REALITY ON DEMAND
By MICHAEL PERKINS
ANY TIME I HEAR SOMEONE WAXING NOSTALGIC for the “good old analog days” I am tempted to check their forehead for sign of a fever. Certainly there are elements of the film experience that, decades after the dawning of the digital revolution, I can still look back on with a smile, there are just as many aspects of working in that medium that fall into the “good riddance” category…clumsy, burdensome steps that put ungainly obstacles between envisioning a shot and being able to execute it expeditiously. Strangely, initial reaction to the technical simplification of the making of an image has often been negative, even vehement. For example, many of we elders can still recall the hue and cry that issued from the ranks of the purists when auto-focus was introduced, with direct predictions that true photography was now dead, etc., etc.. blah, blah, blah.
And you can go on down the line, from the math whiz meanderings of light meters to automatic film advance, to, well, make your own list. Near the top of my own “thank God that’s over” roster is the calculation of white balance, which used to require a lot of back-of-the-envelope figuring and is now, like so many other fine functions, an on-demand dial-up. Clicks. I certainly am not downplaying the vital aspect of the right color temperature for the right shot, and, indeed, formal portraitists and studio shooters still have a more essential need for pinpoint precision in this area. But for many more of us, WB is an elective choice made in a moment and largely on a whim, as in the two sunset exposures seen here, taken barely a minute apart from each other. These images are one intentionality level up from straight snapshots, and yet, I can produce drastically different results in an on-the-fly shooting situation where the ambient light is changing rapidly and speed and ease are key.
Cameras are now loaded with many more control options than many of us will need in a lifetime of use, like the now-standard menus of emulations designed to re-create the look of dozens of different classic film emulsions, or custom settings for diffraction compensation. Many of these functions were once, like white balance, slow and tricky to achieve. Now they are a click away. And with the departure of all that bother, another barrier between thinking of a shot and getting it has been eliminated. The purists can, of course, make things harder for themselves out of some affection for “authenticity”. Me, I want to get to the making the picture. Immediately, if not sooner.
thenormaleye 