deny that photography has progressed.  If you discount compositing as a valid component of photography and  dismiss all special effects as boring, then you must be even older than me.  :)  Besides, all of photography is a special effect. 

And don't get me started on the big, gorgeous prints available everyone with a little desk space in their bedroom.  Or the fact that anyone with a grand to spare can produce images for free that are better than my old 6X7 outfit did at several dollars per button-push.


I'm reminded of my comment to a manager of the GoPro booth last Spring at NAB in Vegas. 

On viewing their latest demo reel, I said: "I've never seen any of those images before."

He laffed. : )

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bill t.

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #69 on: January 13, 2014, 04:36:56 pm »

GoPro booth last Spring at NAB in Vegas. 

Photography has truly progressed by leaps and bounds.  Open up any issue of the US Camera Annual from the 60's and ask yourself this...where are the pictures of the skateboarders?

Anyhoo, GoPro is passe.  The Mobius is the new king of first person POV.  You have to keep up, that's the trick.
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Rob C

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #70 on: January 14, 2014, 05:02:44 am »

To me, that's an inexplicable perception.  I agree that photography's ubiquity has resulted in mundanity. I am in fact guilty of that very mundanity myself by sending images of my meals home to my wife as a form of shorthand, in-depth communication.

"Writing with light", right?



Surely no photographer who has become familiar with LR and PS can deny that photography has progressed.  If you discount compositing as a valid component of photography and  dismiss all special effects as boring, then you must be even older than me.  :) Besides, all of photography is a special effect.  

And don't get me started on the big, gorgeous prints available everyone with a little desk space in their bedroom.  Or the fact that anyone with a grand to spare can produce images for free that are better than my old 6X7 outfit did at several dollars per button-push.


I'm reminded of my comment to a manager of the GoPro booth last Spring at NAB in Vegas.  

On viewing their latest demo reel, I said: "I've never seen any of those images before."

He laffed. : )





Kind of proves the point I made, I think. It's a mind set. I don't think traditional photography is a special effect at all. I think that traditional photography was something real whereas PSed perfection is simply another common manifestation of airbrushed life: a fakery no more exciting than silicone tits, a perception which also makes me older than you might be.

I have never said that digital manipulation does not make more control possible; I have said that ultimate digital control removes the art from the equation and puts photography into the monkey writing Shakespeare category of artistic expression. Having worked with both media (and having bought and owned a monkey for a few hours) I know the reality of what digital can do, and also recognize the sense of artistic loss that working that way produces for me. Gone the inner satisfaction, and the arrival of the well, I could always have done this, that or the other as a further layer... You will or will not see the differences, and if you don't there's nothing I can add, and it simply makes no difference to anyone at all other than to me, and least of all to you

Rob C

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #71 on: January 14, 2014, 03:36:42 pm »

And yet, Rob, we all know that even in "traditional" photography, the end results often look not too similar to the original scene as viewed.  It's all just smoke and mirrors or lights and chemicals or silicone and LEDs.
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Phil Brown

Rob C

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #72 on: January 14, 2014, 05:25:44 pm »

And yet, Rob, we all know that even in "traditional" photography, the end results often look not too similar to the original scene as viewed.  It's all just smoke and mirrors or lights and chemicals or silicone and LEDs.


Absolutely so, but what you are writing about here is interpretation, in the sense of St A. and his dictum about negs, scores and performances.

My references are aimed at the differences in approach: with the wet systems, it was something that lay absolutely within the realm of skill; with PS and the rest, it's far more a matter of when you give up, and unlike the wet ways, where the skill lay totally within you, you can now go on forever, mechanically putting layer upon layer until something works. Just as with the monkeys/keyboard/Shakespeare analogy, the chances are that at some stage, you've managed it. It doesn't work like that on the traditional route.

That's why digital is so attractive to newbies: it's as close to painting by numbers as you can get with a camera.

