Guest blog by Parksville portrait photographer Gordon Lafleur
A moment of silence for the passing of an era.
I learned recently that Leitz quietly ceased production of film cameras this past spring. Leitz
invented the modern 35mm camera in 1925, and while they are not the last to produce them, their ceasing production certainly marks a milestone.
I am 63 years old. I've been making photographs since high school, and have made my living as a photographer since 1971. For the past 26 years I have had a portrait studio . I have had a darkroom continuously from the mid sixties until 2004. From '84 to '04 we printed both colour and black and white. Even though I had a full time printer for much of that time, I still spent countless hours in the darkroom.
I have to admit being dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age.
Before the digital age, my professional work was done with medium format cameras and either black and white or colour negative film. At the studio, the work flow consisted of shooting 120 or 220 film, sending it by courier to Vancouver for processing, and then making 35mm transparencies of the negatives on Kodak Vericolour slide film. The slides were shown to the client and the order taken, then the appropriate negatives would be printed in our darkroom.
Hand printing colour negatives is a demanding process. It involves filtered light, an understanding of the process, how to shift colour (if your print is too red, you add red filtration, which is yellow and magenta. If a print is too green, you subtract magenta,.. kinda hard to explain.) It also involved expensive equipement. My 20" Hope paper processor cost $14,000. I took a second morgage on my home to buy it. When we shut the darkroom down, it went to the dump.
Finally, it took a lot of time. Sue, my printer, could print from 6 to 10 negatives on any given day. That often included multiple prints in multiple sizes. Now multiple prints from multiple sizes may sound simple, but consider that to print the first print from a negative, one would first, make a test strip, like you do when printing black and white, only you are guessing on the initial colour filtration. Feed the test into the processing machine, since it takes 15 min or so to process, (used to be an hour) you go to the second enlarger, where you are printing another negative, and do more testing, and on to the third and fourth enlarger. This is all done in the dark by the way. No safelight when printing colour. Now go collect all the test strips, evaluate colour and density, note changes, go back into the darkroom and make the changes, test again...you get the picture. Five or six tests were not un-common, nor were two or three prints before the final print was deemed perfect. "dodge here, burn there, slightly darker overall, add 2.5 yellow". Getting back to multiple prints, Change size, from 8x10 to 16x20, it all changes. Even in the un-likely case where your 16x20 paper and your 8x10 paper have the same emulsion number (every emulsion number has a different colour balance), you have to re-test. Even a change in exposure time gives you a colour shift.
Back to kicking and screaming. On my last 100 ft roll of Vericolor slide film 5072, the film we used to make slides from the colour negatives, a small sticker announced "this product has been dis-continued"
Now, without 35mm slides, the only way to show clients their portraits would be with 4x5 paper proofs (not a good idea), or with a digital projector. No problem, Kodak had, at the same time as dis-continuing the film, sold my photofinisher a stupidly expensive high speed scanner, and, who, for an outrageous fee, would provide me with low resolution scans of my negatives, which would allow me to show my clients their portraits with a digital projector. At that point, it made no sense to shoot film. Why shoot film, then scan it when it would be easier and infinitely less expensive to just shoot it with a digital camera. I had no choice but to go fully digital.
Fast forward to 2010.
This year, I finally gave in and sold my Mamiya RZ system. Camera, three lenses, four backs, meter prism, more than $10,000 new, I was lucky and got $1000 for it. I also sold the last of my three Pentax 645s with four lenses and accessories for $500, a tiny fraction of what it cost. Neither of these cameras had seen a roll of film since Jan. 2004.
There are several mis-conceptions about digital photography. The main mis-conceptions are that it is easier, cheaper, and faster. It is none of these. Digital is photography made hard. The learning curve is huge. It took a year to finally learn how to "make it go". It is very expensive, we just give our money to different people now, computers, software and cameras need to be updated constantly. And it is SO not faster. There is the instant feedback, but because we can take an endless number of photographs without expense, and because there are an endless number of ways to interpet those photographs, we spend an endless amount of time sitting in front of computer screens.
So, is it BETTER?... In a word, yes, it is.
It has changed the way we, I, photograph. There is the instant feedback. In the days film, we had to use Polaroid to check lighting set-ups, re-assure clients, etc. Now , we KNOW whether or not we have the shot or not. It is instant feedback, all the time. It encourages experimentation. We can shoot infinite variations, take chances. That little voice in the back of your head whispering "play it safe and cover your ass" and "there goes another dollar" every time you press the shutter button is now silent.
