Digital: A Personal Perspective

In an attempt to break the endless stream of news about the Olympus E-1, I’ve taken the drastic step of adding a completely new section to PhotographyBLOG. The Articles section will contain all of my hopefully coherent personal ramblings that won’t fit into a normal everyday posting. My first ever article explores a well-worn theme; the advantages and disadvantages of digital photography…

Website: Digital: A Personal Perspective - Part 1

Published: Wednesday, June 25, 2003

Reader Comments

1. You've hit on the reason I love shooting digital so much - the freedom it brings. You instantly know what works, and what doesn't. So you try more than you would with film.

   Ed Garrard at 12:47pm on Thursday, June 26, 2003

2. Your example is a good one. But I'm still haunted by the stories of Cartier Bresson heading out for a day's photography and shooting one one perfect picture. It's probably a myth...! But how about the after-image fiddling, ie, the darkroom vs the computer?

   johnead at 04:11pm on Saturday, August 09, 2003

3. Darkroom vs Computer sounds like a great idea for a new article...!
   
   Mark

   Mark Goldstein at 05:05pm on Saturday, August 09, 2003

4. Since the dawn of digital photography in the early to mid-1990s the darkroom and computer have been discussed as roughly equivalent - the same process in a different medium. Sounds sensible enough at first. But I'd contend using a computer is qualitatively different in important respects. For example, I can think of several occasions where I've 'airbrushed' out complete people (or bits of people) to improve a shot's quality. There are times where traditional photography is probably only 30 percent of what's going on. Looking around the Internet I see more evidence of this trend in the images of others. Are we turning from photographers into something else? People have always fiddled around with photographs, of course, but I'm imagining a world where this becomes standard rather than occasional.

   johnead at 02:38pm on Sunday, August 10, 2003

5. I'm glad to say that I don't fall into that category. I only use Photoshop to adjust colour if required, sharpen the image, clone out dust, and crop.
   
   What about everyone else then? How much alteration do you make to your digital photographs?
   
   Mark

   Mark Goldstein at 12:41pm on Monday, August 11, 2003

6. Changing the way you shoot is going to be hardest for photographers who still have the cost of film/chemicals stuck in the back of their minds. Digital is basically free after your equipment investment as long as you dont print it out. thats what big screens are for (think 42" plasma or similar display output, your images will look more awesome the bigger you display them). Let go of the small screen! Get a Mac so you dont have the frustration of windoze whilst manipulating pictures. Get big rechargeable batteries (NiMHi) and lots of them, and shoot as many photos as you can every outing. I take about 2-3 thousand shots a week, and keep maybe 6 or 10. the rest I toss. Darkroom time now = computer time except there is no wastage and trial/error waste with expensive stuff.... time spent reading photoshoip manuals and practicing with it is well spent. As for the ethics of digitally messing with a picture, either get over it or dont. you can really create with digital. if you dont want to, then concentrate on photojournalism, and dont bother retouching anything.
   
   there, that should ignite some comments!

   GSC at 02:25am on Friday, October 10, 2003

7. Actually, I'd counter that (compared to 35mm darkroom say) digital photography is actually quite expensive in terms of setup costs. For a start you have to buy a computer and get some decent software. You tend to find yourself upgrading every two to three years as well. Mac or Windows? Doesn't matter a whit and the PC is cheaper to buy in relation to graphics perfomance. So there!

   Johnead at 03:07pm on Friday, October 10, 2003

8. read the posting johnead..... "free, after your equipment investment." and upgrading is the cost of staying ahead.... if you wait until you have to upgrade it always seems more expensive. I upgrade my gear often, selling the just used stuff to fund some of it. ibeg to differ, on the mac or windows choice, I get so frustrated with PC's that for ME its got to be a mac, its a free country, you sit with your own choice.
   g

   GSC at 08:51pm on Friday, October 10, 2003

9. Whoops - think I hit a nerve there! But I wasn't disagreeing with your point just adding slightly to the thread. Anyway...let's not get into the old sterile Mac vs PC debate. Surely it's out of the ark by now...!

   Johnead at 02:14am on Saturday, October 11, 2003

10. As is the Digital vs Film "debate" I think people should concentrate less on the equipment that they're using to take photographs, and concentrate more on the images that they're creating. Who cares whether the image was captured on film or on a CCD, so long as it satisfies the photographer? (and if they're being paid, the client!)

    Mark Goldstein at 04:06pm on Saturday, October 11, 2003

11. FYI I got to handle the new 4 mp Canon A80 for a review in a magazine and was mightily impressed. It's similar looking to the A70 but with the internal electronics of the S45 and Ixus 400. For my money, it's a close to being a portable G5...! Any other view on this camera? Btw, equipment is still worth discussing insofar as digital cameras are still evolving... film cameras perhaps not.

    Johnead at 08:27pm on Tuesday, October 14, 2003

12. I am pleased that you are enjoying your new Digital SLR but I wanted to take issue with some of the misconceptions and fallacies that plague digital camera users. Since there will be other parts to your story, I will deal with the issues that you have raised in Part 1.
    
    Many digital users have the mistaken belief that the pictures that they take are "financially free of charge". This is NOT the case. What they fail to consider is the excessive cost of the digital camera to begin with. Your original EOS 300 would have sold for @US$350 however the new EOS 10D sells for @US$1,300 or almost 4x as much before even one picture has been taken. It would be as if you purchased the film camera AND almost US$1,000 worth of film besides. This amounts to many thousands of pictures...much more than the 1,992 that you took since April. The pictures from the digital camera aren't free...you pre-paid for them when you bought the camera!! (and, of course, when you paid for all the extra memory cards, printer [paper and ink], etc that goes along with the package).
    
    Next you praise the questionable value of what has come to be known as 'chimping'. This is when the digital camera user takes a shot, checks the LCD, deletes the shot and tries again. As you noticed, this is fine if you are photographing a mountain or a building but there are so many instances where we do NOT have any second chance. As HCB would have said, there is only 1 'decisive moment' and, if you miss it, you can't retake the shot no matter what the LCD says! You would be better off to learn to use the camera's viewfinder and turn off the LCD altogether...it saves the batteries anyway!
    
    But the most greivous fault in your article is where you delight in the ability of digital to allow you to take shots "without even having to think". This is one of the worst habits any photographer can get into! You HAVE to think about what you want to capture and then have sufficient mastery of your gear to accomplish it.
    
    You shouldn't have to be surprised when you review your shots..you should have a pretty good idea of what is going to appear in the frame (film or digital) and that requires that the photographer SLOW DOWN rather than speed up! Digital has a tendency to force people to be obsessed with speed and to abandon thought. The chances are that you have NOT taken more successful shots with digital than with film because you have simply deleted the failures and pretended they didn't happen.

    Meryl Arbing at 12:12am on Sunday, September 19, 2004

13. Hi! I'm new to photographyblog so be easy on me if I point out a mistake.
    
    Meryl, I considered the 'prepaid' cost of the photos when I decided to buy a digital camera, and I view it this way.
    
    If you make a mistake, you can wipe it, right? Your mistake does not cost you anything extra as regards film usage and processing. In fact, every time you make a mistake and wipe the image, the camera is 'paying itself off', so to speak. So if you use the camera often and keep it for a long time, it would be a lot cheaper in the long run to get a digital than to use film.
    
    Also, you don't NEED a printer when you take photos. I plan to view photos on the LCD on my camera, and if I need to store them in an archive somewhere then I'll just burn it onto a CD ($1 CD for a few hundred prints sure beats $10-$15 for a couple of dozen prints [costs in Australia where i live]).

    Rugosa at 12:56am on Wednesday, October 06, 2004