Just a Thought...

I’ve been going through Jeff Curto’s History of Photography podcast which has been very good and educational. Not surprising since this is Mr. Curto’s lectures from the class he teaches at the College of DuPage. I did get out of it what I wanted, which was exposure to history’s famous photographers. However, there is one thing I can’t wrap my head around; which is not Mr. Curto’s fault. It’s this whole thing with concept art. The music world has an equivalent called “performance art”. I don’t think it’s so much that I don’t get it, but more that I don’t want to get it.

To me, concept art or performance art is what happens when your left brain attempts to do the job that belongs to the right brain. In essence you as the viewer or artist are supposed to thrust your own intellectual ideas on the object of art rather than allow the art to speak for itself. In essence, it seems to me like the mental masturbations of someone pretending to be an artist telling the world that this boring or non-existent thing is art. For example, someone sits at a piano for 30 seconds in an outdoor setting, closes the piano and takes a bow. Someone erases another person’s painting and calls it art. It takes no skill to do these things. You are supposed to contemplate the ingenious mastery of perception or some other such nonsense.

Sure I come to art with a preconceived notion that art is supposed to be beautiful. I can get abstract art. Art is always introduced by folks like Michelangelo, DaVinci, etc. We then learn about impressionism such as the wonderful works of art by a Claude Monet. I can even get Picasso. So when I see photographic art in the same style I can wrap my head around it. I can understand it. I can see the beauty in the subject, even if I may not particularly enjoy the subject.

What I don’t get is how something that looks amateurish is supposed to be a modern interpretation of art. It almost seems to me as if the art community has become so inbred on its own philosophies and community that it has lost touch with the world. The people who buy these pieces of “art” don’t do it because they enjoy what it looks like, but rather because they look at it as an investment. I have to wonder if the concept art will truly be remembered a hundred years from now?

Do I consider myself an artist? Hardly. Sure I am pursuing photographic art, but I don’t count myself to arrived. In many ways, I want the art to challenge me and impress me. Not to challenge my understanding, but to challenge my skill and knowing what is possible with the medium. I’m forced to deal with left brain functions all day with my job, when I view art I want to exercise the other half of my brain. Concept art (and in the same vein performance art) fails to challenge me or impress me. My daughter created better work when she was nine.

Many people have considered what makes a photograph look old. Of course, the best way to find out is to look at some old photographs yourself. The question becomes a bit muddier when you have to consider who took the pictures? Was it a professional, was it an average Joe? What kind of equipment did they have? Many old pictures are plagued by being just out of focus because the focus screens were just off. One obvious difference was the use of black and white film. They didn’t have color on one piece of film back then. In the 40s color was done by three frames of film each with a different color filter (red, green, blue). The composite became the color rendition. Color film didn’t make it onto one frame until the 50s. Even then, it was no where near as stable as the black and white film.

The archive of pictures I inherited from my grandpa was all shot on two types of film: Plus-X and Tri-X. The formulations have changed over the years, as has the backing (the original backing is not “safety” film, so it degrades over time). I’ve also noticed the exposure is all over the place. Mostly from using the “Sunny 16” rule. The sky was plain white, or there wasn’t a whole lot of shadow detail. The things that we take for granted now were not in existence then. Meters were either very expensive and only for the elite pros, or they just didn’t exist at all. These technical challenges aside, there is one thing that separates yesteryear pictures and pictures of today—and that is on the creative side of things.

Back in the day, a portrait was a formal thing. You dressed up for the occasion. Even the informal pictures had a certain class about them. I’m not necessarily romanticizing the past, but things have changed in the past 60 years. What is socially acceptable, and what is not. How people dress. The expressions on their faces. 60 years ago the world had finally ended its second war, a war that spanned both hemispheres of the globe. These people have a depth of character and presence in their eyes that you aren’t going to see in today’s average person. There are certain parts of the world today that have been ravaged by war for many years, and you’ll probably be able to see the same character in the eyes of people from those regions. But if you are in America, Western Europe, or even Japan most people have forgotten the horrors of war and what it does to a soul. Even if you had the equipment to make sure everything was in focus, and the exposure was nailed every time, you would still notice a difference between pictures of people 60 years ago and today. If you truly want something that looks retro, you have to put yourself in their shoes. Pay attention to all the details such as clothing, architecture, etc. Maybe you want to add mistakes to make it even more believable. It’s just something to think about.

