Top photographers condemn digital age

Gregory Blank wrote:

What I really wish is that I could somewhere use the
most advanced output device to draw my own conclusions
regarding how good, good can be. I do know any conventional
print I in house make, blows away any thing I have seen come from
prolabs printing my work either conventional or digital.

I think for so long "many" have lusted after the control
that digital somewhat affords, that those many, without the
controls of doing your own work conventionally,.. are quite willing to
suckit up and say this is great without a real frame of reference.

I think that's true. Or they lack the skill to good making
negative and prints. Of course I'm talking science (the
factual process) while most -- I assume -- are concerned
with subjective comparisons. Such subjective values are
in the eye of the beholder.

But the facts are the facts. And if you look at the facts
not only are digital and photochemical imaging very
different mediums, produing different results, for straight
pictorial imaging film always comes out the better medium
due to it's superior imaging abilities. Color or b&w makes
no difference. Digital, however, can be endlessly manipulated
by software and made to look good even when the actual image
is a piece of anti-aliased interpolated garbage.

I hope I stated that thought clearly?

I would like to state clearly I have never met John Edwards ;-)

In article ,
Tom Phillips wrote:

No, it's not. More misinformation. The fact is no digital
color space (the gamut) can or ever will equal the gamut
and depth of color available in traditional color dye
materials. Doesn't happen. In fact, the more a digtal
image is processed towards output, the less gamut there
is available in digital devices and the more color information
that is actually lost. Again, you just don't know what
you're talking about.

--
LF Website @ http://members.verizon.net/~gregoryblank

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong,
is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public."--Theodore Roosevelt, May 7, 1918

The Wogster wrote:

Tom Phillips wrote:

The Wogster wrote:

Tom Phillips wrote:

In article ,
Gregory Blank wrote:



Ok what do you need a darkroom for then?

In article ,
Helge Buddenborg wrote:



That's my opinion and I'm sticking with it, "Digital Photography is
"GREAT".

What he misses (completely) is that digital imaging,
though an imaging medium, is not a *photographic* medium.
The physics simply don't support this.

And when people begin to see through the marketing hype
and in 20 years lose all those non-existent image files
on their hard drives they will realize film is the better
medium. There simply is no permanent archival storage
for digital and never will be, since as mere data
it's dependent on 100% on electronics rather than
concrete materials.

There is no permanent archival storage for data, yet.


Read my lips: it's electronic. It can _never_ be permanent. It's
ones and zeros, mere data, representational, not a real image,
1000% dependent on electronics and the storage mediums that can
actually read it, which changes constantly. Shall I go on?

It comes down to standards, if governments, were to legislate that,
these file formats,

Never going to happen.

stored on this media type, will be readable by all
players made from this date forward. You would have, effectively, a
permanent digital storage medium, providing the media would last
indefinitely, under adverse conditions. However it means that future
storage methods would not be developed, nor would new file formats.


However
photographs are not the only data that need this kind of storage, so
active work is being done in this area all the time.


Guess I need to go on: There's no such thing as a digital
"photograph." A photograph is a real, tangible image actually
created by the action of light on a light sensitized material.
It's chemical and permanent. Even if the emulsion degrades due
to exceptionally horrendous care and storage, the silver metal
compounds it's composed of lasts forever. Digital disappears the
moment your hard drive, CD-R, DVD, etc., fails. Not to mention
silicon doesn't record anything (it can't, the physics don't
allow it) and the regenerated voltage/image data stored on your
computer is, all together now -- mere data that represents an
image.

So I suppose, that that digital representation, when printed by a laser
onto a piece of paper covered with AgBr and then processed, is still
simply a representation?

it's a reproduction (regenerated output) of a digital image,
not a photograph created by the direct action of light which
is what happens when you expose film. This does not happen
when you scan with a silicon sensor...

