There is one other aspect which may, for just a few folks, impede the total triumph of digital over slide film - even after the resolution, cost, and all other functional limitations are removed (which will of course happen very soon indeed): namely, the questionable authenticity of a digital image. Whether we realize it or not, all of us are enjoying photos because they are photos - that is, they are representational objects. They are not purely aesthetic in nature, but always reference something. This something is our reality. A photo of a mountain is not just a two-dimensional green hump, but also by its nature constitutes a psychic connection to our appreciation of real mountains. Even where a photo is distorted, a filter used, exposure manipulated, etc., the filmic negative still represents what was there. (Keep in mind that our eyes themselves distort things, and when a photo is exposed differently, or infrared film used, we are not simply changing the image but revealing a different - sometimes, to our eyes, latent - aspect of what was there.) The mechanical process of filmic photography is an authentic process which contains a comprehensible connection to reality. Consider whether a different emotional effect is produced by a photo of a person being savaged, or, for instance, by an iconographic drawing or pictogram of the same. We understand the photo's connection to reality and are usually horrified by such a scene, whereas we understand the fiction of a drawing and are far less so. This is not simply to do with the greater accuracy of the photo, but also with our knowledge that the photo is describing an actuality (and that therefore a person was probably actually savaged). That the photo may have been faked isn't terribly significant to our emotional reaction, though soon afterwards many of our intellectual reactions might be "Is this for real? - did this really happen?" Photos can of course deceive, but so can our eyes - and we don't as a rule distrust our eyes. The existence of optical illusions doesn't call into question the veracity of seeing as a rule. We can heap up the instances of photos being manipulated without calling into question the authenticity of the process of photography just as we can heap up the instances of optical illusions without calling into question human sight. In the case of digital, what we are seeing is a computer's instantaneous re-creation of a scene. This may or may not have an appearance similar to reality. (Usually it does appear similar to reality, at least initially.) In any case, the best relationship it can possibly have to reality is precisely appearance - which is to say, a by definition superficial relationship to reality. It is constituted not by the optical residue of reality, but by entirely anonymous complexes of data. It is a computer's original generation (really, a code execution), with reality merely as its guide. (Even this may be saying too much.) It loses nothing in successive iterations (keep in mind that each time a file is "copied" a new file is created with similar data) because it never had anything to begin with! We make no pains to distinguish "original" from copy because neither possesses any authenticity, and the word "original" in this context is therefore meaningless. The digital camera shares the same relationship with the mechanical camera that a synthesizer does with an acoustic instrument it imitates - which is to say, no real relationship at all. However, because collective culture understands the growing power of manipulation in the digital milieu, we will soon enough take it for granted that any and all images (digital or analog) are simply pretty (or ugly) "pictures" with no definite connection to reality (just as real original paintings must be scrutinized before being believed authentic): this says nothing about the filmic negative, but only about how the digital age has conditioned our misunderstanding of it. This undermining of our belief in film is a relatively small problem, however, when set against the larger problems a society will face when based upon the entirely ephemeral, with nothing behind to adjudicate reality. The argument will surface, as it always does: "pixels, grains - what's the difference?" This is similar to comparing Picasso's Guernica with a visually indistinguishable copy: what's the difference? - just chemical properties of pigments? The difference is not in the appearance but in our understanding of how each was created. One is authentic and the other not, regardless of the superficially similar appearance. Philosopher Rudolph Arnheim has compared the negative to a bearprint. It may or may not resemble our expectations (a-priori pictogram image) of a print, but it is a print because an animal made it. And something that resembles a bearprint (for instance, a depression made by a fake plastic bear paw) is not a bearprint because a bear did not make it. Similarly, a shadow is a shadow even when its appearance is distorted by, for example, three-dimensional irregularities of the surface on which the shadow is projected - it contains authenticity while a chalk outline of a shadow does not. Meaning is not contained simply in appearances. Regardless of the distortions, the bearprint and the shadow are authentic objects because of the process of creation. In the same way, the closed optical-mechanical-chemical process of the photo relates to what it photographed in a definite way. A digital photo is similar to a bucket of paint spilled behind someone in the shape of his shadow or perhaps to a clay model of a bear print - which may look interesting, may last longer than the real one in the dirt or snow, may appear more like our expectation of a bearprint, and perhaps teach us in the classroom about the appearances of bearprints, but which holds no authenticity. And if the digital photo looks more like reality, don't be fooled into calling it a product of reality - just as you would not call a very accurate model of the bearprint a product of a bear. I'll not buy a digital camera any time soon - I have no interest in simply the outward appearances of images. I wouldn't mind an LX and a 50mm/1.2 lens, though (to replace my K1000 and 50/1.4). I'll go on dealing with reality rather than phantasms. I'll peruse my photos myself and among my friends who will trust my explanation of their origin. Not everyone will care about such things, but a few of us care far more about this than about narrow considerations of resolution; thank you for taking the time to consider my, and our, feelings on this important issue. -RSW "The fundamental peculiarity of the photographic medium [is that] physical objects themselves print their image by means of the optical and chemical action of light." (Arnheim, 1974) _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
