What is the difference between photography and digital photography?
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at
7:16 pm
Some colleges want to know if I want to major in photography or digital photography. Besides the use of two different cameras, what the real difference?
Tagged with: cameras • colleges • digital photography
Filed under: Camera
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They are ignoring the fact that there is only Photography (anything else is a branch of photography) and catering to the whims of a generation that doesn’t want in-depth instruction. -They make more money giving the ignorant what they want rather than actually taking the time to properly educate them.
The difference isn’t so much the camera as it is the recording medium. One is a photosensitive chemical reaction (film) and the other is a photosensitive electronic sensor (digital). If you know Photography you know both.
Real Photography is going into the dark room, using an enlarger and chemicals to print and edit your photos, i did this in High School and really enjoyed it, i wanted to take it in college, but it is not offered here anymore (only digital)
Digital Photography is doing all the same on a computer. it is becoming more and more popular, and Real photography is disappearing into the past.
Digital is obviously the new media and is going to be the thing you will need to be trained in, but if you have the chance to take Real Photography, go for it! Working in the Darkroom was an enjoyable experience, one i will never forget!
[Non-digital] Photography uses a strip of plastic containing a layer of light-sensitive chemicals. This is the film. There are two basic types of film: negative and positive. If you put positive film in your camera, after you shoot the film it is developed and becomes a transparency. So the film that was in the camera is the film you put in a projector. With negative film, when it is developed all of the image is reversed with respect to tone. The things that were lightest in the scene you photographed will be dark on the negative, and vice versa. You then take this negative and put it in a sort of projector called an enlarger. This projects the image down onto a flat surface upon which you have put photographic paper. The paper also acts as a negative, so the tonal values are reversed again and become correct. You have to do this in a dark room using a dim red lamp, because the photo paper is light-sensitive and would be ruined if light got to it (it’s not sensitive to red, so you can use a red light when working with it.) You take the paper on which you projected your negative and put it through several steps of development using two or three different chemicals. Once you have finished you will see your image on the paper. When making the print, as this processing is called, you can move the part of the enlarger with the negative in it up and down to change the size of the projected image on the paper. This will correspond to the size of the finished print. You can also use your hands or simple shapes cut out of board to allow more or less light to hit the paper during the time the negative is projected onto the paper. This will cause the paper to get differing amounts of light, and you can use this to correct for mistakes in your original exposure when you shot the film, or for bringing out detail in areas that are dark, for example.
With digital photography there is no film. Where film would be inside the camera there is instead a sensor which registers the amount and color of the light when the shutter is open. This information is saved to a file in the camera’s storage medium (usually a small memory card.) When you transfer these files to a computer, they can be loaded into a program like Photoshop, and you can do your "darkroom" corrections in software. Then, if you want, you can make a print of the image.
I don’t know which major you should choose. Photography isn’t harder to do than digital photography, but there are more steps involved, mixing chemicals and so on. But that’s just the mechanics. The real skill is learning to be able to see photographically and how to use your photo equipment to capture that. You need to be able to do this in either field.