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Japan is a bit like the Germany of the East. Boundless potential that must be constrained by its enemies. The only reason it didn’t take over the global economy after WW2 is because Richard Nixon industrialised China and “international finance” created property bubbles that crashed Japan’s economy in the 1990s. After WW2, while the German people were being experimented on like guinea pigs by “American” psychologists, Japan was so culturally alien and impenetrable to the westerner that it was able to maintain more of its nationalist spirit. Therefore the same competent men who successfully attacked Pearl Harbor and conquered Asia were reinstalled to run the country and transform it into a leader of world industry.
Before the Second World War, one of the many things the Japanese would take from the West and improve upon was cinema. Along with America and Russia, Japan was perhaps the next most important innovator in the medium. Various big Hollywood films like Star Wars would take major influence and narratives from directors such as Akira Kurosawa. Clint Eastwood rose to fame in a series of westerns that were remakes of Japanese samurai films. Apart from genre pictures, Japan was pivotal in the formation of more high-brow poetic filmmaking. The writer of Taxi Driver, Paul Schrader, wrote the seminal book “Transcendental Style In Film”, which focused on Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Bresson and Carl Dreyer. Many classic films by master director Yasujiro Ozu (and others) are lost forever because of the firebombing of Tokyo and nuclear strikes on Japanese cities by America.
The oldest surviving Japanese photograph is from 1857. Ichiki Shirōi’s daguerreotype of greatly respected feudal lord Shimazu Nariakira. Daguerreotypes were made with a sheet of silver-plated copper polished to a mirror finish and treated with fumes that make its surface light-sensitive.
After WW2, Japan’s economic recovery started by making one to one copies of western products, knock-offs, but they would quickly develop and refine their own technology. One of the other western inventions Japan successfully built upon was the camera. Before WW2, Japan already had various camera manufacturers including Nikon, Olympus and Canon. They took the pre-war innovations made in Germany and Northern Europe and just ran with it. In the 1950s and 60s Japan was handed the keys to western markets and Pentax, Konica, Minolta, Mamiya and Yashica became global household names. Such classics as the Pentax Spotmatic, the first SLR with through the lens metering, were sold by the million. Movies such as Die Hard, Rising Sun, Blade Runner and Black Rain all in their own way expressed both American anxiety and admiration towards Japan’s rising economic power.
Apart from the quality mechanics of the cameras, Japan made beautiful lenses. Japanese precision lenses more than any other defined how we saw the world. Even the supposedly greatest of all cameras, the Swedish Hasselblad, has now dropped Carl Zeiss lenses in favour of Fujinon ones. It is no wonder the pre-iPhone cliché of the Japanese tourist constantly taking pictures exists, their nation was endlessly pumping out the latest and greatest camera technology. This would eventually extend to dominating the world of video cameras, televisions and video game systems with Sony replacing General Electric and Nintendo destroying Atari.
Comedian Patrice O’Neal talks about “hard consonants” on Comedy Central’s Tough Crowd
Behind the lens, before we had digital sensors and smartphone cameras, was perhaps the most mysterious, alchemical and beautiful aspect of the photographic process – film negative. Alongside America’s Kodak, the next powerhouse of film technology was Fuji and it would be an endless debate about which one was better. Kodak was actually a made up name, it meant nothing, they just hired a marketing company to construct a word that would be the most successful and so like comedians constructing a punchline, they went with hard consonant sounds. In reference to the “DC Sniper”, black comedian Patrice O’Neal used the punchline “Nigger in a Buick” instead of “Chevy” because of how it sounded with the “K” sound. When he said that joke on television, they actually bleeped out “Buick” instead of “nigger” so as not to defame the car manufacturer.
Conversely, Fuji was not a made up name because it did mean something. This film was named after Mount Fuji, an almost perfectly symmetrical active volcano that has inspired artists, poets and been the object of pilgrimage for centuries. Fuji created its own film stocks, with individual colour, grain structure and characteristics. Many of your favourite movies and photographs were produced using Fuji film. The current state of Fujifilm is in flux, subject to Globalist agendas of the fourth industrial revolution and the destruction of physical media. This has meant that despite growing demand (film is really “in” right now), rather than developing new film stocks, they have actually started to phase out existing classics like Superia X-Tra 400 and the magic, super-saturated Velvia and Provia slide films. The one shining light has been the innovation of Fuji Instax, an instant colour analogue photograph that has filled the void left by Polaroid. This has been embraced by young people and should be a signal that the consumer market desires physical analogue photography. We are human and we like physical things.
“Fine Wind, Clear Morning” also known as “Red Fuji” is a woodblock print by Japanese artist Hokusai (1760–1849), part of his Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series, dating from 1830 to 1832.
Film is magic. The various aesthetics of film are completely unmatched and only imitated in the digital era. But that imitation is of little meaning or value. The popularity of Instagram film-grain filters to turn harsh, ugly digital imagery into something palatable is testament to the timeless aesthetic of film. When HD video came to cinema, cinematographers hated it, having to apply heavy filtering to soften the sterile images. These computer chip sensors simply made women look ugly compared to the subtle diffusion and magical process of light kissing celluloid negative, being chemically brought to life in a chemical bath like a baptism. There are many philosophical and human layers to this as there are layers of emulsion. It is often said that labour is the source of all value. When something becomes easy, abundant and idiot proof – it’s no longer as valuable. And that’s what’s happened to photography. Not just with the smartphone but the DSLR that can take endless shots without the need for new film or lab processing. This magical human process cannot be authentically replaced by Instagram filters or digital software. The meaning and substance are very different.
Scene from the influential 1966 film “Blow-Up” directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. David Hemmings is using a Nikon F to photograph Veruschka von Lehndorff.
Want your photography to have intrinsic value and meaning? Start shooting on film. Beautiful models that get their photos taken all the time are far more impressed and curious about a photographer that uses a larger, solid, metallic art-deco-looking film camera. The winding of the film, mechanics and how it sounds makes these women double-take. If nothing else, it’s a conversation starter. An old-fashioned film camera looks like it comes straight out of a classic movie – when women were depicted at their most beautiful and desirable.. Models may not know the engineering and technical side behind one of these devices, but women have a keen sense for prestige, uniqueness and value. The fact that you are spending money on film and lab processing for every shot is a real investment in the human subject. Women love to be photographed, it’s very flattering to them, but someone capturing their image on film is something else. That’s right, shooting on film gets you ladies.
Norm Macdonald quickly explains how over-abundance and digital convenience has killed the value of photography
The Japanese are a serious and remarkable people. Despite partial American occupation since WW2, being subject to international financiers and associated agendas – they have remained ethnically homogeneous and nationalistic. Yes, issues of modernity and Globalism are always attempting to creep in and destroy what it is to be Japanese. “American” Blackstone has just invested half a billion into Japanese anime to probably turn it gay and African. But for the moment, this advanced place still strikes an eerie balance between its constant futurism and ancient tradition. Old ideas and aesthetics live somewhat harmoniously alongside modern culture. In some senses, because of their technological advancement, they have suffered some of the worst that modernity has to offer, children addicted to the internet and video games who won’t leave their room first manifested as a Japanese phenomena in the 1990s. They have also given birth to literally living in pods. So because Japan is further down the modernist pipeline, it’s only natural that some reactionary movements against the modern world will manifest there first. Thus despite being so technologically advanced, a strong sub-culture of shooting on film still exists in Japan and is growing among its youth.
The new “Pentax 17” is the first new serious analogue film camera being made in decades
In comes Pentax. Pentax have made the bold step by creating the first entirely new film camera for many years. This was much harder than you think. It’s a bit like trying to land on the moon again, but being forced to only use techniques from before the 1960s. An intense amount of research and development has gone into this precision mechanical product in an industry that is otherwise 100% focused on digital technology. Old Japanese men were brought out of retirement to help engineer this ambitious project. Like retired samurai masters transferring wisdom to the next generation.
This isn’t just an old model dug-up and re-manufactured, it’s entirely new with a fresh point of view. The Pentax 17 has taken the unique position of being a vertical “half frame camera” in that it splits every normal sized photograph into 2, doubling the amount of shots you get from a roll of film. Buying and processing film has become more expensive, so doubling the amount of shots you get is convenient. Because it’s vertical rather than horizontal, it’s ideal for sharing on social media. This will be an injection of analogue alchemical material into the physical and digital realms, a revolt against the modern world. An aesthetic challenger in the cultural battlefields of social media as well as the brick and mortar art gallery. Also, the side by side vertical images will normally come back from the lab as diptychs, two images joined together, which has created a new analogue meme format and mode of expression.
Pentax 17 “diptych” shot with Kodak Gold 200 by Belgian photographer ivophoto
The reviews are in and very positive. The Pentax 17 is well-made, the lens is sharp and there are a few modern features that have made improvements on the point and shoot style film camera. Exposure settings are excellent. But the future of the Pentax 17 will not rest on its reviews, its fortunes will instead be decided by what young people do with it. It’s vertical, it provides the options for diptychs, it allows use of any 35mm film with all their unique characteristics to create images – black and white, slide film, infrared, t-grain – there are rare and out of production film-rolls kept in people’s freezers, so many creative choice to be made even before using the camera, the possibilities are endless. I already own other more professional film cameras, but I have purchased this new one to test it. It’s been very fun and its simplicity is liberating. I take it everywhere and everyone wants their photo taken by it (especially women).