This makes zero sense; reminds me of king dubya
talking about foreign policy...


and longer then film will last,


Ignorance abounds. Film (according to Dr. James Reilly of the
Image Permanence Institute) begs to differ. If properly stored,
his Storage Guide for Acetate Film states film can theoretically
be preserved for thousands of years. Regarding film on polyester
base (b&w sheet films like Tmax), these are stated matter of
factly to have an estimated life of 500 years even when stored
under normal "room" conditions. If the images on film or paper
are toned or otherwise protected from oxidation, the emulsions
should also last.


would need to last
under less then ideal conditions. The problem is that you would need to
wait 500 years to see if it lasts 500 years.

W


W/dubya? hmmm...must be related.


Nope, no relation, I just get tired of typing Wogster all thr time, and
shortened it to W.

W

Cheney, then? He certainly is a wogster if I ever saw one.

I would like to state for the record I have never met John Edwards :-)

"Lloyd Usenet-Erlick" Lloyd at @the-wire. dot com wrote in message
...
On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 21:46:06 -0400, The Wogster
wrote:

...
For me, I don't care, it's easier to download a photo, then to soup
films, and it's easier to balance it, and post process in PhotoShop, and
print on inkjet, then it is to spend the day in the fume room, making
test prints. One issue, if you know the fume room, it's easier to learn
about digital. Same process, different methodology.
...

oct604 from Lloyd Erlick,

If it's 'the fume room', there is something wrong.

A regular old darkroom need not smell, let alone have
'fumes'. Probably people who use digital printers
operate them correctly. That type of image making
should be compared to a correctly operated darkroom, if
comparisons are to be made.


I like the smell of RA-4 chemicals in the morning... it smells like...
photography!

Ken Hart

On 6 Oct 2004 05:09:57 -0700, (Phil Glaser)
wrote:

John wrote in message . ..
The thing is that people find working in the dark
uncomfortable.

I believe there are a significant nubmer of people (including myself)
who make the digital/traditional decision based on their experience of
the process.

I'm certain that this is a factor. I would rank others as :

1) Image quality - Analog is better
2) Image permanence - Analog is far better
3) Medium stability - The mediums life.
4) Ease of use - Photoshop ain't easy !
5) Cost - Analog requires less of an investment and doesn't
depreciate as rapidly nor mandate upgrades as does digital.

Ok, now suppose you can afford to have your digital images printed by
one of those proceses that exposes digital images on traditional paper
using lasers. I'm told the quality of such prints is phenomenal (and
the price astronomical). Assuming that the quality of such a print
equals or surpasses that of what you could produce in your darkroom
(assume hypothetically if you disagree with the assertion), is film
capture of a black and white image better than digital? If so, why?
Does film have a better dynamic range? Is it easier to manipulate the
contrast? Etc., etc., etc.?

If I were to do anything in digital it would be to create
large format digital negatives to contact print on traditional
materials. I don't know of a printer that prints on Galerie.

Again, please restrict the universe of discourse to black and white. I
don't care about color.

That makes two of us. Cool-Aid suspended in gelatin.

Regards,

John S. Douglas, Photographer - http://www.puresilver.org
Please remove the "_" when replying via email

On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 13:15:06 GMT, Donald Qualls
wrote:

Yep. It's called "commerce". "New and improved" sells new
equipment. Old equipment and methods are replaced and rapidly become
extinct. All in the name of Big Bizness. In two years your 32 bit OS
will be extinct. Ready for that ?

Careful there, John -- I'm still running Windows 98 (SE, having finally
updated from original 98 to run a game last winter); even XP Home
Edition is three years old now...

Yep. And I have the _beta_ of XP64. There are at least 4
versions of Linux for 64 bit systems and the dual-core procs are on
the horizon and closing fast. 98SE was always good for a mail station,
gaming, a word processor but it's inability to effectively address
more than 256MB of RAM limited it severely.

FYI, I'm running XPP/SP2 on an 3K AMD64 w/1GB RAM, 2X160 GB
and 1XDVD/RW drives.

