The End of Digital SLR
Mr. Gu Quan of the Chinese Academy of Arts suddenly asked me one day, “Have you noticed that the cell phone is the new stone tool of modern people? “
Just like the stone in the hands of the apes in the barbaric era, the cell phone has become an all-purpose tool in the hands of modern people, capable of doing everything except smashing walnuts. Perhaps in the eyes of future people thousands of years later, those traces of use on the phone, and the ancient artifacts on the handle of the cladding is no different.
As a photography enthusiast, I also used to camera never leave my body, and now go out, less and less carry a camera, cell phones have unknowingly replaced the camera, nearby walks so, and even long-distance travel so. Combing through the photos I have taken in recent years, I found that about half of them were taken with cell phones.
Only twenty years ago, there were obvious thresholds for photography: first, the technical threshold, those who could take photos with clear focus and accurate exposure could be regarded as photographers; second, the equipment threshold, those who owned cameras could at least be considered well-off. And now, the popularity of cell phones, making “everyone photography” is not only possible, and is a reality. People can shoot anytime and anywhere without any knowledge of photography or the need to purchase any professional equipment.
Someone once asked photographer Annie Leibovitz, “What do you think is a good camera? Leibovitz said, I think the iPhone is quite good. If memory serves, this conversation took place in the era of iPhone 4, when Steve Jobs was still alive. From iPhone 4 to today’s iPhone 11, Apple phones have been iterated and upgraded countless times, but the phone’s shooting performance at that time, has made Annie Leibovitz feel satisfied.
In 2018, Canon launched the first generation of its R-series cameras, which, in my opinion, signaled the end of DSLRs. The R series is called “dedicated micro”, meaning professional micro single. The essential difference between micro single and SLR is that there is no reflector. And that piece of reflector, from the film era, need to use it between the lens and the film to block the light.
But the problem is, the digital camera’s light-sensitive module is a piece of electronic components called CMOS or CCD, and whether or not the light is direct, and whether or not to pass electricity has a relationship. Therefore, this piece of reflector, is the appendix of digital cameras. Why do digital cameras have to have a reflector? The extended question is: Why should the full-frame digital camera be the same as 135 film? What makes a digital camera even look the same as a film camera?
Digital SLR is destined to be a transitional product from the film era to the digital era. Moreover, not only digital SLR is a transitional product, all digital cameras are also transitional products. Digital cameras with a single function will be replaced by comprehensive digital products such as cell phones.
In 2009, Kodak film was discontinued, symbolizing the end of the film era; in 2017, Nikon small digital cameras were discontinued, meaning the advent of the cell phone era. The last Apple fall conference, 100 minutes long, had 13 minutes to promote the camera function of iPhone 11 Pro, in addition to taking up 7 minutes to introduce the iPhone’s bath camera.
This year’s Chinese New Year, Apple launched a short film using the iPhone, no longer relying too much on professional equipment to assist, but with the lightness and dexterity, to obtain the visual effect that is difficult to achieve with professional equipment. The evolution of the phone’s shooting module has matured, both in terms of image quality and functionality, has been better than the expensive camera in the hands of the master photographer. From Instagram to WeChat circle of friends, it is obvious that shooting with cell phones is the mainstream nowadays.
Many “decisive moments”
The two photos taken by Bresson, the man diving into a puddle and the boy holding a bottle of wine, are classic examples of “decisive moments”. Today, the probability of obtaining similar photos has clearly increased. To capture the man jumping into the puddle, you can use the continuous shooting function of your digital camera or even turn on the LIVE mode of your cell phone and select the decisive moment from the continuous images afterwards.
And capturing the smiles of street boys may be done by monitoring heads all over the streets. There are countless smiles of countless boys on countless streets recorded in the mass memory every day, and all that has to be done may be just to cut a screen.
In October 2019, I participated in the project of “Island-Image” at the Inter-Media Institute of China Academy of Art, guiding students to use documentary photography to perceive and creation. The students used a wide variety of equipment, including DV cameras and Polaroid. In the end, the best photo was taken with a cell phone.
The exhibited works of “The Island – Image Magazine”. Photo: Wang Ruolan
Reviewing the process of taking this photo, if it were a camera, this scene would probably not have been taken, either because it was fleeting or inconvenient, and neither the environment nor the time allowed for raising the camera. The freedom that comes with taking pictures with a cell phone is unprecedented: the number of occasions that can be photographed increases, the camera position is more flexible and concealed, and the person being photographed is more accustomed to being more relaxed. These exclusive conveniences are more than enough to offset the shortcomings of the phone’s image quality – if you can’t shoot it, there’s nothing.
