I love taking photographs and since 2004 I have had the opportunity to own a Kodak Easyshare camera. Now I know this camera is starting to get old, but it has done a great job at capturing the important images within my families life. Prior to this, I used a Minolta 35mm camera that was a hand-me-down from my mother (A very nice hand-me-down).
Prior to 2004 my 35mm was wonderful and produced great pictures! I was however staring to have some problems with the shutter speed and getting some light seepage that was a bit frustrating. Around November 2003, J-Mom and I decided to get a new digital camera prior to the birth of Diva-J. We also were very excited about the idea of immediate gratification, seeing the pictures, being able to delete pictures immediately and re-shoot, etc.
The camera definitely lived up to its reputation, and as I said before I have been able to get some greast picture over the years.
Saying this though I return to the crux of the question I am posing today. Is digital photography helping or hindering our society?
I can say that I love the ability to tinker and fix and know what I am taking. But the quality of a 35mm is stellar….and there is still something to the anticipation of what you will get with this type of a camera and the roll of film that you are turning in. I can honestly say that I always love the wait that I have and the suspense of seeing what my eye and camera captured with my newer Canon 35mm camera that J-Mom and her parents got for me back in 2006.
Does digital picture taking cheapen the moment? I think not. Now, I will put a caveat on that in saying that I do think that it has become so easy to make an image something that it is not…making the perfect image when the original is far from it. This makes me think of the whole concept of airbrushing pictures for magazines and how reality really isn’t reality.
I am not saying that I am a purist as some are…. I do not shun digital technology. By the contrary, I find myself using my digital camera more than my 35mm…but the sad thing…I barely print off the pictures I take. I do keep them on the computer, but I fail to print them as I would with my 35mm pictures. This is one of the things I miss with digital photography…you are not forced to get pictures you have to throw out or cringe at. Instead you can pick and choose the best ones, you get to digitally enhance those that you do want making the perfect moment even better…. and you get to save money because you are only printing the pictures you want.
One final thing that comes to mind is the fact that recently Polaroid released information that they would no longer be making Polaroid Instamatic cameras…this too is a creature of a bygone age. I mean I always loved having to shake the heck out of those pictures to see what kind of image I (or whoever else was taking the photograph) had received…oh well…I guess the technology revolution continues.
So I now turn this over to you, please fill the Maniverse with your thoughts…
Good day from the Divadom….
2 things:
1) What?! No more Polaroids? That stinks. As crappy as the pics turned out, I have fond memories of those things.
2) Tom & I take LOTs of pictures (should I be embarrassed to say sometimes over 500 a months?). A 35mm is not practical for us! Though we do still have one. It collects dust in our camera bag.
I love the fact that I do not have to buy film, pay to develop film (only to find out that some pics didn’t turn out), and buy a photo album or stash away pics in a box never to been seen until you clean out that closet. Now, with a 35mm, I do love the anticipation of what will be developed, but I have to say, we live in a small house and could never store all of the pictures that we take all of the time. I like the fact that we can take a lot of pictures, capture all of the moments, and not worry about how many pictures we have left and have to sacrifice one moment for another. I do like to use my 35mm for “photoshoots” of the girls, but that is about all. Times change, kids grow and we will never get some of these moments back if the film is bad, or the developing is bad. I find that I capture more now than I did even when Reegan was born. Just think of all the fond memories our children will have looking at more every day events than at just special events later in life.
I’m with ya, Chris! There was something about the unknown – the anticipation of waiting for that roll of film to come back from processing to find out how your photos came out. The delayed gratification made photos a bit more special… and equally frustrating if you fudged your prize-winning shot. So, I’m nostalgic about the old days of photography, but at the same time, I’m a bit too enamored by the immediacy and ease of digicams to ever go back.
My wife & I were fairly early adopters – we bought a Sony Mavica floppy-disk based digital camera (that took half-megapixel pics) about 11 years ago. We lugged that beast all over Ireland and still have the box of floppies to show for our adventures!
My wife’s been itching for a digital SLR, but the price tag is still a little too steep to justify.
The only thing that digital photography has done is allow one to take more bad images. The basic tenets of photography have not changed as a result of digital cameras becoming commonplace.
Digital photography has not done anything to harm society, in fact this same argument happened when color film started becoming mainstream. And “developing” still happens with all professional photographers. A lot of the same techniques that are used in the dark room are still used in the “digital darkroom.”
Digital has definitely forced our family to start being proactive about storage and backups. Our lives are now moving towards having everything captured digitally, and so now we deal with things like extra backups, offsite storage, and the like.
One thing digital has done, and done really well, has been to accelerate my learning curve exponentially. I can continuously try out new ideas and techniques with lighting and exposure that I simply wouldn’t have had the patience for with film.
Of course, with all that experimentation, that brings me back to the first point mentioned above about storage. It’s important to work on an ‘edit in’ mentality rather than an ‘edit out’ one. That is, pick the shots you want to save, vs. the ones you want to discard. You’ll end up with a lot less fluff!
Eric
I am sad about the Polaroid too, but at a buck a picture (which it was when I last bought it, many years ago), I can live without it…
I think digital photography has gotten to a place where it enhances everything AND can be abused – true for just about anything new and anything, period!