Regards,

John S. Douglas, Photographer - http://www.puresilver.org
Please remove the "_" when replying via email

On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 10:39:33 -0400, The Wogster
wrote:

So I suppose, that that digital representation, when printed by a laser
onto a piece of paper covered with AgBr and then processed, is still
simply a representation?

I thunk it qualifies as a digital image. Doesn't matter
whether it's positive or negative. Just the same as a photograph is
something captured using a photo-chemical process.


Regards,

John S. Douglas, Photographer - http://www.puresilver.org
Please remove the "_" when replying via email

One could say that all photographers are wimps -- if we were "willing to do
the work" we would learn to draw and paint.

In article , "Michael A.
Covington" wrote:

One could say that all photographers are wimps -- if we were "willing to do
the work" we would learn to draw and paint.

Interesting you bring that up. When photography was first
commercially introduced painters attacked it. They called
it names, they said it wasn't art, they saw it as a threat
to their art and business. Photographers (pictorialists)
responded by trying to make photographs look like paintings.
All they did was undermine photography's potential by trying
to piggy back it into legitimacy on painting's back.

In reality, everyone, photographers included, neglected to
realize photography was not a competitor, but a new medium
that had it's own limitations and applications. If
pictorialists had simply accepted photography as it's own
medium instead of trying to imitate painting it would have
gotten out from under paintings shadow much earlier and
been accepted as an art in it's own right.

There's a lesson there for digital imaging, which instead of
being marketed and advocated as a new medium with it's own
limitations and uses, is being offered as a replacement for
(imitating) film when it's not film and cannot do what film
does. Anymore than photography could do what painting does.

Digital needs to find it's own market based on it's own
limitations and stop piggy backing itself into the
marketplace on photography's back/turf via false claims and
advertising. There's room for both, but the misinformation
needs to stop.


--
Tom Phillips

Gregory Blank wrote:

In article ,
Donald Qualls wrote:


Daguerreotypists were at somewhat less risk than hatters in
the mid-19th century, because they used only small quantities of mercury
and kept it confined


In a box: Interesting side bar, the angle one fumes the plate
determines the angle the image can be viewed.

I had never heard that; I'd have expected, if I thought about it, that
it would be more related to the angle of incidence of the exposing light
(due to interference similar to what produces the colors in a color
Dag). Have you heard of a mechanism on that? Fuming, if not done in a
moderately hard vacuum (which could allow impinging ions/molecules to
travel ballistically) *should* be angle-independent due to diffusion and
the random-walk path of the halogen molecules before they reach the
silver surface -- or are you talking about mercury atoms in development?
Should be the same deal. I wonder if modern vacuum development setups
(used to avoid heating the mercury, so to minimize vapor exposure of the
worker) might produce this, but I wouldn't think they use anything like
a hard enough vacuum -- I had thought it was just a couple inches of,
um, mercury (heh), er, a hundred or so millibars of vacuum, to promote
evaporation at room temperature; a pressure that still contains more
than enough air molecules to ensure diffusive, rather than ballistic
behavior. Ballistic behavior (for things like vacuum evaporative
coating) requires a vacuum in the range of a millionth of a Torr up to
about ten times that figure, which gets down to a few hundred molecules
per cubic millimeter and allows fairly long path lengths.


Don't you just love ether?


I do like the smell of ether, but preferably in milligram quantities.
If you do, too, and have any other hobby time besides photography, you
should consider getting a model airplane diesel engine; they run on a
fuel made up of approximately equal parts kerosene, lubricating oil, and
ether (with a little ethylene dioxide as an igniter). Smells really
good (if you like that sort of thing), but don't open the can when it's
95 degrees in the shade; it'll bubble like a thermos of hot coffee when
you open it at the ski resort.

Please test run your engine only outdoors...

