The integrity of Film

[tashley]

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Definitely Baboons. Chimping Baboons goes fine on Canons...

 

 

Baboon in Tsavo West, Kenya

 

I had a boss once that looked just like that when he was trying to concentrate. I kid you not.

 

t

[vic vic]

jaap..

well.. not such a big hessel to be honest.. good scan and the photo is realy almost as fast as the RAW x100000 convertions takes time.. but leave it..

 

ah.. the hussel ..

the hussel of training.. so what.. not a big effort but im not a tennis player, and not fotball (soccer) play maker, and not one mile cool runner.. not sure about olympic championship, but all of them could be much better only if i made some little effort for it )

if one loves film.. a little effort is not a big deal ... )

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[vic vic]

hahhahahahah

jaap, i think i have made a mistake.. the above reply suposed to be a reply to you from the other thread ) hahahahahah

[peter55]

Well I'm a painter and sculptor and photographer, I would like to add my view on this and I hope I can get it out while typing.

 

When I draw, paint and sculpt - a single image takes hours for drawing, entire day's for painting and months for sculpting, sometimes years.

 

When I use film especially in my M5 or any other all mechanical camera including my film SLR's because the film is precious I don't do snap shot 's as often as when I use DSLRs.

 

When I see people with the P&S style digital camera I assume they don't own a film all mechanical camera of even a DSLR or digital rangefinder. I assume they have not studied and learned about aperture, shutter speed and ISO and lens focal length. I also assume they are taking the best images that their limited involvement with image making allows them too. So I'm happy for them that at least they like photography and they are trying to be creative. That's a good thing.

 

Now the video recorder and cell phone are set to make these digital still cameras obsolete.

 

So I think that those of us who have applied ourselves and have gained some mastery over our still cameras will now see how the DSLR may go out of fasion. We who can still use an all manual camera like a film rangefinder and in our mind's it's possible that we can still feel the historic limks to Barnak and the early 35mm film cameas and the early 20th centuary. It's a rich heratage and Leica the surviving 35mm all mechanical rangefiner camera manufaturer is really the only camera manufacturer with these roots and by using their film rangefinder we connect. Now Leica the last mfr to go down the digital road is in fact on the same road as it always was. They have brought out a real manual modern digital rangefinder still camera to keep the connection alive. Perhaps it's use is seen as an aquired art form by others and then perhaps it is a surviving art form. Making images using an all manual camera. So it's like we are all artists when we use the rangefinder. We look at the world as an artist does, a modern artist. We don't paint, we don't draw and we don't sculpt, we use the device desired and thought of by the arists hudreds of years ago. We use an all mechanical camera.

 

This is very difficult to explain, I have been thinking about it since yesterday. The video camera will take over from DSLR. But the M cameras will remain. They are meant to be "single image" "still" cameras. Much like one of my drawings and paitings. People need artistic expression and this "M" camera in film or digital camera allows it. We can use our skills to make an image and that is gratifing. The same is also true for the older all manual 35mm film cameras. The 35mm format was thought of by Barback to have a small and eminently portable camera with enough image quality to make moderatly sized blown up prints. I know the MF and LF camera have better IQ and are even more artistic to use as I have a LF camera. Especially the bellows LF with tilts and shifts and rise and drop bed's. But remember these just are not "eminently" portable, some even require a tripod. Then again eminently portablility never applied to my wooden artist box with all my oils, brushes, the canvas and eisel. Especially not too my sculpture chisels and stone or woodmedium. So I'm very happy with my M5 and Summilux and will be for the rest of my life. If I never become famous for my art be it painting sculpting drawing or photography well at least I enjoyed the many times that I observed life and made an image to show others my observations.

[Guest malland]

Peter, you seem to have put a lot of effort into your post, but it's based on the fallacy that people that use digital cameras don't put a lot of effort into their photographs — that simply isn't true. Also the idea that digital cameras will be replaced by something else while the Leica-M will survive is not somthing that is obvious. That someone can have an attachment and like uing a Leica-M is something I can understand, but that really is all there is to it: their is no higher moral imperative to that at all. Really, the only thing that matters is the quality of the photographs, or art if you will, one produces with whatever one uses. The rest is personal preference; and there is nothing deeper in thia at all.

 

—Mitch/Potomac, MD

[Guest stnami]

Peter I am willing to prostitute myself to any form of camera.......... .....................................jaap Self-Portraiture is not your strongest area of expertise?

