[RobA_Oz]

I don't think it is just convenience over quality. Sometimes that is true, especially in early models. It's probably true that a good photographer could get objectively better results from film than from an *ist. But now? I think even the most hardened film advocate would be hard pressed to claim a K-1 or even a good APS-C body wouldn't give you better results in most or even all cases.


We could go down a long audiophile rabbit hole, but you can get equal or better quality digital music than vinyl. And the digital copy doesn't physically wear down and degrade every time you play it. The physical media may eventually degrade, but hopefully you've made numerous perfect copies before that happens.

I think we're basically in agreement, but to be clear, convenience is what mostly drives the change, and when that happens, there's no going back for the majority.

The thing that has always struck me in the arguments over analogue versus digital, is that the outputs with each are different, and the user can decide which they prefer for themselves, although most would not do side-by-side comparison tests in making that judgment. Still, you have to make comparisons wisely: ask me whether I'd prefer to listen to a vinyl recording of Dire Straits' Love Over Gold or an early CD version (through the same HiFi system) and I know which I'd choose – that's one test I have done, but it reinforces your point about improvements being made over time (for example, sampling rates have made a difference since then).

Your remark about the K-1 struck a chord with me. I have a friend who's a dedicated film enthusiast, even though he got interested in photography through digital, and he was quite firm that the K-1 was the only DSLR he would countenance buying, which says a lot for its ergonomic design, as well as its output. Maybe it's also the fact that most of my lenses are film-era ones, as he likes the look of my Flickr posts.

The later point you make about schools and analogue photography got me thinking a bit more about the subject, too. Here, schools, colleges and universities stuck with running wet process alongside digital for a long time, although many have now abandoned analogue altogether, which I think is something of a pity. The argument often made in favour of retaining wet process was that it forced the student to slow down and consider what they were doing – to take time in considering their subject before pressing the shutter. There may also have been an element of teaching appreciation of the processes by which the masters in the analogue era created their work, but I'd defer to others with closer experience than mine, on that point.

Whatever the past positions on teaching, one can only speculate on the reasons for moving solely to digital, but I can't help wondering whether the culture of instant gratification had something to do with it, rather than cost.

[GUB]

Whatever the past positions on teaching, one can only speculate on the reasons for moving solely to digital, but I can't help wondering whether the culture of instant gratification had something to do with it, rather than cost.

You may call it the "culture of instant gratification" but I see it (in digital) as the ability to immediately see and learn from your mistakes and hence a far far steeper learning curve. I have been in both worlds - did my own colour processing - I will never go back.
If film is a necessary starting point in photography then why don't we in mainstream "readin an riting" start off with a stone tablet , a chisel and a thorough grounding in runes.

[ThorSanchez]

Nope.

Digital is only as good as your digital to analogue conversion. Analogue, if done well, is the source sound and will always trump digital. Our ears work analogue, not digital. Most modern styli exert so little pressure on the record that frictional wear is negligible. Good record pressings introduce very few, if any, artifacts to the music. Digital, in contrast, is a convenient medium for listening to music using mediocre speakers and sub-par equipment. It sounds "OK" to the masses. Not good, just OK. To hear what was actually recorded you need analogue.

Well done digital is indistinguishable from pristine analog. After you've played vinyl a few times it becomes worse, and will never match digital again.

Our ears may be analog, but anything sampled correctly at or above the Nyquist rate contains all of the information in the analog signal.

If you want to talk poorly sampled audio... there is just as much poorly done analog.



---------- Post added 01-29-18 at 07:09 PM ----------

You may call it the "culture of instant gratification" but I see it (in digital) as the ability to immediately see and learn from your mistakes and hence a far far steeper learning curve. I have been in both worlds - did my own colour processing - I will never go back.
If film is a necessary starting point in photography then why don't we in mainstream "readin an riting" start off with a stone tablet , a chisel and a thorough grounding in runes.

