Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The digital revolution

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Topic: The digital revolution

Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 03-24-2011 03:56 PM

quote: Mike Blakesley
What I've noticed about wedding pics these days is, the photographers tend to take about one billion pictures in the hope of not missing any precious moments. This results in the photog being all over the place to the point of disrupting the services and festivities. When my niece got married last summer, I wanted to shove that camera down the photographer's throat

This gets into why I specifically avoid wedding photography gigs. It's often a lose-lose, catch 22 situation. The customer has their list of all the important moments they want captured. The problem is the only way to capture many of those angles is by being right up there in the middle of everything. Gotta make the customer happy, but you're going to piss off plenty of guests in the process.

Again, church lighting and the lighting of most other places where weddings are held absolutely SUCKS. It's amazing anyone can manage to shoot any video in most of these venues much less do still photography work. The conditions rarely ever allow the photographer to get positioned far back at a distance and use a really long telephoto lens to capture the moments. When you get up to focal lengths of 200mm or longer you're going no bigger/faster than a f/2.8 aperture. And at 300mm or 400mm, a lens with a f/2.8 aperture is going to set you back $5000-$12000. It's easier, faster and cheaper to attach a super fast 50mm or 85mm prime get up closer.

In a perfect world churches and other venues that host weddings would have some camera friendly studio lighting and structural design features that allow photographers to shoot from inconspicuous locations seemingly out of view of the guests. With that type of design photographers wouldn't have to shoot so many extra shots. No need to bracket exposures. And instead of rapid fire shooting in JPEG they might be able to do RAW instead or even break out some medium or large format film cameras.

We don't live in a perfect world though. A lot of better skilled photographers don't want to mess around with the possible confrontations and other PITA stuff involving wedding shoots. With everything going "digital" a lot of amateurs are spending a few thousand on mid range Canon or Nikon bodies, a couple good lenses and then diving into the wedding photography scene without really knowing the rules of the game, including personal conduct. It doesn't surprise me at all if I hear about a wedding photographer that acts like a jackass disrupting parts of a wedding.

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Ron Funderburg
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 814
From: Chickasha, Oklahoma, USA
Registered: Nov 2007

posted 03-25-2011 05:40 PM

I stand corrected there are 2 or 3 companies making 1 or 2 professional 35mm film cameras. When I bought my first professional film camera back in the 1970's there dozens of manufactures and each had lots of professional cameras models. Even in the 90s there were dozens. But if there now 2 or 3 companies instead of dozens isn’t that comparatively dead. You can still buy a brand new Conestoga wagon if you wish but that dose not mean it is thriving industry.

In the end digital is winning on still photography not because of cost but speed the photographer can review as he goes. The professional photographers through time is faster with digital. That makes his profit come quicker. That is what drives it.

WE went from shelves of 35mm films in all kinds of speeds and types to a few rolls of select speeds. We lost Kodachrome this year entirely.

The graphic arts industry used film for much pre-press to not at all now.

I am not a big fan of digital especially for theaters but it is the future it is going to happen, in fact it is happening as we speak.

I agree with Bobby on wedding photography I hated it when I did it wouldn’t do it again. But the buck amateurs in it are really annoying.

I think that movies will be shot with film for quite sometime into the future. I don’t think they will be distributed that way in five years. The film companies in the end doesn’t care about the small town theater they think people will drive miles and miles to see a movie in a big city.

I could be wrong I have been before, at least once, maybe twice. Film accounted for 100% of all photographic sales in 1980 what is the percent now?

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