A Farewell to Film

[250swb]

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So, why DO digital photographers add grain to their shots? I have never understood that. "Just because..." I suppose.

 

When I shoot digital I want that clean, sterile look as absolutely noise-free as possible. When I shoot film, I want it to look like film.

 

I suppose on an idiotically simple level its because photographers are able to 'pre-visualise' the image they want to make. Just as film users do by choosing a type of film.

 

An artist uses depth of paint, broad or thin brushes, and the style of applying paint. So all you are doing with digital is pre-visualising the end result and work towards that, using the 'brushes' available to you, in software for instance. Actually, if you think about it, its exactly what Ansel Adams always advocated, to see the end result and aim for that, manipulating your techniques along the way to get that exact visualisation. But I'm dammed sure if he was still alive he wouldn't have a stick up his arse about the devine status of film.

 

Steve

[andybarton]

IMHO, that's not a reason for digital shooters to add "film grain".

[StS]

Strange - I have the feeling I have seen this discussion around before...

 

My experience was the opposite - when the M8 was in Solms, I went on a two weeks trip to Asia. I took the M6, one 50mm and some BW400. This was fun and a good photographic exercise. I think I would have taken different images with the M8.

 

So I will continue using both.

 

Stefan

[Doug A]

Actually, if you think about it, its exactly what Ansel Adams always advocated, to see the end result and aim for that, manipulating your techniques along the way to get that exact visualisation. But I'm dammed sure if he was still alive he wouldn't have a stick up his arse about the devine status of film.

"I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practitioner will again strive to comprehend and control them." Ansel Adams, The Negative, 1981

[NZDavid]

Some time ago I came up with these alternatives to digital that are more in keeping with C21 terminology:

 

Fully Integrated Luminescent Medium (FILM). Available in two versions: Super Luminescent Image Display Edition (SLIDE) and Permanently Reproducible Image Negative Transfer (PRINT).

 

One advantage, as already mentioned, is a new sensor for each image. The real breakthrough, however, is that the user no longer has to rely on stored data in the form of 1s and 0s with all the attendant worries about permanence and longevity -- instead information is converted into a real, physical storage device which can be retained, given proper care, more or less indefinitely.

 

In a similar vein there is the new Basic Open-standard Organized Knowledge device (BOOK). Information is scanned optically and registered directly onto the brain.

[250swb]

IMHO, that's not a reason for digital shooters to add "film grain".

 

 

Film is nothing more than a filter, either hazy with a lot of grain, or clean if a fine grain film is chosen. The photographer is adding grain or reducing grain just by choosing a type of film, so Andy, why can't a digital photographer do the same thing regarding expression, feeling, and occasion? The next step in your list of can't do's would be limiting the digital image to the vision of the technician who programmed the M9's chip, no changes to colour or contrast. Are you advocating having a digital camera for every change of mood, an Ektachrome M9, or a Tri-X M9? How absurd.

 

Steve

[pop]

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... The next step in your list of can't do's would be limiting the digital image to the vision of the technician who programmed the M9's chip, no changes to colour or contrast. ...

 

I have never understood why a composer should include the snap, crackle and pop of - say - phonographic records into his work. If you want to fake it for use in a movie or for some special effect, fine.

 

In the same vein, it's a very rare case where I find the reproduction of the artifacts of one medium onto another one advantageous.

[andybarton]

Are you advocating having a digital camera for every change of mood, an Ektachrome M9, or a Tri-X M9? How absurd.

 

Steve

 

Rubbish. Why on earth would you want to pretend that you shot with Tri-X? If you want to shoot with Tri-X, shoot with Tri-X. It's not hard. It's not expensive. It's easy, and cheap.

 

By choosing to shoot on film, you are making aesthetic choice when you drop that canister into your camera, or load that roll into your back. You have to think about what you are doing BEFORE you do it. Once it's recorded, it's done (more or less).

 

With digital, you only have one chip. You record it as Mr Kodak/Herr Jenoptik decided you should for that particular chip and later on, you decide what you want to do with it. Fair enough.

 

But, whatever you decide to do with it, and whatever software you decide to use along the way, you are always making retrograde choices about you look.

