[rollei_list] Re: "digital" supreiority is about bad attitude

I'm hoping the dumping of film equipment continues a bit longer.  I've
acquired professional 4x5, 120, and 35mm film systems over the last 3 years
- cameras, lenses, and accessories that I could only lust after in years
past due to the cost!  I still have a few items I'd like to acquire before
the "collector" markets relize what just happened....

I use film when I can and digital when the job calls for it.  Most of the
commercial work I've done over the last 2 years demanded the near-instant
turn around of digital (product shots, corporate brochures, etc.) for
marketing folks who always seem to need stuff yesterday.  These people now
take for granted you're going to send them a link to the day's shots to view
online within hours of the shoot.

All my personal and fine art work is back to film 98% of the time.

Jeff

On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 9:00 AM, Peter J Nebergall <iusar4s@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

>  I'm not interested in big statements, only in what I see.  Digital is
> convenient.  Digital is fast, it satisfies the itch once filled by polaroid,
> it is perfect for the "virtual reality" generation who experience life on a
> computer screen.  Digital puts images, via internet, in the hands of buyers
> faster than ever.  And, for those (the majority) who want images but don't
> want to learn how to make them, digital, heavily automated, is perfect.
> Never forget, its all a mass-market economy we have, and the great mass, who
> once bot box brownies and then 126 or 110 instamatics, are the target
> market.
>
> After 14 years at a national magazine, I see the uncomfortable truth that
> the advertisers call the tune.  The markup on film and film cameras is/was a
> few percent.  The markup on DSLRs is ten times that -- and you'll have to
> buy new lenses, new printers, new computers, and the latest
> image-manipulating programs -- which will be obsolete in two years
> anyway.  There's good money to be made selling the stuff.  Thus, the mags
> push it, and the fashionistas and the wannabees, who "gotta have the latest,
> so they'll be IN!" buy it.
>
> The best DSLRs are pretty good, and getting better.  By the time you've
> paid off the loan, there'll be a new one....
>
> That's not the problem.  The problem is the same as that of rock-and
> rollers who proclaimed "jazz is dead NOW!" and of keyboard synth players who
> proclaimed the death of the symphony orchestra.  Attitude.  There's a lot of
> room out there.  There's a lot of companies stepping up to the plate to keep
> our 4x5, 2x3, 120 and 35mms filled.  This last month, Freestyle finally
> answered my plea for 16mm cine film.....  No, we won't go away, and we will
> continue to equal, even to surpass, the digerati.  We will, of course, scan
> prints and negs; buyers want it.  But we won't abandon our old classics
> anymore than the jazzman will park his sax or the folkie his banjo; they
> work, and for many of us, digital synthesis is not an improvement, merely a
> parallel means.  And if we can beat it with 50 year old equipment, why not
> just keep on?
>
> Its the "us and them" attitude that gets me... the idea that if I buy the
> latest gizmo, success is guaranteed, and that if I continue to use cameras
> as old as I am, I'm meaningless, hopeless as a person, and my work is of no
> account.  Balls.  Check out my *MOMENTARY ARTIFACTS* (at
> www.peternebergall.com; there's not a single digital-camera image in
> there.  The cover was shot with a Baby Speed Graphic.
>
> Alongside this is the internet revolution in image sales -- so now almost
> all photo sales, save weddings, are carried out on line.  Film cameras are
> at no disadvantage; you scan the prints.  I scanned everything for my book
> -- but I didn't throw away anything because it was made with a film
> camera....
>
> We're not going away.  OK?
>
> Peter Nebergall (who just bought a new Omega C enlarger at a jumble
> sale...)
> On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:08:47 -0400 "Robert Lilley" <
> 54moggie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> > I would come under the hobbyist and fine arts photographer heading.
> > I
> > follow all these digital vs. film discussions closely.  I don't
> > understand
> > the digital world as much as I understand film.  So in the midst of
> > all this
> > digital talk I am building a full sized darkroom complete with
> > utilities,
> > ventilation, cabinets, sink, etc.  Am I a fool?
> >
> > I was in a gallery in Blairstown, NJ a week ago.  One of the
> > exhibitors was
> > a silver printing photographer who had a little place card under her
> > work
> > stating that folks better buy up silver prints now because there
> > isn't going
> > to be any film or paper in the future.
> >
> > I listened to a former head of photography at the Museum of Natural
> > History
> > tell me that if she was buying large format today she wouldn't
> > purchase a
> > 5x7 camera.  She doesn't think film will be in available in that
> > size soon
> >
> > Five camera stores in my area closed this past year - the general
> > lament, "I
> > can't compete in the digital market".
> >
> > Then I read your folks on the internet who are slowly but surely are
> > going
> > digital.  It seems that soon film will be relegated to just the
> > collectors
> > who sound like tree frogs exercising their shutters as film's sun
> > sinks in
> > the west.
> >
> > Am I a Don Quixote de la Mancha tilting vanishing windmills, a
> > Luddite
> > watching the world pass me by?  Do I not understand something, did I
> > miss
> > the announcement?
> >
> > Rob
> >
> > ---
> > Rollei List
> >
> > - Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > - Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe'
> > in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org
> >
> > - Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with
> > 'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into
> > www.freelists.org
> >
> > - Online, searchable archives are available at
> > http://www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list
> >
> >
> >
>
>

Other related posts: