On Fri, 16 May 2008 02:05:35 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Charter <jrc### [at] msncom> wrote:
>> Hmmm, I suppose, but I also thought that the lines of people ready to
>> muse upon truth and artifice in photography were wide and deep.
>> Analogue cameras were bad enough, but now that the capture is digital
>> and probably filtered digitally from the start, at least that is what I
>> assume my camera's different shooting 'modes' are,...it seems that
>> 'faked' is an increasingly relative term.
> 
>   I still consider there to be a difference between, for example, a
>   white
> balance filter and, for example, compositing an image from several
> source images. There's a drastic difference between those two. The
> latter has something the camera didn't "see" (at least not at one single
> shot), so it has a sense of "faking" to it.
> 
>   A very wide panoramic image which has been composed of several images
> taken in quick succession is a rather border case. Personally I consider
> it "faked, but it doesn't bother me too much".

I tend to agree on the first part. You can white balance, or do a lot of 
the other 'processing modes' of the camera in analogue, with the right 
lighting and color filters on the lens. The fact that a digital camera 
makes it faster and requires a lot less investment to do it, shouldn't 
matter that much.

However, a camera does see a composite image, and can create one from a 
single shot. You could take film that had a higher contrast range then 
the paper you put the pictures on, and selectively expose the print to 
bring out the parts that you want. Shooting in RAW format acts a bit more 
like film, you can tune the RAW image the same way you would selectively 
expose a film negative, to get more contrast or the burn a sky out to 
white, even if the actual shot contained a few clouds. In analogue, this 
isn't even getting into print manipulation, just changing the time you 
allow the print to be exposed to light.

And even old film allows for good post processing, dodge and burn to 
composite two images, double exposure of the print media, gradient 
filters for both the shoot and the film exposure, using the wrong 
chemical in processing . . . there are tons of ways to 'fake' an image 
while still using the original film, and if you take out double exposures 
of the print and dodge and burn techniques, you can do all of them with 
just the camera and chemicals.

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