Rain

dup.

Hi,
 
Nice one Paulo ... and yeah ... I agree.
 
I am having issues converting to video from the film camera, despite the obvious ability that it is much easier now and it was prohibitive then ... for some reason, I have not enjoyed editing things on the computer screen as I did manually in the old days, It was cool to count the frames and match the music, or soundtrack ... even if it took longer than it does now.
 
Today, you can sync all three cameras, or however many you want, and while this makes things easier for filming, in the end, there are some fine moments that only something out of sync will give you! And many of the directors in the 60's and 70's in film? ... yep ... they took advantage of those moments to create odd responses and details, and was one of the oldest tricks in the books for horror films ... sound out of sync has a way of scaring people, or distract them, and you can POP something else at them!
 
The photography side was interesting for me. My boss was a professional photographer, and he had no talent whatsoever for "moments" in time. He did portrait all the way, regardless of school, sports or whatever. Consistently good, though I have to admit. 9 years there and we lost maybe one or two rolls of 35mm film that got eaten up somewhere!
 
Coming from "film" I always found and could get the "moments" that make a picture special. For me, "arts", "literature" and "music" have always been about these "highlights" which makes us remember them forever ... so I set out as a kid to look for those moments ... and guess what I find ...  a movie camera ... because I can see those moments and grab them ... and for me it's the same thing in music, with the exception that the majority of musicians are too self-conscious and afraid of rehearsal, with a director, so they can "get out" of their minds enough to look at the possibilities. I have never had issues with this with a camera in my hands, film or otherwise, except once ... I was doing a nude shoot for a lady, and I don't know if I was intimidated, or it simply did not work, or the ideas and poses she had just did not match what was in front of us. In general, that is one of the hardest types of shoots. It is easier on film than still photography, btw!

Hi Paulo

We don't live in caves anymore because we have centrally heated houses and we don't ride a donkey because we have cars and trucks. At then end of the day it still takes a creative mind / talent to be up there with the very best and that's what really matters to me. Exactly how someone produced that particular fantastic piece of work is not as important to me as the end result.

I totally agree with your take on the situation - I used to be in advertising and no matter what computer or camera you might use, a crap idea was always a crap idea. 
I worked with some top professional photographers and it was their"eye" for the picture you were looking for which made them the best - it was not necessarily the camera they used.
I think the same can be said to be true of music - whilst it is without doubt easier today, you still need  ability to write something decent 


Nigel

Good point re quality v quanitity Rain. One of the downsides of the digital age for sure is the utter crap that people seem to think worthy of being posted to FB and the likes and it never ceases to amaze me. I think that it has a lot to do with people's seeming perception these days that their every thought / action is somehow worthy of worldwide publication, when it is in fact generally quite the opposite. I'm not sure where this came from - chicken or egg ? Has the digital world produced all these deluded, ego-centric beings or were they always there just lying in wait for the appropriate means with which to inflict their narcissim on the rest of the world ?

Yep, agree.  The talent is behind the camera, not the equipment itself.  

You know, one of my favorite bands was Nine Inch Nails. However, it struck me recently that half of their catalogue was, imho, fairly poor.

Over the course of their first 10 years, NIN put out 4 albums. Then, in a matter of 4 years, they released just as many.

Looking back, the first 4 albums were released at a time where Reznor didn't have absolute control over the projects. He had people programming drums, people creating sample libraries, and digital audio was still pretty much in it's early days. Analog tape, SSL boards and all the rest were still involved, even though they were using the latest gadgets.

But from the moment he went on to record With Teeth and onward, where the line between creation and the recording process began to blur, the music began to suck pretty badly. I guess it seemed a good thing to him not to have to compromise and to have absolute creative control, but as a listener, the results were sometimes terrifyingly boring.

Most of that stuff would have ended up on remix albums and b-sides back in the days. And that's something I used to dig - those precious little oddities. It was like being given access to the creative process, yet, somehow, it was a totally distinct experience.

But for the second half of NIN's career, it's almost as if anything he recorded was released. Talk about 2 hours of ominous atmospheric piano... About as exciting as an old pair of socks.

The destination doesn't change because you chose a different route to get there today.
 
What you are talking about there Steve is photographic skills many of which will still be required regardless of the medium.
 
There's also the question you've posed about availability, you'd have had to have shown plenty of commitment to what you were doing at one stage to warrant the expense of studio equipment and at least one professional engineer at one time.  It hasn't made it any more convenient to make good stuff you'll still need all the same qualities you had before to rise above the soup of mediocrity generated by the availability of the tools.
 
It's got its advantages so play to the strengths, the fact that you can appraise 20 shots while you are in situ without having to wait 2 days for the chemist to mail your prints back has to be a creative advantage.  So you wont be able to mimic the exact behaviour of silver halides in the digital realm, so what? 
 
Many of these so called 'real' audio engineers still lament the similarly ridiculous 'losses' in audio, trying to recreate the flaws introduced by flakey old analogue gear, hopefully photographers are not that sad.  The whole audio thing has been a joke IMO for many years when digital has so many avenues that could have been explored by now it's been stunted by an obsession to make it sound sepia tinted and most everyone has fallen for it.
 
For example how many simulated LA-2A compression algorithms have been given development time which could have been better spent doing wondrous things with binary math and logic?
 
Look at it this way, the written word didn't change much due to the advent of word-processing, having something to say is far more important than the type of pen and ink.

So Steve... are you OK with it now that is done? I know you are... digital is so much easier. I am all for easier. I have a roll of 35mm film I found that was taken sometime in the last 10 years... I cannot wait to see what is on it, grand children I am sure.

J

I've been thinking about this question since I read it earlier today.
I agree with the general consensus that it's really the skillset, not the medium, that makes the difference. 
I think the digital age has brought about a higher level of opportunity for all users.
Yes, there is more fluff visible, but there is also more good to excellent work being done by people who now have access to better tools.
Like you, I learned photography on some pretty basic cameras.
I think my old Argus C3, light meter, and Ektachrome 64 was a great learning experience.
It taught me a great deal about how light behaves, and how to control what I captured on film. Over the years, I advanced to better cameras, but the lessons learned stuck with me.
When I got a digital camera, the ability to control it manually was absolutely essential.
I'm inclined to believe that what we learned with analogue photography does give us a leg up in the digital realm.
As for audio, I have hours of reel to reel tapes that I couldn't really do anything with.
They exist in their raw, unedited form, because I did not have the tools to move forward with them.
Enter the DAW. It's a whole new world. The dream realized.
Would experience with analogue equipment have given me an edge here? I don't know.
I do know that I have learned more about sound than I could have imagined in the seven years since that fateful day when I peeled the plastic back from the SHS4 box.

Digital reduces the cost of a photograph. I take many, many more than I did with film, but probably end up with same number of good ones and many more rejects. Its certainly useful to be able to bracket exposures and take rapid succession shots when photographing people or action without worrying about the cost of film.

If you are serious, shooting RAW images is the way to go. I have a Canon EOS 450 and use Adobe Lightroom to process the RAW images. I keep thinking I should add something like Photoshop Elements for extra capabilities but Lightroom meets most of my needs and covers a lot of ground that is missing in Elements.

I know results would improve if I used manual mode more, but most of the time my camera is in aperture priority mode and auto focus. And with image stabilizer lenses the tripod is used far less. There is nothing like using a tripod to make you really think about a shot.