The integrity of Film

[Guest malland]

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Well whether it's important doesn't matter, fact is that is what 'the integrity of film is.

 

Having a unique original- there is no other.

 

You are holding in your hand a transparency that was the actual first picture to be taken on the moon.

 

You are looking at a digital copy on a monitor of the first picture taken on the moon.

 

Only one has the integrity of the moment

just my opinion

Mark

Yes, that is the "collector's" view of things. If I see two prints of the first picture taken on the moon it doesn't matter to me whether one was printed from a transparency and the other from a digital file. Holding the oroiginal transparency in my grubby hand means nothing to me, the same way as holding the camera with which it was taken also means nothing to me: I'm just interested in the pciture — I'm not a collector.

 

—Mitch/Potomac, MD

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/

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[jaapv]

No I'm afraid Raw images are not originals in the same sense.

The are interpolated computerized versions that are prone to errors, they certainly don't have the integrity of an original image as they are often duplicated exactly- this can't be done with film- therein lies films integrity, there is only one.

Mark

 

This only holds up if you assume that integrity of the original is related to the quality of the reproductive process - which to me is not the case.

[Guest stnami]

........ anyway us mob in the wards don't give a rat's arse about integrity................ ok maybe the skitzos in the other wing do

I mean by pushing contrast, blowing out highlights, compressiong shadows — that moves away from "exquisitive" photographs

.... yea but I know film and digital guys who do it and there is a difference. How important, to a minority very............most see the image either in a subjective way that gets the grey matter and associated chemicals buzzing or are chasing the chocolate box with or without the roses.........

[Guest malland]

...yea but I know film and digital guys who do it and there is a difference. How important, to a minority very............most see the image either in a subjective way that gets the grey matter and associated chemicals buzzing or are chasing the chocolate box with or without the roses.........

Imants:

 

In the picture that I posted earlier in this thread, with grain the size of golf-balls, do you think film grain would make it look better?

 

 

—Mitch/Potomc, MD

[Mark Antony]

This only holds up if you assume that integrity of the original is related to the quality of the reproductive process - which to me is not the case.

 

No quality is totally irrelevant.

Question:

If you had two copies of the Magna Carta both exactly the same, which one has more integrity, the one actually signed by King John or the exact copy?

[Guest stnami]

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[Mark Antony]

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Yes, that is the "collector's" view of things. If I see two prints of the first picture taken on the moon it doesn't matter to me whether one was printed from a transparency and the other from a digital file. Holding the oroiginal transparency in my grubby hand means nothing to me, the same way as holding the camera with which it was taken also means nothing to me: I'm just interested in the pciture — I'm not a collector.

]

No It's not a collectors view.

If you had two copies of the Bill of Rights,

One original one exact copy which one has more integrity?

 

BTW I didn't say PRINTS of the first picture on the moon I said the original FILM that was in Buzz Aldrins camera the image is actually taken on the moons surface, the light that reflected off Armstrong and onto that film- it is that film that has integrity.

 

Prints are all fake.

[jaapv]

No quality is totally irrelevant.

Question:

If you had two copies of the Magna Carta both exactly the same, which one has more integrity, the one actually signed by King John or the exact copy?

This comparison is not to the point; the integrity is in the context, not in the document per se in that case. If you had two identical prints by Ansel Adams, one signed and one not, which would have the most integrity? The vision of and the execution by the artist are the parameters, not the reproducability.

[plasticman]

So this disqualifies all etchings by Rembrandt as "art"? In fact reproductive art is as valid as are unique products.

 

The etchings i did while at school have all unfortunately vanished with the multitude of moves over the years - but one thing i can assure you of from memory and experience, is that no matter how accomplished the printer, no two examples of even a Rembrandt etching are identical.

And this is something akin to the discussion we're having here: because the same is true of any two darkroom prints that are made by hand.

[plasticman]

This comparison is not to the point; the integrity is in the context, not in the document per se in that case. If you had two identical prints by Ansel Adams, one signed and one not, which would have the most integrity? The vision of and the execution by the artist are the parameters, not the reproducability.

 

But the signature has nothing whatever to do with this discussion.

[jaapv]

But the signature has nothing whatever to do with this discussion.

Exactly my point. I did not introduce the signature.

@ your other post: I must confess to struggling to process the same rawfile in a more or less consistent way two times running...

[steve kessel]

As it's Friday afternoon, I might as well bore the pants off everyone and bring in Walter Benjamin and Wikipedia:

 

"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", a better translation of the original German title might be "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility" (Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit).

