Your low light tricks

[Guest malland]

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As a Picture Director of one of the biggest mags in the UK I can tell you sadly more often than not the readers don't like grainy high contrast images...You can argue until you are blue in the face about peoples understanding of grain in photography...digital colour grain/noise is never nice when printed and can only pass in B&W.

Never? Would you have a problem with the grainy colour photographs by Magnum photographer Harry Gruyart in his Rivages series?

 

—Mitch/Potomac, MD

Scratching the Surface©

[bussta]

Never? Would you have a problem with the grainy colour photographs by Magnum photographer Harry Gruyart in his Rivages series?

 

—Mitch/Potomac, MD

Scratching the Surface©

 

Some of those work in an art form in the right context, to me some of them it's too much, all i am saying is from a commercial magazine point of view if it were between a clean image and something that is as noisy as static radio then 9/10 times the clean image will win, this is from a commercial value way of thinking knowing that the majority of the buying public may not understand the value and artistic integrity of a grainy or noisy image when all they get shoved down their throats these days are heavily retouched "clean" images. Digital noise is no where as pleasing to the eye as real film grain.

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[Guest malland]

Yes, from a commercial point of view I'm sure you're right. The trouble is that a lot of amateur photographers, from the reaction I've seen to Gruyaert's photographs, also have a "no noise/no grain" mentality and cannot appreciate the aesthetic of the Rivages series, which in my view works very well.

 

—Mitch/Potomac, MD

Bangkok Hysteria©: Book Project

[bussta]

Yes, from a commercial point of view I'm sure you're right. The trouble is that a lot of amateur photographers, from the reaction I've seen to Gruyaert's photographs, also have a "no noise/no grain" mentality and cannot appreciate the aesthetic of the Rivages series, which in my view works very well.

 

—Mitch/Potomac, MD

Bangkok Hysteria©: Book Project

 

Without going off the initial topic too much I think that with the digital age people can irradicate the noise effect of high iso's where as with high iso film it was there, it was physical and apparent, although the advancement in high iso relatively noiseless images has been a benchmark in digital photography I also feel that it is the reason for many people dismissing the qualities of true film grain as they do not have to work with it any longer and see it as a flaw of the previous methods of image making, a real shame if you ask me as I feel the best photographs ever taken have had some sort of grain structure to them making them feel organic, real and authentic.

 

Soon we will all be plastic people living in a shiny smooth plastic looking world and all will be silent - no noise and smooth with no grain.

[Guest malland]

...the advancement in high iso relatively noiseless images has been a benchmark in digital photography I also feel that it is the reason for many people dismissing the qualities of true film grain as they do not have to work with it any longer and see it as a flaw of the previous methods of image making, a real shame if you ask me as I feel the best photographs ever taken have had some sort of grain structure to them making them feel organic, real and authentic.

 

Soon we will all be plastic people living in a shiny smooth plastic looking world and all will be silent - no noise and smooth with no grain.

Yes, I like the "35mm aesthetic", which is the reason I was never interested in MF film cameras. Like you, I also like the look grain gives in many photographs, although I'm don't feel it looks "real and authentic" as that is not how we see with our eyes.

 

—Mitch/Potomac, MD

Scratching the Surface©