[Jamie Roberts]

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{snipped} So I'm very happy with my M5 and Summilux and will be for the rest of my life. If I never become famous for my art be it painting sculpting drawing or photography well at least I enjoyed the many times that I observed life and made an image to show others my observations.

 

@ Peter: of course, plenty of wonderful artists were never famous in their own day Thanks for the thoughtful post, I think you're quite right about a lot of this.

 

@Vic--yes, I'm glad you got my little phenomenological joke Of course the integrity of film is in your head... As long as you don't think it's in the medium.

 

And, FWIW, I'm all for *artistic* integrity; but that, as your story quoted allows, is a bit about intention.

 

Whether Don Kihot (or Quixote) can taste iron in the wine or not, what if the residents had said--"yes, indeed--the little iron pin in there makes all the difference in the world, we love it, and that ferrous taste brings us closer to god in every glass! "

 

Ok, so now I'm mixing Kant with, who was it? Hume? But you get the point.

 

Of course it *is* all about the image, and of course that's obvious.

 

But the intention of getting or creating the image is not always artistic or obvious. That's why it's pointless to tell someone who needs to take 8 shots per second to make a living shoot for Sports Illustrated that they should slow down and think! Or that they don't need a 1d2 to shoot with. Or that they shouldn't chimp.

 

That's just ridiculous IMO. And a waste of anger or sarcasm (when there is so much to be angry / sarcastic about these days...and I'm being at least partly serious here).

 

I mean, from an "artistic integrity" perspective it's a moot point because the point is not at all art.

 

It's consumable imagery as trade or capital (and I know plenty of artists who would like their work to be more willing capitalized--if you know what I mean). Yes, it's clicheed, and dull, unless it's your team winning, of course...

 

And all this plays into a Romantic myth of the outsider as artist, and that's an interesting point of inspiration, too, but it's not "real" in any integral--or even interesting--sense.

 

So: people who have a technical bent get bent with technology. Nothing at all wrong with that. Without the scientists at Kodak, I never would have been able to shoot Tech. Pan.

 

So resolution, resolution, resolution!!

 

Without the folks at Fuji, I never would have seen the world in the highly twisted way Velvia shows it to me!

 

So Colour, colour, colour!

 

All of that is *not art*--it's simply technique and technology, which is important to Art, by the way (the root of the word technology, in Greek, is closely tied to techniques or skill for the arts).

 

So art either embodies the apogee of technique and commerce (in a code-conforming "masterpeice") or sidesteps commerce and (some would say transcends; I wouldn't) technique (while still remaining complicit, usually) in the code-extending "blink" of something new (like Imants work).

 

But to say a medium--film or digital--is removed from the continuum of technique, technology and art is ridiculous, as is saying one has more integrity than the other.

 

One is not more pure than the other; there were film geek boys with toys and now there are digital geek toy boys (and in my more child-like moments, I'm one of them. I like to know the technical possibilities and limitations of the medium before I consider artistics or aesthetic grounds).

 

Only the final image has integrity or not, and again, that depends on the intent, not the workflow, folks.

 

@ Jaap--if the vision for the final image means adding grain or scratches or sepia or whatever else to a digital capture, then why the hell not? You're not being more pure by not doing that either--you're just happy with what the software and hardware (well, and filters) already gives you. That it's in the "naturalistic" convention doesn't make it more--or less--real.

 

I agree with one observation--yes, working with film is slower than dSLR digital. Hell, working with an M8 is slower--or even the DMR--because of the manual processes involved. But that doesn't really matter except as inspiration or thought conditioning to the person making the picture.

 

So Vic go easy on the digi-boys. They're serious about the technology--and that's anyhow in aid of art "advancing." Indirectly, perhaps, but "advancing" all the same.

 

@ Mitch--I think Peter's point about many, many people with digicams is hardly fallacious--most people with a small digital camera don't expend that much effort in taking their snapshots, in my experience.

 

Watch and see how many of them just leave the flash on. All the time!

 

It still makes them happy seeing their own images realized, and so that makes me happy too. It's precisely the same way that people with auto-everything 110 film cameras didn't expend much thought on theirs either.

 

I'd actually say the same thing about Polaroid cameras, but I remember how excited my father was to receive an SX-70 Polaroid as a present, and then how many times it simply did not work. He had to send it back at least 3 times for stupid repairs and jamming.