 

Benjamin used the word "aura" to refer to the sense of awe and reverence one presumably experienced in the presence of unique works of art. According to Benjamin, this aura inheres not in the object itself but rather in external attributes such as its known line of ownership, its restricted exhibition, its publicized authenticity, or its cultural value. Aura is thus indicative of art's traditional association with primitive, feudal, or bourgeois structures of power and its further association with magic and (religious or secular) ritual. With the advent of art's mechanical reproducibility, and the development of forms of art (such as film) in which there is no actual original, the experience of art could be freed from place and ritual and instead brought under the gaze and control of a mass audience, leading to a shattering of the aura. "For the first time in world history," Benjamin wrote, "mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual."

 

The use (or abuse) of the term "integrity" in this thread has some connections with "aura" above.

[Mark Antony]

This coIf you had two identical prints by Ansel Adams, one signed and one not, which would have the most integrity? .

 

Neither both prints are copies, the original is the negative that is the one with 'the integrity of film'

 

Raw does not have this as it is is interpolated and bayer distorted.

[plasticman]

The use (or abuse) of the term "integrity" in this thread has some connections with "aura" above.

 

Never was a word more poorly chosen...

 

The allegation here is that Class structures and structurally inherent social power-relationships lead some of us to prefer film over digital (I'm guessing because digital in this case stands for the enabling and 'democratizing' power of mass-available media, while film has taken the place of bourgeois drawing-room Art as the dilettante 'plaything' of the élite - or something equally unfathomable)...

 

Okay, even allowing that to be true (while thinking that it's absurd), the thesis breaks down directly because in the case of film shot for one's own enjoyment, these symbolic issues of ownership or provenance are entirely irrelevant.

 

EDIT: but i should add, that there IS and remains a magic in uniqueness. If this makes me a creature of the degenerate bourgeoisie, so be it! ;-)

[Mark Antony]

.

 

EDIT: but i should add, that there IS and remains a magic in uniqueness. If this makes me a creature of the degenerate bourgeoisie, so be it! ;-)

 

Yep it is that uniqueness that my argument pursues.

A couple of years back I was given 8 slides to copy. They were of the only performance given by the Beatles in my city in 1963.

 

Some may argue that the copies I made were just as relevant, but to me there was something of history in my hand a unique document, made in the presence of the Beatles and the only images of a performance long forgotten.

You can argue all you want but to ME they have "The integrity of Film"

Mark

[steve kessel]

Mark, Mani

 

I am not arguing against the "magic of uniqueness" but I have trouble when "integrity" is used in this context. It implies that the one pursuit is somehow more noble. And what happens if the first person on Mars records the event with a digital camera? Will we have no unique record of this event?

 

Best wishes, Steve.

[Mark Antony]

Mark, Mani

 

I am not arguing against the "magic of uniqueness" but I have trouble when "integrity" is used in this context. It implies that the one pursuit is somehow more noble. And what happens if the first person on Mars records the event with a digital camera? Will we have no unique record of this event?

 

Best wishes, Steve.

 

Steve in no way am I asserting that it is more 'nobel' or better or more desirable.

But in my opinion (only my opinion) Film has the original light that falls on a subject it is a photo mechanical reproduction of that exact scene.

Digital on the other hand is an interpolated version of the light, most of the pixels in the image are the product of the mathematic algorithms in conversion from analogue-digital-analogue.

They contain information that was never in the scene.

Look at the window in the top image, there is a part of the frame missing this is due to the de-mosaic algorithms and not present in the film version.

Also the first digital shots on Mars will not be a 'unique' record either not in the way that the original Ektachromes from the moons surface are

Mark

PS I'm going to have to stop here because it's probably going to make me enemies on what I consider a friendly forum:)

[Guest malland]

I wouldn't worry about making enemies. It's only a discusson: if people take this so seriously then they have deeper problems.

 

In any case, the window frame that has a missing element in the digital picture is not unique to digital: I have a picture of a landscape that I've printed at 24x36 inches (60x90 cm) shot on Tri-X in which at that blowup size you can see tree leaves merging into grain, very much like your example.

 

—MItch/Potomac, MD

Flickr: Photos from Mitch Alland

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[Jamie Roberts]

Well whether it's important doesn't matter, fact is that is what 'the integrity of film is.

 

Having a unique original- there is no other.

 

You are holding in your hand a transparency that was the actual first picture to be taken on the moon.

 

You are looking at a digital copy on a monitor of the first picture taken on the moon.

 

Only one has the integrity of the moment

just my opinion

Mark

 

I find it quite completely hilarious (and I'm not even drinking--yet!) that 170 years after the invention of photographic processes the romanticization of the "unique" has reached the singular point where people think of a negative or slide as "unreproducable".

 

LOTFLMAO!!