 

If you shoot digital, why on earth would you want to pretend (for that's what it is) that you shot it on film? Unless you feel that film has a better look and aesthetic than digital.

 

In 50 years, this discussion will be ridiculous, because the only people who can remember shooting on film will be 90+. But, they will still be watching all those "1930s in colour" television programmes. Only they will be watching "1980s in colour" programmes too.

 

They will not be watching "2030s in colour" programmes.

[NZDavid]

Part of the problem here I suspect is the tendency for software engineers and designers to cram in as many "new and exciting" features as possible. Like "Creative Art" filters that imitate the look of grainy film and Velvia, pinhole cameras, toy cameras, sepia, cross processing, etc, etc. (Who actually uses them? Get the wrong setting and the picture could look absolutely hideous!) Cameras are thus judged on how many features they have, not on how good the basic image quality is. It's probably a lot easier and cheaper for manufacturers to add these USPs (unique selling points) than it is to concentrate on boring stuff like reducing noise, moire, purple fringing, or making sure the highlights don't blow out. One promising development, however, is HDR -- if not overdone and unrealistic looking. It's been a dream of photographers since the C19 to create images that successfully capture detail in both shadow and highlight areas. However, that hardly makes HDR images vastly superior to carefully composed and exposed images on film.

[zipper]

there's room for A & D imaging, but as far as output is concerned: I'd rather a silver print than an inkjet...

[jaapv]

Today I´m looking at my slides taken during the last 35 years, in twenty years I will look at my slides

taken right now and I know it won´t be a problem. Needless to say that all those shots have been and

will be taken with the same cameras.

Who on earth could say that about digital?

 

Jo

I can't say that about film either. I've binned all my old Agfachrome slides because they have turned a low-contast brown. Irrecoverable..

[250swb]

If you shoot digital, why on earth would you want to pretend (for that's what it is) that you shot it on film? Unless you feel that film has a better look and aesthetic than digital.

.

 

Well you could look at it like this. Was van Gogh pretending there were great big brush strokes in the sky, and that crows had turned into large gobs of paint? He knew the history of art, that painting had come from a tradition that enabled artists to paint in a style of hyper-realism. But he chose not to. Its because artists learned that expression is not only in the subject matter, but in the way it is presented. And I mean artists to include painters, sculptors, and eventually photographers. Its a more sophisticated approach to the medium, but in the day there probably was a photographer who asked Cezanne why the shadows delineating a portraits nose were green. This is because in evolutionary terms photographers were still crawling from the slime and mimicking painting from an earlier age.

 

So time moves on, and the necessity for a faster film throws up the interesting possiblity that the tonal range and grain could be used to good effect for expression in a way that slow film and low grain couldn't. Now Ralph Gibson likes sunny places to photograph in, but he doesn't use a slow film grainless film, he uses a film that adds to the expressive qualities of the image by manipulating tone and grain. He is an artist who has thrown aside the rules of photography as proscribed by traditionalists. Many others do something similar and use a fast grainy film when none is called for, because they are pretending, they are adding an extra element called expression, something that is not there in front of them, but something they can imagine.

 

Which leads to digital. Well in many ways photographers are back to crawling out of the slime again, and you'd have thought they had learned the lesson the first time around, yet clearly haven't. The call has consistently been for less noise, more speed, and you often hear people say they need these things. This is probably because of an early frustrated potential with digital, great idea, shame about the ugly noise, and it doesn't look as good as the noise of Tri-X. Tri-X noise changes along edges, clumps in certain ways, and people feel its more organic and natural. So while remaining a chemical reaction Tri-X has fooled people into thinking its all as nature intended. And this is the dilemma facing digital. How do you transform the perception that something so smooth mechanical and lifeless is capable of being used expressively. How long is the timeframe before photographers finally throw off the shackles and see that if digital doesn't easily facilitate expression out of the box then its OK to use a proverbial big brush and lots of paint (to hark back the van Gogh)?

 

The truth is of course that many photographers are using digital as a means of expression, discovering and embracing its imperfections and ways it can be stretched and molded. And in art just as in life nothing exists in isolation. Artists borrow from earlier generations and subtly re-invent, making styles their own. They always have. So crudely put if taking the grain of Tri-X and using it as a filter on a digital image facilitates the continuation of the artistic language then its the language thats important. Its not pretending to be Tri-X, its using the language of Tri-X.

