----- Original Message -----
From: "Shel Belinkoff"
Subject: Re: we're jaded
How many are worth showing? How many are you proud of? What's the
percentage of good keepers compared to what you shot with film?
I am the first to admit that my number of keepers has gone down compared to
how I worked in the past. I am shooting a lot of stuff that I wouldn't have
bothered with.
A lot of my shooting with the digital has been pure documentation of my
house construction, which has no artistic merit at all, motly, just
recording what is inside walls before the sheetrock goes on, and documenting
contrator errors.
I also shot a couple of thousand pictures of lingerie shows, has I been
shooting film, I would have shot far less, since the entire thing was on
spec (and all I got from it was pictures, as the project died).
Shooting the lingerie models, I was impressed that I was able to give the
girls a lot of choices in pictures. None of the girls were professional
models, it was nice to be able to shoot, download the files to the laptop
and go back and try something different.
Sometimes quantity is the only way to get quality.
Had I been shooting film, financial constraints would have caused me to
shoot a lot less, and it is doubtfull I would have gotten as many good
pictures.
When shooting people who have done no modelling work, often blind luck is a
requirement.....
To be candid, Bill, the quality of your vacation pics this year -
certainly
wrt subject matter - is, imo, definitely a few notches below what you've
done previously. Do you think shooting all those free pix with a digi cam
may have something to do with it? Or, conversely, does using a larger
format film camera contribute to producing better results.
At least this year I used a tripod <G>.
Sriously though, in most respects, the digital is not giving me the quality
I am used to, but in fairness to the medium, I am used to 4x5 Ilford FP-4.
Up until I bought the istD, I was shooting pretty much everything in black
and white, either medium format or large format.
This past trip was the first time I had used the digital to make landscape
type photos.
A lot of what I showed the group were snapshots, plain and simple, had I
been using my normal camera, I would probably have shown about three
pictures, not ten.
I'm really curious to know if you think digi use has affected the quality
of your work?
The digital does not demand the discipline that large format requires. I am
more likely to snap a picture that is less than ideal, since it costs
nothing, and I already have it in the sights. I would never do that with
large format, which costs significantly every time the shutter is tripped.
William Robb
