The twelfth installment of the One Minute Rant. Each audio is one minute or less and focuses on a very specific topic to engage readers here on the FR to comment and start a dialogue! Just click on the RANT logo to listen.
The twelfth installment of the One Minute Rant. Each audio is one minute or less and focuses on a very specific topic to engage readers here on the FR to comment and start a dialogue! Just click on the RANT logo to listen.
Figital Revolution 
I agree it is sad that this misinformation has almost killed off film photography. About 4 years ago, I bought into the hype over digital photography and switched 100% from film to digital. Last year, I started looking around on flickr and noticed that there were a lot of people still shooting film, even Kodachrome my old favorite film. Since then, I have been shooting more film than digital.
Spot on!
In a strange way technology has not helped the true art of photography, in fact in my humble opinion after years of subscribing to the new digital world I now see that in a strange way it has knifed the true art of photography directly in the back. As you correctly stated Stephen to many they refuse to see that both forms, digital & analogue, can co-exist.
Manual or auto gearbox in your car? Not either or, both exist and continue to exist for the user/drivers personal preference. Film or digital? Why cannot the same scenario be seen by so many? It does NOT have to be one or the other – We the people can still decide and put the big *P* back into Photography instead of it being all about using the very latest gear as it has been allowed to become thanks to large quarters of the media. Viva the revolution! 🙂
I keep worrying that by the time I move to a place with enough space to set up a permanent darkroom, there will be a severely limited selection of printiing papers and developers, and even those will have to be ordered by mail.
I haven’t fallen into the hype. Digital capture is ok, but generally not my first choice. It has it’s place. Scanning and inkjet printing (what I mostly do at the moment), is ok, but what a loss I would feel I could never make another silver print because there simply were no more materials.
One thing that I think is useful is to both support and educate your local photo shops and labs if you are lucky enough to have them. I make a point of placing my Freestyle order through my local photo supply store. (Beauphoto.com, Vancouver BC)
It may actually save me money because I don’t get hit with import duty, but the other point is that if I order something weird I get a chance to talk to the the folks behind the counter about what I’m planning to do with it and they can then suggest it to others who might be interested in the same thing.
I enjoyed your rant very much. I bought my first camera, DSLR, 3 years ago at 27. All I heard was about digital, what little I heard from film is that it was obsolete. Well, after about of year of taking as many shots as possible I got a little bored with photography. I discovered film by accident. It was a little more money but I noticed I started really enjoying Photography. Now, I take less pictures but enjoy looking at things differently and taking better photos instead of deleting hundreds of digital files. Long live film!!! And the Figital Revolution!!!
Stephen
I couldn’t agree more. I shot film for years and then didn’t do much photography after I lost the use of my darkroom. Digital was instrumental in reinvigorating my enthusiasm – once again I could make the photographs and not just depend on the lab to print as the machine saw fit – but after a couple of years I’m back shooting more film than digital and scanning to print digitally.
There seem to be a lot of websites that meet your description – often appearing helpful and educational – but I can’t help thinking that they have either been deluded or are deliberately misrepresenting reality and in so doing support a consumerist view of photography as being principally the acquisition of the next digital body and not an arts driven view.
I hate the description ‘capture’.
Mike