Olympus-OM
[Top] [All Lists]

[OM] Re: A film better than digital

Subject: [OM] Re: A film better than digital
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:37:20 -0700
Wayne Harridge wrote:
>>
>>     
> Interesting but...
>
> ...if you think about some of the greatest photographs:
>
> Which ones would be significantly improved by having double the film 
> resolution ?
>   

With just a few words, you have, at least to me, raised a host of 
complex issues, some of which are probably unresolvable.

First, which are these greatest photographs? I'm not trying to be cute, 
it's a real question to me. For example, I can imagine that for many 
folks, that would include street candids like HC-B's street photography, 
but that's a genre that doesn't much speak to me. Relatively few of any 
group of greatest images chosen by me would be of that sort.

Or might we be talking about war and disaster photography? Portraits? 
Landscapes?

It seems to me that the answer to your question would depend on the type 
of photograph and when it was taken.

Second, what is meant by "improved"? Won't the criteria vary with the 
observer? Let me propose a practical thought question. If the films of 
the time had had less grain, higher resolution and greater sensitivity, 
as later films did, would HC-B's street photographs have been different? 
Would they have been better or worse?

Assuming they were generally different in having less grain, less motion 
blur and sometimes usefully greater DOF, I'm sure there are many people 
who think that would make them worse. What would the photographer have 
thought? Was he intentionally making grainy, often blurred images? Or 
was he making images of what interested him regardless of the technical 
limitations of the film and equipment available to him?

Might later viewers and critics be ascribing value to qualities of his 
work that he himself would have "corrected" if he had different 
technology available to him at the time?

If we then address large format photographers, landscape like Ansel 
Adams or still life and portrait like Edward Weston, the question 
changes. It becomes entirely possible that lens limitations and 
diffraction effects from the very small apertures often used may limit 
resolution more than the rather large pieces of film.

Would iconic images like the flag raising on Iwo Jima be improved by 
higher resolution? The emotional response would probably be much the 
same in small prints. But what might it feel like if the resolution was 
such as to show the expressions on the soldier's faces in large prints 
or crops?
 -------------------
I could go on, but I hope you see my point. Might a more useful question 
be "Which of the greatest photographs would be significantly worsened by 
film with double the resolution?"?

I tend to think that the answer to this reverse formulation is very few 
photographs made worse, whereas the answer to yours may be quite a lot 
made better, depending on taste and definitions.

Ken Norton wrote:

> How is this any different than megapixels?  Which of those "greatest 
> photographs" would have been significantly improved if they had been shot 
> with the 5D Mk2. 
To me, the answer is the same as above.

> Historically, the majority of those "greatest photographs" were NOT shot on 
> 4x5, 8x10 or larger. 

Here, you are either being disingenuous, have not thought it through or 
are taking a narrow view of what are historically "great photographs". 
Fans of Adams, the Westons, Porter and so many others, right up through 
contemporary LF work by Avedon, might firmly disagree with you about 
"majority".

> Honestly, we are a sad, sad, sad people of we think that technology will 
> magically transform the mediocre
> into anything other than technically perfect mediocre.
>   

If all images in general are improved in technical quality, the great 
ones float up along with the mediocre. Although your and my ideas of 
which images are great will differ, both will generally be of better 
technical quality than heretofore. I just don't get how that is bad - 
even for a glass half empty person, as you seem to me to be in this area.

Is it possible that you are projecting your frustration with your own 
ability to transcend what you perceive to be mediocrity in your own work 
onto the broader world of photography? Let be by very clear here; I am 
not saying I perceive the images I see from your hand are good, bad or 
indifferent in this particular thought. Rather, this projection of mine 
onto you is based on the sort of personally pained, existential quality 
of your above complaint, some past posts expressing distress over the 
difficulty of producing truly creative work and my personal perception 
that there is not less "great" photography going on now than in times 
past. I'm all too familiar with perfectionism and self criticism. I do 
know that my internal issues with them do not necessarily translate into 
meaningful characterization the world at large.

In fact, I think is likely that there is more first rate photography 
happening now. My theory is that more artists who would have been 
defeated by the technical complexity in the past are now able to express 
themselves in this medium. I know that many photographers believe that 
mastery of the technical aspects is an important part of photography. 
That has certainly been true for me. But I wonder if it in in any 
inherent way true, or simply a now past result of what was required in 
order to produce a decent photograph.
-----------------------------------

When I see an image on the web, hanging on a wall, in a publication, and 
react to it in an internally significant way, does it matter if it was 
produced with a manual camera, film and scanner or wet darkroom or with 
a totally automatic, digital camera and perhaps a computer printer?

Going way back to the original question, I believe "great photographs" 
are great because they affect us, by causing an internal felt-shift, or 
perhaps resonate with something internal; not because of the technical 
process that created them, but because of their content, that is, the 
subject(s) and how it/they are visualized by the photographer, seen by 
the camera/film/sensor and presented by the photographer.
-----------------------------------

One important thing that has changed over the last few years is that it 
is possible to see a lot more mediocre and just plain poor images now. 
The image sharing sites already contain more images than I could view in 
any meaningful way in my lifetime and are growing at a rate I couldn't 
keep up with, if I tried. All those snaps that used to go into bags and 
boxes in closet, attic or basement, largely mercifully so, are now 
dumped instead into the public closets.

Twenty years ago, it was pretty much possible for one with such an 
interest, and  bit of time and money, to see a very large proportion of 
those images  judged by buyers, critics, publishers and gallery owners 
to be worthwhile to see, while being exposed to only a small portion of 
the unending sea of snapshots and wannabe art.

Should we let this change in availability lead to the conclusion that 
photography has gone to hell? I choose to let it be an opportunity to be 
exposed to images and photographers who may happen to speak to me, but 
whose work I would never have seen before the advent of digital 
photography and the web. In fact, I see it an an opportunity to view the 
world as seen in photographs unfiltered by the judgments of the others 
who have shaped the world of photography seen by most of the world until 
recently.

Coming around in another circle from above, I find many images that 
others enjoy simply uninteresting. That doesn't mean they are wrong and 
I am right, in any larger sense. It does mean that to the extent that 
such people determine which images I am exposed to, they may actually 
lessen my overall enjoyment of photography.

For example, I'm a fairly regular follower of TOP. I find that Mike 
Johnston is moved by many images that simply raise no emotional response 
in me, other than the occasional feeling of having my "looking 
molecules" wasted. This is not to knock Mile's taste; it's obvious from 
the responses that many others share them. It is simply to point out 
that, to the extent that Mike edits TOP and has edited magazines in the 
past, the images I see in those places are not entirely those that will 
most please me.

To what extent has that been true of the arbiters of what has been hung 
and published, and thus what I've seen, in the past? The new paradigm 
presents me with a potentially overwhelming range of images, but has at 
least the advantage of being unfiltered, or some night say, uncensored.

> A less than perfect AG-Schnozz
>   
A. Ditto Moose


==============================================
List usage info:     http://www.zuikoholic.com
List nannies:        olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
==============================================

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Sponsored by Tako
Impressum | Datenschutz