Shooting on film sounds too complicated? Start with this new Pentax 17. It’s designed to be easy to use whilst being a quality camera at the same time. The perfect balance. You can shoot film in a contemporary style and make use of the new characteristics of this camera. Young digital natives making art with technology that’s been in existence since the 1800s – it will be fresh eyes upon something that older people have taken for granted, moved-on from and neglected. Move on boomers with your endless iPhone pictures of clouds – young people will naturally find new ways to use this timeless technology, they will have their own twist and try things not suggested in the manual. Teenagers have already embraced Fuji Instax but shooting on proper 35mm negatives will give the new generation way more creative options.
Pentax 17 “diptych” shot with Ilford Ilfocolour 400 Vintage Tone by photographer Jason Lau
There is at least one group of artistic nationalists in America already experimenting with this camera and the different film stocks available. I have been privy to some of the early results and they are wonderful. Expect to see this imagery soon in memes. Its really going to inject new life into how certain themes are depicted. Our propaganda will have a new substantial edge. And the broad right-wing position on this camera should be a complete embrace. The seeds are already there in the textural instincts of synthwave and fashwave, young people putting VHS filters and glitches on digital video to give it more character. But now its time to get more authentic and go on a true aesthetic journey. We must value superior analogue aesthetics.
When many are too lazy to even take a photo, instead of asking AI to conjure something from the void (cringe), we must go in the complete opposite direction. We cannot allow ourselves to atrophy into limp-wristed pod-dwellers. Film photography was never superseded – we were just offered a cheaper and more convenient alternative like an Indian delivering us lukewarm Uber Eats. We started to value images less and became lazier consoomers in the process. It should be no surprise that what we often describe as “the end of culture” or artistic decline has correlated with the adoption of digital and virtual over celluloid and physical. The medium is the message here.
If we make this product viable, it will open up a stream of new film options from manufacturers (both cameras and new film stocks) and change the course of artistic history. We must send a signal to the market that will otherwise just give us a 50th iPhone that reinforces their spiritual control-grid. If we are to take back the culture, it is our job to define aesthetics and what is beautiful. This starts with the substance that makes up an image, the colour, texture and PHYSICALITY that conjures more than just sterile depiction. The grain structures and deep mysteries of each film-stock are the artist’s palette to play with. One thing the dissident right prides itself on is having impulse control. It takes a sophisticated person to be patient and take photos not knowing what they look like until the lab has developed and scanned them. Its healthy delayed gratification. Are you even White?
Pentax 17 Diptych shot by Benoît Pinchon using Ilford HP5 Plus 400 black and white film
Britain’s Ilford has also produced one of the first entirely new colour film-stocks in many years aptly named Harman “Phoenix”. Developing a new film-stock from scratch is quite the undertaking and this new amber-tinged film is giving photographers some rose-coloured glasses to view the world, making reds pop like a shotgun. This bolsters Britain’s tradition of dominating black and white film with the legendary Ilford monochrome range still thriving. America’s Kodak has also revived slide or “positive” film with Ektachrome 100 allowing for more artistic experimentation. Pentax are bringing back film cameras from the dead so people don’t have to purchase second hand ones with no warranty. Pentax, Kodak, Ilford, Fuji, these companies are all defined by the nations that created them and the undertone of all this is national pride.
It’s the perfect time to photographically revolt against the modern digital world and pursue something meditative. This isn’t about living in a cave, but about being discerning. It’s time to be elitist. If we don’t differentiate ourselves artistically and start valuing things, appreciating moments without a digital screen, we are as bad as everyone else eating goyslop and using goytech. Invest in the very best quality aesthetics for yourself and your people. Document and illustrate the beauty of our world in the most substantial and creative way possible.
Buy the Pentax 17 from Amazon and help support The Noticer (affiliate link)
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Thanks for this.
Photography does not have intrinsic value and meaning, and it is not really art.
E Michael Jones: Is Photography Art?
https://old.bitchute.com/video/D9dfzHZcdcs5/
Thats retarded. Of course photography can have intrinsic value.. E. Michael Jones also says “Labour is the source of all value” and clearly traditional photography requires more skill and labour than digital photos.. And as for it being art or not, there are all kinds of photography, some overtly artistic, subjective and pictorial. Creative inputs at various different stages of creating a photograph.
“Photography does not have intrinsic value and meaning, and it is not really art.”
Well, argumentation by mere bald assertion is not all that persuasive. You mention “intrinsic” “value and meaning”; all these things, which hold quite a bit of ballast in them each word, indicate that you presumably have got something going on backstage which you ought to bring forward.
Whether art exists (or can exist) in the realm of mechanical reproduction is an argument which has been going on for a long while now.
Since you have a strong opinion, you ought to start a real conversation by fleshing out your view and defending it. This site is a forum for discussion and debate, not a Speaker’s Corner where you just make a crackpot pronouncement then drop the mic. Go for it Balboa.
It’s fine to be a fan of film, but rather randomly bizarre to tie that to a racial and anti-Semitic agenda.
Given the undoubtedly disproportionate influence of Jews in the pre-digital European and North American camera industry as well as commercial photography, and of course film-dependent media such as movies, television, magazines etc, you might just as well portray film as “goy slop” controlled by the inherently evil tribe, and celebrate the rise and ubiquity of digital cameras, smartphones, social media, and the internet as a mass breakout from Jewish control. With the usual “to be sure” caveats acknowledging PC efforts at reining in social media etc., but also pointing to the drastically cheaper and easier nature of taking and spreading photos in the digital era as bypassing the old grip on printing houses and distribution channels.
What’s next, trying to tie some other random nerd retro interests like typewriters or coal-fired steam engine trains into a racial agenda too?
Not everything is about what you’re interested in.
correct. the people who ask for more explanation are too stupid to figure it out for themselves. so ignore them.
What would actually be great is a return to silver nitrate film stock.
Been there, done that. Only whites care about these things, though our Japanese friends do seem to be interested as well.
Video Link
Learn to draw my friends
You are correct.
Hooked on a Feeling
Video Link
Complete garbage
The conceit that Japan is “ethnically homogeneous” is absurd–the entire island of Hokkaido in prehistoric times was pure Ainu and hence absolutely caucasian (no one knows how it happened and perhaps it happened by the hand of the Creator). The main (or perhaps only) Caucasid trait is analysis (tearing apart) while the main (or perhaps only) trait of the Mongolid is synthesis. (The main trait of the Negrids is sensuality and not cognition at all–as most Unz.Com readers know without being told.)
As a result of the foregoing prehistory, the Japanese are on average 10% Caucasid, which alone accounts for a large part of their difference from (and differences with) their pure-blooded Mongolid neighbors China and Korea. Mongolids by birth possess few or no sweat glands in their armpits or groins, so that the Japanese had to invent a word, “smells like a White man.” It will get you out of the Army! The chief defect of the Mongolid is Pride; of the Caucasid Greed; and of the Negrid Vanity.
Why the three main races are fundamentally different neurocognitively and even incompatible socially with each other was perceived by a profound German genius 500 years ago. We have told the story and what it means neurophysically and aesthetically here:
https://www.academia.edu/36536128/The_Spirit_of_War
Note that to view the article, simply SCROLL DOWN; no sign-in is necessary. Thanks.
Handling and processing films by hand (as amateurs do) will get you a case of silver poisoning, which produces permanent blotches on your legs but is otherwise thought to be harmless. In general, chemicals used in small-batch film processing are toxic and/or carcinogenic.
Using TCE film cleaners (which are now prohibited as carcinogenic) was necessary back in the day to get rid of the last specs of dust so that retouching was minimized. Likely there are similar substances now and in the worst scenarios–as with TCE–might cause brain cancer.
As for the assertion that digital modes cannot replicate the best “look” of film, this is completely false. Look at what can be accomplished with Silver Efex Pro 2 (among other apps)–we worked with film for almost thirty years and can assure readers that digital can indeed successfully replicate film.
wow. more dumb fuckery than a week of anglin’s posts within the first paragraph.
the fuck? are we talking about the same “japan”? the one that is and has been the yanks’ bitch since 1945? the same ones who don’t even control what little military they’re “allowed” to have? the ones who went from traditional living to getting obese from KFC just because it was imported by US military fatasses? what “nationalist” heights you dream they ever achieved were built on the same western technology that took them from samurai swords to gatling guns.
odd that you don’t get that yet you think nixon “industrialized china”. china industrialized china, shit for brains. to you the nips are “gods among men” but the chinks are “cattle that must be led”.
yeah…because noooooooooooooooobody saw pearl harbor coming. as for “conquering asia” that retarded statement says more about you than it does about the millions of people actually involved. i guess you admire the way the zionists are “conquering” gaza and lebanon? same fucking thing, empire simp.
nothing says “competent” like raping and murdering your neighbors before someone drops two nukes on your head. the japanese before WWII were out of control vicious subhuman apes. they only look good compared to truman and he’s the dumb shit who midwifed modern “israel”.