 

Yes--it was photography in the 19th C that was accused of the exact same thing--"in- authenticity"--compared with the unique artistry of painting, and precisely because it was "thoughtless" and "reproducable" and "kitschy!"

 

The photographic glass plate process even gave rise to the term "clichee" as being something reproduced so much as to be kitsch and meaningless and artisctically flabby. That's where the first postcards came from, folks; the very first holiday snaps (well and I think before holiday snaps the 19th c equivalent of "porn" was actually first, IIRC, as is the case with so many new media).

 

So to me, the value, the uniqueness of any photography / picture making (if that's even important), well it's still all about the vision for the final image--and that's it--and even then it's usually about the *print* or paper reproduction (ok or the screen these days).

 

Negatives?Slides? Integrity? Feh!! (ok, I love them too, like a lot of folks too... but I know it's a nostalgiac technical delusion, and that's ok...)

 

My gosh--to hold a peice of Kodachrome, which, in its way, is the apogee of an industrial process that exemplifies consumer reproduction, and to be all nostalgiac and reverent about it as an "integral original..." I just have to say "wow." It's like people get with vinyl records or 8 track tapes! LOL!!

 

More to the point, you don't think all that 150 years of chemistry mediates the "moment?" The light? The colours? That's a bit naive, don't you think? The light recorded isn't even what you see...

 

You don't a think copy could be made that is virtually indistinguishable from the original? Prints? No copies? huh?

 

Well, it's just nostalgiac and uber-romantic, but I'm sort of even more sure than ever that integrity or authenticity, properly called, has not much to do with the reverence paid to some plastic.

 

And what could be more *mantic* than comparing film to a death mask? I mean, it is like one in terms of time, but then so is a RAW file. Perhaps even more so, the RAW file is a LATENT image--it can be expressed as many NEGATIVEs or POSITIVEs.

 

In effect the RAW file is like the space in the death mask that makes the mask itself both creepy and important--the absence of the thing that should, properly, be present.

 

So in that sense, the RAW file is actually much less mediated and has more integrity with regard to the actual light, the photons.

 

Just because it doesn't make visual sense to a person until its interpreted by a RAW converter means that it is, in fact, more pliable and less "decided" than film, which has so many things set at the chemical level as soon as the shutter is pressed.

 

Which is precisely why I love film so much; you can count on its mediation to be consistent if you want, and crazy if you mix up the chemistry (I'm developing some film in COFFEE next week for heaven's sake. I didn't say film doesn't have charms )

 

But ultimately the death mask analogy of film photography is only good if you could, say, reproduce a gazillion of 'em easily and cheaply!

 

In any case, I absolutely guarantee you that the "photons" are just as captured as they are with film with digital. It's just in a different capture, and a different physics / chemistry.

 

So to take your point to the logical extreme, the integrity of film is the same integrity as you'd get from an overhead slide maker (remember those? or a gestetner machine! Hey--there's an "original" there too, and the copies are microcopically different )

 

And one more final point. After you're gone, your children may curse you for reams of negatives and slides in shoe boxes (or negative slides) that weren't ever made into prints. Believe me, I deal in nostalgia and family history--and nothing is as important as the print.

 

Will they get nostalgiac over a CD? nah, I hope not. The same way I'm not nostalgiac over a slide projector or screen.

 

But a CD is NOT an image, so let's not go there. Put them on their iPod after you're gone; I bet they tear up just as if they saw you on a light table. After all, no-one is debating the power of images. Or even the power of historical artifacts! The first pictures on the moon? Roman coins? Titanic remains? What's the difference there? Nothing to do with the picture or the image's value.

 

Just the "integrity" of a medium meant for reproduction

 

Sigh. Too early to quit working, too early to shoot, too early to drink (well, it is a long weekend here!) Must get work done...but thanks for the fascinating diversion!

[Mark Antony]

I wouldn't worry about making enemies. It's only a discusson: if people take this so seriously then they have deeper problems.

 

In any case, the window frame that has a missing element in the digital picture is not unique to digital: I have a picture of a landscape that I've printed at 24x36 inches (60x90 cm) shot on Tri-X in which at that blowup size you can see tree leaves merging into grain, very much like your example.

 

—MItch/Potomac, MD

Flickr: Photos from Mitch Alland

 

Well possibly I've been on DPR forums too long disagree there and people act like you insulted their mother:D

Your point about the window frames:

I believe that film is a direct link to the original scene, the light that falls on the film is the light that comes from the subject and printing to moderate size will look realistic.

But the print isn't really relevant as it's the film I'm referring to your 24' print is a copy.

 

I believe that digital is a sampled version created by mathematical algorithms mostly through Bayer pattern de-mosaic and is further removed by that 'making-up' of info that was not in the scene.