After the fact there is the post processing. Every RAW file can be interpreted an infinite number of ways. This is very liberating, but at the same time adds to the workflow. It is somewhat like the people in East Germany and other eastern bloc countries who, while complaining of the oppression of the state controlling their lives, found themselves floundering when the communist era ended. Kodachrome gave you what it gave you, no chance to change anything once the exposure was made. Now, as in liberated East Germany, there are infinite possibilities. This is too much for some to deal with. It is overwhelming.
Now, my former darkroom is a computer/printer room. I print with an Epson 24 in printer, which costs a fraction of what my Hope paper processor cost, and makes prints that are far superior by any measure. Modern inkjet prints not only look better than conventional photographic prints, but as a bonus, will actually last longer than the average human life-span. Prints on Kodak Endura photographic paper, (Kodak re-named Ektacolor to "Endura" to make you think it would last longer, but never actually changed the paper), will last a whole ten years under average viewing conditions according to tests by the Willhelm research folks. Prints made with pigment based prints with modern ink-jet printers are projected by Willhelm to last from 100 to 200 years, depending on the paper they are printed on.
Do I miss the darkroom? Well, in a perverted way, yes. You disappear into a dark room, stereo on, your own little universe. Black and white?, yes, if I had a lot of time, didn't need to earn a living, I'd love to print some of my huge un-printed archive of 35mm negatives on some of the few good papers still available. I still have my ever so elegant Leitz Valoy and one of my medium format enlargers in storage. However, I'd be better served to invest in a good scanner. Many well known photographers are re-printing their entire archives with the far superior digital technology.
What are we missing? Mostly, the beautiful cameras, and what it felt like to use them. Cameras with no light meters, never mind no auto-focus. They are beautiful objects. There is a whole ritual involved in shooting film, part techno, part intuition and part alchemy. And then of course for black and white shooters, the whole magic of watching an image form on a piece of photographic paper in the developer tray.
My first serious camera was a Rolliecord Vb. A twin-lens reflex camera that made negative that were two and a quarter inches square. I bought this camera new as a teen-ager for $159.00 in the sixties and still have it. Over the years I've owned and used Bronicas, Hasselblads, Leicas, Topcons, Calumets, Sinars, Pentax, Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Topcon,..etc etc. I've owned and used a lot of cameras. The experience of shooting film is, well, different. I do miss it. More than the film, it really is the cameras I miss the most. Do we go back? No.
While I use a Canon 5d or 1Ds for, work These cameras make spectacular photographs, any size you like. I've had commercial clients make billboards from the files.
I do most of my personal work with an entry level Canon Rebel XS that cost less than $500.00. On Program mode, with auto white balance, auto ISO, and auto focus, I can raise the camera to my eye and make a sharp, well exposed picture in any situation from bright sunlight to dimly lit interior at will. The quality of images this $500.00 camera makes eclipses any 35mm at at least equals any medium format camera I've ever owned. My tiny Fuji f30 point and shoot makes photographs of astounding quality.
Photography has been democratized. When I was young, the average person took photographs with a box camera, or an Instamatic camera that took 12 pictures on a roll of film. It was always a mystery as to whether or not the pictures would "turn out". There were often photographs of Christmas and summer holidays on the same roll of film. Developing and printing was very expensive. Contrast that with now, a capable digital point and shoot camera can be had for under $100.00 with which anyone can produce sharp well exposed photographs of anything you point it at, then see instantly if it "turned out". This is not even mentioning phone cameras. The digital revolution has also created a huge interest in serious photography. Sales of digital SLR cameras have overtaken the sales of 35mm SLRs. There is an astounding amount of amazing work being produced, and available on the internet.
What remains to be seen, is how the marketplace for photography will evolve, and how photographers will be paid for what they do. While it is true that the digital revolution combined with the global economic situation has lead to a vast change in how the photographic industry operates, I believe that we are entering a golden age for photography. Photography has been re-invented. Photographers now need to figure out how to re-invent themselves.
Digital photography has re-kindled my love for making images.
Portrait of Gordon Lafleur by wife Martha. Portrait of Martha by Gordon Lafleur.
Addendum (Alex Waterhouse-Hayward): Since I use film (with the exception of my iPhone) my views on digital photography cannot be objective. It is my hope that Gordon Lafleur's essay will tip the balance in the right direction.