TL;DR: keep your incel yellow fever to yourself.
An interesting article for a change at the UR.
Yes, film cameras are what’s it at.
But yeah, only White men (and Japs) care about such things.
If they disappear, all this disappears too.
Carl Zeiss does not manufacture consumer lenses any more. Even lenses for the Contax decades ago were outsourced to Kyocera under licence.
Sony has a Zeiss licence too – Sony owned Tokina I think and Cosina was a Zeiss licensee
Fuji was a minority shareholder in Hasselblad which is now owned by DJI of China
Hasselbald lenses are complex because the shutter is in the lens
Fuji on always we’re good lenses
Why?
We also lost something special when audio became digital vs. the analog that enabled the production of so many great recordings.
I’ve found it interesting over the past decades — as I’ve acquired ever-older examples of both audio and video — at the great strides that people made in the use of photography and of audio so very early on in their existence. I’ve had audio records that originated on Edison cylinders as far back as 1904 that, when recorded onto high quality audio tape on high quality devices produced exceptional sound. The same with photos and even videos … photos from more than 150 years ago are still magical and full of life.
Sadly, many of the former famous Japanese large format camera makers no longer exist … names like Ebony and Wista are long gone … and with their departure we’ve all lost something of great value.
One of the elements not mentioned — quite understandably — is the place that W. Edwards Deming played in post-World War 2 Japan. He had enormous influence in revolutionizing their quality control across a broad spectrum of their industries — something American companies were too smug to adopt.
The stupid gringos like this author are at it again. Nixon did NOT ‘industrialize’ China. That was Mao who did. And no, China didn’t join the WTO until 2001, after Clinton lifted US sanctions against China by granting MFN status the year before.
You guys can’t help but cling to your delusional fantasies about the alleged role played by the Americans in ‘industrializing’ China. The fact of the matter is that US multinationals like Apple decided to ‘outsource’ the manufacturing of its products to China by hiring Taiwanese contract manufacturers like Foxconn. Without China, Apple would have gone out of business instead of having a market cap of $3T today.
Nice article and I got a chuckle over how the usual Unz concerns popped in with worries of Japanese anime being made more gay and black. Analogue does rule and my expensive digital cameras are an exercise in trying to make the images look like they weren’t shot by an expensive digital camera.
Imagine believing this. The Japs are the most broken people on earth, so completely mind raped that they cannot even conceptualize their identity as being anything other than slaves of Americans. Their nation was turned into an American colony, an intermediate node in the American imperial economy, occupying a space between third world resource extraction and American consumption and rent extraction. Every Jap is keenly aware that the only purpose of his existence is to work himself to death making Nintendos for fat American children (or making niche novelty cameras for American weeb photographers, apparently).
Silver nitrate?
Yep, it is a bit odd, isn’t it?
I would also agree, at least at this pre-AI stage in its evolution, that cheap digital photography esp. via the cellphone is more contrarian and ‘revoltionary’ than film. Film is now toss, and for pretentious tossers. No-one really wants to see your tedious snaps anyway. And if, by chance, you create a great and memorable image (sorry, Jones; it can be art) it doesn’t matter what its on; its all gonna’ be presented on digital.
Who needs boxes and boxes of bent, stupidly-expensive, fading slides and negatives cluttering up your cupboards, nameless cringey CDs in old bags everywhere, and thousands of tacky purple-fringed little prints of pussy that all get binned but the very best?
Sure a real book is better than Kindle, but that doesn’t mean ‘real film’ is better than digital.
https://cdn.hasselblad.com/f/77891/x/c475c39d63/the_evolution_of_lenses.pdf
It appears many customers do not consider Fujinon lenses to be on a par with Carl Zeiss judging by Hasselblad’s attempts to assure buyers that Hasselblad controls lens design and Fujinon is a subcontractor unlike the situation with Carl Zeiss which made Hasselblad successful
“Whether art exists (or can exist) in the realm of mechanical reproduction is an argument which has been going on for a long while now.” The great Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote the classic book on that subject, and his insights have been usefully applied to Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, which depicts a defeated and occupied post-WW2 USA in which the Japanese occupiers have a big yen for “genuine authentic American kitsch” like vintage 1938 Mickey Mouse wristwatches, kindling an ersatz-kitsch industry where big money can unlawfully be made.
Dick’s defeated USA, with its East occupied by Nazi Germans and West by fascist Japanese, is obviously a cypher for the real post-WW2 Occupied USA. But who defeated and occupied us? Philip K. Dick was a genius who wrote novels at his typing speed of 120 words a minute, with his unconscious dictating the content. And Dick’s unconscious knew that the USA, in our timeline at least, has been defeated and occupied by the Jews. Dick’s first and only boss was the Jewish owner of a record shop, and that pushy personality became the model for the many shrewd, greedy, shallow, materialistic bosses in various Dickian dystopias. So it’s the Jews, not the Nazis and the Japanese, who have turned the USA into a defeated and occupied kitschy simulacrum of its former self. And good luck trying to fight THAT occupation with kitschy simulacra of old Japanese film cameras ; – )
Why is this pretentious Pentax 17 advertisement on TUR front page?
Earlier this year I tried to explain this after seeing the movie “Civil War”.
People were laughing at the two woman combat photographers as being hopelessly retro when they used film and I tried to explain what this article does here. No. It’s not archaic; film has some serious advantages.
As a photographer who used a darkroom for twenty years and remembers the joy of the image appearing as a result of my own time and effort, there will never be a time when serious professionals will be happy with digits.
Just think of the last CGI heavy movie that turned you off, and you get it. Photos and even movies are better when wet chemistry lends a hand.
Not celluloid, for God’s sake! Just new state of the art film.
“Move on boomers with your endless iPhone pictures of clouds – young people will naturally find new ways to use this timeless technology, they will have their own twist and try things not suggested in the manual.”
The author reveals an incredible ignorance as though nothing occurred before his present life. Boomers, for over 50 years, used only chemically processed film before digital became available.
“As for the assertion that digital modes cannot replicate the best “look” of film, this is completely false. Look at what can be accomplished with Silver Efex Pro 2 (among other apps)–we worked with film for almost thirty years and can assure readers that digital can indeed successfully replicate film..”
This is gay. This gay “digital is the same as analogue because it artificially copies the look” is an unsubstantial comment. The process at every level is completely different, the result is entirely physically different.
Rightoids are embarrassing when discussing art.. We have no aristocracy to speak of now. Just grunts who know little but like to chirp a lot. Consumers with a consumer mindset.
The Sony Cyber-shot was sick. They had a few different settings and would take good photos.
This article had highs and lows. For me it was worth it just to see the oldest existing Japanese photograph, the 1857 image of Shimazu Nariakira.
An image from a long lost time and place. I’d love to see an image of Shimazu’s soul: his honor, dignity, values, hopes and dreams, but those images don’t exist.
——————————————————————————————————————————
In these photos (linked below) of other peoples and places taken in 1857, you get an idea of the world that existed at the time Shimazu Nariakira posed in his wide-shouldered outfit for his photograph.
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/11/1857-photos-of-the-world-from-the-year-the-atlantic-launched/544607/
So true re analog audio.. Totally agree.. In sound quality/characteristics, barriers to access and value of physical media.. It was a real culture because of all these things.. Now turned worthless like digital photography.
This reveals a very weak understanding of China’s recent history. Nixon did not ‘industrialize’ China. Western linked industrialization began under Deng Xiaoping, in the early to mid ’80s, with Armand Hammer’s Occidental Group heading up the list. Nixon resigned in 1974, when China was still under the influence of the Cultural Revolution.
One encounters this lack of historical understanding frequently, and I wonder why many parrot it? Nixon’s reproachment with China was directed at triangulation toward the Soviet Union, and was a military stance, not a global economic plan. The idea that China could possibly have been industrialized by the West during the CR is absurd. It was only after Mao died, and the Jiang Qing clique was arrested and jailed that it came to pass. And it is more correct to say that China used the West in this process, than the West used China.
Interesting comment. Can you expand on the stuff about your photography?
“Learn to draw my friends”
This.
But first, read Tom Wolfe’s “The Painted Word”.
Do black billionaires appreciate French oak doors? Probably not the value, beauty, or uniqueness, only the cost. Nothing beyond, “How much dem ol’ do’rs wurf?”
You can take the black out of the ghetto but you can’t take the ghetto out of the black:
My local cinematheque has kept its 35mm projectors. Every now and then they will bring back an old movie in that format, not a 4K restoration. It’s definitely a different aesthetic experience, in no small part due to the oddly comforting sound of the projectors whirring away in the booth. While one might scoff at the occasional imperfections (scratches on the film, color fades, an occasional splice, or a mis-timed changeover), it is worth noting that digital movies are far from perfect. Go to enough movies or watch enough DVDs and you will experience your share of glitches.
Yes, yes, and more yes!