I’m not going to argue about quality, process, etc. It’s just a pure look at the cost of film vs. the cost of digital. Let’s be honest, there are some real gear junkies out there so we aren’t going to talk about the people who change their camera every week for half of a megapixel more resolution. We’re going to talk about real people and real situations. So first off there are certain costs that are the same. Your lenses and your flash units are not likely to be any different with film vs. digital at any format size. Medium and large format cameras where the shutter is in the lens use a standard cable release for remote operation. Small format cameras like to get you to spend more money for the same thing so a remote for your film camera may not work for your digital camera. What’s worse is that a remote for one model of a company’s camera won’t necessarily work with a different model of the same company’s camera. It’s still a constant expense, so go figure.

OK, so now that we got that out of the way, what’s different about digital vs. film (other than the fact that one is digital and the other is film)? First off, the cost of the sensor for a digital camera is very high in comparison to the “sensor” for a film camera. One is several hundred (or thousand depending on format) dollars, and the other is less than $10. That’s right, film is a light sensitive material, hens it is a film camera’s sensor. The big difference of course, is that you can only use film once and you can use a digital sensor several times. That’s the rub. Your up front costs are going to be higher with digital, but over a given time your consumable costs will overtake that initial investment. That’s a fact no matter how you slice it. Digital also has consumables in the form of compact flash cards and hard drives. They are convenient in that they can store large amounts of photos, but dangerous because if the device fails you lose everything. That’s why you need more than one, and to back them up on other drives. With film, the negative is your storage device and it requires physical damage to lose pictures.

Small format cameras are a little worse than medium and large format cameras in the sense that you have to replace the entire camera when you upgrade. Medium and large format cameras have changeable backs where you can use the same camera for both film and digital, depending on the client and your budget. By the way, a digital back for a medium format camera is several thousand dollars. You can purchase several small format digital SLR cameras for the same price. For the sake of argument, let’s keep things in the realm of the small format SLR cameras.

A used small format film camera can be had for $25-$400 depending on the model you buy (consumer/pro, age, etc.). You can buy a small format digital camera for about $500-$900 depending on the model you buy. Add to that a compact flash card for $20-$50 depending on the size and speed you buy. So just how many rolls of film will it take to overtake the initial plunge? Again, it depends on what kind of film you use. Slide film is near $10 a roll, but if you do black and white film is around $3 a roll. The price of lab development also varies based on the lab and the type of film. Slide film can cost near $10 a roll to develop at a pro shop, regular color film can cost about $4 a roll at a pro shop or $1.50 a roll at Target. If you develop black and white film yourself it will cost you pennies a roll—definitely worth it. So you can see that the answer depends on a lot of different things.

Let’s say you are the extravagant type and you shoot Fuji Astia 100. It costs $5 a roll, but to get it developed unmounted it costs $6 a roll (mounted is $10). That’s $11 a roll. Now, let’s say you also you skimped on the body knowing you were going to upgrade to digital later. So that’s $25 for a cheap used camera. Slide film is typically very low grain and very rich colors. To produce equivalent pictures you’ll need a nice digital. Let’s go for the $900 model (roughly what I paid for my used Canon 30D). The difference between the $925 (camera and compact flash card) digital and the $25 film camera is $900, so it would take roughly 82 rolls (just under 3000 pictures) to hit the break even point where the up front cost of digital equals the same cost in film.

Now, let’s say you are shooting sporting events and you need to take several pictures in a row quickly. You’ll need a better film body so your up front cost is something like $400 for a used top of the line model (roughly what I paid for my used Canon 1N). You’ll also need high ISO film if you are shooting indoors, which means you are working with normal color negative film. You have a choice between Fuji Press 800 for $3.50 a roll or Fuji Pro-Z 800 for $5.50 a roll. Developing costs for a pro shop is about $4 without prints. Let’s call it an even $8 for simple math. Using the same digital camera from the last example, your difference is only $525. You can shoot 65 rolls (2300 pictures) before you hit the break even point. In sports photography that number comes up really quick. Digital is a clear winner here.

For the aspiring fine art photographer, black and white is king. You’ll want the nicest camera you can afford because you want to enjoy the process, but you are now shooting black and white film and developing it yourself. Fomapan 100 (a very nice film) is about $3 a roll, and to develop it yourself costs about $0.50 or cheaper a roll depending on the chemicals you use. That’s $3.50 total per roll, and for the sake of argument we will compare the same two cameras in our last example. You will have to shoot 150 rolls of film (5400 pictures) before you break even. Since this style of photography is slower paced, your digital gear might need an upgrade before you reach that mark. The film gear will be just fine for years to come. My personal belief is that film renders a better black and white image than you can get from digital. That’s my opinion, and you can take it for what it’s worth. If we took the cheapy film camera and the expensive digital camera the difference is even more drastic at 257 rolls (9252 pictures).