--
I may be a scwewy wabbit, but I'm not going to Alcatwaz!
-- E. J. Fudd, 1954

Donald Qualls, aka The Silent Observer
Lathe Building Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/HomebuiltLathe.htm
Speedway 7x12 Lathe Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/my7x12.htm

Opinions expressed are my own -- take them for what they're worth
and don't expect them to be perfect.

John wrote:

On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 13:15:06 GMT, Donald Qualls
wrote:


Yep. It's called "commerce". "New and improved" sells new

equipment. Old equipment and methods are replaced and rapidly become
extinct. All in the name of Big Bizness. In two years your 32 bit OS
will be extinct. Ready for that ?

Careful there, John -- I'm still running Windows 98 (SE, having finally
updated from original 98 to run a game last winter); even XP Home
Edition is three years old now...


Yep. And I have the _beta_ of XP64. There are at least 4
versions of Linux for 64 bit systems and the dual-core procs are on
the horizon and closing fast. 98SE was always good for a mail station,
gaming, a word processor but it's inability to effectively address
more than 256MB of RAM limited it severely.

FYI, I'm running XPP/SP2 on an 3K AMD64 w/1GB RAM, 2X160 GB
and 1XDVD/RW drives.

I keep hearing about the limitations of 98SE from people running the
"latest and greatest." Funny, I don't have to manually disable Windows
Messenger's pop-up spam vehicle or otherwise turn off a bunch of new
"features" Microsoft saw fit to force on users when XP came out. And I
have 1 GB RAM and see considerable performance improvement in, for
instance, image editing with the GIMP, so I'm not sure what's meant by
"inability to effectively address more than 256 MB of RAM" in this
context. I do have to go through a little rigamarole to partition a
hard disk bigger than, IIRC, 40 GB. Darn. It works fine, just doesn't
report the sizes correctly on screen (idiots, using 16 bit arithmetic in
software for a 32 bit OS, haven't learned anything useful since Bill
said "Nobody could possibly need more than 640k of memory."). The only
limitation of 98SE that I find significantly annoying is the maximum
single file size of 4 GB; I sometimes (like once a year or so) want to
make a backup to free space that's larger than that and have to break up
the job.

My main reason for avoiding XP, however, has been incompatibilities; I
still have and use a bunch of old DOS software, some of it installed
when I was running DOS 3.31. Most of it doesn't work, or doesn't work
correctly, under XP. And XP adds *nothing* I need, just moves around
the old familiar controls so I have to dig in menus or use the (much
more annoying, in XP) system help to find stuff that's 3-4 clicks away
in 98SE. Add to that the inability, with XP, to avoid IE 6, with its
very own load of security issues and annoying "features"...

Oh, and not to mention I have to pay out $90 or so to upgrade and get
all that stuff I don't want or need (and XP is reported not to like
installing as an upgrade, which is a serious issue for someone with
seventeen years of pack-rat data and applications on his hard disks).
Even though Microsoft is dropping 98SE support this year (dropped
original 98 last year, IIRC), I'll keep it until I need to run something
that won't run in 98SE, and then I'll probably try to figure out how to
set up dual boot.

No, SE doesn't support USB 2.0 for getting pictures off a digital a bit
faster -- darn, that means the digital has to get plugged into my wife's
XP machine and then the pictures transferred through the house network
-- which, I might add, works fine with three 98SE (ranging from 266 MHz
to 1.4 GHz) and two XP machines (1.8 and 2.0 GHz) on it.

Sometimes, I think the reason I like the darkroom is because my Omega
D2V won't need a software upgrade in my lifetime...

--
I may be a scwewy wabbit, but I'm not going to Alcatwaz!
-- E. J. Fudd, 1954

Donald Qualls, aka The Silent Observer
Lathe Building Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/HomebuiltLathe.htm
Speedway 7x12 Lathe Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/my7x12.htm

Opinions expressed are my own -- take them for what they're worth
and don't expect them to be perfect.