If you want to see a picture of his soul, you could go and look at the original “daguerreotype”:
The experience of viewing a daguerreotype is unlike that of viewing any other type of photograph. The image does not sit on the surface of the plate. After flipping from positive to negative as the viewing angle is adjusted, viewers experience an apparition in space, a mirage that arises once the eyes are properly focused. When reproduced via other processes, this effect associated with viewing an original daguerreotype will no longer be apparent. Other processes that have a similar viewing experience are holograms on credit cards or Lippmann plates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype
Another example of people wanting to return to a simpler time, photos without going on line, music without going online, life itself without having to go “online”. Fuck the nwo, in every way and every opportunity. Learn to live without the “internet”. Go outside and get some sunlight, physically and spiritually. For heavens sake, put the fucking cellphone down and start living again. Wake Up!
The ultimate retro binge for this boomer would be shooting a couple of rolls of 36 exposure Kodachrome through a Pentax 17.
Then getting it developed.
Based
An enjoyable and thought-provoking article. Hope to see more like it.
You really don’t see any great photography anymore. I admit, I shoot a lot of pictures with my phone. It’s convenient. You get good pictures. Perfect, almost. When everyone can take a perfect picture, all interest is lost in the art. Everything is mediocre.
What joy when I had finally saved up enough to buy my 35mm Mamiya/Sekor 50 years ago.
Some random thoughts: I’m not a photographer, just a retired sign artist/logo designer who now dabbles in Photoshop. Seems to me that there’s a lot less work for traditional photographers and illustrators nowadays, because of AI. Impressive photos can be shot from an I-Phone by amateurs. Most anyone that can punch a keyboard can conjure up an indelible image with AI.
IMO, the value of all art is in its relation to how difficult, how demanding it is to achieve. That’s why the Expressionist paintings, for example, are fake art – no skill was required! Just a phony market. Also, the ratio of how many others can do it as well. If millions can do it, it’s not so unique. We are in the early stages of the Matrix of art. Any endeavor that requires unusual skill to pull off, has intrinsic value. That’s why I consider sports as an art form. Playing ML baseball is so damn hard to do, an insanely small ratio of individuals make the grade. and they make it look easy because they’re extremely gifted professionals. Traditional European Realism painting, (or illustration) when created by a master, requires severe, persistent mental work every step of the way, in addition to conveying a feeling, gesture, and mood. Artistic poetry if you will. “How the hell did he do that? With all those figures and that tricky perspective, and all the shadows have to be correct, and the values and color hues correct, and the anatomy and foreshortening”… What kind of out-of-this-world concentration and visual wisdom does this artist have???”
Is the age of art coming to an end? Slavery to the particular discipline is a requirement of all true art. But intensely striking and powerful imagery is now available to the artistically talentless. The obsolescence of tradional art? We’re all taking a shortcut….. to what?
Soon MLB will require that all teams have at least one 300-hitting robot on their roster!
“Sure a real book is better than Kindle, but that doesn’t mean ‘real film’ is better than digital.”
That is *a* point, but not *the* point.
With all complex phenomena, it is vital that the intellectual chain of custody be fully preserved. It is not crucial that some obese clownish teen farting around with digital knows how a darkroom works and what it produces; but it is vital that *some* gang of nerds, somewhere, knows how, so that the entire system soup to nuts can be understood (and replicated, if need be) in the future. If you don’t know, or can’t understand or recall, your origins, then no sort of teleology will ever make sense to you: you will just be mindless children playing with the latest toys, while your betters control your actual reality.
We see this playing out right now in intellectual history. Or rather, the chaos and rank stupidity which lately passes for intellectual history (you want to tell me Critical Race Theory has any foundation whatsoever in criticism, theory, or an adult understanding of “race”?). Post-modernists now cannot even remember the Modern which hatched it, much less the pre-Modern, the Romantic, the neo-Classical, the Classical, the pre-Classical. If you don’t know where anything really came from, then you have no real way of knowing where it’s going; in fact you don’t even know where it is at present.
People who read Plato as teenagers may not today still agree with Plato or make any direct use of him, but what they *do* know is where the ideas swirling around us came from; viz they didn’t all come from Plato, but people who are deeply read know the genealogy of ideas, and so are fit to discuss them. People who studied Latin as kids may not be able to write a complex sentence in it today, but by and large they retain the X-ray vision into language, grammar and vocabulary which it gave them. (You can’t infer what grammar really is, if the only language you know is English.)
It doesn’t matter if you personally don’t prefer film to digital, but it is vital that *somebody* does. Otherwise, pace JK Galbraith, “in the long run, we’re all negroes”.
Holly Wood, Bollywood et el is but an art of Deception.
Even Satan has PhD in Deception.
Agents of Anti-Christ Dajjal will deceive mankind using media as their medium. They managed to fool us with the 911 lies and much more.
102. And they followed what the devils taught during the reign of Solomon. It was not Solomon who disbelieved, but it was the devils who disbelieved. They taught the people witchcraft and what was revealed in Babylon to the two angels Harut and Marut. They did not teach anybody until they had said, “We are a test, so do not lose faith.” But they learned from them the means to cause separation between man and his wife. But they cannot harm anyone except with God’s permission. And they learned what would harm them and not benefit them. Yet they knew that whoever deals in it will have no share in the Hereafter. Miserable is what they sold their souls for, if they only knew.
https://www.clearquran.com/002.html
Video Link
Many steam trains are maintained and run at times as ‘event trains’ in Japan.
Have ridden at least four, when having the time and meeting the timing, more than once. Some pull the original carriages, some pull modern ones. This is a great thing on many levels.
For the passenger, unless without a gramme of poetry in the soul, to simply ride is moving. Since it isn’t an everyday thing, people at many places also come out to watch, wave, and take photographs.
For apprentices and mechanics, it is great for maintaining rare skills. For them, and for the stokers, oilers, and drivers, it is a great adventure, starring role in theatre, privilege to aim for, and point of pride.
Also have a typewriter and film cameras. The typewriter needs a new ribbon and a little other work, likely expensive, but not too much, and I know of a shop that can do it.
Three film cameras are unusable (Polaroid, a Minox, and a great Minox-format camera by Fuji) thanks to non-availabity of film and processing. As an aside, the destruction of still-popular Polaroid at the time was a classic case of a malignant Jewish hostile takeover.
Photography can be an art, especially with monochrome film and darkroom work. Even with a digital, though, genuine art is possible. What it requires is an eye (in terms of framing, feel for scene, colour contrast, nature of light, etc.), manual adjustment of settings, and a lot of bicycling or walking to find points from which taking a photograph is worthwhile.
To me, the use of phone cameras to photograph just any shit or of expensive digital SLRs with huge lenses to take the same photograph as a group of other people with expensive digital SLRs with huge lenses in the same place are both equally worthless things.
‘It’s the Jews, not the Nazis and the Japanese, who have turned the USA into a defeated and occupied kitschy simulacrum of its former self.’ — Kevin Barrett
All three of these egregious cultural occupations now have persisted for three generations.
But the Jews, barely 15 million in number worldwide, have doubled and tripled down on an existential war against their neighbors, whom they denigrate as Amalek in their blind Talmudic hatred.
Obviously this wobbling top doesn’t spin much longer. Either the Jews blow up the world with their illicit nuclear weapons, or they themselves get overrun in a great orgy of throat-slitting that stains the Mediterranean red.
In any case, there will be no ’21st century Holocaust’ museums. 🙂
No tears, no fears
No ruined years, no clocks
She’s a twentieth century fox, oh yeah
— The Doors, Twentieth Century Fox
The article itself has no intrinsic value and meaning and is a mere advertisement for a film camera. Your comment, Germ, is not fleshed out and has little meaning except to refute an intelligent comment by Anthony. The real world is not what you think it is and you alone do not get to determine value.
‘Pentax have made the bold step by creating the first entirely new film camera for many years.’ — John MacDonald
My friends call me Captain Analog. I’ve shot film, black & white and color, slides, you name it. I’m sympathetic to your argument, Lord knows.
But why, oh why, does the Pentax 17 have a tiny little button of a lens? Why does it look like it should sell for a third of the price?
When I shoot film, I want acres of glass in front of me to mesmerize my scantily-clothed female models — a probing, impassive third eye, as it were. Whereas, confronted with the Pentax 17, they’re only going to snicker and smirk, as they would at a four-inch penis, while re-fastening their bra. SAD!
Asolutely correct. Deng opened China to foreign investment in 1978 after allowing private agricultural plots at home. In the process, the CCP threw off the millstone of Marxist-Leninist economic ideology, retaining the trappings of the communist state by retaining a tight control on other aspects of everyday life of the Chinese citizen.
Seemingly right on cue, U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s administration promoted policies favoring downsizing, outsourcing and eventually offshoring U.S. industry, some of it right into Deng’s new Special Economic Zones in places most Americans had never heard of like Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Xiamen, which today form part of the biggest urbanized area in the world.
By some accounts, Reagan was showing signs of senility already even when he was still governor of California, but that’s another story.
