Slashdot Mirror
The Difference Between Film and Digital Photography (Video)
Sally Wiener Grotta and her husband Daniel wrote some of the first books and articles about digital photography. Sally was an award-winning photographer in film days, and has maintained her reputation in the digital imaging age. In this interview, she talks about how to buy a digital camera -- including the radical idea that most people really don't need to spend more than $200 to take quality photos. (We had some bandwidth problems while doing this remote interview, but the sound is clear so we decided to run it "as is" rather than try to remake the video and lose the original's spontaneity.)
I read that as "The Difference Between Film and Digital Pornography (Video)"
They really did bring about a revolution in photography. At this point dSLRs should only be used by professionals, as image quality is far less important than image usability via social media sharing.
A dSLR camera is useless if no one sees your photos.
Please slashdot, direct me to the 200$ camera that makes good shots, and video (this is 2013, cameras should do video without too much moire or sensor overheat) of low light theater settings.
I was thinking a nikon 5200 with some hdmi recording to compensate for the 29 mins recording artificial limit. Or a non eu market panasonic gx7 which looks cooler. All of the above means shelling out some $$$.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Hey, it's clickable! I learn a bit about slashdot everyday!
A sixty-second commerical? Nope.
We're nerds. Not blind consumer-sheep. We want to know what she thinks, how the sensors work, what makes the cameras good. We don't want to know that the interviewer has a smartphone with an integrated camera, and that he's about to buy his new camera as a phone from BestBuy because he dropped his old camera.
This is a professional here, stop thinking you know *anything* about the intricacies of her job and show some respect. Imagine interviewing Linus or Wozniak and telling them that you're going to buy a new keyboard because you spilled coffee on the old one. Then asking them for recommendations on what brand of bluetooth keyboard you should get to go with your $120 tablet. I'm surprised she didn't hang up out of sheer frustration.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
Taking advantage of the conversation audio was probably much better than trying to reshoot it while reading off a transcript. Good call there. That said, cutting from video of a person to a similarly framed still of a person is not a big improvement from a cinematic perspective. If you want to do more of these, and you want something to show when the video goes wonkey, you should get some other cutaway material. A great example in this case would have been some stills from her portfolio, Ken Burns style, with some simple annotations of what we are seeing. Another easy option would be occasional reaction shots of the interviewer. Obviously, you have4 complete control over that half of the connection so you can always capture decent quality video on your side. (It's a good excuse to clean up your bedroom, if nothing else.) You could also have images of the things that are being talked about. Pictures of cameras, screenshots of software, etc. At around 10:30, you say "I will have this cheapie as a spare" as you cut away from the video. Would have been perfect to cut away to a shot of the cheapie tos how what was being talked about. Or a shot from the cheapie. Etc.
And of course if you have more technical interviewees, you can ask them to record video of themselves on the call and send it to you after, while you have an audio Skype call for the interview. You can spend as long as you need downloading the already recorded video after the fact.
That said, good job providing the transcript below the video. Excellent model to follow.
voila un site des films vf en streaming directe sur vk http://www.streamingdirecte.com
We're nerds. Not blind consumer-sheep.
What?!?
I've lost feeling in my toes...
I can't typea
Ahhhhh DUUUH
F/oss, Linux, Apple, Buffalo,
Really,
Guys.
F/OSS!!!!
Not consumer sheep?!
RMS dictating what you should do?!
Not sheep?!
For 95% of what people take pictures of in the real world, yeah, a camera built into a smart phone is probably good enough. However, if you're shooting:
Then you need something like a DSLR with a real shutter & aperture and honkin' big sensor, and hopefully expensive lenses that can take advantage of all of the above. Spending $200 on a hands-on photography class will have much more impact for most people than spending the money on an expensive camera, and then hoping you getting better results when you push the button (which ain't happening).
How is it that all of this technology - image stabilization, megapixels, digital zoom... How is it with all that, so many of those digital photos are blurry garbage?
And yet our photo albums and history are filled with incredibly sharp photos that were shot on film. All without image stabilization technology. All without instant feedback on quality, or taking the same photo a dozen times.