For the casual shooter, film provides a great starting point as you get your equipment together. For the more prolific types of photography such as sports and event photography, digital is a clear winner. It will pay for itself rather quickly. For the fine art photographer, you can’t go wrong with film. There is no real demand on quantity of pictures, and the archival quality of film has been proven based on history rather than simulated projections. There are plenty of other reasons to choose film, but those are all personal choices. The truth is that digital cameras (not the cheap point and shoot variety) cost a lot more in the initial investment, and film has a continual cost you need to incur as you take pictures. Eventually, digital will become cheaper as long as you don’t keep upgrading your body. I use both, personally.

I’ve been using this blog as a way to talk about my adventures in programming, but as of late I sound like a broken record. I don’t have time to explore new things like I used to, and right now I’m in the process of pounding out code. It’s not active design, nor am I in control of the project any more. Times cycle, and I may be in that position again—even soon. However, I have a creative outlet with my photography. There’s different things you can do in the darkroom, new experiments to try with developing, etc.

I’m going to focus on my hobby, where I have most of my fun. All the old articles are still here, and won’t be going anywhere. I did want to give fair warning, knowing I’ll lose some of my audience. You may enjoy it if you stick around, so let’s all have fun and enjoy ourselves.

Adobe Lightroom is a vast improvement over Photoshop Elements, to which a hundred of you will chime in and say “no duh!” and another hundred of you will chime in and say “wait till you try Aperture!”. The truth is that all the adjustments I need are taken care of in Lightroom and Aperture. I’ll have to wait to try Aperture until I get my own Mac. The family Mac is used all too much for me to have time with it. My wife is doing transcripts, my son is creating and editing music, and my daughter is playing with video and her own canned music. That says something about the utility of the Mac out of the box. Dell, HP, Gateway, Sony, etc. pay attention, the set of software included in a Mac is both fun and useful for a family. Not the load of crap that slows down the PC and gets in the way.

Back to Lightroom. All my complaints about tagging and organizing my photos has been addressed in this piece of software. It’s how things should be. Of course, it does highlight a problem I noticed about my tags—over time some of the supporting players on my son’s team had their jersey numbers change. I shouldn’t have included the numbers in the name tags. The cool thing is that I was able to tag and organize my pictures from a game in about half an hour. Considering I am tagging the pictures with the players that can be seen, that’s better than Flickr. I’m sure that Aperture is equally cool in this regard. I just can’t play with it yet.

It’s important to point out that when you make things that people have to do fun, they are in turn more productive. They also have a certain loyalty to the brand. I thought it was interesting to point out that with the O’Reilly experiment to have their Lightroom columnist try Aperture for a week, and vice versa, that both columnists were loyal to the app that first made managing their pictures fun. They appreciated several features of the application they weren’t used to, but because they work differently they had to relearn how to do the same things they already knew how to do—which is never fun. It’s like a baller fixing their shot. They already know they can shoot, and they continually fall back into their old shot until they have practiced so much that the new shot becomes natural. It’s work and work is not fun. The only thing that will help them pursue the change is that they will become even better. With both Aperture and Lightroom, they suit different styles of working with your pictures. Aperture is very non-linear, and Lightroom is more structured. One avoids forcing a workflow on the user, and the other encourages a workflow.

Structure can help people make sense of their world, but the wrong structure can get in your way more than it supports you. If your discipline is to organize the pictures before you spend any time touching them up, then you will enjoy Lightroom. If you like to make multiple passes and organize on the fly as you touch up the pictures (a much more organic process), then Aperture will better suit you. Lightroom forces you to adapt to its way of thinking before you can enjoy it. Organize, then touch up. I tried organizing, and touching up the pictures one by one and that took too long. I adapted by organizing, selecting the top 10 and then touching them up one by one. It was annoying to have to change modes to change pictures, but it was more productive that way. I prefer a more organic approach. I’ll definitely try out Aperture (which is at a nicer price point anyway) in the near future.

The bottom line is that when the cost per picture is fairly low you will take more pictures. You then have to do something to manage them all. With large format photography, you have a much lower production pace because it takes longer to shoot, costs more per frame, and you usually don’t have to compromise to get a “close enough” picture. You can manage it efficiently with proofs and notes on paper. The whole idea of a program like Aperture and Lightroom is unique due to the demands of digital photography.

I’ve been playing with the Adobe Lightroom tool lately, mainly because I have a lot of pictures to manage. When it comes to sports photography, you end up taking hundreds of pictures a game. Even with 6 fps you get close to that critical moment, but many times just a bit off. A typical high school basketball season lasts for three months with roughly two games a week, rarely with a night off. Some of you are doing the math right now, let me save you some time: the season isn’t over yet and I have 1,872 pictures. That’s a lot to go through. I thought that in order to help me out I needed a system to weed out the not quite good enough and get a top 10 for each game, and then from there further refine to the top however many I decide. That task proved ridiculous when I used Photoshop Elements, but to be fair it really wasn’t designed for the purpose.