Didn’t listen to his talk, but my guess is that Jones plays off the philosophy of art presented by French medieval historian Etienne Gilson, who in Arts of the Beautiful contrasts painting with what he calls picturing, along with grounding a view of art as a ‘making’ and not a mere ‘representing’.
Thus, for example, an oil painting such as The Night Watch evokes more than a simple picture or photograph of a group of men; rather is it an unique expression the artist places into his canvas, capturing the essence of what it is to be human. Whereas a photograph is, ontologically, simply a picture of a static or mechanically reproduced reality–i.e., not participating in or flowing from the artist’s inspiration, or being.
Of course whether one agrees with Gilson (Jones?) is another matter.
George Eastman like the letter K … Kodak.
Yes, I’m moving to vinyl and tube amplifiers. Great Pentax commercial.
I completely agree; you say it very well. Of course, of course, the professionals, the ad men, the cinematographers, need the Leicas, the Hasselblads, the Velvia and the Provia. And they do a fantastic job. But I don’t think that when it comes to pressing a button on a mobile phone or a Fuji Instacam that the slob really needs to know the whole backstory to the whole photographic industry. I know it because I’m interested in it, just as I know how English grammar works because I can read and write Latin, but 5 billion niggers like me taking pointless snaps of 4 billion cat’s buttholes, or 10 thousand Thai hookers might as well use digital.
So, again, I agree. But apart from for the ad men and the professionals, I still think film is toss, and the slob niggers that want to use it are pretentious tossers; its just that they pay.
And thinking of it all a bit more as I write this, I’m not that sure anybody really does need to know how to fix silver halides to a plate of acetate. No one at all actually; its not that good. So, no, I don’t agree afterall. I mean I bet you don’t really know how your mobile phone works, and your dick’s never out of it. The only people that do, like those that want us liking film, are those that make money from it.
So what am I really saying? It might be a sad day for some sentimental traditionalists, but of all things on this ridiculous planet, photographic film is the thing we can all most easily do without.
Nec hoc ideo significat nos demittere Latinum. Rem omnino aliam.
“The Japanese are a serious and remarkable people.”
No matter China was industrialized and made wealthy by the West, it’ll never match the Japanese and will always remain a poor version of the original.
Paeans for legacy snapshots. I am impressed.
Great article!
Complex bemoans the loss of Polaroid 4�5 film.
He took several boxes of black and white on a trip to rural Peru and Bolivia four decades ago, and delighted in shooting photos of children with it. After processing, and penning the date and individual’s name on the back, said photo was presented to the beaming child. Perhaps some still exist.
Yeah, as spawn of a photographer, thanks a million.
Excellent statement. I agree about the Caucasoid trait — analyzing, tinkering, thinking about cause and effect based on reason and logic — and Negroid. But please elaborate on “synthesis.” I suppose it has something to do with this race’s predisposition for collectivism, but I would like to hear what you mean by this term if you please. I’ll read your paper.
The Pentax 17 seems to be another oddball camera from Pentax. It has a 37mm f3.5 lens and pokey 1/350 – 4 second shutter speed range exposing half-frame images on 35mm film.
I had a brief fling with half-frame using an Olympus Pen FT which was a sweet little camera very nearly as full-featured as the Pentax Spotmatic I also used at the time. Both sported fine f/1.8 lenses, but the Pen maxed out at 1/500 while the Spotmatic managed 1/1000 and also featured a self-timer. In any event, the 1960s-era Pen FT had much better performance characteristics than the modern Pentax 17.
Pentax also sells a B&W digital camera. I own the nifty little Pentax Q, along with a K-S2 that suffered aperture block failure, making automatic lenses on the camera virtually useless, although my older manual K-mount lenses still work. Because of that, my next DSLR was a Canon, and even now I’m looking for a mirrorless successor to mount a long lens.
Well, the long and short of it is film is a PIA. I spent enough time in several B&W darkrooms and had my hands in the soup for a number of years, but thankfully moved on to color, let the labs handle the processings, and eliminated my further exposure to the toxic darkroom chemicals used to process B&W film and prints.
And I still have tons of color slides and a pretty good Plustek scanner which removes some dust but not all of it necessitating manual spotting if you’re any kind of perfectionist, or glutton for punishment, and I do allow myself some of that from time to time, but in the final analysis, film is a PIA and a huge time sink best left to the young.
Now there is this sort of nostalgia-driven aesthetic for film similar to and related to the nostalgia for B&W images and both probably related to cosplay where people want to relive the past, or somehow be part of it.
Nostalgia is great. I have it for old timey things too, especially of the type that They don’t make ’em like that any more.
But for cameras, I’ll take digital any second, and I definitely like to see images in full color, because we don’t live in a black and white world.
That’s abject nonsense and you know it. While Ainu do have caucasoid genes not present in any other east Asian ethnic group, they quite plainly were not white. They were an admixture. Eyeballs are required to be taken seriously, boyo.
I do. Before the end of the last ice age, whites had outposts around the world and had begun to settle in various places. When the oceans rose, the “empire” got cut off from itself and the white settlers were either killed or subsumed into the other local species of humanity. Even the North American Indios have some stories about the “pale people from across the sea” who were wiped out.
Too many variables. IMHO, it isn’t simply about analog vs. digital. I remember the first time I used a Kinoptik lens on the Leica. Or the first time I got back a transparency taken by the Apo Lanthar on the Linhof Master Technika. I had taken shots with the Schneider lens at the same time, and the difference was striking. The difference in films was equally striking, as Agfachrome was a completely different color shade than Ektachrome – at least in the 4�5 format. Then, in the darkroom, the differences in materials were apparent.
I keep coming back, in many things, to the old Persian proverb – the dogs will bark, but the caravan moves on.
(in article)
I can’t take this writing/writer seriously. Nor his subject.
i can understand black and white photography shot on film, as you can still process your own film and develop silver gelatin prints, which are archival. shooting color in this day and age, makes no sense, as there a few labs that still process film and those that do, don’t print directly from negatives, they scan the film digitally and then print digitally, why go to all the expense, to end up with a digital image?
this camera seems pretty stupid to me, as they are halving the size of the negative, which halves the information, like using a digital zoom. it seems self defeating, to try to save money by giving half the quality, especially with color. perhaps if they had a stereoscopic lense, you could create 3d images that could be used with a viewer, that would be kind of anachronistic and cool, in a steampunk way.
AWFUL
Lovely. People scrolling their phones and shoving them in our faces is about as transitory and meaningless as a hostess ding dong. Long live the analog!
The question to make first is: what is art? Because for a photography to be classified as an object of art, it must present attributes that all of the currently accepted as being real (genuine) objects of art present in the course of time and, for this reason, have been appreciated as real art by humanity and are carefully preserved. Otherwise, it will not survive the scrutiny of time and will eventually be ignored and forgotten, like many other objects that are said to be art.
The second question is: which are the attributes of real art? Many attributes are given to artistic objects. They differ according to the kind of object. Improperly, some contemplate purely the aesthetic attributes – referring to the object’s beauty, pleasantness… But, by themselves, aesthetic attributes are not enough to distinguish an object as art. Usefulness is a more important attribute, and perhaps the most relevant usefulness of an object of art is its indisputable importance as a historic document.
Very common in the UK. Almost every weekend will see something like this somewhere in the UK. This was today (Saturday):
Video Link
The diesel at the back detracts a bit but is now required for safety. Also supplies head end power (the blue/grey cars have A/C and electric heating)
The referenced paper (‘Spirit of War’) discusses in synoptic detail the racially explanatory theory that each of the three main races uses the brain in a different way. The Mongolids use primarily the R hemisphere (or non-linguistic) brain, which is why they “sing” pictographs. The R brain specializes in synthesis of elements such as holistic pictorial comprehension. Mongolids can learn alphabetical languages with their L brain later but their disposition even then remains L brain (synthesis) oriented.
The collectivism to which “EdwardM” refers is a RESULT and not cause of the neurocognitive disposition of the Mongolic race. Their main trait is ANGER (or Pride when controlled), since the deep thrust is a deathly DARK FIRE called the 1st Principle. (The Caucasids and Negrids express the 2nd and 3rd Principles, respectively–see the theoretical analysis, whose basis is the great genius idealist J. Boehme, d. 1624). They ostracize anyone who gets out of line; the corollary of this is ancestor worship.
Now readers know why in the Mongolid lands one man rules–from the Ming dynasty to Mao the communist to Xi the quizzical pragmatist atheist materialist. This is why Hegel said, “nothing has changed in China in 3,000 years.”
Ha ha. Real nerds develop their own film.
It is probably already true that the only people who understand this essay are gray hairs in their rocking chairs. Film is a better artistic medium than digital but it is also obsolete. : (
Most film has a higher resolution than a digital camera does, and better dynamic range.
good comment but i would argue in the other direction with the color vs b&w photography, especially in film. imo shooting b&w, makes you a better photographer, you need to concider composition more and spend more time thinking about lighting and contrast, as well as framing in the can. to me this is the true art of photography.
nowadays everyone has a digital camera in their pocket and people tend to shoot everything they see, as there’s really no cost involved. many people end up with so many images in their archive, that they could never find a particular image, amongst thousands of images that have never been properly filed, let alone edited.
archiving these images is also an issue, most people think digital is forever but just like with digital music recordings on c.d.’s, the first generation of them are beginning to degrade sometimes becoming unplayable, vinyl when stored properly is more archival, lasting indefinitely with proper care and handling. storage methods for for digital information, come and go and need to be transferred, as older methods and technologies are abandoned, every copy degrades the the original file.