Digital photography: never in history have so many people been able to take so many lousy photos, and share them.
I liked what she had to say, especially: "The camera doesn't take the picture, the human does." -- that's very important. It's always been possible to take *great* photos with very inexpensive gear, if the composition, subject and lighting are all great.
Most people don't need anything more than a decent $200 or even $100 camera. The trouble is that if you want to go to the "next level" -- you need to spend two or three times that (or lots more), and you can then get into low-light territory, which (IMO) is where all the excitement is. A truly *usable* 6400 or 12800 ISO is unbelievably liberating, and that's now here for well-under $1000.
http://xkcd.com/1014/
Is this the slowest of slow news days?
love is just extroverted narcissism
I now know not to take classes from her, she clearly knows very little about digital photography. She may be a great photographer, but her technical understanding is very very weak.
I see people who go out and buy 800$ DSLR cameras, have no idea how to use any of the functions, just keep it in auto, making their pics no better than a cheap point and shoot. They don't know what shutter speed, iso, white balance is or what the difference between a 55-80mm lens and a 75-300mm.
Not only that, but the thesis that one can take "good" photos varies hugely with the definition of what a "good photo" is. It's one thing for social media; perhaps another for family; another for marketing; another for deep space; another for stacked macros and stacked low light; another for historical archives; another for forensic analysis; another for HDR; another for sports and other rapid-motion incorporating shots; another for time lapse; another for journalism... you get the idea.
DSLRs are to point and shoots what high end sports cars are to volkswagons. They have a great deal more potential, said potential rather easily tapped by one with expertise in hand, but getting that potential out of them requires more than picking them up and pushing a button without some supporting knowledge.
The biggest upside, at least in my opinion, is that if you decide to go for a DSLR, all that's between you and expertise is your learning capacity and available time. Truly invest the one in the other and you'll never, ever consider going back to a point and shoot.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Between film and digital photography? I heard no such discussion. Slashdot, please take your editors out behind the barn and shoot them.
On another note: Right at the end of the video, we all heard someone's camera ring with an incoming call. This is a problem I've never encountered with my SL66.
Have gnu, will travel.
No, no. This is being cute.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Why would you be surprised that someone buying an entry level ($800, your number) DSLR would be a beginner?
When they spend $3000 or $5000 or more on the camera -- plus perhaps as much on lenses -- and they don't know how to use any of it, now we're talking smile-into-your-napkin time. Even so, there's nothing saying they won't learn how to use it eventually.
After all, it's a lot more fun learning to play guitar on a Martin dreadnaught than it is on some cheap box from the low price specials category of Musician's Friend. You dig?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Something I've realized in my career as a photographer is that newer isn't always better. I started off doing it as a hobby with a Canon point-and-shoot with CHDK firmware, and eventually I bought an entry-level Canon DSLR when I decided I wanted to focus on photography.
My photos taken during the period when I was using the DSLR were generally crappy. I experimented some, learned about aperture and shutter speed, but mostly kept it on program mode. I had a few good photos, and thousands of bad ones.
In late 2010, I decided to take a black and white photography class at college. It required a film camera, and we would learn to develop our own film and print photos with enlargers. My friend happened to have a camera he wasn't using, which he very graciously gave to me: a Mamiya 645 medium format SLR.
Being limited to 15 shots a roll helped my skills immensely. I started carefully considering each photo I took, since I could only take a few at a time, and each one cost me money (in film and chemicals). My compositional skills went from "occasionally lucky" to "I can look at and evaluate my own photos and use elements I like later on". I learned how to expose correctly (the camera is manual with a built-in light meter), how to take great landscape photos lit only by the full moon, and (later) how to scan and process my film photos on the computer, so I could put my Photoshop skills to use and show my photos to people.
One of the most helpful parts of switching to film, though, was the quality. The 645 format (each photo is 6 cm by 4.5 cm on the negative) inherently gave me better resolution than my DSLR. Photos that would have turned out disappointing on the DSLR turned out great with the Mamiya, because film has so much more dynamic range than digital (no matter how hard digital tries with new sensors and HDR gimmicks). I learned to use the grain structure of each kind of film to my benefit, and to create specific effects.