 

Still, the promise of instant results was a powerful incentive, even back in the dark ages of the 60s and 70s

 

PS--I'm sorry for the long post. Too much (very good) wine this evening; I shouldn't even be on the computer!

[Guest stnami]

pissed again Jamie? ............ still working hours here in OZ////........... Vic chucks a wobbly because too many digifreaks openly try to get the film look and they own a film camera and don't use it.. a fair call that way..............

[tashley]

Peter, you seem to have put a lot of effort into your post, but it's based on the fallacy that people that use digital cameras don't put a lot of effort into their photographs — that simply isn't true. Also the idea that digital cameras will be replaced by something else while the Leica-M will survive is not somthing that is obvious. That someone can have an attachment and like uing a Leica-M is something I can understand, but that really is all there is to it: their is no higher moral imperative to that at all. Really, the only thing that matters is the quality of the photographs, or art if you will, one produces with whatever one uses. The rest is personal preference; and there is nothing deeper in thia at all.

 

—Mitch/Potomac, MD

I'm sort of with you on this Mitch but I am minded of the dada and found art movements, who in essence were partly saying 'screw your advanced technique and clever use of paints: they are bourgeois tools that constrain your view of the world instead of freeing it.'

 

Sorry to oversimplify but my point here is that that the formalities and traditions of technique have been overthrown before, and replaced by guerilla warfare artists who wanted to work with anything but conventional materials and techniques. And it was at least in part that revolution that set art free to explore far wider boundaries. So I can't possibly see that the partial replacement of the analogue subtleties of film (with all its attendant archanae of technique and material and the reverence that those attract) by the machine-gun anarchy of digital shoot and shoot and shoot again, can do anything but help free art up that little bit further.

 

It's my perception (possibly wrong) that its commonplace on the fora these days that the 'real' artists are those anarchists who hang out in darkrooms and make brooding works in silver halide. There's no doubt that a lot of artistic talent is found in such places.

 

But I wonder what Marcel Duchamp would have thought about it?

 

Best

 

Tim

[Guest stnami]

.. remember marcel gave up and played chess the game of the bourgeois( probably spelt wrong) world

[jaapv]

jaap Self-Portraiture is not your strongest area of expertise?

 

 

Yeah, it was one of those bathroom mirror shots.. Maybe I should have shaved first....

[StS]

I guess it depends on why you are taking images.

 

If I were a professional I would take digital images because it is more practical. Other people said my images became better when I bought a digital SLR three years ago (probably instant feedback about what I did) although I owned my first camera with six and had my b/w lab with twelve. However I had only moderate practice back then - I could only take images as far the pocket money took me.

 

For me and my skills photography is more a craft rather than art. Film and enlarger are closer to hand-craft than sensor and printer. Admittedly I enlarged the last photo several years ago (I'm slow and don't have the time any more).

 

For me both concepts have their justification, I will continue to use both

 

I can understand Jaap's contempt for 'simulating' the film look, in my view the 'look' of an image should be true to it's medium. I won't mind plastics on my dashboard as long it doesn't try to look like wood. But maybe this view is also due to my craftsman approach.

 

I wrote this craft thing before in another thread, sorry for boring the mates again with the same concept

[peter55]

Hi all,

 

I don't think I said that people who use DSLR's are not serious about thei craft. I own and use 4 DSLR's as much and perhaps much more than my 3 all manual film cameras. Certainly I use either of these more than my 3 AF film cameras.

 

The fully manual film camera requires me to think in order to operate it. This additional brain engagement sometimes carries over to my creative side and I feel I am more creative with my M5, Ricoh KR-5 and Nikon FM2.! Not always!!

 

Craft and artistry are interrelated. My brain is creative in an artistic way but the training of my hands and eyes improved my art. I make my art, paintings, drawings and sculptures with my hands. The time spent and the developed motor skills for hand and eyes enable my brain to speak with these mediums. But my brain must first concieve the idea, or I can make nothing. All this is from observations of life, I add my interpretation to it.

 

When I use a machine like the camera the all manual camera machine allows me more feedback and has an influence on me. Also the time it takes to set all the controls correctly and the effort to do so get's me more involved. I have to first notice the physical world and then adjust the cameras settings to interpret it the way I want. The auto camera machine is a faster tool and eaiser to pick up and use but it gives very little feedback.

