{"id":1187,"date":"2011-06-29T12:39:52","date_gmt":"2011-06-29T19:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/?p=1187"},"modified":"2011-06-29T12:50:04","modified_gmt":"2011-06-29T19:50:04","slug":"old-cameras-new-techniques-new-cameras-no-techniques","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/2011\/06\/old-cameras-new-techniques-new-cameras-no-techniques\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Cameras, New Techniques – New Cameras, No Techniques"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently exhibited my photographs at the La Jolla Festival of the Arts in beautiful La Jolla California. \u00a0It was a pleasant show and the quality of the work of other artists was top notch. \u00a0At such venues where the show is not held on the street, the environment is more relaxed and I like to set up my 4×5 wooden field camera as part of my show display. \u00a0It really is a conversation starter and the visitors to my booth are mesmerized by the camera and\u00a0then\u00a0even perplexed that I actually use such an old\u00a0camera. \u00a0I don’t know what shocks them more, the fact that I use it or the fact that the\u00a0camera\u00a0is only about 6 years old while it looks 150 years old.<\/p>\n

The funny thing is that they think because it is an old styled camera that I photograph using wet glass plates! \u00a0I have never touched a glass plates in my life. \u00a0When I tell them I use film I get this\u00a0perplexed\u00a0look. \u00a0I then explain to them how the camera works. \u00a0I take off the lens attached to its lens board and show them that there is nothing inside the bellows and that a camera is nothing more than a black box with a light focusing element on one end, the lens, and a light capturing medium on the other end, the film or digital sensor. \u00a0I explain how the camera is focused by moving the lens closer or farther from the film, how the tilts and swings help in choosing the plane to focus on and how the shifts help in correcting distortions.<\/p>\n

I then explain how I scan the films and prepare them to be printed digitally and suddenly this somehow seems incredulous to them. \u00a0I then point out that with scanning film at even moderate scan resolution I end up with raw image files that hover around 500MB and that even the highest resolution digital cameras available still only produce files that are about 240MB. \u00a0We then walk over to a large 20×25 inch photo hanging in the booth and I point out all the fine detail that is retained and then\u00a0they\u00a0start to see the light.<\/p>\n

They start to understand that making a photograph <\/em>is serious business and not as easy as it is made to seem with todays automatic cameras. \u00a0They comment to me that I must really be invested in a scene to haul out and use such a big camera. \u00a0They are correct of course. \u00a0They comment on how I must know a lot about light and camera operation, not to mention processing and printing techniques and again they are correct. \u00a0Even though I use an old camera, I\u00a0employ\u00a0many new techniques to maximize the amount of information in my photographs so that the finished image on paper is as close to how I experienced it and hopefully so that they can experience that moment as well.<\/p>\n

When making a photograph I use a top-down \/ bottom-up workflow. \u00a0It starts with seeing something that moves my heart. \u00a0That is the peak of it all, the scene has to move the heart somehow for some reason sometimes beyond our understanding at the time it is seen. \u00a0From there artistic\u00a0decisions\u00a0about perspective, composition and lighting come into play followed by technical decisions about focusing and focal planes, apertures, light levels and shutter speed. \u00a0Only then can the shutter be tripped to capture that light. \u00a0The process does not end there however. \u00a0The latent image on the film, or RAW sensor data, then has to be developed and then printed on to paper using a myriad of techniques in either a wet darkroom or a digital darkroom on the computer.<\/p>\n

Over the years cameras have steadily become more sophisticated while becoming easier to use and taking over many of the decisions that a photographer has to make in the photographic process. \u00a0Starting out with built-in light meters and moving to auto exposure and auto focusing. \u00a0 The sophistication continued into the digital era as well and now photography is\u00a0instantaneousness. \u00a0Modern technology has taken a difficult time-intensive process and has rendered it to as simple as\u00a0pushing\u00a0one button. \u00a0Gone are the technical decisions about how much light is available, what aperture-shutter combination to use, and to some extent where or what to focus on. \u00a0Focus, even though taken care of automatically, still only focuses exactly at only one distance from the camera, and without a proper aperture setting, important elements in the composition are rendered out of focus and hence the photo is considered “bad”. \u00a0Focusing and aperture selection were the last technical decisions that photographers still had to make as the camera had no idea what the photographer was aiming at. \u00a0So even though the modern camera was loaded with auto-everything, good technique was still important.<\/p>\n

Enter the latest\u00a0contender\u00a0to simplify photography. \u00a0The Lytro<\/a> camera was recently announced with the ability to capture an image and choose what to focus on afterwards entirely in software. \u00a0In other words that camera \u00a0has\u00a0eliminated\u00a0the need to focus or choose an aperture entirely. \u00a0Photographic technique has now been\u00a0laid\u00a0to rest and operating a camera has now been completely rendered\u00a0to pushing a single button. \u00a0Don’t get me wrong, the technical sophistication that goes on in the background is truly amazing and the science behind it is even more fascinating, but where does that leave us as photographers? \u00a0The ability to make images is now so\u00a0ubiquitous with “cameras” on almost every\u00a0device\u00a0imagined\u00a0that the\u00a0demarcation lines have been blurred between the photographer and everyone else. \u00a0Today’s cameras require no technique at all. \u00a0Just point and press a button – you can focus later, set exposure later, and mimic whatever aperture desired later.<\/p>\n

Photography, writing with light, requires technical proficiency in understanding and working with light. \u00a0Yet the majority of \u00a0today’s “photographers” have no clue about light the very medium they work with. \u00a0They don’t need to as they have a machine that does everything for them. \u00a0I wonder\u00a0what\u00a0authors would think if there was a device, perhaps called a Scribbler, that produced novels at the press of a button. \u00a0Would they be as accepting as photographers are about the technique-less camera?<\/p>\n

\"Fallen\"<\/a>

Fallen<\/p><\/div>\n

Hone your photographic technique and be that writer of light that moves the hearts of those who take the time to see what you saw and feel what you felt. \u00a0The camera cannot do that for you.<\/p>\n

Peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the years cameras have steadily become more sophisticated while becoming easier to use and taking over many of the decisions that a photographer has to make in the photographic process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[10],"tags":[222,58,362,365,363,364,361,49],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1187"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1197,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187\/revisions\/1197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}