J'Accuse

[Rob C]

Rob, apologies, I'll rephrase the question.

Why on earth would you want to return to such a severely limited baseline, standard, constant or given?

The answer is at least twofold:

1.  I was perfectly happy using film and can assure anyone interested that I never felt it complicated, threatening or in any other way a bad deal. Yes, I did hate airport X-Ray, though, but managed to avoid most of it by making formal application to the various consulates through whose country I'd be passing. The only place the system failed me was the USA, and once Spain, and in Spain before I twigged about getting good documentation beforehand;

2.  the main problem with digital (for me) is that I have been used to looking at film after film on a lightbox and making pretty instant decisions about what I presented to a client and what stayed in the files or vanished into oblivion. In all the years since the D200, my first digi camera, I have never felt comfortable with digital editing, even for my own, private use where there may be only about fifty to seventy images as a maximum. Were I ever fortunate enough to land another calendar, I think I'd die of stress or old age before I managed to edit such a shoot running into thousands of images via a computer. It's alien to my ways of life, still;

3.  this thread began with the idea of complication and poor design (unless I'm mixing threads up, which is possible if one reads enough here) in cameras and as far as those parameters are concerned, I found film simple, instinctive and not at all frustrating. Nothing, since the 500 Series, has felt so right, simple and perfect for so many photographic applications, especially those that I face as an older man.

I realise from other posts that I am obviously the lone elephant, even possibly the rogue trader in an exchange of honest men, but nonetheless, that's how my reality of the two systems compares. Not a lot I can do about that if I want to be true to my own feelings and report them as such.

I could, I suppose, say nothing or just go along with the majority, but why? What would be the point for me or for anyone else?

Rob C

[Tony Jay]

Luckily I don't feel the same way about digital photography.

I am able to sympathize though.
Nonetheless my bet is that your digital editing abilities are pretty good.

Regards

Tony Jay

[KLaban]

Rob, I do understand your preferences, but given your reasoning I have difficulty understanding why you are hanging onto a brace of "bookends" that you say are over complex and too heavy for you to use.

Anyway, enjoy the time with your daughter.

Best

Keith

[BJL]

Rob,
    your new point about preferring to work with slides on a light box to doing something similar on screen (usually only allowing two or three at a time) makes sense. (But I rarely used slides, so I will not pretend to have a worthwhile opinion on this.) For the rest, I am happy with the perspective that has been articulated by Keith Laban, and by that guy whose screen name suggests that he is proud of his Pentax 645D camera, but avoids the too common partisanship of the MF vs smaller format debates.

[KLaban]

your new point about preferring to work with slides on a light box to doing something similar on screen (usually only allowing two or three at a time) makes sense.

I spent years using a lightbox to sort and select transparencies. They facilitated choosing between similar shots but left much to be desired in terms of determining image quality.

Now imaging programs allow us to compare and select at will and with the option of 100% views there's no longer any hiding place or excuses ;-)
 

[Rob C]

Rob, I do understand your preferences, but given your reasoning I have difficulty understanding why you are hanging onto a brace of "bookends" that you say are over complex and too heavy for you to use.

Anyway, enjoy the time with your daughter.

Best

Keith

Keith -

Thanks re. daughter; wish she could bring out her brood too, but one’s at home studying for exams and her Dad will have to play chef (¡he say!) the other still, as far as I know, in Paris.

Bookends. Well, as I have said before, the D200 cost me around the equivalent of 1800 quid in Spain, and was the first such body in Mallorca. I asked a London Nikon specialist last winter, from whom I was buying a lens, for a trade-in value for the D200 and it was a grudging 300 notes! I’m better off keeping it as a ‘just in case’ body. The D700 is all I will ever, AFAIK, require for serious work, whatever that is, and what I’d like is something like an M9 at a tiny fraction of the Leica price. In essence, something that I can carry around as easily as the cellphone but can give real, printable A3+ RAW files. It’s very frustrating to have found some nice abstracts when carrying the cellphone, working on the jpegs and then wishing they were something else!

