Zero Choice
Can you imagine?
It did exist once. At least in my lifetime.
Film photography.
Ah.
The products in the shop window that is….
You loaded a film canister into your camera. Took some amazing images (you hoped as you could never tell there and then). The wind-on mechanism indicated you had come to the end of the roll. You wound the film back into the canister and then either sent it off to a lab to get processed – or in my father’s case – developed the negative in our family kitchen (yes my long-suffering mother) and then processed this negative into actual photographs on paper up in his homemade darkroom in the attic.
And that was it essentially.
No discussions about film, RAW, JPEG....
Life was simpler. And I can certainly see the rationale of many who choose to shoot film these days.
But the cost…
A workaround for the conscience in these digital days is “straight out of camera”. Of course, that forgets all that dodging and burning that went on in the attic darkroom to get that perfect image - apart from slides (transparencies), where they always got sent off to a lab when you had zero choice in the development process, there was always some tweaking in the darkroom. At least with my father!
“straight out of camera” these days sounds purist.
Like the original.
Going back to what is used to be like.
BS
Yet... Many aspire to this when they share images on social.
No editing or processing in Lightroom or similar. No more time in front of a screen (ok I do get that).
Just take the photo and share what’s on your SD card.
“straight out of camera” sounds appealing - but…
it does conveniently forget the earlier process I described.
it totally buys into the immediacy of today’s culture.
it ignores that some people (myself included) actually enjoy the editing process in Lightroom (or similar).
But you know what? I decided to try it out!
Shooting with Fujifilm which allows multiple film simulations, tweaks and iterations all in-camera, here are some of my recent “straight out of camera” images.
No tweaks. Nothing (ok I did crop on one very slightly to eliminate a distracting edge – am I forgiven?)
No colour, highlighting, shadows, texture, masking – you name it – tweaks. Zilch.
And I have to say, although I feel my (digital) fingers itching on some, I’m amazed at how they look.
Thoughts anyone?