This is another piece of work from “The Island – Image Magazine”, shot with DJI. Before the advent of drones, no one reached this spot except God and birds.
When we are nostalgic about Leica, we seem to forget that Leica started because it was light and cheap – compared to the bulky and expensive large-format wooden cameras of the time; we also seem to forget that the evolution of Leica from the first A-type to the final generation of film MP was the gradual automation and electronicization of focus and exposure. And lighter, cheaper, more and better performance, is not exactly what digital photography equipment is evolving.
In my opinion, compared to digital images, film images have four characteristics: low resolution, low tolerance, logo tones, and graininess. Here is a general analysis of each of them.
Resolution: The resolution of 135 film is roughly equivalent to 10 million pixels, which can be reached by any $100 phone on the market.
Tolerance: The ISO range of film, up to 1600, is already considered ultra-high sensitivity, while the sensitivity limit of digital has been easily 100,000. Zhang Lixian, editor-in-chief of the Reading Library, used his newly purchased iPhone 11 to shoot his daughter sleeping late at night and lamented that the light was so dark that he couldn’t even see himself, but his phone could.
Logo color: The so-called logo color of film is essentially the color characteristics caused by the manufacturing materials and processes, as well as the quality control differences between different batches. Cell phone APP countless similar to LOMO, NOMO and other small programs, can easily imitate seventy to eighty percent.
Graininess: I totally agree that subtle film grain is much more fascinating than raw digital noise. The good thing is that many post-production effects plug-ins can simulate film grain of various brands, models and even batches, and the effect can be realistic.
This is also the work of “The Island – Image Magazine”. The obscure light and shadow of the coarse grain has a subtle texture, emitting a wisp of Al Ghul-like sadness. At the exhibition, many people asked whether this photo was taken on film. But in fact, the effect was achieved, not through film, but through the NIK plug-in for PHOTOSHOP. This photo has as many as a dozen area adjustment points to achieve effects that previously would have taken countless hours to achieve in a traditional darkroom.
For digital images, the various features of analog film are forward and downward compatible, without arcane or technical difficulty.
Compared with the traditional darkroom, the digital post-production method is not the same, the change is only the mouse instead of the finger, into the era of cell phones, the finger is once again instead of the mouse. Not long ago, Apple updated the IOS system to version 13, photo editing functions again, almost half of the common functions of PHOTOSHOP can be achieved. Thanks to the powerful image experts and AI algorithms behind the phone, the post-production effect generated by the phone “automatically with one click” instantly often exceeds the results I adjusted with PHOTOSHOP half a day. So much so that sometimes, when I am not sure of the effect of a PS photo, I will transfer it to my phone and try it with “One Click Auto”.
During the break in the exhibition of “The Island – Image Magazine”, I visited “Lev Gabrielsen: Faces of China 1980” photography exhibition. Thirty years ago, the Norwegian photographer Lev captured China’s 1980s on film; thirty years later, his photographs of Chinese faces are presented again in an artistic micro-jet. This exhibition brings a poignant reminder that exhibition-quality effects can be achieved through artistic microblading rather than traditional darkroom.
The first breakthrough in the development of photography was the reduction of exposure time from eight hours to half an hour; the second breakthrough was the reduction from half an hour to tens of seconds; and the third breakthrough came with the emergence of the modern sense of the negative. In the sense of time, it is the process of completing a shot in the order of magnitude from hours to milliseconds. In this time dimension, film and digital are almost just walking side by side.
I am not a nostalgic person. In my opinion, the only thing lost from film to digital is the ritual of photography. Of course, for perception and creation, the sense of ritual is really important. When I think of this, I still feel a bit sad. But that’s all.
Afternoon tea with David Hern
When studying a book, what is deeper than reading through is intensive reading, what is deeper than intensive reading is revision, and what is deeper than revision is editing. As chance would have it, I became the editor of the Chinese edition of David Hearn’s The Photographer’s Handbook, published by Reading Library.
David Hearn is a Magnum member, and the original title of the book is On Being A Photographer, which means Photographer Raised. “This is a book about photography, but photography is about life. “I am defenseless in front of such a sentence.
Popular photography books are divided into three main categories, equipment performance, shooting skills, and post-production techniques, but this book talks about ideas and approaches to photography, and is largely unrelated to the former. For photography enthusiasts, the latest equipment and the most dazzling PS, you can easily find a huge amount of resources from the Internet, or even and photography friends at the dinner table exchange can be. But “what to shoot” and “how to shoot “, such an essential and critical issue, but in fact there are not many books to guide.
