Quote Originally Posted by Sebastian
Norman,

Digital is the equivalent of you framing shots in the ground glass, only this time they are permanent, one can take them home, study them at length, maybe even work with them. I kind of see your post as bitter, not sure why. I see the exact opposite thanks to digital, my work and many others' has gone way beyond snap shooting. The ability to shoot anything for the sake of experimentation has really gotten the creativity flowing. And there is no reason in the world to not use the digital camera like film. Don't take the shot if you don't want.to. Don't look at the screen if you don't want to. Shoot only 30 frames and never look at one to check exposure or focus, treat it just like you did film, but with all the freedom of choice that digital provides you.

I think that's my favorite thing about digital, the freedom it provides. I am no longer forced into a cycle of shoot and hope for the best, hand it off to the developer and hope for the best, scan and hope for the best...I now can take total control over an important image, or I can still hand off the card to a lab for snapshots, I get to choose how I work, and most impotantly how my images look. I know, with a darkroom I would have all those things. Yes, but with less control, and I'd pretty much be forced into strictly B&W, not much freedom IMO. I always wanted a darkroom for B&W work, but my parents' house didn't have the room, and now I'm renting an apartment, and that just makes it impossible. Someday I'll have one for the sake of it, probably when I retire...

I think digital does not increase the amount of snapshots, it just records the ideas that before you didn't want to risk film on. That has nothing to do with digital vs. film, it's just that you now have a physical record of all the failed ideas that before you would just forget about... And that can also be a good thing, as sometimes when we come back to a failed idea (barring that we didn't delete it, I keep EVERYTHING I shoot) and through a burst of creativity see something in it that we didn't before. Then we go back and reshoot it with the new vision in mind.

The only problem I have with digital is that I have 60 gigs of images to organize.
With all the technology and ease of making images, are the images being made today anywhere near the quality of the early pioneeers of the art, or are we getting technically very sterile photographs? I do like like digital, it has resparked the flame of my interest, but I have seen too many photoshoped models made into winged faireys.Sorry if it sounds synical.