Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/07/05
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]All this talk of Kodachrome and E-6 films has made me start thinking of what is to become of the images of "our times". I am probably of the last generation of news photographers who worked shooting only Black and white films on daily news stories and I am only 32 years old. We all know Black and White can be made to last a very, very long time. Many of the images I think of as being the telling images of a decade, century ect have been in Black and white, but that is mainly because color as a standard staple of news reportage has been in use for only the past 10 years or so. Sure it has been used for longer than that, but most papers and wire services shot mostly black and white because of the cost factor and time factor. However, with the advent of excellent color negative films, "cheap" film scanners and digital photography everything is now shot in color. In the past if it was not for the front of a section it was shot on black and white. Now shoot on color then if needed in B&W scan in greyscale. I have no idea what the archival factor of color neg is, but I would guess it is no better than e-6? Of course now many papers, and the Associated Press do not even use film. All of their images are shot on digital cameras. This now brings into question not only the archiving the images, but the "history" factor. We all know how easy it is to alter an image in photoshop, so who is going to safe guard the images of world shaping events for our future generations? Would Eddie Adams' Pulitzer winning image from Veitnam be safe from manipulation, or would it, in this day and age of politically correct, be manupliated to show some kinder event? Furthermore almost everything shot in color before the advent of color neg was shot on E-6 and from Fred's, Donal's and others posts I assume we can just rule all of this stuff as garbage in the next 10-30 years. This really hits home to me as the type of stuff I currently shoot is the kind of thing future generations will look back to see how things used to be. I shoot mostly travel/development photos of small towns and cities. How often do you see a photo from 1900 showing what a town used to look like. Now that everything is on E-6 I guess in 2097 it will be "Well we had these great photos showing our city in 1997, but they are now just clear pieces of plastic!" And unfortuantly Kodachrome is not an alternative as the time factor comes into play. When shooting on tight deadlines you just don't have time to ship film off, plus I HATE shipping film for processing, just to many things can go wrong. In the few times I have to do it for clients I have had to many problems, so I would hate to do it on a regular basis. As a final note on the advent of digital cameras in the newspapers I wonder if it will do to still photographers what video cameras did to motion picture TV photographers. The TV photographers of old had to understand light, color, and film. This in my opinon is what makes a photographer, today all they do is hit white ballance, and most of don't even do that well, and shoot on automatic (Hence the reason I REFUSE to call them photographers). From what I have been told shooting on full automatic is how to use these digital cameras. So I am guessing that the news photographers of the future will have no real understanding of film, light ect as those of use who came up shooting chrome on deadline did. I already see this to some extent from those who have come up shooting color neg, never having to worry about the correct color on a color slide, perfect exposure ect. Hmmm maybe not so bad afterall....maybe the competition from the future generations will be not so stiff, if they don't understand film..... :) Harrison McClary http://people.delphi.com/hmphoto