I now use a Pentax 67 camera for a great deal of my work; an Olympus OM-4Ti and various film point-and-shoot cameras fill in when I don't want to carry around an enormous chunk of steel and glass. Not only are the 35mm film cameras smaller than their digital equivalents, but they cost less (for the cameras and lenses both), and especially with the point-and-shoots, take better photos than equivalent digital cameras.
I have abandoned digital photography entirely. I have spent, in total, less on my entire ensemble of cameras, lenses, film, chemicals, and equipment than I would have spent to buy a prosumer DSLR and one or two lenses of lesser quality than the ones I own now. I have to spend 45 minutes to an hour to scan each roll of film, much less process each photo, I had to upgrade my computer to hold twelve gigabytes of memory to process the biggest photos comfortably, and 190-megapixel photos occupy most of my hard drive space; my best camera is hard to transport easily without a suspension backpack, and I love it. With Kodak Alaris continuing Kodak's film lines, and with Fujifilm and Ilford still devoted to upholding film photography, I do not think me switching back to digital is in the cards in the foreseeable future.
http://pinopsida.com
What you saw is an improvement from the last video I watched on Slashdot. The guy got up and left the room and no one edited this out the video. So there was just minutes of his empty chair and dead air. As I sometimes tell posters, you're creating something to be viewed by hundreds of people. Show them some respect and spend a few minutes saving each of them a few minutes hundreds of times over. I'm glad they have transcripts, because I can read them far faster than watching any video.
At this point dSLRs should only be used by professionals...
Thousands of Canon DSLR-wielding astrophotographers are laughing at you right now.
If "quality" means "good enough for facebook" or "your mom will love it" then yeah, $200 is a fair number.
I, like many I'm sure, have taken a few amazing photos with crap gear (like a plastic 35mm thrift store find). I've also had my share of lousy photos with expensive gear (like a month's salary DSLR). But I've never had a better-than-mediocre photo come out of mediocre gear.
When I see a title like "The Difference Between Film and Digital Photography", I expect to see exactly that in the article (or in this case, video). Apparently, that was not really discussed. Yeah, one is film and it is cumbersome, while the other being digital, is much easier to share with others. However, what I was really expecting, is how it affects the images that are captured. What is the difference at the grassroot level between the two? When I'm taking pictures, I want to know what the advantages and disadvantages are, or something on those lines. I did not get what I was expecting. It would have been a safer option to just call it "A conversation about digital photography with Sally Wiener Grotta". Yes, I'd still have watched it, but I would'nt have been so disappointed. :(
Geekism is your _only_ God!
Low light means you want the largest sensor well size you can (ie biggest individual-sized pixel), and a wide aperture lens. A few P&S cameras have both, but you're better off with an actual DSLR.
In terms of a body: the Panasonic GH2 is pretty popular among videographers for quality and controls; there are a bunch of firmware hacks out for it. If you don't mind not having video, you can pick up a used Canon 40D for peanuts, and it's a fantastic camera, and close to your price range.
In terms of lenses, you'll want the widest aperture lens you can afford. The simple/cheap way to do this is a fixed (prime) lens; figure out what focal length you need (for non-photographers, the "mm" in "100mm lens", aka "zoom factor".) Canon and Nikon both, for example, sell a 50mm f/1.8 lens that costs about $50-60. Even with the crop factor, might not be quite enough for your purposes, however.
Please help metamoderate.
Good points all. Just a small addendum/correction: replace
"Ken Burns style"
With
"although not Ken Burns style, as that has been overused lately, and makes it harder to appreciate the image"
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
gah, i am showing my age. i though most people take photos with their mobile phones, not cameras. only nature and sports photographers use expensive $5,000 DSLR cameras. just saying
What is a "photography expert" ? This is by far the most pointless and ridiculous story I've come access on slashdot in a long time. Ohh wow she has a medium format digital camera but until recently had no clue on how to use the camera on her phone... oh please !
