August 1st, 2006 looms large on the horizon.
What is the significance of this date?
It is the date scheduled by Kodak for the cessation of pre-paid processing for Super 8 Kodachrome cine film stock, announced in a press release in May last year. Users of 16mm Kodachrome, sales of which were discontinued in February this year, have until the end of December 2006 to send exposed stock to Kodak for processing.
According to Kim Snyder, general manager and vice president for Image Capture products, Entertainment Imaging at Eastman Kodak Company, 'The rationale to discontinue these specific product lines was entirely driven by marketplace dynamics. In line with the discontinuance, we will also cease to offer processing for those particular films within the year."
As a 35mm stills shooter, you may not be at all concerned by any of the above.
As a regular user of Kodak's 35mm Kodachrome 64 and 200 film stock, I am however, and I believe that its days are numbered in spite of Kodak's ambiguous work around concerning direct questions from users like myself, as to its future life span. The words ' marketplace dynamics' quoted by K.Snyder above, are key to understanding Kodak's ultimate intent. This film stock, along with other product types, will disappear without sufficient user support; that means buying it now and using it, not thinking about it.
However, this is not really what I wanted to write about, although it presents a convenient route into the following dissertation.
Before going there however, it may be worth reiterating some previously noted obseravations about Kodachrome.
For 35mm shooters with experiences of the rapidly fading colour structures of E-6 type reversal film stock when poorly archived, Kodachrome can provide a solution. Of all colour film stocks whether negative or positive, Kodachrome still has the highest dark storage rating for the maintenance of original brilliance and colour. It may have lost the pole position (to Fuji) in 1990, for the finest grain, but it's unique colour space remains unbeaten in my book, more especially when used in conjunction with Leica objectives.
The long term benefits of Kodachrome are numerous, but unfortunately, the down side for many is the length of time it takes for exposed frames to make their way to Renen in Switzerland (for Europeans) and then find their way back to their owner. Allow at least 10 days. This elapsed time can be frustrating and it is understandable why countless shooters turned to other stocks more rapidly and conveniently processed.
This convenience factor related specifically to C-41 colour neg and E-6 reversal film stocks has also, I believe, been a driving force in persuading photography enthusiasts to turn to digital capture. The perception, for those who have embraced it, seems to be that there is little significant difference in the aesthetic quality of generic colour spaces offered by digital capture compared to ones inherent in the types of film stocks just mentioned. There may even be an appreciation of digitally captured images having greater clarity, brightness, a smoother tonal range and more saturated colouring when viewed on screen. All of the other perceived conveniences of digital capture also help to outweigh purchase and processing costs of film as well as adding more subliminal benefits. Currently, archiving longevity is not one of them and remains questionable. It's one reason why I still shoot Kodachrome for projects I consider may have a long life.
Another reason is this.
The habit of seeing is one developed from and through my earliest days of using cameras, from experimenting with the many different formats once commonplace and choosing favourites. In this long process of aesthetic evaluation, one came to see life through the eyes of different lenses; squares or rectangles of very specific size were locked into the subconscious and unlocked when occasion demanded say, a 50mm Summicron or a 10 inch Apo-Lanthar. So second nature is this habit of seeing that often, one is not aware so much, at the time of exposure, of a format having been selected. That process is instinctive, while the conscious side takes charge of motif interpretation; content, composition and lens effect.
It may appear, as some correspondents have noted in their mails to me, on the subject of articles I have authored and which have featured in the trade press, that I have 'embraced' digital capture with some enthusiasm.
It's true that for some aspects of daily work routines, digital capture provides a more convenient route to meeting client demands than when using silver based technology. There is also the major consideration these days, of the demands of picture buyers. In the past five years, I have noticed an increasing number of missives arriving in the 'wants' box for images 'not originated on film'. The perception amongst younger picture researchers who seem to have had very little experience of looking at transparencies on a light box, is that all film, no matter its size or format, has peculiar and - for them - unsightly pin-prick sized artifacts inherent in its image structure. They are right; it's called grain.
