More Thoughts on Digital

Despite the fact that I think of my self as a young guy I can remember “Mikey” tv ads, VHS rental when the store also rented players, Laserdisc, DVD and Divx wars, the wide acceptance of HD TV. More over the migration from film toward digital imaging.

By no means does this mean that I am a Luddite and want to keep my head deep in the sand as the world passes me by. It’s more that the progression of the world doesn’t seem so progressive. You go from grabbing a roll of film and knowing its look and feel, making a choice in seconds–Now, a picture is made but it’s not ready for until someone spends hours in front of a screen just to get it look like right. Then more time to get it to look good on paper.

There was darkroom time in the bygone days but it seems that to take a photo from light to paper takes longer in the era of 1’s and 0’s.

Many will say that the darkroom has simply been replaced by the screen. But, I don’t see it that way. The darkroom was an effiencent place where you would print a test strip and go. Or, at least for me. But, I would also try to work with the same film and paper and developed an understanding of what results I would get in all matter of conditions.

Retouching seems to take hours to do something as simple as building the overall look and feel of the image. What could be made in the time it takes to load a camera to get the contrast, grain, hue, saturation, vibrance now is done in hours in a chair. What was built in by Fuji, Ilford, Kodak is now in the eyes of the viewer at the desk or coffee shop.

But, as Pathé said “The March of Time!”