Digital and film
Envy and nostalgia at the restaurant and considerations on technological progress.
These considerations of mine are inspired by some phrases that you hear or read around about digital photography, especially that taken with cell phones. I am referring to phrases like "with film you could do less" or "when you paid for them you would never take pictures of the dishes at the restaurant" ... and other cheerful ironic jokes ... or maybe not.
I am not the type who photographs every dish he eats at the restaurant with his cell phone, both because I am not a restaurant frequenter and because I do not like taking pictures with my phone, but I am not bothered by those who do it, in fact good for them, they share moments of their happiness. I am a little bothered by those who launch these apparently innocent jokes, as revealing digs perhaps of an unspoken internal discomfort, and the question arises spontaneously: what problems do you have? Do you perhaps feel envious because modern generations can afford the luxury of photographing everything they want for free? Because honestly this is the doubt that comes to mind.
I am now of a certain age and I grew up with film, with all the advantages and limitations of the case, and I feel lucky to have been able to witness some changes that can be defined as epochal, such as the one from analog to digital. In my youth, photography was an expensive passion, not only did you have to face the considerable initial expense for the equipment, but then you had to pay for the roll, with a maximum of 36 shots available, and then pay for each individual print, even just to see the results and perhaps decide to throw it away. Not to mention that I lived in a small town where there was no photography shop, so I also had to pay for gas and the hassle of the trip to go to the city to take the roll to be developed, and three days later return to pick up the prints. In addition to the expense, many other limitations weighed on photography, for example it was a classic that the film ran out right at the best moment, also if you put in a black and white film, it was black and white until the end, the same goes for the sensitivity, if you put in a 400 ISO film or a tungsten light film, all the photos had to be taken at 400 ISO, and so on. Today with digital you can change all these parameters from one shot to another at your leisure, and take photos at your leisure without any other expense than that of the initial purchase of the camera. Personally, I experienced the transition to digital as a great liberation, both for the economic savings, but also for the immediacy of the results and the infinite possibility of experimenting without other worries.
I think it is also necessary to remind certain nostalgics of analog, that not so many years ago, many of the equipment that today is within everyone's reach, or almost, only a few years ago were instruments with absolutely prohibitive costs, that only a few, very lucky chosen ones could afford. I am referring for example to certain lenses, such as fisheyes that years ago literally cost an arm and a leg, underwater cameras, flying cameras (drones), even just unimaginable, panoramic photography and so on. Perhaps many of these nostalgics who indulge in certain irritating statements, are just old barons, noble and rich, now envious of the freedom conquered by others, instead of being happy and content with everything that modern technology makes available to creativity. I, on the other hand, am happy as a sandboy, and so is Amazon for all the money I leave them!
So today, and fortunately I say, we literally have a flood of possibilities and choices, both digital and analog, so everyone can freely make their own choices without easy ironies, otherwise I just don't understand what's stopping you from being happy with your passion? ... or maybe this is the problem for many, the management of their own freedom and their own choices.
Honestly, therefore, I am not nostalgic for film at all, and I read in certain jokes and statements perhaps a hint of envy for those who were born with digital. But there is also the other side of the coin: probably those who were born with digital do not fully understand how lucky they are. For this reason I consider myself very lucky, having lived through both periods, and therefore having the necessary terms of comparison. But there would also be other interesting questions, namely, we should ask ourselves why even among so many young people who have never experienced analog, they are so attracted to it!
The fact remains that if someone is nostalgic for paying for every single shot, this possibility is not at all precluded to them, fortunately films still exist today, and are in any case an important segment of photography, of undoubted charm, as vinyl records and paper books still exist, which are and remain products of great value, charm and quality. Perhaps it is the sensuality of the material, the need for physical contact with the world, and not just virtual. Everyone is free to choose the expressive medium that suits them best, there is enough for all tastes I would say.
It is also likely that the big photographic industries have understood that with digital they can no longer squeeze so much money from consumers, so here they are resurrecting the "old" films and photography can go back to being profitable for companies, and expensive for photographers.
A similar reasoning can also be made for lenses: years ago, when I was a boy, zoom lenses did not yet exist, and to have a certain freedom of expression, you had to buy and carry around a whole set of lenses, which had to be dismantled and reassembled every time you wanted to change perspective! Even in this case I enthusiastically welcomed the arrival on the market of the first zoom lenses, and they were very expensive and of inferior quality to the corresponding fixed lenses, but they had undoubted practical advantages, and everyone yearned for the legendary zoom. Over time these lenses have improved and have taken hold, today they are now of equal and sometimes superior quality to many fixed lenses, and now that there are superlative zooms with incredible focal excursions, of irreplaceable practicality, nostalgics emerge who praise the advantages of fixed lenses! The human mind is very strange...
