The dreaded D-word

Lilly. (Photo by Lisa Robinson.)

“I bet your wife took that with a digital camera,” I said.
Two weeks ago (Saturday, October 3rd, 2015) I went to George Eastman House in Rochester (NY) with my younger brother and his wife.
My brother will soon turn 57, his wife is 55. I, of course, am 71.
George Eastman House has become much more than just the mansion of George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak.
It became a museum of photography, and also restores stuff and has a repository of original films.
A museum with galleries was built on the back of the mansion.
There is also a 500-seat theater for showing movies.
While there we attended a presentation by a museum docent about the history of photography.
After detailing every photographic process through the years, from daguerreotype to albumin prints through inventions by Kodak, such as the Brownie camera, Kodachrome, and Instamatic cameras.......
......We got to the dreaded D-word: “Digital.” (GASP!)
Kodak invented digital photography, but didn’t run with it, probably because they had so much investment tied up in film.
A large area of Rochester is “Kodak Park,” an entire city-like area dedicated to the manufacture of film, cameras, and photography paraphernalia.
It even had its own fire department and railroad. Miles and miles of buildings.
Kodak eventually declared bankruptcy. Many were laid off, and its retired employees were left hanging. Years ago a job at Kodak was what one dreamed about.
Photographers called it “Yellow Father.”
Many of those buildings in “the Park” were imploded. Kodak stopped making Kodachrome not too long ago.
And now the best-selling camera of all time is not the Instamatic, It’s the SmartPhone.
And they’re digital (GASP).
I have one myself, an Apple iPhone-6.
Some of the pictures in this blog were taken with that iPhone.
I also have a digital Nikon camera, a D7000.
I started with a D100, Nikon’s attempt to break into the high-end digital camera market.
The people at George Eastman House poo-poo digital. They say it’s inferior to film.
Well, I guess so, if you’re picking nits.
People at Eastman House claim they can tell if a picture is digital; they can see the flaws.
Well, in my humble opinion, what they’re missing is what matters most about a photograph: CONTENT.
Which is why I posted that picture of Lilly above; it’s a great photograph, taken with a digital camera (GASP).
Ya don’t find some elitist badmouthing that daguerreotype of Abe Lincoln.
That picture of shooting a Viet Cong in the head, that Woody Allen uses so much, is not grist for the elitists. —It was probably shot with Tri-X developed in Dektol.
People tell me how wonderful my calendar is, but it’s just JPEGs. JPEGs are the el-cheapo digital format. They have compression, but I still think they look pretty good. I could use .TIF, my camera will shoot .tif, but why bother? I get a lot more ,jpeg files on a memory-chip, and to me they look impressive.
My brother’s camera is shooting 300 pixel-per-inch ,jpeg just like me.


It picked out the signals a mile away! (Photo by BobbaLew with Phil Faudi.)

After George Eastman House I ain’t sure about digital.
I certainly have felt what digital I’ve shot is very impressive.
And I certainly am glad to be free of a darkroom; I had one years ago.
I also am glad to no longer be browning my fingertips with developer.
And I can do more with this computer — the triumph of Photoshop.
Okay, so maybe film is superior, but digital is great.
And I doubt the average photo-viewer complains about digital. I certainly hear enough huzzas about my calendar-pictures. And in fact one was recently stolen — a picture was torn out.
What matters, more than technical quality, is CONTENT.

• “Lisa Robinson” is the wife of Bill Robinson. Both she and he worked at the Messenger newspaper during my employ — he with me. “Lilly” is their daughter.
“Phil Faudi” (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”) is the railfan resident of Altoona (PA) who helps me take pictures of trains. —I’m a railfan, and have been since age-2.