And, of course, it was DiFi who was on that mission to china to grant them MFN status … along with that POS husband of hers, Richard Blum. He went along to negotiate contracts with the new chinese business partners in the amount of more than $200 Million just on that trip. And that was just one of his trades on her position … among others, his firm got the contract for the liquidation of USPS properties that President Trump’s predecessor ordered … something on the order of more than $1 Billion in value …
Once again … insider trading and such based on DiFi’s position as a US Senator.
It’s always amazed me how she — among all of the Congress critters — has totally escaped any hint of scrutiny … must be that tribal thing, although that doesn’t explain it entirely.
You think you’re being clever but you’re really just fucking up a reference to cellulose film stock. Oh well, I guess you suck. Like a truckstop faggot.
And that is the real point, isn’t it? No need to denigrate digital photography to promote the benefits of having old analog processes as an alternative.
We need analog photography for the same reason we need vinyl records.
Another thank you for writing this. As a long-time film photographer (+50 years now), I still love working with film and my results cannot be duplicated with digital. That being said, digital has its place. If you read up on what Stanley Kubrick had to do to shoot under candlelight illumination, we can do the same today with just the phone we carry in our pocket. And a digital camera captured a bullet that had just nicked Trump’s ear (I calculated a real shutter speed of 1/4000s based on projectile velocity and length of the bullet image relative to Trump’s head), which could not be done with film cameras unless you used specialized gear including strobe lighting.
Photography is artifice, no doubt about it. If we think of it as a child does, as a “REAL PICTURE” (which ought to be something desirable) then we can dismiss it as a mere “mechanical reproduction.” Like tracing a famous sketch with a pantagraph.
Of course, accurately reproducing great pictures must be considered a kind of art in and of itself. As can capturing real images on film in a camera obscura. To see something or contrive something of interest and to take a picture that reveals what you have seen – the artist can contrive it so that you see what he sees so as to RECEIVE THE SAME IMPRESSION.
The director of a film, the director of a play, the director of an orchestra, is not creating the spectacle or producing the sounds. He is nevertheless crucial to the production of the whole. Comprehension of the art is fundamental to his “function” (his art).
This is good; you stir up shit on another blog which we know has some considerable personal importance to you, which just happens to expose you, then you abandon your positions and go to bullshit elsewhere instead about, of all things, photography. Bravo! We’re really in great shape with you with us.
The link for the camera on Amazon leads to a Pentax 17 for $846. A separate search on Amazon shows you can buy the same camera for $499. That seems like a very generous tip. I think I will stick with my digital camera.
Are you truly a retard, or just pretending to be one on the internet?
ANY fool can make an abstract painting.
To create an abstract image, with a camera, takes both vision and talent.
The same can be said with most surrealistic images. They are MUCH more easily accomplished with the implements of drawing or painting than with a camera and film
You’ve OBVIOUSLY never used film for color photography, developing and printing it yourself.
Film gives you immense control that just isn’t there in digital.
I own a film SLR, a Canon EOS II)
I own a digital Canon EOS SLR.
I use the digital for test shots, but never for final images.
Why?
Because, quite frankly, the images from the digital camera are never as good as what I produce with the film camera.
The digital gives me a good idea of composition and whether a shot “will work” or not. But there are far too many weird glitches with digital, and other constraints, that aren’t there with film.
You would think it would be otherwise, but it isn’t.
Dear Mr. Macdonald, When it comes to many of the fine artistic points you make in your article, don’t expect to receive many worthwhile critiques from most UNZ commenters. They’re great mainly when it comes to making much needed condemnations of Jewish and Zionist power, or in offering political perspectives that would be censored by the NYTimes, which is where I your perspectives on Japanese culture and photographic art would be more appreciated. But apart from that, much of your article does sound like an advertisement for Pentax.
OBVIOUSLY
Digital is convenient, but I do miss my SLR and even my first grotty 110 which I had much fun with on vacation, . there is a magic to film.
I briefly played with a soviet Lubitel, but I had no home lab so too expensive. There was the appeal of large format 4X5 and larger, expensive systems.
The best I can do is old school drafting. I am unable to draw a convincing stick tree freehand. My spatial reasoning is geared toward orthographic projection, but possess no talent for depth, contour, or shading. I wouldn’t trade though; I have designed and built 2 homes, the second doing 50% of the trade work, and currently residing therein. Cheers!
That photographer was the one who took the My Pet Goat GWB photos. glowie dude.
Him being there really says that event was a psyops, same as the Islamabad CIA photographer wandering around the Sandy Hoax firehouse parking lot on the morning of 12/14/12
EXIF told many a tale that day and the day before when the firefighters got pizza delivered during rehearsals.
The MSM were so upset about people doing detective work with EXIF on MSM photos they scrubbed EXIF data from photos on webpages from that year on.
I remember reading in the 1970’s when Esso changed its name to Exxon, that it was done because NiXon was in power and like his name, the hard x consonant, double downed on, sounded more domineering and militant which aligned with the future of US corporate capitalism taking over the world!
Good expression. But if the US occupation is partial in military terms, it is not the case in other fields.
listen you flaming unit 8200 trollbot, i didn’t pick the topic, you fucking moron. and please explain how have i abandoned my positions. once again, you accuse others of your actions, standard mossad troll technique. how did my comment have anything to do with you? if i wanted any shit out of you, i’d have squeezed your pinhead.
you mossad trolls think you own the site, that’s just your inbred chutzpah, i guess you just can’t control your actions, typical israeli. rupert pig, you’re just here to shit up the threads as always, anyone can read my comments on this thread, as well as yours and compare and contrast, you may think your being smart but the rest of us see you as the idiot troll you are.
I don’t have a cell phone and get bored looking at tons of people’s digital photographs. I would say that black and white photography is art, because the world is not black and white. Color photography involves, like art, like black and white photography, deliberate choice [frame] but is still just a representation of what the eye can see anyway. So, color photography is sui generis, like music.
I ‘ve never understood how photography can exist at all. How can there be an actual representation [a clone] of what is, when what is, is all there is. That light is absorbed or reflexed or however it’s done, does not quite demystify photography to me. There’s a strangeness to real photographs, but not to digital which is like television, stopped.
The artist chooses this pallet.
I did photography for about 10 years. Lots of 35, also 120, and 4�5 view.
Did all my own darkroom, including 3’x4′ b&w prints.
Digital kicked my ass. I threw some of my stuff away. Still have some.
But I miss the ART of taking and making photos.
Yea, I’m an artiste.
If I sell you an 8�10 photograph for $2.00, then that photo has intrinsic value. Art is in the eye of the beholder.
The neat thing about physical media is exclusivity.
There are lots of good photographers on Instagram. Posting yours just makes you one of many competing against each other and the algorithm. When everyone is special, nobody is. You just don’t stand out. Everything recommended to you is the best of the best. It gets boring.
I’ve printed and hung my best photos around the house. They’re frequently a topic of discussion. I get more engagement from the physical copies than any of the ones I’ve uploaded because the home is a gallery I get to be the curator of (and don’t have any competition). It helps if you hang stuff opposite the toilet. Captive audience and all.
A family member has a random painting he bought at some bazaar on his wall. It’s nothing special (abstract) but its composition and color draws me in. Getting a chance to see it is always a little bonus to visiting.
I’ve never felt the same about anything online; I might save a copy but I’ll never remember to look at it again unless it becomes wallpaper.
It’s not the tools, it’s the carpenter !
These two sentences seem to encapsulate what this possibly emerging fad is all about; another pick-up gimmick for men hoping to get laid. Yes, this hobby is far less expensive than owning a late model Ferrari or Porsche 911, but a suitable alternative might be to get a small digital Leica camera instead of the technically equivalent Lumix.
Real fashion models are too tall anyway. But what if you spend money and effort photographing a cute woman with clothes on, only to find out later that she is rather furry in the front and has a big and nasty tattoo on her lower back? Better to just hang out at a nudist beach without a camera and clothes and meet women there instead.
The US multinationals wanted to access the Chinese market which Deng had opened to Asian and European investors during the 1990s when the US government imposed sanctions against China after Tiananmen. The American multinationals had been losing to their Asian competitors such as Japanese automakers, Taiwanese electronics manufacturers such as Foxconn as well as European multinationals such as Airbus which had established operations in China. During this time, the EU launched the Euro while the USA ratified NAFTA to outsource auto manufacturing to Mexico and Canada.