I renamed this booklet of only a few tens of thousands of words as “The Photographer’s Handbook”, from the French “Film Manual”, although the new wave of cinema back then has been pushed out of reach by countless later waves, but “Film Manual” is still the film bible in the hands of directors to film fans.
The same can be said about this “Photographer’s Handbook”. The insights in this book about photography are not only applicable to the film era, but also to the digital era, and its value does not change with the passage of time. You only have to observe a photographer for a few seconds to see how he takes pictures to get an idea of his level,” says Hearn. “It’s true, whether that photographer has a film camera, a digital camera, or a cell phone in his hands, it’s all the same.
The Photographer’s Handbook was first published in the 1990s, just as digital cameras were coming into their own. It’s interesting to look back at the opinions and judgments made back then, now that the big picture is settled.
The book talks about an anecdote in which Hearn went to Arizona to complete a year-long shooting project. He went to a photography equipment store and asked if they had a certain brand of film. The store owner said yes, took a roll out, and Hearn said, I want a thousand rolls of …… thirty-six sheets a roll, a thousand rolls is more than 30,000 sheets, and Hearn used it up in a year.
In the film era, a full-time photographer’s lifetime shooting volume is roughly hundreds of thousands, and an amateur photographer, may not be able to finish a thousand rolls of film in a lifetime. But now, an ordinary CF or SD card with 256G capacity can carry the equivalent of a thousand film photos. Of course, a 256G memory phone can also.
Hearn devotes a separate chapter in his book to the importance of work samples. These samples are used both to compile a selection of photographs and for indexing and archiving. All the images I like are printed on 8×10-inch paper,” says Hearn. Many photographers prefer 5 x 7 inches, but for me, the larger proofs have several advantages and are easier to evaluate when pinned to the wall. As for the slight increase in cost, I can make up for it by selling reproductions. “
And today, small proofs of work are no longer a problem, with almost all viewing software compensating for the limitations of traditional print proofs, zooming in and out at will, and without spending a dime. Hearn also friendly tips in the book: “You have to have an accurate method of archiving. When you have 40,000 negative folders, each with six negatives, you understand that once the negative is put back in the wrong place, it is like throwing it into the wastepaper basket. “
Today the negatives binder has become a hard drive sub-catalog, so wherever a photo exists, it can be searched by keyword and quickly pulled out.
Of course, Hearn inevitably talked about darkroom technology, including the digital darkroom, which was still fairly new at the time: “I’m sure many reportage photographers would use the latest tools to reset images. They were able to achieve the effects that Eugene Smith spent countless hours in the darkroom to achieve, or rearrange elements in front of the camera as he did. “We know that Eugene Smith’s darkroom is top secret and that only God knows how he accomplished his masterpieces in the darkroom.
Hearn, however, has reservations about digital photography. On the one hand, he euphemistically says, “I expect the Marc Chagall of electronic images to emerge. It will be a pleasure to watch and enjoy such electronic images of timeless value, even though I personally have no interest in participating in such creations. “On the other hand, I admit: “At the moment, such digitally manipulated images seem to be the tricks of crappy photographers. But soon, digital photographers will be able to operate computers with ease. “
At the same time, and through the success and over the wisdom and cunning: “When digital cameras, electronic images everywhere, the old silver salt photos will gain more value than ever. I’m developing 25 of each of the most in-demand images before silver-based paper disappears. This will be my retirement income. “In The Photographer’s Handbook, Hearn mentions his daily shooting exercise: “Sit in a café somewhere and observe other customers, imagining your eyes detached from your torso, floating in floating around in space. Blink at the moment when all the variables coalesce into a perfect picture. “This training today looks very much like shooting with a DJI drone by remote control.
Five years ago, Google gave up on Google Glass. There are signs that Apple may pick it back up and replace the phone within a decade. Perhaps in ten years, the camera will no longer be held in the hand, but worn on the head. Or the old question, as a modern tool and toy, what makes it necessary to be a cube held in the hand? If there is such a pair of glasses, light, hidden, with the performance of cell phone photography, but the blink of an eye can press the shutter, then both Bresson, or David Hearn, will gladly accept this pair of glasses strike.
In any case, the future is here.
(Based on the lecture at the China Academy of Art’s “2019 Receptive Forum”, first published in Art Contemporary, No. 4, 2020)
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