Piffle. I take all of my holidays by three-masted ship on years-long voyages to watch five-day cricket test matches, which I document with the traditional Daguerreotype process. I've long since gone into insolvency, and am dying of mercury poisoning, but at least I'm not fluttering about with a cell phone.

---------- Post added 01-29-18 at 07:17 PM ----------

I think we're basically in agreement, but to be clear, convenience is what mostly drives the change, and when that happens, there's no going back for the majority.

You seem to use convenience as a pejorative term. I rather like seeing my photos right away, being able to edit them without caustic, harmful chemicals, and not having to pay significant amounts of money for the one in 10 or 20 shots that was any good. Convenience is good. When you get much better results for less time and money that's a good thing. Even if the unwashed masses being instantly gratified with their cell phones and Polaroids also benefit.

[GUB]

That is typically how it is done in the U.S. for both high school and college-level photography courses. What's more, the K1000 is the standard camera for instruction.


Steve

And with those film camera heading to an infirm old age what a great opportunity for a camera manufacturer.
Imagine a pentax Kpoint5 – “apsc would be fine too”
Save only to raw.
Manual focus
Base Iso only. (Iso invariant sensor)
Only manual mode - Imagine the buttons you can get rid of!!
Incident light meter on camera
Handheld lightmeter type interface with Shutter edial and Aperture edial integrated with a over / under exposure indicator.
And of course that wonderful preview mode that the K1 has.
Maintain SR and associated tricks.
Bring out a kit prime with PentaxA functionality (Manual focus and in-camera integration of aperture.)and maximise functionality with old glass.
Market to places of learning with a very modest to no profit margin and expecting a generation of dedicated Pentax fanboys and girls.
Oh and integrate Pentax software with open-source software like Rawtherapee and Gimp to give the students a sense of full control over their images.

[dsmithhfx]

And with those film camera heading to an infirm old age what a great opportunity for a camera manufacturer.
Imagine a pentax Kpoint5 – “apsc would be fine too”
Save only to raw.
Manual focus
Base Iso only. (Iso invariant sensor)
Only manual mode - Imagine the buttons you can get rid of!!
Incident light meter on camera
Handheld lightmeter type interface with Shutter edial and Aperture edial integrated with a over / under exposure indicator.
And of course that wonderful preview mode that the K1 has.
Maintain SR and associated tricks.
Bring out a kit prime with PentaxA functionality (Manual focus and in-camera integration of aperture.)and maximise functionality with old glass.
Market to places of learning with a very modest to no profit margin and expecting a generation of dedicated Pentax fanboys and girls.
Oh and integrate Pentax software with open-source software like Rawtherapee and Gimp to give the students a sense of full control over their images.

Sounds like a plan. Kickstart it.

[stevebrot]

More serious than my last post... how does that make any sense at all? Schools are almost all strapped for cash, and they're teaching photography with techniques that involve buying film, buying and maintaining darkrooms or paying to have film developed.

The economy is in the nature of the tech. It is the student's responsibility to purchase their own camera at a cost of less than $100. Film is purchased in bulk and while not cheap, is less expensive than Adobe licenses (seats). Again, the expense of that and darkroom chemicals is referred back to the student in the form of lab fees. FWIW, digital imaging is very expensive on an ongoing basis. The cameras, computers, monitors, printers and software in the academic setting may as well be treated as consumables rather than durable good.

From the educational perspective of actual student assignments intended to teach technique in exposure, focus, and composition, which makes more sense...a 36 exposure roll of Tri-X or a 32 GB card full of P-mode AF images? I know which tech I would prefer for instruction. The irony is that the film is incidental to the conversation. The point that may be and should be made is that perhaps what may be needed is a manual exposure, manual focus digital camera in a durable package made specifically for teaching photography fundamentals.


Steve

(...thinking how so many questions regarding poor results on this site result from poor understanding of fundamental principles...)

