Had a hard drive crash the weekend before last and was without my main computer until yesterday. So no scanning or proper editing for a week.
It never really registered before how much time, effort and general piss-fartery goes into processing a photo. Especially a film frame, where even if I didn't edit the tones (in which case, why shoot film in the first place?) there'd still be the scanning and dust spotting to do.
So I went for a wander last night with the camera that got me started back in 2004: the Fujifilm S5500. Four megapixels of obsolete noisy-sensor goodness, with an LCD the size of a postage stamp, a cheesy 10x superzoom lens, and no proper viewfinder or workable manual focus. But it does have a tripod mount, self-timer and manual exposure mode, so it can do long exposures. Well, up to 15 seconds anyway. And it weighs nothing and makes these cute little beeping sounds just like R2-D2.
After wandering around for an hour I had five or six usable photos, and within an hour of getting home I had three photos in a finished state. Shooting JPGs helped a lot, as it forced me to get the exposure right at the time and limited me to very minimal editing. If I'd gone out with a film rig I'd have gotten maybe two or three shots in the same time. Then they'd sit in the camera for a week or so until I finished the roll, then they'd need developing, and then there would be scanning, processing and dust spotting.
So am I reverting back to doing everything on a little digicam? Not likely. It was impossible to do selective focus on anything that wasn't in the middle of the frame, and I'd eventually go nuts without an optical viewfinder. Besides, I like all the piss-fartery of processing. The camera is a magic box that does all the work of painting the basic image for you - without real input into the interpretation of that basic image, I'm only half a photographer. It sure speeds things up if you skip that step though - so maybe those "straight out of the camera" purist types are onto something, if only from a productivity point of view.
telfa, La ProvinciAna, GenEvIEVe 1467, and 11 other people added this photo to their favorites.
GadgetLam 37 months ago | reply
wow, I actually just went through the same thing with my d40. I did it because I joined a competition bracket in flickr, and my film is still being developed. it was weird being able to take multiple shots and adjust based on what I saw. hell of a lot faster, but a little soulless.
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Seen on my Flickr home page. (?)
telfa 37 months ago | reply
so good!
Kwozie 37 months ago | reply
...for me it's the difference with hunting with a bow and arrow and a shot gun...where's the fun of it being easy. Do you appreciate your photo's more if there is less or more sweat and tears within it's production...with more or less failure to acheive what you were looking for. I find I don't appreciate a photo that has been easy to achieve. I also find that magic 'it' factor of a good photo cannot be produced using PP. It's there at the beginning or not there at all. It also takes a certain type of photographer to see that...and that's also natural.
Edited for spelling and grammar.
Clarification: PP that takes longer then 5 minutes maximum.
jonathan sander 37 months ago | reply
love it, great words
Román Emin 37 months ago | reply
Well, for that little camera is a really nice picture.
paulxstoney 37 months ago | reply
Interesting words mugs Like your thoughts mate. Come and do the piss fartery thing in the darkroom(kitchen!) same things you face once you've captured the shot. You do excel at processing a neg digitally. There are so many here that do it so well. I'm trying to do more of my shots ..just what was in the viewfiinder .. then either print and scan them ... or clean up the dust/scanner artifacts etc and thats all.
Cheers.
PS. There will be dinos again. A pigeon shot was posted. They are coming.
Eugene1959 37 months ago | reply
Nice shot.
Vermin Inc 37 months ago | reply
Not bad for the retro cam.
BenjaminPatrick 37 months ago | reply
Brilliant! I do love long exposures :)
lindsaybridge 34 months ago | reply
Melbourne; and not a tram in sight.