All these factors compelled the US government under the Clinton Administration to grant MFN status to China in 2000, thus paving the way for its entry to the WTO in 2001. But that was 25 years after the death of Mao in 1976. For some strange reason, stupid gringos like this author falsely claims that Mao somehow rose up from the dead and forced Clinton to grant MFN status to China in 2000. Before then, China had been placed under US sanctions since 1989 after Tiananmen. Thus it wasn’t possible for US multinationals to ‘outsource’ the manufacturing of their products to China because of US sanctions. US automakers for example didn’t enter the Chinese market until after 2000. So where did US automakers go to ‘outsource’ the manufacturing of their products? Mexico and Canada which had been given tariff-free access to the US market under NAFTA during the 1990s, the same period when the US government had imposed sanctions against China after Tiananmen.
Heck, the USA didn’t even have diplomatic relations with China until 1979 under the Carter Administration during which time Deng visited the USA. Prior to that, Deng had started experimenting with ‘market capitalism’ by creating FOUR(4) SEZs in Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen. And guess who invested in these SEZs during the 1980s? The Overseas Chinese from HK, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. The Japanese and South Koreans arrived later followed by the Europeans during the 1990s after Deng made the decision to open up the Chinese market to foreign investors by establishing some two dozen EDTZs throughout China.
I applaud their gumption in doing this. It will definitely face major headwinds in the industry but it’s refreshing to see them make the try. When I think about my first film camera, a Yashica FX-D I bought in the early 80s, I realize just how special it was to me. The pictures I too, those little moments frozen in time, are some of the most precious things I have. I’ve told my son and daughter what their responsibility will be once I’m gone… and that’s to save and pass those memories on. I don’t expect them to appreciate it until they’re much older.
I applaud Pentax for doing this. It will definitely face major headwinds in the industry but it’s refreshing to see them make the try. When I think about my first film camera, a Yashica FX-D I bought in the early 80s, I realize just how special it was to me. The pictures I took, those little moments frozen in time, are some of the most precious things I have. I’ve told my son and daughter what their responsibility will be once I’m gone… and that’s to save and pass those memories on. I don’t expect them to appreciate it until they’re much older.
The Jomon were basal East Eurasians so not Caucasoid at all although they also had ANE ancestry which while being another independent basal population is also part of the ancestry of all Whites.
The typical East Asian phenotype seems to have arisen later in time.
Therefore, their similarity to Caucasoids is mainly plesiomorphic except for the shared ANE ancestry.
Furthermore, the Ainu are(or rather were) a mixed Siberian/Jomon population.
I do agree with the gist of the comment but you should go learn some basic XXIst century race science terminology before you comment on the Internet.
As a Mongoloid, I can only praise your insight.
I beg to differ.
Both require an eye to proportion and visual meaning. But the manual artist also needs to learn dexterity and technique, trained by constant practice.
The photographer, however relies on chance, rather than training.
If one says that “any fool can make an abstract painting”, then the equally uncharitable would say that “Photography is the artistic pursuit of the insufficiently talented.”
Balderdash.. “Chance” .. That would mean everyone has the same photographic ability – they dont. You are really talking about “pictorial” photography and thats very much a skill and style. Not just an accident anyone can do.
Did you not bother to read the whole my comment before taking offence?
I append again , and place in bold the relevant parts because your eyes are apparently not very good.
1. How many talented artists have to resort to photography to express themselves? Not many
2. How many photographers are also talent artists? Not many.
You obviously take offense to my comment because you identify with being a photographer.
Let me ask you this: How good an artist are you?
That is true.
Picasso found a bicycle seat and handlebars juxtaposed them together to form something delightful. It is undeniably art. Especially when you compare it with the “accepted form of art” that he could actually do when he really wanted to.
This is not someone who resorted to a particular form of art because he was not able to do the difficult stuff. He already mastered the “difficult stuff”, then went on and transcended them.
Picasso Bull’s Head,1942
Picasso Gurenica, 1937
Picasso at 14 years old, Portrait of Aunt Pepa, 1905
Its a pretty radical move, I’m glad one manufacturer took this step
Im a painter actually..
You still said “The photographer, however relies on chance”
I dont take offense, just pointing out you are talking a bit of rubbish.
I dont think he transcended anything really .. His significance as a more modern artist is probably due mostly to market forces and Jewish galleries, finance, communists etc. I dont think hes terrible at his most modern, but to say he transcended something by becoming crude and primitive is not really correct in my view.
In the late 1960’s, the Pentax Spotmatic was the best selling 35mm camera in the world. Asahi was the first Japanese camera maker to reach 1 million sales (1966) and 10 millions sales (1981).
Today, according to some accounts, Ricoh-Pentax accounts for about\ 6% of camera sales, well behind Canon, Sony and Nikon, which dominate camera sales with Canon accounting for close to half, while Sony (26%) and Nikon (12%) get much of the rest with Pentax and several others content with the remaining scraps.
What happened with Pentax?
Despite its big success with the Spotmatic, Asahi was slow to introduce a bayonet mount favored by pros, and stayed with the screw-mount M42 series of lenses until 1976, when it at last introduced its K-mount system used to this day. Unfortunately, the K-mount’s design reduces the possibility of a good mirrorless full-frame Pentax offering from Ricoh, If Pentax is to produce a good mirrorless camera, which is the wave of the future for cameras, then it will have to introduce a new lens mount design as the other major camera manufactures have done.
Nikon had introduced its own bayonet F-mount in 1959 which still survives in the Nikkor line for mirrored DSLRs alongside the newer Z-mount from 2020 for mirrorless TTL cameras.
Canon has had several breech or bayonet style lens mounts, including the R (1959), FL (1964), FD (1971), EF (1987) and RF (2018) series. The market leader has never worried about backward compatibility and has never had a problem introducing new lenses. It’s enough to make a Pentax users eyes water when comparing the telephoto lenses available for both EF and now RF mounts from Canon with the long lens offerings from Ricoh-Pentax
Some critics also blame Asahi’s marketing for its decline over the decades, but although Pentax did offer a range of lenses and accessories for its cameras, it was outdone in both departments by Nikon and especially Canon.
Despite all that, Pentax enjoyed some success with the MX and ME from 1976 that in fact were inspired by Olympus’s revolutionary OM-1 introduced in 1971, which set the standard for SLR design in the 1970s much as the Spotmatic had done in the ’60s.
But once again Pentax was slow to introduce a fast auto-focus system and was playing catch-up as the film era wound down and the first DSLRs began to appear in the late ’90s, with Nikon’s 2.7 MP D1 from 1999 considered by many to be the definitive exemplar. The megapixel race heated up in the early ’00s with Canon’s 4 MP EOS 1D from 2001 followed by its 6 MP Rebel in 2006.
Pentax got in the game with its oddly named 6.1 MP *ist D in 2003, and followed up with its well-received 10 MP K10D in 2006, which won several camera-of-the-year awards in 2007. However, reported pressure from major stockholders forced Pentax into a merger with Hoya in 2007. In 2008, Hoya “spun off” Pentax, leading to its acquisition by Ricoh for $125 million.
Well, I still have a pair of 35mm Pentax P30Ts but I haven’t put a roll of film through either since Comet Hale-Bopp graced the night sky in 1996-1997, but the last film camera I used regularly was the Olympus Stylus, which was the long-sought solution to a truly pocketable 35 mm camera, because as most photographers know: the best camera is the one you with you.
Now my Canon EOS T7 is a hunk of hardware with the 100-400 Sigma mounted. It’s not really the kind of thing you want to be lugging around all the time, nor is any SLR or DSLR, but I have a tiny 10 MP Canon Powershot ELPH 330 HS that virtually disappears in a pocket and probably produces images on par with the K10D at 100 ASA, but goes well beyond that Pentax DSLR in low light performance, where the K10D suffered beyond ISO 400. The little 330 HS also sports a 10x zoom lens and I have the CHDK software loaded, making autobracketing a breeze, all in a package smaller than a bar of soap. Yeah, it’s rather a delicate little thing with the lens extended so it needs to be handled with care, and it’s well worth the effort!
Getting back to Pentax, the company suffered another setback from around 2016 with the aperture block failure that affected several of its mid-range DSLRs including its K-30, K-50, K-500, K-S1 and K-S2 models. A faulty Chinese made solenoid aboard those models is prone to failure, thereby preventing proper operation of the automatic aperture control and leaving the lens fully stopped down.
Hiss. Boo. Bah!
I guess that’s what happened to Pentax…
Shame your link is for Amazon Australia.
Then again, I never threw away my old film cameras, and the dark-room is in boxes somewhere in the cellar.
Oh, and by the way, there is one Asian country that influenced Deng more than the USA or any country in the West: Singapore.
Video Link
The rest as they say is history.
You fucking cretin. Can’t even type into Google.
“Specifically, silver nitrate film is what has been most commonly used when making movies on 35mm stock. Whether black and white or color, silver nitrate film stock has been a standard in the movie business.”
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-film-stock-definition/
Who cares about the handling of the film?
But you are wrong about the quality.
Nothing, nothing beats silver nitrate film for quality. Digital imitation is just that, (cheap) imitation.
You should set up that dark room.
Let us see.
