[rollei_list] Re: [OT] film vs digital
----- Original Message ----- From: <eroustom@xxxxxxxxxxx> 
To: <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 4:34 PM
Subject: [rollei_list] Re: [OT] film vs digital
I was on a panel judging printing (for awards, etc.) for a regional organization. One of the entries was a digital piece. We didn't know who to give the award to, the press that produced and sold it, or Epson, so we passed on that category altogether. Many fellow artists are drawn to digital output for everything from artists books to broadsides and postcards, but I know that many of them learn to live with what comes out, or manipulate what they can understanding the limitations before creating. So it's selection of end results rather than control. For very talented people, the medium is secondary to that selection process that yields what get signed and numbered. For everyone else it's luck or adjusted expectations that produce good results. The digital media add another element - that of the intentions of engineering and sales teams. It's not so different from when Kodak changes Tri-X, but all the steps Sony and Epson save us, remove us by multiple degrees from the essence of the effort and the product. If there's anything wrong with digital it is that. Of course on the flip side, analog photography is difficult and expensive and inacessible to most - even many fine artists. I see my friends books and prints, and am duly impressed by the content and even the output, and I know that if it weren't for their PCs and printers, their works would not come to life.
This has been a very interesting discussion. One would think this topic is tired and it's outcome settled, but everytime it comes up it raises more questions and adds more depth. 

Elias
I comment only that pictorial presentation in books was traditionally done by making half-tone plates from photographs. The photographs were often heavily retouched and additional manipulation was done in the process of exposing and processing the half-tone negative and further retouching and manipulation was done on the resulting printing plate. Much of the manipulation offered in Photoshop and other image editors is simply an electronic version of work formerly done by optical, chemical, and mechanical means. I believe that the process of seeing remains the same whether the medium is chemical photography, electronic photography or some traditional form such as painting or pencil. There are certainly many mediocre artists. Some of them have become mediocre Photoshop operators. However, the mediocracy is not in the medium. Even if a medium is technically very difficult to work that fact does not gurantee that someone who becomes proficient in its use will be talented as an artist and produce interesting or moving work. I believe that lack of technical skill or ability can interfere with an artist with genuine talent but the technical ability and the artistic talent are two different things.
My only objection to digital or electronic photography is that it has limited the materials available for chemical photography, which I happen to enjoy doing and have spent most of my life learning how to do decently. As long as I can practice it I am fine with digital. I will add that IMO photomechanical reproduction has come leagues from the best quality available from conventional half-tone or other (lithographic for instance) reproduction. One has only to compare the best reproduction of, say, fifty years ago, to the modern stuff to be convinced. If you can find editions of _Fortune_ magazine from any time up to about the 1950's you will see color and B&W work that was about the best possible at the time. 

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Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx




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