[Cuthbert]

It is a real experience watching a contact print appear in the glow of an orange safe light.

Ignore web photos they are all digitalised...

New reality. Deal with it.

I can agree with that after I insert 'virtual'.

I might agree with Xmas on a certain level: the good thing of film photography is to try to make a pic that looks analogic with the best of your skills using the best gear (cameras, lenses, films) you can get and mixing these elements as a painter would mix his colours.

If you start to apply a lot of PP like sharpening, grain removal...what's the point? Isn't it better to remain digital?

There is a good forum with a lot of cool pics called MF lenses, and at the beginning I thought the old lenses they were using were way too good, then I realised they were putting so much PP to make the images look completely sterile. And all the lenses look good and look like each other.

[dsmithhfx]

[Xmas]

I might agree with Xmas on a certain level: the good thing of film photography is to try to make a pic that looks analogic with the best of your skills using the best gear (cameras, lenses, films) you can get and mixing these elements as a painter would mix his colours.

If you start to apply a lot of PP like sharpening, grain removal...what's the point? Isn't it better to remain digital?

There is a good forum with a lot of cool pics called MF lenses, and at the beginning I thought the old lenses they were using were way too good, then I realised they were putting so much PP to make the images look completely sterile. And all the lenses look good and look like each other.

My auto Takumar 5cm/2 is single coated (I think) and I use Fomapan 400 in Rodinal for a nice grain signature. I do use a deep hood but that would have been also true in 1960.

So I don't need a photo shop '60s plug in, yes I use a scanner to proof cause silver bromide paper is already expensive to waste.

Some of our art Unis teach colour wet printing and some people are salt printing still.

Not everyone is hybrid yet.

[Eyewanders]

(hair color ad)

I don't get it.

[dsmithhfx]

I don't get it.

Why it's a splendid example from the golden age of film!

[Johnny Rod]

I think it's a comment on the veracity of pictures in the 21st century.

Some heated debate going on about post-production. Given the OP asked about advice for a native I'd say, don't bother with PP, at least until you have your hand in. There is enough to worry about to get a good picture, and no amount of PP can fix a really bad one. I don't do any PP, and while my pictures may be able to look better if I did, I'm still trying to get them right first time.

[dsmithhfx]

I think it's a comment on the veracity of pictures in the 21st century.

[Cuthbert]

Allright, but here you are talking about photomontage, like the Soviet photographers who made disappear disgraced top communists from pics after a purge.

The difference is that at that time they didn't do "black room PP" to change exposure, correct lens defects etc...while what we are pointing out that today's digital photographers take 1000 bad pics to get one decent shot and then PP to death to make it look good with the result that the image looks "synthetic".

Same thing for the other example: in the B&W era monocrome "painting" wasn't unusual, but that wasn't done to correct errors of the photographer or enhange for instance the contrast of uncoated lenses.

I personally like the desaturated WWII colour imagines that have that look because of the lack of coating of the lenses used to shoot at that time,if I had to take a pic of WWII cosplayers I would use my Leica IIIB with my uncoated Summitar, not use a modern camera and desaturate it in PP...perhaps I'm a fetishist?

[dsmithhfx]

Allright, but here you are talking about photomontage

This is a studio photograph on wet-plate collodian, not a montage.

http://www.aci-iac.ca/content/art-books/19/Art-Canada-Institute_William-Notman.pdf

today's digital photographers take 1000 bad pics to get one decent shot and then PP to death to make it look good

You are disparaging the work of a lot of photographers who don't happen to use film. But surely that is not your intention.

'Good' is in the eye of the beholder. If you feel that a picture indeed 'looks good', what do you care (or for that matter, even know to any degree of certainty) how it was made?

[IgorZ]

This is a studio photograph on wet-plate collodian, not a montage.

http://www.aci-iac.ca/content/art-books/19/Art-Canada-Institute_William-Notman.pdf

You are disparaging the work of a lot of photographers who don't happen to use film. But surely that is not your intention.

'Good' is in the eye of the beholder. If you feel that a picture indeed 'looks good', what do you care (or for that matter, even know to any degree of certainty) how it was made?

I think you are right, but I can see where Cuthbert is coming from. Once I started shooting film a month ago, I realized how much more work I need to do before I take the shot. As a result, I take way fewer shots on my digital camera, but there are way more keepers as well. It seems that, in my case at least, I have a choice of doing the work before I take the shot, or doing the work after I take it. I prefer to do the work before I take a picture. That's my personal preference, but to each his own, and if someone prefers to take 1000s of pictures and then spend hours in PP to produce a gem, I'll enjoy it just the same

[Cuthbert]

You are disparaging the work of a lot of photographers who don't happen to use film. But surely that is not your intention.

'Good' is in the eye of the beholder. If you feel that a picture indeed 'looks good', what do you care (or for that matter, even know to any degree of certainty) how it was made?

You are taking all this story on very personal level, IMO photography like many other arts (music first) has involved since the digital era started, where are the digital photographer at the level of a Cartier Bresson, Helmut Newton or Robert Capaa? To be honest I haven't seen any, but if you have any good name feel free to propose it.