Far from me to criticize anyones art, but I expected to be impressed at least with some of the images of her website. While many of the photos are nice they are far from what I would expect from someone that teaches a "Master photography" class.
The camera is easy. My $180 dSLR has a plenty good sensor for what you're doing, though you need a lens set up for your very rare, obscure challenge. Try an 80 mm f1.4 prime lens.
I've done chemical photography since 1979, and digital since 2000.
What I have found to be the major difference betwen Digital and film photography is the way it handles light. This is very quantifiable.
Film has a portion ot light effect that it responds to in a linear fashion, which is to say that the film reacts fairly linearly to the amount of light hitting it. At the bottom (dark) end of the response of th efilm, it flattens out, as well as at the top (light) end.
While this is awkward to write about, in graphical fashion, it makes good sense, and if you have a doubling of light and graph it, it makes the traditional "S" curve. At the bottom, there isn't as much difference between doubling the amount of light, and also at the top.
In practical terms, this means that there is less contrast in both the darkest areas of a photo, and also the lightest areas of the photo. In the middle, there is "normal" contrast range.
In digital, the S curve is greatly diminished, leading to more of a straight line from the lightest the camera will show, and the darkest.The contrast range is more constant
This is a big part of what people see when they can tell the difference. between the two forms of photography.
If you want to come pretty close to imitating film response, take the image into Photoshop, select "Curves" and imitate that S curve.
Now as for the other technical issues, Cell Phones have a really big limitation. They use tiny little sensors, which in order to have a normal photo, need lenses of extremely short focal length. This ends up making for pretty "lensy" photos, and even the zooms don't actually zoom, they enlarge an area. This means no lens effect other than the wide angle look.
As for the other parts, the artistic issue, good photos can be made with any camera. People have been using plastic DIana Cameras for years to make art. A good photographer can make great art. Unfortunately, not everone has the eye or figures out how to do it, and we can now make really bad photos pretty easily. But we can always learn.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"Yesterday I bought a camera that's so advanced you don't even need it."
-Steven Wright
I love it when people plunk down thousands of dollars on a dSLR + lenses, and never take the camera setting off AUTO mode. I've had a dSLR for 3 years, and a "prosumer" before that. With my dSLR, I think it has been on auto mode maybe a couple times. 99% of the time, I keep mine on manual, and set the shutter & aperture manually, depending on what I want to capture. Composition is key, to capturing a certain scene, mood or whatever you are trying to portray. The other thing is after you take the photo. I shoot in RAW mode, and "develop" the photo in photoshop. It's the post processing that can make a photo "WOW" you. And I'm not talking about those over processed HDR photos. And for gods sake, stop with the megapixel wars. A super good quality photo, 300dpi, can be had by a 4-8 megapixel sensor. The only good a 41 megapixel sensor in a pinhole camera is good for, is cropping. In very low light conditions, without a lot of software noise compression, it's gonna look like someone sprinkled pixie dust in front of the photo. For most people, those into "snapshots", stick with a superzoom or your cell phone. No sense in wasting your money on a dSLR & a bag full of equipment. I carry my camera, the lens on the front, 3 more lenses in the bag along with a flash, bunch of filters, a ring flash, some flash filters, batteries, charger & tripod. Most people don't want to lug that stuff around when they go out to take photos, but my 9-5 job has me lugging around a 50 pound tool bag, so it isn't a big deal for me. In my film SLR days, I use to carry around a pad of paper & pencil so I could document how I had the camera set up for each photo, but with the exif data on digitals, you don't need that. If you really want to get into photography, get a superzoom first, but take the dial off out auto mode and play around with DOF, the f-stops & shutter speeds.
and I agree with you.
I still have 2 canon 1D bodies with L lenses. I use them for work. But for fun, I use a T3i and a zoom lens because of portability. I wish I could get a pancake lens if I could. Most of my "fun" shots are still cityscapes or slow wildlife, so I can sacrifice autofocus speed and even low light. I try to channel my inner Cartier-Bresson and take whatever life will give me.
