What is bad with Digital?

[Nemrod]

I don't care that digital photos are manipulated in Photoshop, my curiosity is in how digital images and process compare at the first level, the image creation. Post processing artifacts, film or digital, detract from my original question, what is bad with digital. My concern with the severe post manipulation is that it covers over and hides some of the differences of which I was curious about. But there is a point with that, Photoshop that is, if the photo is created by manipulating data, where is the line drawn. Maybe you could just create the photo from scratch and not bother with the camera, extreme, but where doe the original image become so altered that it is no longer representative of reality but instead a digital creation?

N

 

[SeaYoda]

I don't care that digital photos are manipulated in Photoshop, my curiosity is in how digital images and process compare at the first level, the image creation. ...but where does the original image become so altered that it is no longer representative of reality but instead a digital creation?...

I think the general comparison of film and digital is like comparing apples and oranges. You can probably judge the final results but each has its pluses and minuses during the process. Electronic information manipulation is part of digital photography just like the chemicals in the film and developing process are in film photography. You can't take away either from their respective genre or you would not have anything worth looking at.

Film's final product has not always been "reality". Total "reality" pictures are more for news stories where you want to see it as it is. From what I hear, even Ansel Adams used the darkroom as his friend to get the picture the way he wanted it (saw it in his mind?). The point where reality is lost in digital is when the electronic signal is processed by any algorithm - in camera or in computer. I guess the same happens with film as light reacts with the chemicals not our eye.

The line of manipulation and creation is hard to define. For me, the basics of exposure (including shadows and highlights), white balance (temperature), cropping, and sharpening (some may disagree with sharpening but the nature of the sensor and data collection make its use necessary to achieve closer to what we saw with our eye) are all "reality" - digital image processing. Cloning, healing, blurring, filters, and the like are distorting "reality" into what we wanted to see - digital creation. An example that hugs the line is backscatter. The removal of backscatter is pleasing to our eye but is not "reality". I think that process doesn't bend the rule too far unless you are in a competition looking for just photography skills.

 

[SeaYoda]

... Also, the consensus in that article seemed to be that the colors were not as rich, especially as you go up in ISO because the last layer is getting very filtered light. ...

I guess the layers should be reversed for underwater photography - red needs the most light. This is new technology so I can believe it will improve with time. The theory of how it works is still pretty cool.