is traditional film and paper photography dead?

Question

I have a black and white darkroom....

Answer 1

It might surprise you to know that "traditional" film and photographic paper is alive and doing well. Don't believe all of those pronouncements of its demise... it's a rumor and nothing more than a slick way for digital manufacturers to promote digital technology as they laugh all the way to the bank with their wheelbarrows filled with money... digital tech is FAR cheaper and easier to manufacture with less workers, which means less salaries being paid out, less benefits, etc., and the manufacturers are raking in greater and larger profits as they sell at ridiculously higher prices! They promote convenience over quality, and that's OK for the average consumer... but even the average consumer has to rely on the avid and professional photographers when they need GOOD family portraits, wedding photos, or photos for magazines, newspapers, newsmedia, glamor, architecture, travel, etc.

I recall reading about the lively debates of yesteryear centering on whether or not photography was an art form, akin to today’s debates on film vs digital technology. But every step that progress has brought us has had its share of debates, too.

I can only imagine how those that learned and used the Daguerreotype process must have felt when they were exposed to the direct positive images on glass (ambrotypes) and metal (tintype use of an emulsion of gelatin and silver bromide on glass plates or ferrotypes), and to Kodak’s roll film of 1889 or so. OR, imagine how the working photographers must have felt around 1907 when the first commercial color film the Autochrome plates (manufactured in France by the Lumiere Brothers)! And, when the Leitz company in Germany developed the camera using the modern 24x36mm sprocketed 35mm movie film around 1914 or 1915, and the shock waves caused by these smaller and more portable cameras must have had on the public and working professionals! Of course, the development of Kodachrome, the first color multi-layered color film must have had an effect on the popular use of black and white films, too. Just like the now quaint Polaroid film and cameras of 1963, which are now relegated as museum curiosities. I still recall the popularity of color films in the late 60s to mid-70s and how everyone taunted those that still used and developed black and white films and sounded the death tolls of black and white film back then and hand-painted black and white photos with oil paints, yet black and white is today STILL a popular medium throughout the world.

Who could have imagined back in the mid-70s the revolution that digital photography was to make on the photographic world when Nicholas Nixon took his first annual photograph of his wife and her sisters (The Brown Sisters) using the first working CCD-based digital still camera made by Steve Sasson at Kodak?

Progress continues and whosoever fails to embrace it will be doomed to stay in the past (I am one of those fossils that still uses film). It was back in the mid-80s, as I recall, when Minolta first introduced the world’s first auto focus SLR system and everyone mocked the technology and found all sorts of reasons why it would fail… or would not be embraced by either the public or the working professionals… how time changes!

Digital photography and film photography are both means and ways of doing the same thing, capturing images and “immortalizing a slice of life that will not repeat itself every again.”

Technological advances are nothing more than the inevitable progress that must take place if humanity is to continue to progress; one invention has many ramifications, and each ramification has still others and man's ingenuity is limitless!

Film still holds certain advantages that digital technology has yet to match (dynamic range of film far exceeds that of digital sensors, the ability to capture quality details in both highlights and shadoy areas in a scene, archival issues and the need to constantly have to be backing up repeatedly, depth of film images, etc) and it would be very foolish for someone to say that digital will never catch up with what film has been doing for about 120 years! But, film AIN'T dead and that's what matters.

I'm starting to put together my own wet darkroom again after more than 30 years away from a darkroom. I'm even setting up an area where I'll be able to hand-color black and white photos with oil paints, too. BECAUSE ITS FUN and very relaxing!

Answer 2

If you have a B&W darkroom, then keep it going. First, digital black and white imaging still doesn't compare to traditional B&W film and printing, espcially if you treat it as a craft to be mastered. Color imaging, on the other hand, has been geared towards the masses and therefore more R&D is going into digital color imaging. Think about it this way. If you master the medium of traditional B&W photography and printing, then when it really starts to disappear folks who still want it will flock to your door looking for ANYONE who still knows how to do "the old ways!"

Answer 3

Darkroom work and chemical imaging has been almost completely replaced by electronic image capture and reproduction in the last five years. It is very similiar to what happened to magnetic tape capture for audio and video. For better or worse , all of the R&D money for current image systems has moved into electronic imaging.
Take some time to learn Photoshop and inkjet printing.Get your hands on a Wacom tablet! You may find out that working in the light can be lots of fun!
http://www.wacom.com/tips/index.cfm?category=Photoshop

Answer 4

Not yet. There is still a lot of people still shooting film and many more are just now starting to enjoy using film. The popularity of LOMO photography is using a lot of 120 film and now with 35 mm versions of the same camera, there is a lot of 35 mm film being sold just to feed them. Most photo classes start students using film to quickly hone their skills of making nearly perfect exposures within just a few rolls of film, slow them down when setting up their shots and use the many controls and techniques used by photographers over the past decades. As a result, many fall in love with the medium and use it from time to time, although they still do use digital cameras.

Answer 5

I sure hope not. Digital is fun and cheaper, sure. But the clarity is not as good. And there is something beautiful about watching your image come to life in the baths. It's almost the cumulation of the creative process. I hope it never dies. And someday I hope to have a B&W darkroom too.

Answer 6

Yes, send me all your equipment.

Answer 7

Only if you let it die...but why are you worried...