However, when I have my 1D, I'm all tense and ready to get that moment worth a thousand bucks. It's no fun, I shoot with both eyes open, and all that gear gets incredibly heavy after a while. I seriously don't see why photography would be "fun" with all that pro gear unless you get your jollies in showing off. It's not like driving a fancy pickup truck on the highway to show how "manly" you are, but it's more like driving an excavator down the highway. But for the jobs that requires it, I see the pro gear as an investment with real financial returns - otherwise, it's a waste of money.
I also started with your philosophy - my first digital camera was a Pentax, and I moved up from there. I did a lot of lens buying/selling on ebay until they were nonexistent; then bought them off B&H or Adorama's used dept, and finally just bought the top shelf equipment new. This took several years in progression, and it forced me to understand the limits and appreciate what I was really buying by starting from the el-cheapo lenses and bodies.
I agree with you to some extent but when I work on a photo shoot, or assist in one, cameras do sometimes fail. Lenses break or "disappear." The art buyer on set doesn't really know what you're using or really care, because he hired you for your talent and service, not as a technician. Anyways, those photographers I've worked for, and even myself, sometimes had to rely on the crappier backup cameras but we knew its limits and compensated with the other gear that wasn't broken - lighting, forcing the talent to work harder, have the assistants setup more cards, or fix it in post (worst case scenario).
Years ago I saw a kid just like you shooting college or pro football (can't remember which) where his camera locked up during the game. I think it was a canon 20D since it used to have that snag. Anyways, he freaked out and had no idea what to do and the other body was a lesser Nikon D70 I believe. I think he ran back to the media room to consult with the editor or find out how to unlock his canon in an online forum.
Anyways, the professional can use whatever camera or lens is thrown at him. Just as a professional piano player can perform anywhere, from a music hall with a grand piano and maximize the sound, or a county festival with an electronic keyboard. It's not the tool what matters, but how the professional leverages when it counts. Photography is always easy - it's when things go wrong is when experience kicks in. Sort of like an airline pilot.
I don't disagree that the 5D is a fine camera, but between all those generations the benefit is marginal. I would've just bought the 5DII and made some money in those 6 months (and probably more) than get the 5DIII. I would never shoot anything above 800 ISO anyways, but hiring grip and lighting instead. The art buyer doesn't really need anything above 4k, and videos are useless at high ISO unless you're doing basic narrative with no post (color grading, chroma key removal, integrating CG assets). Even with magic lantern, it's hard to do much post work. I'd rather rent a Red with Contax lenses if we're going "high end."
To me, a low-end camera is a $100 Kodak camera/ video combo you find at Best Buy, not the previous generation of the 5D. Or even the T3i, which by the way, I can shoot better than newbs with a Red camera outfit.
First of all, you don't sit there and talk about your own crappy camera phones with a professional photographer any more than you would talk about your stupid dell keyboard with a professional hacker.
Secondly, the camera you use makes a *huge* difference. One of the online dating sites, for example, did a comparison between people's photo ratings and the quality of camera used and found there to be a strong correlation. I am not saying everyone should run out and buy an overpriced Leica or something like that - just that even a simple DLSR used in point-and-shoot mode will be WORLDS better than a camera phone. In fact my 5 year old DSLR has some advantages over my brand new top of the line camera phone. (I have an Xperia Z, which has one of the best cameras in a phone that money can buy - but it's still a camera phone!)
Certainly the theme that you don't need to spend tons of money is true. You can buy a used SLR camera on the cheap and learn how to use it. And a good point and shoot camera is not that expensive and still much cheaper than a new fancy top-of-the-line camera with features you won't know how to use, and still much better in photo quality than a phone will be. It actually makes me feel sad to see all these photos on facebook or whatever where people are taking grainy blurry shitty photos of someone's going away party, etc. That's their last chance, and because they thought their phone would be fine, they got stuck with shit photos.
Anyway, putting photos on a social media site or not means about zero to me. I don't want to share all of my photos with the whole world. Some are for my private use, others are to share with everyone online, while some are for my close friends only. You can very easily take your photos on a decent camera and then upload them to a web site later - in fact, I nearly always do. In fact, my camera will even send the photos to my phone via WiFi.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/nokia/