Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/11/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Digital news photography is a subject I am really concerned about. Ted Grant and I discussed this on Compuserve about a year ago with some other members of the photo forum there. It's one thing if all you care about is one-time use of your photos in your newspaper. What happens later, though, if some of them turn out to have historical or artistic merit? Even the best current digital cameras (I'm talking about hand-holdable, non-studio cameras) produce files with resolution too poor do do large gallery prints, or to be printed full-page in a book. (Fine art-book printing on slick paper is often 175-200 lpi.) Many of the famous photos by Leica-carrying photojournalists were originally taken for one-time use in a newspaper or magazine. At the time when they were taken, meeting the current deadline was all that was important, just as with news photos being taken today; I'm sure that little importance was given to their long-term artistic value. I fully understand the advantages to going digital; however, as more and more papers and photographers go this route, I think the problem will eventually become serious. The other issue is storage. With film, you drop your sleeved film and a contact sheet into your filing cabinet, and it stays there forever. Will you do the same with digital files, or will you dump them when your disks fill up? What happens later, when the photos turn out to have some significance that they don't, now? The example Ted and I talked about was the photo of JFK shaking hands with the very young Bill Clinton. Would this have been a digital file that would have been kept for 30 years, copying it from disk to disk as formats change, and considering that most magnetic media only last a few years unless they are refreshed? If you're a long-time working pro, what do you do with the hundreds of thousands of images, which make up your lifetime's work, which need to be backed up every few years. Do you bother, or do you just keep what you think is important? Which of us has not come back years later and discovered jems in our old slides, which we didn't pay attention to because it didn't fit with the project we were working on at the time? Right now, film can still record much more information than digital, and can simply be re-scanned if newer technology comes along. I'm a serious digital weenie, but I don't think that we are there, yet. Digital does have advantages: you can make unlimited numbers of first-generation copies, can transmit photos electronically, and no nasty chemicals are involved. I'm not buying into digital cameras, though, until the quality gets better. - - Paul