When I started shooting professionally, the big technological innovation was TTL metering. WOW! I shot film for over 35 years and because of my process and the way I was trained, I spent as much time in the darkroom as I did behind the camera.
I've heard a lot of discussion about the "evils" of Photoshop recently. Personally, there is nothing I can do in Photoshop that couldn't be done in a darkroom. Photoshop does make it a lot easier to do. Is digital the same as film? No. But then Tri-X Pan wasn't Kodachrome either. Different media, different processes, different results--but great results were produced with both. I admit, I was a late-comer to digital cameras—my F3s had to be pried from my fingers. I love my Nikon DSLRs. I have had to change my processes, but everything I learned is still relevent—focal length, ISO, aperature, shutter speed, depth of field, zone system, etc.
I think some people get lost in thinking of it as only a qualitative question. My 16-year old son is fond of asking things like, "which is better, a Ferrari or a Taurus?" It really isn't a fair comparison of values or qualities, it is a comparison of differences. Digital is different from film, but that doesn't make it any better or worse.
I still shoot both, I still shoot the same way, and my back-end processes are completely different. Obviously the results are different, but one media is no more or less art than the other. As Trent said, "they are all just tools to me."
No comments:
Post a Comment