I have no objection to b%26amp;w and all it entails but time should be spent on composition and exposure, not mixing chemicals.
Digital, with its instant feedback and dirt cheap cost-per-shot, is the all-time killer photography teaching tool.
Why would educators not see this?|||I think a lot of the teaching time is spent on the development and chemicals so if they removed that part, there would not be much left to teach.|||I agree with "that guy". I think it is like many other things in education, slow changing or not at all and teacher would like to NOT learn much but get paid the way they used to. So if they must teach "old school" they might as well teach how to burn metal to take pictures in 1800's :)
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|||I think it is very important to learn the basics of photography.
How light reacts to film and what film grain does. (ISO)
Same kind of effect is visible in digital but it's called noise.
To understand why it's there and what it does, the limitations etc, I reckon it is best to feel it in darkroom
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|||It can be as simple as this.
If you can do it with a film camera, say completely manual (Holga)
than you can do it with any digital.
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|||i personally love everything about the darkroom and i think a lot of other people do too. yes, technology has advanced to where it seems only natural to teach digital photography but many people would prob use some sort of photoshop. AND it would cut out the darkroom experience.|||Might be true that people would cheat in photoshop (as one of your respondents claimed).
Me, I learned on a film camera... a 35mm with manual focus and "auto" aperture/shutter, switchable to manual. I always chose manual, made a bunch of mistakes along the way.
I still shoot film, but when a digital camera is put in front of me, I rarely have trouble sorting it out.
There are issues of white balance, which in film has to do with filtration based on the light source.
There are issues of exposure, which in film has to do with metering and the values you get for different parts of the frame.
There are issues of depth of field/focus. Shooting manually, you have to sort this all out. When you shoot digitally, or with autofocus, you pretty much know where to put the locus of your focus to get or approach the desired result, that is, if you have experience with manual.
But you're right that instant gratification/feedback is invaluable! Back in the day, it was called Polaroid. Pro photographers have wanted to see what they've got right away for decades... and it cost them a buck a shot.
So why not digital? For one, the algorithms on today's cameras are sooooo good that digital, in my opinion, might actually keep you from figuring it out yourself. When you're pressed to come up with a shot that works for you based on principles of chemistry and physics, you pass through quite a bit of territory along the way. This is where you come up with styles of your own, and where the photographic principles are solidified.
If what your camera does automatically is so much better than what you would do instinctively or based on your rudimentary understanding of the art/craft/science of photography, might that not be a hindrance to your development as a photographer?
To my eye, photographers who have a broad and solid understanding of the principles involved in the production of an image have a much greater range than those who "trust"
the camera to give them a "good" image. Notions of what constitutes perfection change over time, yet the algorithms that come with a given camera pretty much stay the same. My fear is that the future look of photography will be determined by camera, chip, and software makers more than by the experimenters.
As to the the cost, education is always expensive. We can read a book for free in the library, but if we pay somebody to help us read and understand it more deeply (as in a professor), it ends up costing a ridiculous amount... yet we've decided in this society that it's worth it to pay for higher education, whether it's coming from tax dollars or out of our pockets. All I'd say is you either trust your educators or you don't. If you don't, bail out like I did.
Final note: the little screen on a digital camera RARELY gives a true representation of what the final image is going to look like. If you can see in your head what your shot is going to look like on paper, that's when you're a photographer.
Good luck.|||I think, they still prefer to use that type of cameras for you to learn, how to take a perfect shot with just your skills and not by how great your camera is...
We know that non digital cameras had some problems when it comes to focus, blurring and lighting adjustments. It is just one of the things may be the school wants you to learn with. Once that you know how to do it with your old cams, it is much easier for you to do it with the digital cams.
Plus, not all people can afford to buy a digital cameras, so what if you are stucked in the country where the price of the cameras is too much, what would you do?
Lastly, the beauty of the picture in fine arts is not just judged by the way it looks... It is how the photographer made it a masterpiece and that is by his own skills.|||You answered the question yourself. Anyone can push a button until they hit the right spot, but it takes skills that are learned to get the image correct. Film photography teaches you that now you only have 24 shots, instead of how ever many you have on your memory card. So, you'll try your best to make the best of them all.|||do go directly into digital photography. spend many years into film photography before anything else so you would understand the decisions you make before the shot is taken. decisions such as speed, aperture, focal length (in the case of variable lenses), etc. these decisions are now being done by the machine (in digital photography). gladly, the only thing that the computer can't teach is WHERE you (the photographer) will position your self relative to the position of your subject (composition).|||With digital, people tend to become trigger happy and shoot 500 photos without thinking much about exposure ISO aperture or any other settings. Out of 500 photos, you may get 20 or so that are good. Film makes you learn how to manipulate your settings in order to achieve the desired result. After you learn the basics, you will be able to go out with a 24 exposure roll of Tri-X and come back with 20 good photos.
Trust me when I say that all the work you do now with film will make you a much better photographer in the long run.
And if you don't like spending too much time with chemicals, get some Diafine.|||the answer is obvious to trained fotogs.
composition is easy, exposure is best learnt by understanding zones as per ansell adams and black and white is the best teacher.
so thats the answer for you: black and white is the best teacher.
refer your last question about film quality vs digital that should also help you
is this for discusion or you seriously cant fiquire it out?
as for mixing chemicals it takes only reading the bottle and mixing with water - takes about 30 minutes to do it not an entire course
a|||Photography is a process, not point and click, show me a pulitzer prize winning digital shot.|||This is a question that is habitually asked by those about to take a photography course. It's not a question that those who have finished a course ask.
The answer is simple. Film enforces discipline and forces thought throughout the process of making an image. Digital, without exceptional self-discipline by the student, leads to sloppy working and actually impaired imaginative ability.
I have met some people who took courses that let them start out with digital and in every case they are not as good, flexible or as capable photographers as those with a film background. They have an underdeveloped and, in a real sense, crippled skill set.
Ask this question of students who have completed a course and now work digitally what they think of starting with film. They may not have liked it, and they may never want to look back, but they probably wouldn't do it another way.
It's an axiom of photography that you get it as right in the camera as you can the first time. That is very different than getting the correction right in photoshop later.
For a professional, this shows up not only in a consistent overall level of quality, but also in a more effective and efficient workflow.
Vance|||because they want to teach you how to make the chemicals to develop pictures. Many people still you use flim camaras and not digital.|||because people would cheat and use photoshop if they used digital cameras which would make their pictures look a lot better than they really are|||Do they?|||Not only does it teach you how to use chemicals to develop the film, but it also teaches you the many different ways in which light can be manipulated by the camera depending on the speed of the film, the shutter speed and the apeture. It is truly an art form that is not easy to come by. You have to understand the whole package to frame a picture. A digital camera is the slacker way to take a picture.|||Two words, Georgia O'Keef|||I can't add much to all the really excellent answers so far, and I agree with most of them.
One thing I would like to add, though, is that from the perspective of a college student, it would be quite a stretch for a professor to ask a student to go out and drop $800+ on a DSLR.
At the same time, though, good film SLRs can be had for well under $200, which is in the range of the typical price for a textbook these days.
I know that personally, if a class required me to go out and spend $800 on a camera, I wouldn't take it. At the same time, though, if an otherwise identical class only required me to spend $150 on a camera, I wouldn't have a problem with it, as I have paid more for textbooks.|||the pictures are of a lot better quality when they are printed
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