Quote:
Originally Posted by jimiw
Please dont misunderstand me I do believe that digital does have its place but I also feel it takes alot away from learning the basics as so many wont bother to learn them because they dont have to. As long as they can fix their images in a photo editor. Ive read else where on this site that now because of digital almost anybody can or at least think they can be a photographer, just point and shoot. To me photography is an art and to be good you must learn the basics and expand from there. Thanks All, Jimi
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Jimi. Here i think you hit the proverbial nail on the head with a sledgehammer
I started with film about 20 years ago, shot both 35mm and Medium format (woo my good ol trusty RB67 =) and thoroughly enjoyed every single part of it. Had my own lab for my B&W's and actually did some E6 processing aswell. All fun ... and expensive. Which was the reason i stopped. Just couldn't afford it as it got more expensive.
A few years back i got me a digital camera instead, first just a p&s to have something, quickly outgrew that and got a EOS D60 which is basically stone age today
It still takes damn nice images.
but, and here comes the catch. I noticed a distinct preference to shoot carelessly with digital. I'm a pretty decent photoshopper and i started to see a behaviour in me that went away from the manual labouring that you had to do with film simply because if the frame was bad, no sweat, shoot another. You got instant feedback and you could erase it right away. This meant i wasted a whole lot more shots which i didn't when i shot film as the film was more expensive and more "valuable" in a way than a digital wasnt.
Now is this a big issue? well the thing is, if i shot 12 frames with my RB67, i most of the time had 12 really good frames since i did the homework and took care when taking my shot. Today, it's not uncommon to spray quite a lot of images and only get a few usable. I was at the point that out of 100 taken frames (in studio), maybe 20 were ok, and maybe 3-4 were good enough to keep.
Fairly recently i started rehearsing all the good ol basics of photography and lighting to teach a friend, and i even got myself a new Medium format film camera (Mamiya 645AFD) and started shooting a few rolls. Now im more careful when setting up the shot regardless if its digital or film and i shoot in a much more relaxed pace (which also relaxes the model =). On the last shoot i did i took 300 images, roughly 280 of those were sent to the client for selection (fashion shoot in studio btw).
So yes, i feel that many photographers, both new and old, can benefit from going back to the basics of photography and do a little rehersal even if their digital camera can handle it for them =)
It sure helped me :P