Well, the ‘bookends’ are obviously no longer too complex because I have wired them to suit my manual mind; but that wasn’t the point of all of this, which I thought was about basic camera design and function as it comes out of the box. In that condition, and with those massive manuals, yes, I still think them far too complicated for comfort if one has the old experience as a yardstick to fine ergonomics and easy use, even for the novice; especially for the novice, when I come to think of it. If these things confuse me, how much more another person with no earlier experience to help him out?  Perhaps that’s one of the reasons for the popularity of cellphone cameras and the erosion of cheaper digital camera markets: people really don’t like a complicated life.

Regarding the heavy Nikon stuff: yes, I can manage to cart it around if something special has to be done, but that’s not leaving me open to serendipity, and being as I am, I have great faith in stumbling onto things, even if they turn out to be no more than old dog turds that can break your ankle when baked in the sun; Michael may have come across some such in Mexico, too. I have realised that an old shopping trolley can carry the Gitzo when I remove the cloth shopping bag, and it looks quite elegant, much like a golf buggy thing. But as I say, it’s not something you’d do on spec, as it were.

But all this aside, film is now too expensive for me if there’s no client to carry the costs. Not only is it expensive, but as far as the local sources tell me, I’d now have to post to Barcelona for my E6 service... In fact, my Palma wholesaler, with whom I’ve dealt since ’81, hasn’t seen me for over a year; well before that, his staff levels had been cut to the bone and his stock was almost zero: “I can get it for you from head office in Barcelona next week! If it’s in stock there.” Pretty hard to see much future in film now, sad to say; even the dentists are deserting it for digital X-Rays.

Rob C

[Rob C]

I spent years using a lightbox to sort and select transparencies. They facilitated choosing between similar shots but left much to be desired in terms of determining image quality.

Now imaging programs allow us to compare and select at will and with the option of 100% views there's no longer any hiding place or excuses ;-)
 

Exactly it! And for fashion/calendars, that was the name of the game: many similar shots of each setup. And a loup would easily reveal expressions etc. out of the chosen few, the first selection being based on shape, colour and how well or otherwise the idea translated into two dimensions.

Today, even my cellpix take up such a lot of time, and they all look so similar and unlike the final file after I've worked on it for a bit. Transparencies cut all of that doubt away; in fact, they were what you hoped you'd get from the printer, in most cases, and in that sense they provided a master file for everyone with a fish in the dish to refer to when required.

Rob C

[theguywitha645d]

Light tables?

So, in Adobe Bridge, when I open a folder, it shows the contents (and I can change the size of the thumbnails so I can see 20 or so images). Simply clicking a thumbnail shows the image in the preview pane (I can also change the size of the preview pane). Clicking on the preview pane magnifies a detail. I can then classify the image as a second which can hide the thumbnail.

But you are right, a light table, of which I have used many, is just such a better solution unless you have not developed the required flick of the wrist to get rid of outtakes.

...for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so...

William Shakespeare

I am glad you like film. It is a great medium and I am not being sarcastic--I closed my color darkroom a year ago because of supply problems. But there are no winners in this race. There is no difference in the complexity between a silver or bit process excepting availability of supplies--both can be as easy or complex as you want to make it.

I am not advocating one over the other. I believe the choice in a process and way of working is a creative one determined by an individual photographer.

[KLaban]

Bookends. Well, as I have said before, the D200 cost me around the equivalent of 1800 quid in Spain, and was the first such body in Mallorca. I asked a London Nikon specialist last winter, from whom I was buying a lens, for a trade-in value for the D200 and it was a grudging 300 notes! I’m better off keeping it as a ‘just in case’ body. The D700 is all I will ever, AFAIK, require for serious work, whatever that is

Rob, now I understand! The D700 is a 'just in case' body and the D200 is a 'just in case' backup. All you need now is a solution for the rest of your life ;-)

Seriously, if ever there was a 'Golden Age' of photography it is right here and now. There are so many solutions out there to your portability problem. I'll give you an example. Viv has just bought a Panasonic Lumix G3. It looks like a DSLR but is half the size, the body weighs in at 336grams and there's a huge range of excellent interchangeable lenses. If that wasn't enough the body costs all of £380 and the 16MP RAW files are all you would ever need for A3+ prints!

Rob, this is just one solution of many that are out there. In the words of the great Arthur Daley "the world is your lobster".
   