[stevebrot]

And with those film camera heading to an infirm old age what a great opportunity for a camera manufacturer.
Imagine a pentax Kpoint5 – “apsc would be fine too”
Save only to raw.
Manual focus
Base Iso only. (Iso invariant sensor)
Only manual mode - Imagine the buttons you can get rid of!!
Incident light meter on camera
Handheld lightmeter type interface with Shutter edial and Aperture edial integrated with a over / under exposure indicator.
And of course that wonderful preview mode that the K1 has.
Maintain SR and associated tricks.
Bring out a kit prime with PentaxA functionality (Manual focus and in-camera integration of aperture.)and maximise functionality with old glass.
Market to places of learning with a very modest to no profit margin and expecting a generation of dedicated Pentax fanboys and girls.
Oh and integrate Pentax software with open-source software like Rawtherapee and Gimp to give the students a sense of full control over their images.

Sounds like a plan. Kickstart it.

...The point that may be and should be made is that perhaps what may be needed is a manual exposure, manual focus digital camera in a durable package made specifically for teaching photography fundamentals...

Race ya to the patent office...


Steve

[boriscleto]

...a 36 exposure roll of Tri-X or a 32 GB card full of P-mode AF images?

Well they shouldn't be shooting in P-mode...that means 'Professional'

[GUB]

Sounds like a plan. Kickstart it.

At least they would be selling to a market of one- me.!! Except I already have my K1 set at those settings. With an eyeometer rather than the incident meter.

[MarkJerling]

Well done digital is indistinguishable from pristine analog. After you've played vinyl a few times it becomes worse, and will never match digital again.

Our ears may be analog, but anything sampled correctly at or above the Nyquist rate contains all of the information in the analog signal.

If you want to talk poorly sampled audio... there is just as much poorly done analog.

CD gives you 1411kbps data. That is already less than analogue. Most people streaming music do so at between 128 and 256kbps. If you play vinyl with a good quality cartridge, your tracking force on the LP can be as low as 0.75g which means that the vinyl will deteriorate exceedingly slowly, thereby preserving (near) original sound quality for a very long time.

[RobA_Oz]

You may call it the "culture of instant gratification" but I see it (in digital) as the ability to immediately see and learn from your mistakes and hence a far far steeper learning curve. I have been in both worlds - did my own colour processing - I will never go back.
If film is a necessary starting point in photography then why don't we in mainstream "readin an riting" start off with a stone tablet , a chisel and a thorough grounding in runes.

We both have the advantage of working in both media – I used to do some of my own colour processing, too – and you can't disentangle the benefits of having had both experiences. However, I was talking about the training of people starting in photography, which is completely different from changing the medium in which you work. So, when I spoke about the culture of instant gratification, I was referring to the cultural background of young people entering into an education stream which is a totally different situation to you and me changing from a wet darkroom experience to a screen-based editing one.

I don't take your last point as a serious remark, so let me counter by saying that it isn't that long since an engineering colleague of mine related his experience of spending time working with a modern ceramics factory in Japan, where, in spite of the high-tech processes employed there (they produced ceramics for the communications sector), graduates of their training programs could not obtain recognition of their skills development unless they could successfully make a traditional pot using the original techniques that the firm had used in the pre-modern era.

---------- Post added 30th Jan 2018 at 09:48 PM ----------

You seem to use convenience as a pejorative term. I rather like seeing my photos right away, being able to edit them without caustic, harmful chemicals, and not having to pay significant amounts of money for the one in 10 or 20 shots that was any good. Convenience is good. When you get much better results for less time and money that's a good thing. Even if the unwashed masses being instantly gratified with their cell phones and Polaroids also benefit.

I might seem to have used it as a perjorative, but that's your interpretation, and not my intention. I might lament the culture of instant gratification, but that's only one aspect of convenience, which I enjoy as much as the next person, even if I do some things in a perverse manner, just because I can.