 

This is why an English author can write a book about Sicily without having to write it in Italian. He's not pretending they all speak English in his novel, he's using the conventions of writing. Wanting grain in a digital image is just using the conventions and language of photography as it evolves. It facilitates communication because expression (the bit the artist puts in of himself) can be so lacking in digital's raw state, which at its basest level is no more than a dictionary for an author or a tube of unopened paint for a painter. But if somebody only reads a dictionary, or only reads the intructions on the tube of paint, they never realise the full potential of the contents. And that is where making arbitrary rules about not mixing digital and any other elements from the expressive language of photography comes in, you may know all the words from aardvark to zyxt but they don't mean anything unless arranged by other conventions. And look how many people believe using a Leica M9 is all they need to do, everything is taken care of by having the best lens and the most expensive body so the photographs have to be the best right out of the box, don't they? No.

 

Tri-X grain being nicer to look at substituted for digital noise shouldn't be confused with pretence, its being grown up, honest, and sophisticated enough to understand the language of photography and how its used.

 

Steve

[lct]

I can't say that about film either. I've binned all my old Agfachrome slides... Irrecoverable...

Same for my Ektachromes. Lost forever. My Kodachromes are OK but what a pain to scan them. No time enough, never again (hopefully).

[pop]

So crudely put if taking the grain of Tri-X and using it as a filter on a digital image facilitates the continuation of the artistic language then its the language thats important. Its not pretending to be Tri-X, its using the language of Tri-X.

 

If I understand you correctly, applying the idiosyncrasies of Tri-X to digital images is a sign of liberation of the artistic photographer from the constraints imposed by the digital medium.

 

Why, then, has it to be the artifacts of Tri-X and not a novel kind of artifact? Or, if it does not have to be a new one, why not use PS to draw van Gogh style brush strokes on your immaculate digital image?

[jaapv]

Oh- but you can turn your photograph into a van Gogh style painting in postprocessing

[01af]

If I understand you correctly, applying the idiosyncrasies of Tri-X to digital images is a sign of liberation of the artistic photographer from the constraints imposed by the digital medium.

Actually, no. Instead, it's a sign of liberation of the artistic photographer from the constraints imposed by Tri-X.

 

 

Why, then, has it to be the artifacts of Tri-X ...?

It hasn't. That's just one out of bazillions of options—but a nice one because people are used to that look.

 

 

... and not a novel kind of artifact?

There is absolutely no shortage of novel kinds of artifacts, and creative (as well as boneheaded) usages thereof.

[lct]

+1

[nhabedi]

Might be fitting for this thread:

 

asahi.com

[andybarton]

If this is true, how come we haven't seen a "Final 1,000" MPs in humidors released? And at a cost of around £10,000 each - much like the last of the Noctiluxes.

 

Leica aren't just going to stop making film cameras without using the opportunity to make a huge amount of money from collectors.

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[pgk]

Why on earth would you want to pretend that you shot with Tri-X? If you want to shoot with Tri-X, shoot with Tri-X. It's not hard. It's not expensive. It's easy, and cheap.

Well, I'm not sure about Tri-X yet, but after December, anyone wanting to reproduce an image as though it was shot on Kodachrome (for which there are many perfectly legitimate reasons) will have to do so digitally - as an example an advertising image may want to show an image as though it was a colour photo shot in the 1950s shot on Kodachrome. The same situation will inevitably happen with other films and eventually this will include Tri-X, but being in denial about the way the future is shaping up won't change the way it is heading, and suggesting that there are no reasons to mimic specific films digitally is somewhat unimaginative IMHO.

 

Lars' original post reflects the opinion/situation of the vast, vast majority of photographers that I know or talk to. There are a few who still shoot film (as shown on this - probably more conservative than most - forum) but in my experience they are in an increasing small minority.

 

Whilst old film cameras lasted an incredibly long time and whilst many still work, their development progressed as did film. I'm not sure that the fact that an old film camera still works well means that it is as good as a more recent one, or even that it takes as good images in many cases (shutter vibration knocked the edge of details with many early SLRs for example).