Don't misunderstand me: for those who depend on speed and commercial priorities, I'm sure it's the perfect solution except that it's made most work twice as hard for the same or even less reward, and invest God alone knows how much more on equipment than with film and a darkroom. For the amateur, I think he's been robbed of a far more profound personal experience. And for the amateur, isn't that what it's supposedly all about?

For me? It let's me play now for not much money, as long as I don't go nuts and buy into the fibs. I won't.

However, closer to the theme of the thread, I suggest that one would have had far more pride and interest in the conservation of a single hard-won wet prints of which one was proud, than of the totally unlimited number of identical prints of whatever that one can make with a computer. When things come so easily, where is their value, even to you, the maker? I suppose that's why my HP  B9180 has lain unused and wasting tick-over ink for months; what's the point? My kids could come here after I'm gone and just press the button and the pix would come churning out all by themselves... some craftsmanship that requires!

Rob C

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #73 on: January 14, 2014, 08:26:44 pm »

But it does require craftsmanship in the first instance, either to get the shot right or to post-process it to create the image that you want.  Sure, it seems easy to drive PS or LR to do some magical things (and many times that's true), but as most here know that doesn't help you to create a vision that actually works and constantly refining has traps all of its own (contrast creep, anyone?).

I think you devalue the new over the old mostly because the old is your paradigm.  There's nothing wrong with that - it's personal - but in an objective way I don't think there's any less skill involved in creating a truly wonderful image today than when my Dad first gave me a Minolta HiMatic E that he picked up from a friend (Dad was using an SR-T 101 at the time).  I was 7, and had no idea what I was doing, but it was fun :-)
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Alan Klein

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #74 on: January 14, 2014, 09:35:37 pm »

Quote from: Alan Klein on January 12, 2014, 04:48:02 PM

It was a lot easier shooting slides.  You worried about getting in the camera and then went on to the next shot.  More fun for me anyway. 


Quote
Hi Alan,

I agree with Rob -- about it not being easier. As he pointed out, exposure had to be right on the money, and with what now seem quite primitive light measuring tools, that wasn't easy.

As an amateur, I didn't worry much about those that were bad.  What I was referring too is let's say I went on vacation.  I took a few 36 exposure rolls of pictures.  Of course I could not know which were no good at the time.  But when I get home, those that were badly exposed, usually not many at least for my use,  or duplicates or whatever that I didn't want to keep, were discarded.  Those left went into an (80?) slide tray for projection.  No post processing.  That's what made it easy.

bill t.

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #75 on: January 14, 2014, 10:48:17 pm »

Sounds a lot like the arguments that were leveled at photography by painters, back in the day.  Goddam no-talent upstarts and their cheap-as-dirt process!  There is nothing more upsetting than seeing the price of admission to one's most cherished talents, which one may have paid in blood at its peak, lowered down to the level of Everyman's pocket change.  I don't like it either.  But it will ever more be thus, in all fields.  The good news is, I sometimes see very powerful and beautiful images produced by non-technical people who would otherwise have never been able to express themselves in imagery.

Absolutely so, but what you are writing about here is interpretation, in the sense of St A. and his dictum about negs, scores and performances.

My references are aimed at the differences in approach: with the wet systems, it was something that lay absolutely within the realm of skill; with PS and the rest, it's far more a matter of when you give up, and unlike the wet ways, where the skill lay totally within you, you can now go on forever, mechanically putting layer upon layer until something works. Just as with the monkeys/keyboard/Shakespeare analogy, the chances are that at some stage, you've managed it. It doesn't work like that on the traditional route.

That's why digital is so attractive to newbies: it's as close to painting by numbers as you can get with a camera.

Don't misunderstand me: for those who depend on speed and commercial priorities, I'm sure it's the perfect solution except that it's made most work twice as hard for the same or even less reward, and invest God alone knows how much more on equipment than with film and a darkroom. For the amateur, I think he's been robbed of a far more profound personal experience. And for the amateur, isn't that what it's supposedly all about?

For me? It let's me play now for not much money, as long as I don't go nuts and buy into the fibs. I won't.

