(The original version of this essay first appeared on the digital-darkroom discussion list (http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/digital-darkroom), December 1, 2002. It has been adapted by the author for DP&I.com.) Viewing the World Differently: A Photographer Appreciates the Digital Camera Advantage by Larry N. Bolch December 28, 2002 © 2002 Larry N. Bolch A person writing in one of the forums where I tend to loiter, condemned a digital camera on the basis of its lousy viewfinder. It did not give her the view that she was accustomed to with her film SLR. This is somewhat like denigrating actress/model Denise Richards against the standard of heavyweight boxing champion, Evander Holyfield. Both quite excellent if used properly for their design purposes, but they are neither interchangeable nor functionally comparable. There are several basic types of cameras, and each has its own purposes and strengths. You choose the most appropriate configuration for the job. A problem arises when people try to bring technique from one type of camera to another, and when it does not work, dismiss the new camera as inferior. My first serious camera was a little Pentax single lens reflex (SLR) with which the learning process started. I used it for my first job, along with a Graflex that I used in studio. I got another job where the employer supplied the equipment--Leica 35mm cameras and 4x5 press cameras--both rangefinder cameras, and I initially hated both. While I always detested the 4x5 press camera for hand-held photography, they also had a Deardorf 4x5/5x7 that was very difficult to learn, but incredibly quick to use, once mastered. It was an artwork of brass, polished mahogany, and dark red leather--probably the only camera for which I may have developed some actual affection. It was a totally right-brain camera with absolutely no calibration. It demanded that you adjust it using nothing but your eyes--but that is the essence of photography, right? In time, I came to understand rangefinder photography. While the rangefinder window liberates you from the confines of the SLR tunnel vision, the SLR excels where precise composition and long lenses are called for. Advanced SLR systems have a rich array of accessories, so the camera can be configured for a very wide range of photographic tasks. For normal and wide-angle-lens "street" photography, it is simply no contest. Rangefinder rules. However, it took me quite some time to understand this. Since then I have used just about every type of camera imaginable on a daily basis for quite a number of decades, some so specialized that most enthusiasts probably don't even know they exist. Now we have a whole new genre of digital cameras that are neither SLRs, rangefinders, nor view cameras, but that incorporate elements of all, while breaking new ground of their own. Good reason for people to be baffled and dismiss them. LCD viewing technique is entirely new, and it took me a while to fathom, but I now feel that it is FAR superior to any other method. For the person who closes one eye and dwells in the darkened interior of an SLR, it must be a very foreign experience. In the SLR, the world goes away, and all that is left is the little movie projected on the focusing screen. I worked in a resort city three decades back, and I would watch dad taking pictures of the family in front of whatever attraction du jour. Leaning back from the waist, left side of his face puckered with the pressure he is putting on his left eye to keep it closed. His right elbow rising and falling as he cranks the focusing ring on the lens back and forth, lost in the little movie, not caring that his family is growing more exasperated every second he works the camera. Then you see the guy with the rangefinder. Border-Collie-like stare when he spots the picture, the camera lifts up somewhere in front of the face, a minute flick of the index finger brings the two images together and slight pressure on the shutter makes the shot. The shooter does not blink through the whole procedure. The subject is not even sure that he has been photographed, much less having to stand for eons while daddy cranks the ol' Pentax. I always chose a rangefinder camera anytime I was assigned to photograph potentially dangerous people. A big SLR takes on somewhat the quality of a weapon, hiding the eyes of the photographer and pointing at the subject. The quiet little rangefinder camera is not aggressive and not obtrusive. Shooting with a view camera is a very different process--strictly contemplative. Select the image without the camera, just using your eyes. Go through the complexities of setup, cocking, and opening the shutter, opening the aperture, diving under the cloth, and viewing the inverted image. INVERTED IMAGE! Everything is upside down and backwards!!! Interestingly, this can be an advantage. Since you have already previsualised the picture, this abstracts the image and destroys much of its reality, so you compose with two-dimensional design elements instead of the actual subject like you would in an SLR. With a view camera, you focus on the ground glass and then step back and look at the glass with both eyes from a distance. If it looks like a good abstract composition, then it is. Close the shutter and set the aperture, insert the film holder, pull the dark slide, and expose. There is no way to view the image as you press