h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

'Lens vs. pinhole is the least of the debates - when it comes to detail, there's still the fact that your digital photocell is not as subtle as the atomic structure of the crystal surfaces on film, and then again when we print (remember were losing analog printing here too). Then there's the loss of genuine shutterspeed, the play of movement becomes a matter of programming, much more than it ever was before, because your not setting the hardware, you're setting the way the hardware interprets the data.'

Sorry Autist but this isn't true. I work in research chemistry which involves many many areas of spectroscopy which in turn involves the measurement of light intensity and other wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation as they hit a film surface or photocell. For a long time now digital methods of measurement and anaylsis have transformed and eclipsed traditional techniques. Digital technology has far superceded the sensitivity, resolution and subtelty of analogue measurement techniques (and this invludes photographic films) to degree where it has become an area of science in its own right.
Whether people want this for artistic photography or not is a different question of course. Also, as far as I'm aware some of the better digital cameras will allow you to manually alter shutter speed, won't they?

I do think there's a bit of a rip going on by digital camera manufacturers there. Giving you the option to control the camera's various functions (sensitivity, aperture size, exposure time, white balance, contrast etc.) must be a relatively simple software feature to add, yet its usually only available on the most expensive models.

I've got all that on a digital camera I got free with my Nectar card
I think the camera retails at £80 ish so it's not the top of the range.

I agree- i would say that the vast majority of digital cameras allow some kind of manual control of shutter speed, aperture, etc. And there is the exact same 'real' shutter that opens and shuts for varying times.. I know cause i sell and use the things and i hear/see the shutter working!

It's only really the recording part of the camera that's different- the 'front end' could (focal legnth issues aside) be cut off and put onto a film camera and still work. In fact some really upmarket cameras do just that, or the reverse in fact. Digital backs are available for some old film Leica cameras

High end digital cameras are getting close to the resolution of ordinary colour film which is (translating from Fuji's LPM figures) around 15 Megapixels on a 35mm frame. Mono has a significantly higher resolution because it is not constrained by having to provide colour information and, at a guess, is probably nearer 50 Mpx on a 35mm frame.

Ansell Adams took his pictures on a 5x4 plate camera. That's five by four inches, about 127mm or 3.63 times the width and 13.2 times the area of 35mm. That would be getting on for 200Mpx using colour film and a whopping 600Mpx or so on mono film. Ansell Adams' collodium plates may not quite match this modern resolution but even so one print would pretty much fill a CD with picture data.

I'm all for advances in technology but we do need to think carefully about storing these images. I can still pull out wartime photos of my parents and grandparents from a collection my mother has, stored rather haphazardly in a leather bag. Will your grandchildren be able to view a picture of you in sixty odd years time so easily?

Don't forget the technological legacy of photography. It's not just limited to pictures for posterity. Photographic techniques are still used to miniaturise and etch the circuits used in your computer CPU and, ironically, in the CCD in your digital camera.

F

I used to run workshops on basic photography with "Unemployed/Social misfit/general thug type Yoof" & started off my making the ultimate basic pinhole camera, a shoebox & sheet of photo paper at the back.;just explained the absolute basics: "the photo depends on how much light you let in, you can have a tiny hole & leave it open for ages, or a bigger hole & shut it very quickly; too much light will bugger it up totally" Left it to them to decide the size of needle hole. Then we just went out in a pack & menaced the local population & returned to crowd into the darkroom & see what had transpired.

Obviously it would be in negative form, but exposure would vary, the first practical lesson.

Anyone who was left interested at the end of this generally was pretty receptive to finding out the basic relationship between aperture, "shutter speed", effects of light on various photographic materials, means of twiddling the variables etc...basically, well en route to becoming interested in photography.

I've taught photography using this as the starting point to little kids (4 yrs upwards) & they seem to grasp the basic idea.

I am stubbornly of the opinion that Henri Cartier Bresson was "god" of the art of the "decisive moment" & Ansel Adams was "god" of the print!

zdt

I agree! I can't remember the name of the print, but that famous one of Adams' of the full moon rising beside Half Dome in Yosemite can still make me catch my breath. Particularly after I went to Yosemite last year and stood in almost the same spot. The sky just goes on forever there, with half a mountain to frame it.

I think that print of Bresson's, of a man jumping over a puddle is as famous. There's something about the look on his face -- as enigmatic as Mona...

SC

OH YES! They are the "big two" for me also!!!!

to lurk spacecadette, feel free to do likewise!

zdt *why am i hooting at 5am???*

Ansel Adams ruined black and white landscape photography for everyone who came after. Pack up you equipment folks... it's been done.

Seriously, you can't take a good black and white landscape in the American West anymore. Kenny Rogers and Two of Edward Westons sons are trying, but they can't surpass Adams and so they just look like they're copying him.

I can't limit myself to one or two favourite photographers. Edward Weston's stuff gives me a bit more thrill than Adams'. Jerry Uelsmann did amazing things in his time. Dianne Arbus captured humanity. Robert Mapplethorpe and Joel Peter-Witkin showed me beauty in the bizarre and horrific.

Of course the stuff I like the best is my own.

You missed out O. Winston Link.

F

"That would be getting on for 200Mpx using colour film and a whopping 600Mpx or so on mono film. "

I seriously doubt digital cameras will *ever* get to the 200MPixel stage, not because it wont be technically possible, but because of the problems we are already seeing with 6-8 million pixel cameras.

Firstly 'noise' increases the more pixels there are- some 8MPixel cameras i've seen results from look pretty rough, especially with 'solid' ereas of colour, eg, blue sky.

And secondly the processor speed required both to record and to open the pictures in camera or on computer would be a massive drain to batteries (which are reaching their limits in terms of storage capacity-see articles in New Scientist that explain how we have reached the limits of current battery technology).

I have used one or two 8M jobbies and i am amazed at how long it takes (about 3-4 seconds) just to move from one picture to another in the camera, whereas most sub 4 million cams are instant. The new 8M ones, the supposed pinnacle of consumer digital cameras, costing about £500 upwards remind me of how sluggish some of the first digital cameras were!

In cameras that use faster processors to get over this problem, the battery life is very very short, and the camera gets very hot!

Ok, to say it wont ever happen is a bit silly, but i hardly think it's imminent. Too many hurdles to overcome. It's more than simply stuffing more sensors onto a chip.

Perhaps if you had a digital sensor the size of that 600Mpixel photographic plate the odds on this one would be evened out a little?

Good point! It still wouldn't solve the power consumption and processing time problems, but it may well be technically possible, even now, to fit that many pixels onto a plate that size...

For me there is no better filling than i get up in 4 o'clock in the morrning and go to Danube river to capture mist with my camera,and work in the lab and tinny tickling in my stomach and hardley expecting when i developing my films.And enjoyment of making prints and ofcuorse smells of developer and fixer,or blei-fix if it's coulor prints.It's silly but i like it.Now i scanning all my films but just for easily find neghativs when i need it.When you use 48 films on yuor holiday for 11 days there is not be ease to find one shot which you need.

You can buy a 22Mpx digital back for medium format cameras (e.g. Hasselblad) which is 6 x 4.5cm. That's 2.36 by 1.77 inches: 4.18 sq inches or about 21% of the 5x4 plate as used by Adams.

In fact the digital back doesn't quite offer the full 6x4.5cm frame and you would have to use it a lot for it to start being economic compared to roll film as it currently costs £20,000. Yes, that's right, twenty grand.

F

That's more money than I have at the mo to spend on photographic equipment. My car cost much, much less than that.