This point came up in the comments to the previous post, and I thought it might be worth moving up to a post of its own.

"Film vs. digital" has never been at issue for me at all. Rather, it's always been a question of black-and-white vs. color for me.

This is just my personal viewpoint.

The greenish light of a severe thunderstorm on the way.

It was Carl Weese who first suggested to me, many years ago, the digital would be the coming of age of color photography, and I still firmly believe that's the case. Digital cameras "see" natively in color*...at least virtually all of the cameras they've given us so far do. Color management still isn't trivial, but the control we're given over color in post-processing is wonderful and virtually limitless. Color digital printing, easy to do indifferently and still difficult to do well, is nevertheless just gorgeous—well-made digital pigment inkjet prints can be stunning and deeply satisfying, rivalled (arguably not surpassed) by only a few rare esoteric color processes from the old day 'n' ways. Color photography is better in digital than it's ever been. Certainly in terms of convenience and interpretive control. But aesthetically, too, in my opinion.

Similarly, nothing beats a B&W print from film. It's not always easy to do well; really good workers are still in the minority of all practitioners. But it's a fully mature technology and one I find to be aesthetically very satisfying and fulfilling when done skilfully. It doesn't need improvement. Really, the ultimate quality (in terms of aesthetics and permanence) available to B&W film and plates and papers hasn't improved in well over a hundred years...what has changed is convenience, which has gradually improved.

Yet all during that time, color continued to struggle to improve. Color film photography was worked out quite well by the end, but it took a lot of doing, and there was still something less than completely satisfactory about it. Cross-contamination of the dye layers, lack of interpretive control in printing with most methods, materials that deteriorated with time...I just never liked many color print methods. Eliot Porter's dye transfer prints, Paul Outerbridge's carbros, Richard Misrach's masked Cibas were the exceptions, not the rule. And of course Kodachrome was always nice, but there were limited things you could do with small-format transparencies.

The same unsatisfying, one might say resistant aspects I have always perceived in color film methods I also definitely perceive in digital black-and-white. It just isn't easy or natural. To take a digital camera with a Bayer array and RGB microlenses and struggle to convert the results to B&W is just...well, it's just too contrived for my modernist heart. Why do it? You're just imitating what B&W film does, is all. I've never liked it, never been entirely satisfied with my experiments with it, never mind the process and methodological concerns.

The colors in pictures like this can be interpreted in many different ways.

In my view, black-and-white was already perfect, whether it was Kodak Tri-X in a Leica or Pentax or Ilford HP5 Plus sheet film in a 4x5. Color needed digital to set it free, to make it come alive, to give its practitioners sufficient interpetive control and set it on equal footing with monochrome. I would never criticize any photographer for choosing any particular technique that he or she thinks suits his or her work, but in my view it's at least a little quixotic to shoot color film in 2010**, and maybe a touch bullheaded to try to wrestle digital into doing capable black-and-white. To my mind, film is for black-and-white, digital is for color. I don't mean to be rigid about this. And I certainly don't mean to be prescriptive: your photography isn't up to me, and you can hold any opinion you want to. But to me, it's not really a film vs. digital thing at all. Never has been. It's a question of choosing the best medium for B&W vs. color that's the real question.

Mike

*I know some people will probably take the following tack in playing Devil's advocate, but it's an obfuscating argument to contend that digital sensors really "see" in black-and-white. While technically true, that's not the way we experience the cameras. It's not the way they're manufactured or are set up to operate. And yes, we had worked out many of the problems of color photography by the end of the film era. But even in the 1970s, we still had relatively poor-performing color films, and catastrophic short- or medium-term failure of many common color printmaking materials was widespread (the accounts of Henry Wilhelm's epic quests and battles are enough to prove that). Color was just never quite "natural" to photography until digital came along.

**One natural exception would be, if you've been doing it since before the digital era. Another exception is that the fad style among photo art galleries right now is for large-format color film work, and if you shoot for that market it makes sense to shoot what that market appreciates.

ADDENDUM by Ctein: Re "...but it's an obfuscating argument to contend that digital sensors really 'see' in black-and-white." It's worse: it's entirely without point or possible import, because all photographic media, with one singular exception, "see" B&W. The Lippmann Process actually saw a spectrum as a spectrum. Every single other method, silver or silicon, involves assembling a color image out of monochrome bits. Doesn't matter if they're side-by-side, as in an Autochrome or a Bayer array, in-camera seps/multi-chip cameras, or superimposed, as with integral tripack films and Foveon sensors. It's all monochrome, so far as the "detector" is concerned. So, indeed, it is the end-user (ahem) experience that defines the medium, not physically-inappropriate hair-splitting.

Today is the day we say goodbye to summer. It is the last day of the three day weekend, the "pause that refreshes" before we head into Fall. Many spend this day with family and friends celebrating with the last big Summer picnic.

Many others, like ourselves, take the weekend to head off for a short 3 day vacation, spending time with special friends, before we shift the gears and and ready ourselves for the last three months of the year.

Today is also the day that celebrates the working man and woman, the people that have built our country into what it has become today. In this age of outsourcing and job layoffs, let's thank the people who's work ethic keeps the wheels of our country well oiled and running smoothly.

However you spend this day, may it be alone or with friends and family filled with celebration, joy and a sense of thankfulness too. Everybody have a great day today and I'll see you in Phoenix tomorrow for the kick off of our "Captured By The Light 2010" tour [link].

- David

Announcing my 2010 Success Collection! http://digitalprotalk.blogspot.com/2010/05/announcing-my-2010-digital-wakeup-call.html