[ThorSanchez]

The economy is in the nature of the tech. It is the student's responsibility to purchase their own camera at a cost of less than $100. Film is purchased in bulk and while not cheap, is less expensive than Adobe licenses (seats). Again, the expense of that and darkroom chemicals is referred back to the student in the form of lab fees. FWIW, digital imaging is very expensive on an ongoing basis. The cameras, computers, monitors, printers and software in the academic setting may as well be treated as consumables rather than durable good.

From the educational perspective of actual student assignments intended to teach technique in exposure, focus, and composition, which makes more sense...a 36 exposure roll of Tri-X or a 32 GB card full of P-mode AF images? I know which tech I would prefer for instruction. The irony is that the film is incidental to the conversation. The point that may be and should be made is that perhaps what may be needed is a manual exposure, manual focus digital camera in a durable package made specifically for teaching photography fundamentals.


Steve

(...thinking how so many questions regarding poor results on this site result from poor understanding of fundamental principles...)

I think you could do digital much cheaper than what you're suggesting. You don't need Adobe anything, you could certainly do just fine with all free/open source software like Darktable and GIMP. And just run free/open source Linux, using a light distro that will run just fine on older hardware. You can buy used digital cameras like an *istDS (or any of dozens of others from other brands) for under $100.


Doesn't every classroom (or almost every) already have computers? My kids' elementary school does, and it's not like the school is in a hugely rich suburb. Very likely they have Windows instead of Linux, but you can find free/open source applications for Windows almost as easily as Linux.


I think that's where the world has to be heading eventually.

---------- Post added 01-30-18 at 07:51 AM ----------

CD gives you 1411kbps data. That is already less than analogue. Most people streaming music do so at between 128 and 256kbps. If you play vinyl with a good quality cartridge, your tracking force on the LP can be as low as 0.75g which means that the vinyl will deteriorate exceedingly slowly, thereby preserving (near) original sound quality for a very long time.

What is the equivalent data rate of an analogue signal from a turntable? A CD's sampling rate of 44.1 kHz already encodes all of the information a human ear can hear. Most people can't hear 20 kHz audio, so anything above 40 kHz isn't gaining you any fidelity.


At best we're splitting hairs. 99.9% of the time music isn't listened to in an anechoic chamber with high-end speakers and amps. Even in that best case double-blind studies can't differentiate between properly recorded digital and impeccably preserved analogue. In the real world, in your car or your office or your iPod or even your home stereo with an LP the background noise level makes the best system with lossless or analogue recordings barely distinguishable from a moderately compressed MP3.


I understand that a record has all kinds of emotional value, and that's fine. It's like old cars. They look awesome, but I understand my '63 Vette is only moderately better performing and dramatically less reliable and safe than a modern minivan.

[dsmithhfx]

I think you could do digital much cheaper

[...]

What is the equivalent data rate of an analogue signal from a turntable?

[...]

The economic and fidelity arguments are mostly specious. The real value in having students learn through hands-on flim photography is so they can understand the conceptual basis of digital photography, and learn and respect the history. Which is far more important than learning technology ephemera (and nothing's more ephemeral than digital technology). I don't expect the widespread use of film photography in education to last much longer, except in a few elite (and expensive) programs.

[mohb]

In most of these threads about film/digital there nearly always seems to be an assumption that using digital has a magic power to stop it being used in any other mode than P and spray and pray.

[dsmithhfx]

In most of these threads about film/digital there nearly always seems to be an assumption that using digital has a magic power to stop it being used in any other mode than P and spray and pray.

That may be your assumption, but it's not mine. The charge could be equally hurled (and has) at users of all-auto plastic fantastic film bodies, albeit with more frequent pauses to reload.

Though I use film and am interested in that 'look', I'm technology-agnostic when it comes to evaluating the merits of individual photographs, and I think we would do well to drop an obsessive-compulsive need to caption everything with a tedious list of the gear used, like that gets any credit (or blame) for the result.