Among these advantages I often hear that fixed lenses make you think more about photography, composition and framing, forcing you to move and study the subject better. In a certain sense I can agree, but if this is the advantage, then I think that the problem is not so much in the optics but in the mind of the photographer, if he needs a physical limitation to be stimulated in the creative process, rather than in the use of a tool that offers countless possibilities of focal choice! After all, it is an ephemeral advantage compared to the advantages of the variable focal length, it would be enough to fix the zoom at a certain focal length and decide for a session to use it only at that focal length! In this way there would also be the psychological component of the temptation to overcome, an additional difficulty if we are looking for difficulties: the mental difficulty of overcoming the temptation to turn the zoom ring!
Obviously we cannot make a too general discussion, I understand that many people look for a fixed focal length because they are looking for other parameters, such as a certain blur or a certain brightness or a particular character that each individual lens has. I like to think that each lens is like a brush or a pencil, each has its own specificities, its strengths and weaknesses, its character let's say, which can be more or less in tune with the character of the person using it, regardless of quality or performance. It's also a question of feeling. For example, I have two zooms with similar focal lengths, a 7-14 and a 9-18: the first is professional, bright, impeccable, sharp in its clarity, free from vignetting, aberrations or distortions, but the second, not professional, softer, less bright and with some slight flaws at the edges, is instead my favorite, because it has a "warmer and more enveloping" character, more personal.
The analog world, film, manual lenses, it still remains a very fascinating world, with film there is still that "magic" of waiting and the unexpected, you never know for sure what the result will be until you have it in your hands, it can be a disappointment, but also a surprise. But it is probably a nostalgia linked to memories of beautiful and pleasant moments: the sound of the shutter itself, which many digital cameras try to imitate with unreal results, the noise of the film that drags in the camera body, the clicks of the diaphragm and the various wheels and rings to move and touch, to have the impression of creating the photograph with your hands, analog is also this, it is no coincidence that wheels and rings are back to make a fine show of themselves in many models of modern cameras, initially hastily and incautiously replaced by buttons and menus.
And then, a very important detail, each film has its own character, its own particular imprint, which can become part of the photographer's style itself. A similar thing happens with sensors, after all, every brand and every model has its own "aftertaste" that you may like or not, it is one of the important things to take into consideration when choosing your favorite brand.
And then the lenses, all fantastic and beautiful tools, there is also the material pleasure of using them, of handling them, which is a very different approach from managing everything through an electronic menu. All this evokes in the memory of those who have used analog, a nostalgia undoubtedly linked to the pleasant moments spent photographing, because when you spend time dedicating yourself to your passions and the things you love, those moments will always remain imprinted within us, beyond the results obtained. And the physical impressions that we have internalized in handling our equipment remain well imprinted in the memory, the tactile impressions, the noises, the sounds, the gestures, the very scents of the equipment. All this contributes to structuring the concept of "nostalgia".
In recent years we have been witnessing a return or reinvention of instant photography, and I must say that I am personally slowly letting myself be seduced by this world, I feel it, I sense it, and my wallet trembles at the mere thought! Aesthetically very elegant and captivating cameras are being born, from brands that have existed for years, such as Holga, Lomo, Fuji and Kodak, which had been somewhat forgotten with the advent of digital, but which are now recovering lost ground. Some new digital cameras are also being born that boast the lack of an LCD display to review shots, offered as an "added value" that helps not to get distracted in the attempt to capture fleeting moments, and here we return a little to the discussion made previously on the need for man to impose limits or restrictions on himself.
The revival of this type of camera, which in terms of quality are certainly not comparable to modern SLRs with their lenses, makes us think that technical perfection is not everything, and does not interest everyone. Once we have experienced technical perfection, perhaps we realize that all this perfection does not fully satisfy us, perhaps it seems cold or impersonal. So after having invested a lot of money in super sharp lenses and sensors, here we go and buy filters, both physical to use during shooting or software to use in post-production, to create artistic effects of various kinds, filters that essentially have the task of adding character or atmosphere to our shots, effectively worsening the quality of our expensive tools. Or we intentionally look for a blur, or try to obtain deliberately blurry photos to create images that have an atmosphere and a character, images that are therefore technically absolutely imperfect, but warmer and more personal, that communicate to the heart more than to the mind.