However, closer to the theme of the thread, I suggest that one would have had far more pride and interest in the conservation of a single hard-won wet prints of which one was proud, than of the totally unlimited number of identical prints of whatever that one can make with a computer. When things come so easily, where is their value, even to you, the maker? I suppose that's why my HP  B9180 has lain unused and wasting tick-over ink for months; what's the point? My kids could come here after I'm gone and just press the button and the pix would come churning out all by themselves... some craftsmanship that requires!

Rob C
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Rob C

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #76 on: January 15, 2014, 05:02:07 am »

Sounds a lot like the arguments that were leveled at photography by painters, back in the day.  Goddam no-talent upstarts and their cheap-as-dirt process!  There is nothing more upsetting than seeing the price of admission to one's most cherished talents, which one may have paid in blood at its peak, lowered down to the level of Everyman's pocket change.  I don't like it either.  But it will ever more be thus, in all fields.  The good news is, I sometimes see very powerful and beautiful images produced by non-technical people who would otherwise have never been able to express themselves in imagery.



I drew and painted before I had a camera: I share that 'old-fashioned idea' too!

Had I been more skilled with paint, I think I'd have felt the better artist staying with it, but I realised early on that I was no Alberto Vargas. The photographic genre that first drew me - fashion - was clearly the only game in town close to my desires. To tell the complete story, I really doubt that photographers can make the same legitimate claims to being thoroughbred artists as falls to painters... Mostly, we can lay claim to dabbling, touching the edges of the mantle.

Rob C

Ray

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #77 on: January 15, 2014, 08:53:03 am »

This is an interesting topic which I've just come across. I can understand Michael's and Tony Jay's perspective that the print is the best method of preserving the best of one's work.
But I feel this is a traditional perspective based upon past experiences without regard to what seems a fairly predictable trend in increasing storage capacity, increasing reliability, as in steady state devices such as SD cards, and increases in the size and resolution of TV screens and monitors.

My Kindle DX E-book reader displays a constant image when switched off, without using any battery power. Of course it's B&W and not high resolution. However, I imagine in 20 or 30 or 40 years time, it will be in color and will be very high resolution.

We already have SDXC cards the size of a thumb nail which hold 256 GB of data. From the time I bought my first digital camera in 2003, I've bought many compact flash and SD cards. I've never experienced one failure. That's not true of hard drives.

My prediction of the future is, you will be able to store all your photos ever taken, and all the scanned files of images taken by your distant relatives and grandparents, on one or two thumb-nail-size SD cards, and if you want to ensure they don't get lost or accidentally destroyed, make a dozen copies.

However, a hundred years ago, the print would have been the safest method of storage and accessibility. To demonstrate the point I attach a 130 year old (approx) scan of a print of my Great Grandfather and Grandmother, and their family. The two older folks in the front row look rather rigidly Victorian don't you think!  ;D

I never met them of course, except one of the young men in the group who was my grandfather, middle of the back row, the guy who looks a bit mesmerised. It's interesting to note that the lady, top left, has moved during what must have been a long exposure in those days.

Obviously, to store the photographic print in an album was much easier in those days than storing the 6x8 or 8x10 photographic plates. But a 1TB SD card at an affordable price is unbeatable.
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Rob C

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #78 on: January 15, 2014, 10:59:09 am »

All in all, quite nice tonality, too. But poor cropping at foot level!

I think space really will become a very pressing factor in a few years, if only for the problem with house prices. The current flat spot will surely pass - everything always changes - and the available spaces for building are finite unless we learn to eat concrete. So with the probability of smaller and smaller living spaces available, where will all these boxes of prints finally hide? A neater, more tidy format will have to be utilized.

;-)

Rob C

Isaac

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Re: If you don't print, then what do you leave behind?
« Reply #79 on: January 15, 2014, 12:26:34 pm »

I think you devalue the new over the old mostly because the old is your paradigm.

That nicely summarizes many many comments.
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