Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/10/11
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]From: <Afterswift@aol.com> Sent: Monday, October 11, 1999 18:12 Subject: [Leica] A Negative View > You're overlooking one asset of film: the direct= > from-camera negative. It's only with sturm & drang > that a digital system could produce it. That's because digital systems produce a direct-from-camera _positive_, in color, which you can view instantly. You can even delete a shot and take it over again immediately, if you wish. There are no negatives, and there is no need for negatives. > Because the negative is the back-up record of the > positive's statement of reality. The negative is just the positive with the luminance and chrominance inverted. Nothing more. It has no special value of its own, and it's extremely easy to do without it. Indeed, most of the time it is just a source of delays, since it must be converted to a positive to be usable. > Second, the negative is immediately available ... So is a digital image--and it is positive, so you don't have to invert it. What sort of film system are you using that requires no development for negatives? Every system I've seen (except Polaroid) requires a lab to render the latent image on a film negative visible. That generally takes at least 20-30 minutes, even if you are standing next to the lab when you take the picture. Compare this to zero delay in the case of a digital camera--the image is displayed as it is taken. > It doesn't require a complex mechanism to call it > into existence. It requires an entire chemical lab! > The negative is also universal; anyone can make sense out > of it who has any interest. It's really hard to make sense out of something that is completely inverted. > You have the impression that photography is ephemeral. The durability of photography is unrelated to film/digital questions. > A photograph isn't abstract. It is a tangible. It is not > a mathematical formula. You are describing an objective reality in subjective and romantic terms. While this may demonstrate your personal attachment to film, it says nothing about any real or presumed advantage of film over digital, or vice versa. Both film and digital images are completely tangible. And both film and digital images can be described and analyzed mathematically. > I'm invoking the nature of photography here. It isn't digital. It's > analog. It is neither. Information itself is always independent of its representation. > If you slap a digital back on a film camera, it ceases to > be a mature traditional photographic instrument. It still takes photographs, though. And that's all that really matters, right? > Without film, a Leica isn't a Leica. Leicas are not sold with film, so the M6 you buy apparently is not a Leica until you load it with Royal Gold, if one follows your line of reasoning. -- Anthony