So, after having experienced it, technical perfection seems to us perhaps a little insipid, perhaps more like a game or an egoistic display of skill rather than a true personal expression, we then look with interest at cameras that perhaps render less sharp images, with absolutely unreal color dominants, perhaps with a marked vignetting, images perhaps small in size, but unique, a little dreamlike perhaps, and that make us rediscover the poetry and magic of the world and of photography. They are captivating images because they are more emotional perhaps, more passionate if you like.
Should we perhaps abandon our delusions of grandeur, our proud and very expensive perfectionism then, to turn towards a "small world" made of greater intimacy, greater simplicity and greater immediacy? This too can be a valid choice, or a parallel world.
Art and technique are two completely different worlds, but both necessary, one functional to the other: if we want to make art, we must use a technique, but familiarity with it must not become the final goal, indeed creativity is also manifested in knowing how to exploit for artistic and creative purposes precisely those that are the limits or disadvantages of a certain technique. I don't know if the technique in itself can be a language, probably yes, I have seen photographs that conveyed emotions even just by admiring the technical perfection in every little detail, but equally an emotion can be conveyed even just by an impression, by a color, by a tone, by a nuance: the impressionists of the nineteenth century teach.
I am also very tempted by all these very tasty games that the market churns out in abundance today, the only fear that holds me back in front of film is its prohibitive cost, unthinkable to shoot and experiment as I do with digital using film! But I see that some very interesting hybrid cameras are coming out intelligently, or rather, subtly, that is, digital cameras with a screen to preview the results, and film to print the shots when needed, only the chosen ones, the ones we consider appropriate, and this seems to me to be a great choice, successful and intelligent, with an eye on creativity and one on the wallet.
Maybe we have gone too far, today there are amazing things in photography, sensors with a detail unimaginable only a few years ago, cameras that are microscopes, astronomical cameras that follow the stars in their movement and record X-rays and infrared, thermal cameras, 360° cameras that nothing escapes, flying cameras, waterproof cameras and so on, increasingly high-performance lenses and cameras with thousands of intricate functions, sometimes even useless or redundant, and millions of megapixels and then maybe never even print a photograph. It is literally out of breath to want to constantly follow this technological race, maybe it is right to scale down this world a little, and maybe faced with all this many people feel the need to slow down the race, to temper all this performance anxiety that is distancing us from the main objective of photography which is to transmit emotions and reveal one's inner world. If we get lost in discussing megapixels, chromatic aberrations, flare or noise, we end up losing sight of the emotional and most important side of our passion. And this is something that I have always had a hard time digesting in photography circles, with friends or in magazines, whether paper or online: we always talk too much about cameras, and too little about photography!
From this point of view, yes, I am a little nostalgic too, maybe there is really a need for more simplicity and more slowness, even in taking photographs. And probably there is also a need for a little more manual skill, even the material and physical side of photography has its great importance, it is one of the reasons why I don't like taking photographs with the phone, I miss the pleasure of holding the camera in my hands, with its ergonomic grip, with its weight, its volume.
There is a race to spectacularization, a real hunt for the most adrenaline-filled and most abstruse image possible, more, more and more, but in the end we must ask ourselves if all this overdose of spectacle nourishes and enriches us, or if it is just noise to cover a silence that we have inside! Maybe yes, maybe there is a need for less spectacularity, less sensationalism in photography, more intimacy, more emotion, more enchantment, not to be confused with the adrenaline or the fake smile of so many selfies passed off as happiness.
Of course, a return of this type, a step back, must be the result of a conscious choice, I remain however even if a little nostalgic, also always enthusiastic about the great innovations in the technological field, let's not forget that even in the most sophisticated equipment, there is always the "manual" option! The important thing is always to know and be able to choose the option that best suits your needs of the moment, and perhaps this is not a simple thing at all, but it has nothing to do with technology, we must mainly learn to manage ourselves.
All this long speech and these vintage revivals in photography perhaps reveal an important and profound side of human reality: the thing that is perhaps the most difficult for many is precisely the ability to make a choice, the fear of choosing, which is perhaps the reflection of a greater and more disturbing fear: the fear of freedom.
Many feel disoriented in the midst of a sea of possibilities, few are truly willing to be free, despite the fact that many fill their mouths with this fateful magic word.
