William Sommerwerck wrote:
> "Serious" photography was never easy. Until Eastman introduced dry plates,
> photographers had to sensitize their own materials, a real mess. But the
> difficulty forced photographers to spend at least a little time thinking
> about what they were doing.
>
> As the act of photographing something became simpler and less expensive, it
> also became more trivial......
>
> The problem with digital photography is that it reduces the incremental cost
> of taking a photograph to essentially nothing. The photographer thus has
> zero motivation for paying any attention to what he's doing. How many photos
> remain in the camera's memory, unprinted, simply because they aren't any
> good?
>
You kicked off an interesting thread, William. So far, I haven't heard
of experience that parallels mine.
I thought that one result of getting digital cameras would be exactly
what you say, a lot of throw away shots between the keepers, with a
lower keeper ratio, but with any luck, more total keepers.
That's not what happened:
- Apparently, the risk of wasting money on film and processing was
holding me back when there were lots of image-worthy subjects. When in
really photogenic circumstances, I'm now shooting much more, but my
keeper ratio seems about the same. The problem of what to do with lots
of good images is another story.
- When there wasn't enough to shoot really worth the film, I would
sometimes just shoot off the end of the roll in my impatience to finish
it up so I could see the results. With no need to "finish the card", I
don't do that, so one source of losers is eliminated.
- I seem to have retained some of my shooting habits from film, being
parsimonious with dup/bracketing shots. I've been quite shocked a few
times that I turn out to have taken only one or two frames of a subject
I really thought was great. I had told myself when I started with a DSLR
that I would do lots more bracketing and multiple shots in general to
assure a good one, but I am not doing that very much, mostly only for
very long fl shots, where it has paid off with a sharp one among some
fuzzies. In fact, I think the ability to see that the shot is ok on the
quick review may actually lead to fewer shots per subject than on film
for some subjects I want to be sure not to miss.
- I may not spend as much time as using a view camera. :-) But I
think I spend about as much time thinking a shot through now as I did
with film. I don't think "seeing" the shot and capturing it is really
different. The process after that is certainly quicker and cheaper.
I've even found myself taking lots of time setting up the shots with the
P&S cameras. Of course, my criteria may be looser than yours, but I'm
rather happy with the shots in this little gallery. The first two rows
without the first image, which is from another day, are 8 out of a
series of 11 shots, with the ones not shown being perfectly acceptable
variations of reflections b moving my position. The last two rows are 8
of 9 images taken in a row. And the one I left out of the gallery is
still a keeper to me.
I had time and took time, and I think I have 17 out of the 22 shots
taken in these two little sessions as keepers. And the others aren't
junk, simply repetitious.
So, as Lord whatsnisname's quote isn't what people usually say, but
"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt
absolutely.", I would reword your above statement:
"As the act of photographing something becomes simpler and less expensive, it
is also easier for it to become more trivial....but it need not."
> The other day I pulled out one of my OM-4Ti's and played with it for a
> while. It's an elegant product, as 35mm SLRs go, and as its model number
> suggests, it's intended to be the SLR equivalent of a Leica.
>
Indeed, although I've taken to doing my playing with an OM-1.
> The E-500 is nothing like that. It's easy to handle, but grossly outsized
> for an SLR whose format has less than 1/4 the area of a 35mm frame. ** There
> is nothing "elegant" about it; Olympus's claim that the 4/3 System would
> permit compact cameras and tiny lenses seems naive at best, a blatant lie at
> worst.
>
It appears that the limitations of existing technology are behind that.
The E-400 looks to move toward the OM vision.
> ...
> ** Several years ago I bought a Pen F, and was startled to discover that an
> OM body is only fractionally larger.
>
I think the OMs are about as small as one can make an SLR and still have
all the controls at ahnd and easy to use and still be usable by most
hand sizes; an ergonomic, rather than technical, limit.
Moose
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