I’m happy to report that Adobe Lightroom is a very powerful and useful tool for your digital photography needs. I really don’t need a full Photoshop package, and at $650 US it’s a little out of reach anyways. Lightroom is a more manageable $299 US, which is still on the expensive side but it does everything I need—including the light touch ups I do for color correction and cropping. Aperture is equally powerful from what I hear, and based on whatever you get comfortable with first you tend to like. O’Reilly sponsored a week long review of an Aperture user learning and using Lightroom and vice versa. The result is both authors had legitimate reasons for their preferences, and neither was wanting to switch… Even though they gave the other app mad props and even recognized when things were done better. Bottom line is that whatever fits the way you do things, that’s what you want. Both have free 30 day evaluations, so take advantage of it and properly decide.

The main point wasn’t a comparison of Lightroom, Aperture, Photoshop Elements, or Picassa. The point was whether the claims of digital camera salesmen hold up. It also affects how we design user interfaces, but more on that later. The salesman will tell you how digital provides “instant feedback”, “lots more room than a roll of film”, “you can always fix it later”, etc. Sure, my DSLR provides instant feedback but I find that annoying, so I turn that feature off. I have to concentrate on what’s going on around me, not the toy in my hand. I need to be ready for a fast break, a drive to the basket, a beautiful no-look pass. I’ll miss it if I’m constantly distracted by that screen shining off of my cheekbone. Sure, it’s convenient to not have to change rolls in the middle of a game, but I tend to take too many pictures—most of which are good, but not great. I found that when I was using film I would budget 36 pictures per quarter (one roll per quarter), and that worked. Of course, scanning them to manage them was a pain. Now I have anywhere between 175 to 300 pictures in a game. I’m more wasteful instead of better. Of course, fixing it later is a major pain. I’d rather get it right, or at least really close at the time I take the picture.

Lastly, we have to really think about what the purpose of photography is. It’s to have pictures. You know these images on hard paper with a nice finish… I find that when you have 90% of the pictures you take never see paper, you have to wonder if you really need to manage the pictures. If it really wasn’t memorable, then why hold on to it? I’m sure you can tell me many reasons why, but these are legitimate questions you have to answer. The big one, of course, is what is the purpose of what I’m doing? Why is it that I have so many pictures to manage, but there’s no actual picture? Who’s going to look at these and actually enjoy them? People only have so much attention span, so a top 20 might be the limit of someone’s attention span for a slide show.

The bottom line is that better disciplines make you a better photographer, not better gadgets. If you can’t appreciate what a feature can do for you, you don’t need it. Far too much attention has been placed on the gadgets on not on helping someone do what they really want to do. If the idea is to focus on photography, then get out of the user’s way and let them do what they want to do—and no more.

In the analog world, the focus has always been on the hard picture. If you have to print the pictures yourself, you’ll be a lot more conservative about what you believe is worth taking. There’s a fair amount of work involved in getting a good print. It’s rewarding work, but work nonetheless. People have discovered that they are more drastic with their adjustments in the analog world than they are in the digital world, and the picture is better for it. I think a large part of that has to do with the delayed feedback. As we make changes in the digital world, we see every little thing and intermediate step immediately, and the more drastic changes scare us, so we don’t complete what we were originally thinking. In the analog world, you make the changes and prepare everything you need at once without seeing it appear in front of you. When you develop the print, you are pretty happy with the work you did. In a way, the instant feedback hurts more than it helps.

The answer as it turns out for me was to replace the bellows in my large format camera with a homemade version. This is not a project I recommend for the feint of heart, not because of the difficulty, but because of the tedium. A bellows is a fairly simple device that is designed to block out light and provide some flexibility so that the front and rear standards can move about freely. The bellows essentially has two layers and a set of ribs. For small cameras with small bellows, this process isn’t too bad. My Graflex View Camera has a 16 inch bellows (17 if you count the overlap to connect the bellows to the standards), with 42 ribs for each of the four sides. That’s 168 ribs that you have to cut out and place individually on the bellows. Half of them are 8mm wide and the other half are 6mm wide.

Once the ribs are in place, constructing the bellows is not that difficult. Some Roc-Lon curtain blackout material, some black fabric paint, and another layer of the curtain blackout material. Maybe I should have used something lighter for the second layer, but I really didn’t want to get two different materials. The most difficult piece was to try and get the tiny machine screws through two layers of Roc-Lon. In fact, I gave up trying to make that happen. Instead, I’m buying some super glue and calling it a day. The bellows will be permanently installed, but the only thing that will convey with the camera when I upgrade will be the lens. I think this is an acceptable workaround for something that will otherwise be an exercise in futility. I’ll post pictures when it is done.