Film or digital?

thatkidsblack (66)in #dpoll • 6 years ago (edited)

Film or digital?

What do you think?

“Behind every great fortune is a crime.”

Primitive accumulation… With the exorbitant prices for a technique combatted by advances in technology, is there any need for an already starving, income-scarce college kid to further indebt himself with film?

Yes. The need may not be apparent to most, but the same way one can get up and guzzle a mug of Joe, or light a square every fifteen while on the clock, I need film like a bad habit. In fact, I would rather drop my other vices for a more artistic medium. But the matter at hand, is that my pockets are empty. Shall I resort to crime, burglary, and larceny to acquire my ‘great fortune’ or can I cover my costs through a more honest means…

Do I bother when digital epitomizes the adage ‘try, try again’? Film is finite, scarce, immutable – I’m confusing it for cryptocurrency at this rate. It remains that film requires more of my resource than simply capital. Patience, prudence, wisdom, over brash delivery, diligence – the list may continue at length, but film is ultimate in philosophy and practice. Nothing compares to the ‘wait-and-see’ peekaboo style of developing scrolls of film, and the receipt of a hard-earned reward when the prints come out.

Film or digital?

^{Film, every time.}

Film

Digital

Answer the question at dpoll.xyz.

#poll #dbkasks #dtkb

6 years ago in #dpoll by thatkidsblack (66)

Sort:

glenalbrethsen (68) 6 years ago

Voted for

Digital

You make a good argument. I agree with you as far as the art, and even the quality you can get from film. It's just not that easy to duplicate.

But then you have the cost (especially for black and white, which is unfortunate), and the inconvenience of developing it (unless you have your own darkroom—then it might be fun), or the lesser but still annoying issues of accidentally opening a camera and exposing the film, or double exposing film, but not in a cool way...

When I first started publishing weekly newspapers, we had a film camera. Digital wasn't quite there yet. So, confined to the number of exposures to a roll, we would miss shots we might otherwise take because we ran out, then we would need to into town to get the film developed, and if we were lucky it did actually take the hour they said it would, instead of more. And of course, we had no way of knowing what our shot would actually look like when it was developed—blurry, off center, or out of frame entirely. And yet we paid for them all.

Then, it would be back to the office to scan in the photos we could use, clean them up as best we could, crop and then print them out on paper to cut out and paste to our mock up board.

Then, we got a digital camera for the first time, and even though it wasn't the best quality, we had a better idea of how it was going to turn out, could take way more photos, and didn't have to make a trip to the photo store, or scan them afterwards. A simple offload via cable, select the ones that would work, some adjusting in Photoshop, and into the paper it went.

So, artistically, I agree. Hard to beat. For production purposes on a weekly deadline where there's not a whole lot of time to get things right, and for the convenience and money eventually saved from not spending it on film and processing—it's hard to beat digital.

$0.02

1 vote

[-]

thatkidsblack (66) 6 years ago

I hear what you're saying. Did you have any good references for how you got your film developed and organized for the paper? It's a longer term goal, a dream even, of mine to produce a publication, featuring film and what not, but I have no idea who to ask or where to even start! And a sincere thank you, for taking the time to really respond to my question. Cheers, mate.

$0.03

1 vote

[-]

glenalbrethsen (68) 6 years ago

This was roughly 18 years ago, and we had it done at a local photo processing shop that no longer is in business. We may have taken some film to Costco before we bought the digital cameras.

If you know how and have the place and the equipment to process your own, that might be the best (though probably way more expensive). Otherwise, I'm not sure how to advise you there, unless you have a place like Costco or Walmart that might still offer film processing services. It's been a long time since we last processed any photography film so I don't even know pricing or availability.

We didn't do a whole lot regarding organization of the physical photos. Once they were scanned into the computer, we kept the now digitized image files in a folder for that week's publication. At the time, it was necessary to keep all files together to keep them linked to the publishing file we created the newspaper issue in. Now, that's no longer the case. We used InDesign, an Adobe product for the layout and design, and Photoshop for photo editing.

I think InDesign is still the cheapest (although that is relative) and more or less the easiest to use and learn page design app around, but I haven't looked (don't have much of a need) to see if there's anything better. There's all kinds of photo editing apps, of course.

While print is still available in the form of books and newspapers (magazines are probably the hardest hit), and there are folks that read them, who knows what it will look like in ten years as digital continues to take hold, and the older generations continue to pass on.

I'm sorry I couldn't be more helpful, but I do wish you luck if/when you create your publication. :)

$0.00

[-]