[KLaban]

...and what I’d like is something like an M9 at a tiny fraction of the Leica price. In essence, something that I can carry around as easily as the cellphone but can give real, printable A3+ RAW files.

Rob, another thought, if you really want an M9 at a tiny fraction of the Leica price you could do a lot worse than have a long hard look at the Fuji X100. Stunning little camera, I almost bought one myself.

[fredjeang]

What I like is the "almost" before bought...

There are those girls you almost want to invite to dinner.

Then there are the one you actually do invite to dinner. Init?

[KLaban]

What I like is the "almost" before bought...

There are those girls you almost want to invite to dinner.

Then there are the one you actually do invite to dinner. Init?

What can I say, my preference is for à la carte...

[fredjeang]

Indeed, à la carte.

Keith, I visited your site again not a long time ago.

Rob in a post seemed to say that you are quite young; I of course don't want you to reveal your age, just that it seemed to me that the work you display is not actually a work of a young artist but long years on the craft.
I was blowned again by the mastering of the composition, apart from light. This is a very impressive mature artistical work.
To be honest, I don't know many people who are capable of doing such a spot-on compositing. It's all subtle, on the edge, but a few milimeters off and it's not working as well.  
Very impressive mastering indeed and I hope you're doing well with those beautifull photographs. You deserve it.

Best regards from Madrid.

[BernardLanguillier]

Lightbox! Funny coincidence. I was looking at some images in spydergallery on the new iPad yesterday and thought... This really looks like a lightbox!

Of course there are a few workflow issues to iron out, but this tutorial may come handy!

http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/ipad-howto2

Disclaimer, I have not tried this yet but I could perhaps see myself exporting to ipad a whole batch of images and rating them in Lightroom in parallel as I browse through them on the pad.

Cheers,
Bernard

[KLaban]

Fred

Many thanks for the encouraging words, much appreciated.

No secret about my age, 62 and still counting ;-)

Best

Keith

[Rob C]

Fred

Many thanks for the encouraging words, much appreciated.

No secret about my age, 62 and still counting ;-)

Best

Keith

A mere child! But hell, I've been thirty-nine and holdng for decades, so there's still time for me to work it out and fix on a more realistic figure! A figure less realistic would make the mirror more happy, but you can't have everything. Maybe I can Photoshop myself into something more like the man inside sees. Might help.

Rob C

[Rob C]

Light tables?

So, in Adobe Bridge, when I open a folder, it shows the contents (and I can change the size of the thumbnails so I can see 20 or so images). Simply clicking a thumbnail shows the image in the preview pane (I can also change the size of the preview pane). Clicking on the preview pane magnifies a detail. I can then classify the image as a second which can hide the thumbnail.

But you are right, a light table, of which I have used many, is just such a better solution unless you have not developed the required flick of the wrist to get rid of outtakes.
William Shakespeare

I am glad you like film. It is a great medium and I am not being sarcastic--I closed my color darkroom a year ago because of supply problems. But there are no winners in this race. There is no difference in the complexity between a silver or bit process excepting availability of supplies--both can be as easy or complex as you want to make it.

I am not advocating one over the other. I believe the choice in a process and way of working is a creative one determined by an individual photographer.

That's part of the problem: I have PS6, which gives me all of the control any of my pix ever need; to buy newer PS systems and get into 'Bridge etc, costs even more money on top, and I just don't have the financial return on photography since I retired to make that make sense; in fact, there is no real financial return on it, and the thrill of new, technical, photographic discoveries (to me) is far from thrilling. I know how to do what I think I want to do, and I see no reason to throw money at what has turned from job to time-passer. I won't even say hobby, because that would suggest an interest, a craving, that has mostly been wrung out of me over the years. In reality, I see digital photography as not a lot more than a licence for firms to screw ever more moolah out of people where film used to be a fixed-price solution once you'd bought what you felt you needed. As I've written before, 'blads and Nikons could have been 'for life', but now the emphasis is on pushing people into ever more changing equipment; in fact, gathering this stuff appears to be what photography is nowadays: a race to the biggest toy cupboard.