the shutter--other than in your own mind. The camera has gone dark the moment the shutter was closed. View cameras do not have viewfinders! Moving to the LCD monitor on a digital camera, you get much of the view-camera view, though it is not inverted. You do not dwell in the view like daddy in his SLR. The view is out in the open, somewhere around the back of the camera--like a view camera. However, you don't need the black focusing cloth since all digital cameras are auto-focus. If used with skill, auto-focus is infallible. Of course it can be fooled--if a fool is using the camera. You can see the image with both eyes. At a comfortable viewing distance, detail vanishes, and you see only the design elements clearly, especially in bright sunlight. There are devices that mask out light and magnify the monitor converting the digital camera into a kind of ersatz SLR. No longer can you use both eyes. You are forced to dwell upon a highly pixilated screen in darkness, completely defeating the advantage of the open monitor. When photographing people with a digital camera, you watch the subject--not the viewfinder. Eye contact for the comfort of the subject, not a guy detached from and glaring at them through a weapon-like device while flailing away with his elbows. With the digital camera, you are even more in touch with your subject than you are with a rangefinder. A brief glance at the monitor allows you the assurance that the subject is in the frame. For the most part, just keep it within the periphery of vision. Think of the image of a photographer back in 1910, smiling, standing beside his studio view camera, with the red Packard Shutter rubber bulb in his hand. The camera is incidental to the subject. Instead, there is a nice conversation with a charming photographer, and somehow, warm human pictures emerge even though the subject's body is locked in place with a posing stand, motionless during the long exposure. The prime advantage of the monitor for the digital photographer is seeing the processed picture BEFORE taking it. This is the deal-breaker with everything that has come before. With the rangefinder, you float the bright lines over the subject area. You look through the camera. With the SLR, you look into the camera and see the little movie playing on the screen, seeing a symbolic view on the ground glass, mentally translating to the kind of film you have loaded. With the view camera, it is a memory of an abstract image. The image on the digital camera's monitor has already been digitized, passed through the processing software, and is the image that will be captured. As much information as I care to view is concentrated in this screen. With my Nikon CP5000, I can swivel the LCD monitor to whatever angle is comfortable. It is as easy to shoot from my lap as it is from eye level. Like the studio shooter of 1910, I am out in the open and in touch with my subject--not hiding behind a machine. It frees me to compose as well or better than I ever did with a big view camera. It removes the camera from my face, so I can relate to the people I am photographing, better than the rangefinder. I can preview the image far better than I ever could inside the optical prism and ground-glass screen of an SLR. With digital, you are totally liberated from the restrictions previous camera-forms imposed upon the shooter, although you must understand this whole new way of seeing to be able to use it to full advantage. Digital camera technique is radically different from previous film cameras. I would expect it to be daunting to folks who are old and set in their ways. Moving from an SLR to a Leica took months before I comprehended that it was not an inferior way of focusing and composing, but just a different way with its own unique blessings. When I realized this, bells went off, sirens blew, and lights flashed. The same thing happened when I fully comprehended digital. It requires a whole new way of seeing that is way beyond the capability of SLRs, rangefinders, and view cameras. Above all, my pictures clearly reflect it. About the Author: Though photography has been the constant thread for most of his life, Larry Bolch is the ultimate multi-media man. Since day one, in fact. As a child, it occurred to him that what most people call "arts" are actually the media with which artists create art. For Larry, the creative process is the same "whether I am acting, playing music, shooting commercial or fine art pictures, directing, or combining several into a multi-media piece. "To add a new medium just requires practicing a new skill set, often an extension of a previous set. To move into 3D modeling and rendering only required learning the specifics of the software, but from there it was pure virtual photography and totally familiar. It was then a logical step to add music. With the power of current computers and the rich palette of software, anything I can imagine, I can execute. I am currently exploring sequences of still images with music. It is either a very rapid slide-show or a movie with a very low frame rate. In any case, the results so far have been very intense." Larry Bolch can be contacted through his website: www.larry-bolch.com. See list of other DP&I.com essays and commentary here. ^ back to top Home | About Us | Advertise | Contact Us News & Reviews | How-To's | Resources © 2002-2007 Harald Johnson Communications. All rights reserved.