Personally, I like what the effect of grain can add to the aesthetic of a photograph, but again a thorough understanding of how the phenomena works and how it can be used, just like a particualr format size or the characteristics of a special lens, is essential to an appreciation of how the motif might look on the page or in a print.
Where I have a particular problem with digital is not so much with image rendition, as with the tool used to make it. Only a couple of 35mm sized Dslrs provide a full 24X36mm frame and I don't use either one. For the rest, users are stuck with a reduced frame size and substantially different effects on the motif from using lenses designed in a pre digital age. Use a modern DX type designed for image circle coverage of an APS-C type sensor and it cannot be used efficiently for full frame. It's as if my whole habit of seeing has been turned on its head; not much that I shoot digitally is the result of the same instinctive aesthetic reaction to the format of choice which has been applied naturally for decades of 'shooting for the frame'.
In an effort to adjust to and overcome this constraint, I turned to a technique practised in the wire agency news photo business; 'shooting for the crop' helps to resolve format imbalances and the effects of aji and bokeh as seen in the digital APS-C shaped image. This is only partly successful and is due mainly to constraints imposed by the smaller image area of the cut-down viewfinder. It's difficult to subconscioulsy transpose this small image to a hypothetical enlarger baseboard and do the mental crop for a motif in the time usually available for a split second decision, but the process improves with every new assignment.
Objectives designed for 35mm rangefinder film cameras place an optical restriction on the development of similar types of camera with digital capture devices. Epson selected an existing off-the-shelf APS-C sized sensor for its RD1 resulting in a 1.5X reduction of the full 35mm frame (see Epson RD-1.pdf); Kodak has developed a special sensor for Leica enabling a more acceptable 1.3X reduction for use in its digital-M camera, but this still will not, in my humble opinion, enable those of us endowed with decades of traditional visual perception to easily change their habit of seeing.
That digital capture will ultimately replace film seems inevitable when statistics for the photo industry and other forms of digital persuit are analysed. However, while these are the stated aims of some large manufacturers, there will be many customers who will want to continue along the road they know best. That road is lined with hundreds of thousands of individuals with a combined and colossal database of traditional photographic knowledge without peer in the digital world.
They know for example, there is no digital capture device yet available matching the simplicity of a Leica rangefinder, no Dslr with a viewfinder as bright and clear as a Leica R, no digital camera of any marque or type without the encumbrance of some operating pitfall; a dead battery, non firing shutter at the critical moment, a flash storage system which inexplicably fails, and not one, yet, in which the sensor is capable of capturing as much well defined micro detail as film.
This will change of course. Backup systems will improve and yes, it is only a matter of time before sensors exceed the capacity of ordinary film to resolve the finest details. Perhaps camera manufacturers will also get the message that before we all go leaping off the cliff for their new products, the problem of sensor size, viewfinder brightness, area and clarity needs their immediate attention.
I don't buy a manufacturers attempts to fob me off with some marketing crap about how convenient large rear screen LCD viewing is. In the field, it may work for landscape artists or natur mort buffs who can spend hours with their digital capture device on a tripod waiting for or arranging the light. I know that when I'm bouncing around on the ocean or in the midst of an event melee, or stalking the streets, only one viewing system works. I need to be able to see the subject clearly, focus accurately first time around and when I release the shutter, know it is going to happen without delay. I don't want to do the mental transposition game that wastes precious split seconds and misses the moment.
My habit of seeing is so ingrained and my awareness of the mechanical and aesthetic pitfalls of digital capture so acute, grasping the opportunity to expose ones favourite film stock on any camera which has come to be a soul mate over the years is a blissful experience; a release from having to endure the grid lock of a technology devised by those who do not know.
This essay may be reproduced only in its entirety by any means provided it acknowledges the author and carries the following by-line;
The Habit of Seeing by Jonathan Eastland;
copyright 2006 Jonathan Eastland
www.ajaxnetphoto.com
www.ajaxnetphoto.blogspot.com