Nikon's own NX2, which I have, allows something similar to Bridge, too, but these all become steps added to the process, which if that's the part of photography one enjoys, then fine, enjoy. To me it is just more interference with what was of divine simplicity.

Rob C

[MikeMac]

1.  I was perfectly happy using film and can assure anyone interested that I never felt it complicated, threatening or in any other way a bad deal. Yes, I did hate airport X-Ray, though, but managed to avoid most of it by making formal application to the various consulates through whose country I'd be passing. The only place the system failed me was the USA, and once Spain, and in Spain before I twigged about getting good documentation beforehand;

Having just travelled out to Russia with a high end laptop, server, backup drives, memory cards and cameras in my hand luggage I'm not sure I know which is more stressful, film or digital, at the airport! Still managed to leave a vital proprietary cable at home which messes with my backup strategy.

2.  the main problem with digital (for me) is that I have been used to looking at film after film on a lightbox and making pretty instant decisions about what I presented to a client and what stayed in the files or vanished into oblivion. In all the years since the D200, my first digi camera, I have never felt comfortable with digital editing, even for my own, private use where there may be only about fifty to seventy images as a maximum. Were I ever fortunate enough to land another calendar, I think I'd die of stress or old age before I managed to edit such a shoot running into thousands of images via a computer. It's alien to my ways of life, still;

Do you shoot more images per shoot/day with digital than with film?

3.  this thread began with the idea of complication and poor design (unless I'm mixing threads up, which is possible if one reads enough here) in cameras and as far as those parameters are concerned, I found film simple, instinctive and not at all frustrating. Nothing, since the 500 Series, has felt so right, simple and perfect for so many photographic applications, especially those that I face as an older man.

Returning to the thread, is it film that you found simple, or the cameras that used film (relative to todays multi button, multi-menu, multi-modal, mega-manual monsters)?

I could, I suppose, say nothing or just go along with the majority, but why? What would be the point for me or for anyone else?

Where's the fun in that? It's good to talk.

[KLaban]

Having just travelled out to Russia with a high end laptop, server, backup drives, memory cards and cameras in my hand luggage I'm not sure I know which is more stressful, film or digital, at the airport!

There is an element of truth there.

On the other hand I no longer have to worry whether I have any images or not, if the exposures are spot on, if the focus is as intended, if the compositions work, if the subject moved, if the tripod moved, if that darn cat is in the picture, if x-rays have fogged the films, whether the films will be processed properly, how scratched they will be, whether they will scan well, whether they will print well...the list of worries was bloody endless.

[Rob C]

1.  Having just travelled out to Russia with a high end laptop, server, backup drives, memory cards and cameras in my hand luggage I'm not sure I know which is more stressful, film or digital, at the airport! Still managed to leave a vital proprietary cable at home which messes with my backup strategy.

2.  Do you shoot more images per shoot/day with digital than with film?

3.  Returning to the thread, is it film that you found simple, or the cameras that used film (relative to todays multi button, multi-menu, multi-modal, mega-manual monsters)?

Where's the fun in that? It's good to talk.

Hi Mike

2.  With digital, I don’t shoot more because I retired before digital came into my working life and the work ain’t there no more; what I do do, though, is shoot a helluva lot of personal stuff that I would never have dreamed of shooting with film, if only because of cost;

3.  I found film to be very straightforward in use; the cameras for film were also very easy to use. That’s not to say that digital ones are not: what it says is that digital ones come over-complicated, offering a host of options (for which you are obliged to pay when buying) that, in my case, are mainly cancelled out in order to make the damned things more user-friendly and instinctive in use. Of course, I’m aware I may be an exception, that others may revel in having the machine do the thinking, but the only bit of machine-thought that has endeared itself to me is the Nikon Matrix metering. Oh – I also like the auto ISO in very low light conditions. That’s it. But I could live just as well without either.

Perhaps one of the main problems with the high-end digital slr cameras, apart from the technical aspects I mentioned, is weight and bulk. To which one could add price. Buying an F or F2 was never as painful as buying their equivalents today; ditto Hasselblad. Of course, there is also the factor of the one being allowable against the business, whereas with no business… Either way, I never imagined the day would come when a ‘blad would cost the same as a reasonable new car!

Rob C