[rollei_list] Re: The Photographic Reality
- From: Eric Goldstein <egoldste@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:20:48 -0500
In a professional context, the only time film was or is cheap is if you were
shooting a $10-15-25,000 day under difficult circumstances where things were
so fluid that if you missed something in particular you were completely
screwed. Other than that, any professional context in which I worked you
were always being told to watch your film and lab costs. Always... no
exception.
Happy snappers were always regarded as undisciplined and not knowing what
they were doing.
The real false sense of economy in digital is the idea that you can shoot
endlessly at little additional cost. This, too, is folly, because this type
of undisciplined shooting costs you gobs of time on both ends, and that is
your greatest cost of all. And if you are a grunt shooting a wedding or Bar
Mitzvah, where the practice is to dump everything, unedited and uncorrected,
onto a fulfillment site and get a cut of everything that's ordered, you may
as well be shooting portraits at Sears...
Eric Goldstein
On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 2:55 PM, Frank Dernie
<Frank.Dernie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> Yes, I guess for a professional film may be cheap. For an 11 year old
> amateur it wasn't, believe me. I still think the saying is an Americanism
> rather than a worldwide one, in that I have only heard it from North
> American pros. None of the European pros I know used it as a little saying,
> though the sports pros I know certainly shot a lot of frames. I used to
> carry film back to England from Grands Prix for the Autosport and Motoring
> News staff photogs years ago.
> For me everything about photography was expensive! I could afford it for
> the last few years but will need to be more economical in retirement.
> cheers,
> Frank
>
> On 21 Feb, 2010, at 18:18, Mark Rabiner wrote:
>
> >> I had never heard the phrase "film is cheap" pre-internet. Perhaps it
> was a US
> >> teacher's thing, hence unheard here in the UK.
> >> For me, starting photography as a schoolboy in 1961 film was -very-
> expensive.
> >> I could afford 1 cassette of B&W film per month. I learned to consider
> what I
> >> wanted -before- pressing the shutter, not after looking at the results.
> >> This is so imbued in my psyche that when I could afford more film I
> still shot
> >> sparingly, and now I use digital, and each shot is effectively free, I
> shoot
> >> more than with film, but not in a profligate way.
> >> OTOH, when I am photographing people, I -do- often wish I had shot more.
> >> Maybe I will get into the habit eventually...
> >> Frank
> >
> >
> > Frank "film is cheap" is a common piece of basic good advice people
> getting
> > into professional photographer hear from their mentors and their peers
> from
> > day one . In the context of professional photography is a basic fact and
> > truth that has been with us for a very long time and has never been a
> matter
> > of the slightest controversy. ...till we got news lists on the internet
> > with camera collector types second guessing the methods of serious and
> > professional photographers from the back seat.
> >
> > [Rabs]
> > Mark William Rabiner
> >
> >
> >
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