 

Let me give some examples. If my mind could transmute matter and I could create art just by thinking, then obviously I would not spend as much time creating my image. But the slower method of using my hand and eyes and an all manual medium like paint or a manual camera gives me time to think as I compose.

I play the Violin and Sitar, Classical Guitar, Piano and other instruments. I write music for the violin. If I could instantly transpose my thoughts to the paper then I would be done in an instant. But the work would be short and not well developed. But, since I use my hand made quill feather pens and ink and my hand drawn out musical staff and score. This takes time and I get a feeling as I'm preparing the medium. So when I actually have a musical lyric to write I must now methodically by hand transpose it. This takes time and effort but the time and effort it takes allows me to fully develope my theme.

 

If they would create an all manual digital camera I would use it. I have a Pentax K100D that when set to M mode and if a K or M42 lens is mounted this is an all manual camera now. That's why I got it even though I have the Canon 20D, 350XT and 1Ds Mark II DSLR's. Oh I believe the M8 is so very close to the all manual digital camera. It is Leica's Film Heratage that makes it so.

 

P.S.

Was not the British series where big think's ansewer to everything, the entire universe and the reason for being is 42? So surely my M42 srew mount lenses fit the answer.

P.S.S.

To just end this in a humorus mannor I will add: If the manual way of doing things was not better than the auto method then there would be no need for a physical existance. Or to put it in another way: Our very nature of existance is manual everything. So since I like existing I also like the method I use to exist.

[vic vic]

peter, i think you hit here one important part that i have mentioned on this forum several times too..

the art and craft.. indeed..

and leave aside the menual cameras, the aesthetics of film.. that is true.. but there is one more important and unparalel creative stage - the darkroom.. ralph gibson once said that darkroom work makes him a better photographer... well, at that when i first heard this thing i was just in the bigging of my photography.. i thougt he was speacking about better photos printed in darkroom - the perfection of the photo - the interpretation of the image and the mood it rediates through tonailty games etc.... well.. i guess that was my stage at that time..

some time later.. i discovered the power of the real darkoom work.. it is the evaluation of the image and its value as photograph (as photograph - i dont speack now in elitaric terms of art etc)... it was the way i was judging the photography in practice - on the light table.. through the unique process of hand made prints and their test variants etc etc.. it was the way i learn from each project that i do in darkroom how to see my photos through the process of creation.. and the point is that those things i found in darkroom are transcended to the viewer when the pics are on the wall or in the hand... they are transcended.. i dont mnean the tonality.. i mean those values/characteristics/concepts that go beyound the physical visual aspects of the photograph....

 

i will say it super clearly and without "if" and "but".. the synergic outcome of the work in its craft is very different from any kind of computer work and alike... not only different and that is it, but the computer works and alike are simply inferior in their synergic power (not to mention the aesthetic elements)..

the craft (+the art) is not only a process that influnce the photographer - but it is equally transcended to the viewer too..... and it is superior (at least potentially)....

 

 

jemie.. wait i will answer to you too of course....

but read what imants said.... it exaplains many things

ah, and meanwhile.. do a favor to me, to the forum and to the humanity - tell that "images are the important thing" in the "digi toy boy forum"... you know what i mean rite ? )

[jaapv]

If they would create an all manual digital camera I would use it. I have a Pentax K100D that when set to M mode and if a K or M42 lens is mounted this is an all manual camera now. That's why I got it even though I have the Canon 20D, 350XT and 1Ds Mark II DSLR's. Oh I believe the M8 is so very close to the all manual digital camera. It is Leica's Film Heratage that makes it so.

 

Very perceptive. It expresses exactly why DSLR photography started to bore me to the point of not creating photographs at all and why the purchase of an M8 revitalized my enthusiasm. To my way of thinking it has reduced the dichtomy between film and sensor to the point of different media on an equal, albeit separate, artistic level.

Of course it helps that I am not a professional who is compelled by the forces of the market to make his artistic choices. A position of luxury.

[peter55]

Vic,

 

I have been working my way very slowly towards a darkroom. Your meaning is not lost on me. Perhaps I can, after all somehow get my darkroom.

I think then that not only the value I place on each film exposure but then the craft and effort to turn that exposure into a print will in fact help me along in my photographic growth.

Right now I'm on temporary disability and it looks like it going to go to long term. Iam so very poor. It's like when I was a starving artist, almost but not exactly. I am recieving disability money but it's not enough.

Perhaps if I only make one purchase a moth in some time I can be developing and printingmy own.

 

Where is a good place to begin?

 

Also I have a Crown Graphic LF Camera that I finally got the rails sorted, when the leaf shutter split. All I need is a $200 copal #0 shutter and I can mount my lens.

[charlesphoto99]

Excellent! I totally agree here! This is really one of the points I'm trying to make.

I can look at excellent digital captures and appreciate those on their own merits. What I find strange is the process by which people attempt to make their images something which they are not (and therefore my horrible kitschy illustration above).

 

For me though, there is an essential difference in the actual process of image-taking, regardless of post-processing, that has changed the essential nature of photography.

 

Let me put it like this:

 

confronted by a possible composition, when one has a film camera in one's hand, the photographer has to pause; recall other photographs and how they turned-out; reflect on the different possibilities; frame the shot according to her instincts and memories; see the multi-colored world in black-and-white; freeze a moment in a precise and unrepeatable way; in other words use her imagination!

 

when using digital, she points, shoots and chimps.

 

I agree with your basic premise but some of the details here I beg to differ with. One, photographers have always been attempting to make their photos something they are not. The minute you dodge and burn a print you are doing that. The problem I see is not enough photographers manipualting their digital images! If I see one more flat greenish, washed out, over or under sharpened, shot in sRGB, digital photo in print I'm gonna scream. (scream!). It was never enough for a (good) photographer to just remove film from camera and go straight to print (or web or whatever). No, the image needed to be "worked" to match the photographer's vision - "dumb" glass and gelatin won't do automatically do that. And neither will a sensor.

 

When I shoot film I think differently whether there's color or b&w in the camera. I also think differently whether I'm shooting 35mm or medium format. I also think differently when shooting digital. But with all I take my time (or don't take my time as the situation may call for) and use my intelligence and imagination. Yes, I do "chimp" with digital but never do I just "point and shoot." It's all the act of photographing for me, not matter the medium.

 

Anyway, nice thread. I'm a fairly late convert to digital and am not totally sold by it. I like the physicality of a negative just from storage/archiving/permanence standpoint. But I also like eliminating those car trips to the lab across town (sometimes for one or two fricking rolls), the chemicals down the drain and into my system, and the endless mounds of waste created by polaroid testing back in the good old days. I do shoot film for some projects and will continue to do so for many projects where the look is warranted (esp medium format). But I'm also aware that digital is here to stay and I'd better get used to it.

[Guest malland]

Going back to the original posting: here's the integrity of digital:

 

 

V-Lux 1 — 420mm-equivalent

 

—Mitch/Potomac, MD

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

[Jamie Roberts]

I agree with your basic premise but some of the details here I beg to differ with. One, photographers have always been attempting to make their photos something they are not. The minute you dodge and burn a print you are doing that. The problem I see is not enough photographers manipualting their digital images! If I see one more flat greenish, washed out, over or under sharpened, shot in sRGB, digital photo in print I'm gonna scream. (scream!). It was never enough for a (good) photographer to just remove film from camera and go straight to print (or web or whatever). No, the image needed to be "worked" to match the photographer's vision - "dumb" glass and gelatin won't do automatically do that. And neither will a sensor.

 

{snipped}.

 

Charles--oh so correct, in my opinion too. You do what you can to make a great image.

 

@Imants--not pissed enough, usually But at least instead of napping, or sleeping, I write long-winded replies in the Leica forum!

 

@ Vic--yes, I hear you and Imants on the digi-toy stuff It does need to be said that technique should be aimed towards the final image. But people are in different places on their journey, so to speak.

 

And I agree 100% with you on the special qualities of a darkroom. Man I miss it for prints. I still do my own BW film here, but I just don't have the room (or plumbing) to do fine optical printing.

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[plasticman]

I'm really glad I started this thread, especially now that it's given rise to so many brilliant and thoughtful responses. Absolutely fascinating!

 

Right now I don't have the time to summarize some responses I'd like to make here - but this sort of thoughtful exchange is why i keep coming back to the Leica forum - in spite of everything...

 

Just a couple quick comments: the statement about plastic that looks like wood is a wonderful analogy! I'm glad it was repeated here, because i missed the original thread.

 

But that's not to say that digital is an imitation or inferior to film (which I hasten to add, wasn't Stefan's inference either), but that each medium has its own strengths, which leads me to the second point: I've seen Mitch's digital shots, and his discussion about minimal post-processing, in other threads on the forum. Great shots and great thesis!