Keeping the paragon with music until 1993 you could see people going out to listen to live music, guitarists playing guitars, singers singing and drummers drumming, the result of a live performance might not always be as slick as the work in studio, but today people are just used to listen to prefabricated "music" made with computers.

Let's make an example, this picture:




In the digital era would be considered ugly, out of focus, blurred, grainy. Somebody would PP this image until it gets sterile and a lot of people would say it's better than the original, but from an emotional point of view I take this one.

This is just my opinion, of course.

[skierd]

That was as good as you could expect get with 400 speed film (maybe) in a Contax II while being shot at in 1944.

Capa, Robert | Combat Camera

His most famous work occurred on June 6, 1944 (D-Day) when he swam ashore with the second assault wave on Omaha Beach. He was armed with two Contax II cameras mounted with 50 mm lenses and several rolls of spare film. Capa took 106 pictures in the first couple of hours of the invasion. However, a staff member at Life in London made a mistake in the darkroom; he set the dryer too high and melted the emulsion in the negatives in three complete rolls and over half of a fourth roll. Only eleven frames in total were recovered. Capa never said a word to the London bureau chief about the loss of three and a half rolls of his D-Day landing film.

If you think Magnum photographers, or in this case one of the photographers who went on to found Magnum, didn't adjust and "fix" their images in the darkroom you are sorely mistaken.

Marked Up Photographs Show How Iconic Prints Were Edited in the Darkroom
https://theliteratelens.com/2012/02/17/magnum-and-the-dying-art-of-darkroom-printing/

As far as recent wars... I don't know, here's a CNN gallery from 2013
100 moments from the Iraq War - CNN.com

Maybe we don't see it because it isn't on the newsstand alone anymore, published in LIFE or TIME? I'm not up on my artist or PJ names either, but I bet you can find iconic digital work by the current crop of Magnum's photog's.

Can't full on photoshop a negative? Edward Curtis managed...
https://beyondthebubble.stanford.edu/assessments/case-clock

[Cuthbert]

That was as good as you could expect get with 400 speed film (maybe) in a Contax II while being shot at in 1944.

Capa, Robert | Combat Camera

If you think Magnum photographers, or in this case one of the photographers who went on to found Magnum, didn't adjust and "fix" their images in the darkroom you are sorely mistaken.

So...why they didn't fix that pic? Why that pic was published? I've seen many shots from Magnum photographer and many of them aren't technically perfect or sterile.

Regarding the difference between shooting analogic or digital, the article Alan posted today sums it up pretty well>

“In the era of Avedon and Irving Penn, it was the photographers who were leading what the fashion should be,” says art director Fabien Baron. “Today it is the fashion editor. It is the editor who is immersed in fashion so it is the editor’s point of view that is valid. And it is the editor’s point of view that becomes important; the photographer becomes just the tool to express that point of view.”

And:

On set, shooting film demands trust in the photographer, which was very important when I started shooting jobs as a young female, and still is very important,” explains Ghertner. “[Shooting film] demands a confidence in my eye. The attention is then on the subject and the moment and not on a digital screen, and not about perfecting and recreating a lost moment.”

While digital photographers can shoot thousands upon thousands of images in one day, film photographers have to be more mindful of each shot; with film, there’s less room for error. “It basically just makes you think about what it is you are trying to accomplish more than if it’s presented to you right away on a screen,” says Dodgson. “By taking the time to shoot film, get the film back, consider, re-consider, edit, and then finally print, it has to make it through so many different stages of quality control.”

Then of course ou are at freedom to believe the analogic "fixing " of the darkroom was as invasive as today's PP.

[skierd]

The pic was probably published because it captures the terror of D-Day about as well as anything I've ever seen. And it was probably all they had to publish, given that the lab tech who developed the film destroyed most of it.

There's also nothing technically wrong with that photo: no dust, no scratches, the horizon is level, it's evenly and well exposed (at least the print is, only LIFE knows the condition of the original negative). Is that the full frame, or a rotated crop? How much spot remover, dodging, burning, etc was done to get it there I don't know.

Back in the film era, Polaroid backs existed for much the same reason tethering exists today: so the editor or designer could check the photog before the shoot was over. I don't believe for a second that they simply said "well that's what we got from the photographer, run with it!" if a fashion shoot went poorly. They would reshoot, probably with a new photographer. Journalism they would have to work with what they got of course, same as today.

Photoshop and Lightroom aren't evil, They're tools. I've made darkroom prints and I make digital prints. The work is much the same, except one has me in the wonderful red light zen temple that is the darkroom and the other has me in my living room on my laptop while watching my daughter. Choose the paper, test the exposure level, test contrast levels, clean up the dust and scratches, choose the composition, adjust white balance, etc. A sanitized boring image comes from the photographer, not the medium.

[LesDMess]

On the other end of the quality spectrum, a WWII bomber crew portrait taken by a colleague's combat photographer dad scanned straight-up with no post processing applied. No doubt it is easier to plan a well made shot when no one is shooting at you.


Link to the full 2400dpi scan of a WWII 4X5 b&w film