A photographer takes a photo juxtaposing ancient buildings with modern buildings. Did he build any of those buildings? Did he decide where they should stand and how tall they would be?
No. Others did all that. All he did was to CHANCE upon that was already built by others and framed it in an interesting way.
That is what is meant as chance.
Whoa. REAL silver halide film is making a comeback? And Ektachrome is being revived by Kodak? Perhaps there is hope of Kodachrome reviving. This is all exciting hearing about 35 mm, but if I get back into the use of a camera I shall go view camera.
What is modernity in art?
It was when artists decided that they did not need to slavish reproduce what the eye saw. This was the force driving Impressionism, where one gave up trying to be facsimile of nature.
I suggest that A driving force behind the birth of modern art, was when it began by divesting itself from photography, which had begun to take hold by then. Photography was so much better at reproducing nature. Why continue to weave one’s cloth on a hand loom, when one can purchase machine made one’s so easily and cheaply?
Look at his painting in 1905, it is obvious he started with the tradition of the Impressionists / Realists.
After giving up being a facsimile of nature. They went on to ask themselves what makes art, does one also need to slavishly conform to Perspective? Does one even need to reproduce nature at all?
This in the end is what is the difference between Modern Art and that of the past. One has transcended reproduction of nature, because photography did that so much better.
Just because the styles that he evolved to later in life does not suit our own tastes, does not mean we should deny his genius.
German and Japanese products…..automobiles, clocks/watches, cameras, radios, military weaponry, etc., are the BEST in the world! Since, their products and expertise are superior to what the Americans and British had/have therefore, their ideas are considered anti- Semitic, as Germany and Japan were NOT under Jewish jack-boots when these products were manufactured…!
Good article, and I agree with the points but Im a bit amused as a long time Ricoh GR-1 shooter, its like Zoomers suddenly discovered film and this is the shiny new thing. But us older guys have been here the entire time. Wait until they find out about 8mm projectors?
I think thats exactly whats happening… Zoomers grew up being deprived of film.. So they have to start somewhere. We all started at the bottom, with simple point and shoots, so its only natural they will.. Though when I read reviews of this camera, the lens is apparently really good and delivers very sharp images despite only being half frame.
You can still buy similar (to SX etc.) from Fuji.
Since you specify monochrome though, you mean the non-SX-type, I bought a Holga with a Polaroid back, it was fun but just before the hostile takeover, so the film was no longer sold by the time I was used to using it.
Forgot to remove the blinder before attempting a shot several times. A waste. Also wasted colour shots on stupid photos of dolls.
Oh well. It is strange that Fuji never released an SX form-factor instant colour film, since the old Polaroids were popular here, suppose it’s to do with the very nasty takeover of Polaroid (with the intention of patent farming, seizing fixed assets, and destroying the company).
I’m very surprised that such exists there, would have thought that the alarmists already shut such things down.
I don’t want to tell you that but if I don’t accept the underlying premises while or after being subjected to an harangue re: Trump is a racist because Haitians and cats I will be under suspicion of being a danger to minorities re: prejudice. I know you know how this works but this is what is happening daily now in workplaces across the US. My reference is to a real life event from this week that I witnessed.
I encountered a Chinese lady who had taken photos near Mt. Fuji today, she had four very good shots taken nearby, by her phone camera. Helped her to her destination.
Nearer to my domicile, the Bunkyo Ward Office has a viewing deck. It is one place where, with a giant zoom lens, one may get, on a clear winter day, a cliche shot of Mt. Fuji looming over Tokyo.
So, those types were setting their tripods and gigantic zoom lenses to get the meaningless shot. Much competion and territoriality.
The funny angle is that perhaps there was a fight over site, now, use of tripods on the ledges near the windows is banned.
On the other hand, everything becomes less fun, on the same deck, used to be a small bar (beer and sake and snacks), smoking area, all long gone now.
it’s sad what they are doing to japan. they had such a unique culture and esthetic as a people, that seems to be purposefully diluted and polluted in order to destroy them as a people.
i’ve always loved the shinto religious traditions, with their beautiful shrines and deep respect for nature and love for their ancestors. it’s hard to believe the same people committed such egregious acts of violence, against the chinese and koreans during ww2. my father was a ww2 vet in the south pacific and absolutely hated the japanese for the rest of his life, always referring to them as japs. my mother on the other hand, always loved japanese art and particularly ceramics, so i was given both points of view growing up.
isn’t it interesting that the current u.s. ambassador, rahm israel emanuel (i’m not joking, that’s his middle name), refused to attend the hiroshima memorial, after japan refused to invite the israelis, in protest to their genocide of the people of gaza. he also demands gay marriage and more immigrantion be allowed, how very diplomatic of him.
“There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.” – The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich.
..”placed there by the hand of the Creator”..good point! The white race is Supreme! It is the closest to the Creator! There are only 3 races in Earth..white, yellow, black..!
The best theory of the three main races as created, which is derived from the inimitable J. Boehme, d. 1624, was summarized by us in 2018 and clearly theorizes each race–lacking self-abnegation–as DEFECTIVE. The Caucasid’s main problem is Greed; the Mongolid’s Pride; the Negrid’s Vanity.
Reasonable consideration of all the evidence suggests that the Creator divided Mankind into three races to limit Mankind’s potential for evil; Unitary Man (as portrayed by Moses) was intolerable; the Creator came to “repent” his creation, according to Moses. Remember?
It is thus intentional and divinely calculated that the races as psychophysical opposites even today find it impossible to work together; they will never find a way to do it except as individuals laying their wills down before the Creator every day (“may thy will be done on Earth as in Heaven”).
Here is a synopsis of the main races (and the three facial types associated with them):
https://www.academia.edu/36536128/The_Spirit_of_War
Here is a synopsis of Mankind in action displaying all its willful Greed, Pride, and Vanity:
https://www.academia.edu/37832738/Innocent_III_On_the_Human_Condition
Note that to view the articles, simply SCROLL DOWN; no sign-in is necessary. Thanks.
The chief question about visual art is how it is made–historically, it is the result of masterful brush and chisel work–hand-eye coordination of the most disciplined kind. The ancient Greeks were the first to train themselves to its perfection–it took them three centuries to get it right.
See G. Richter, ‘Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks,’ 4th ed., 1970, illustrated with about 800 plates and focused chapters on relief sculpture, drapery, portraiture, bronze work, etc., and their development over centuries. Compared to this photography is simple-minded and trivial.
The pathetic thing is that the best sculptures in ancient Greece were in bronze and not marble–most of the bronze was melted down for cannons later! Smart, eh?
Hey, Carney & Lurker
You can still buy a NEW slide rule by Concicse Mfg. (they now mostly make handbags and suitcases etc.) They’re available thru AMZN or direct from Jp.
Sorry, it’s a racist slide rule. Made of white PVC… And really only good to about 2.5 decimal places… Since we’re on about the whole matter of “precision”, fine optics and servo control…
… recall that the tide machine had to use like 15 or 25 integrators with about 50 constants to predict tides… in 1865.
TPTB are seemingly trying to hunt down and destroy every last vestige of the coal industry both extraction and burning so this is going to present challenges for operators of steam locos. But, we’re not there yet – there are hundreds of operating locos and preserved railways.
In an ideal world that could translate into a useful lobby against the Climate Change hoax. Instead, needless to say, they profess fealty to the ruling narrative and try and work around the hurdles put in their way.
Hadn’t known that arsehole’s middle name is ‘Israel’ before, so thank you.
As I have said before, we unfortunately have two Israeli ambassadors.
True of many other places,
Shinto is really three different things, and one of those three is an invention of the late nineteenth cenury. It has no depth.
The original is gods of place, a river, a special rock, etc.
It also encompasses sites associated with old grave or tomb sites associated with the Imperial family, pre-shogunates.
Post-Meiji, in many parts of Japan, Buddhist sites were destroyed.
Shinto marriage ceremony (looks nice) was invented by a politician, Ito Hirobumi. Most brides prefer a faux Christian ceremony, now, except the few who are Christian, who of course prefer a Christian ceremony.
Same with much of the ritual in sumo. It is a recent confection.
Emperor-worship is from the same time.
Reverence for ancestors is, in general, more Buddhist than Shinto.
This may not be aligned with western mis-conceptions, but is accurate.
Thanks, that is exactly what I meant, why don’t Extinction Rebellion and ‘Just Stop Oil’ morons throw themselves on the tracks immediately before the trains pass?
It would remove a few posh morons from the gene pool.
Disagree to a point. Camera Obscura and lenses were used by artists as tool way way back. Smart phones today have completely democratized image production. There are just better and worse image makers using the tools.
It is superficial to understand fine art–which seeks to reveal the THING ITSELF–as mere “image making.” Mechanical contrivances (apart from brush and chisel) pry the artisan away from discovery of the satisfying decorative and sensuous representation of divine things that has always been the goal of aesthetic insight.
The very quest for achievement in fine art led the Greeks to a perfection in “relief” sculpture that has few or no comparable masters in the modern world. Music, too, has been “polluted” by mechanical contrivances (electronic amplification) in a similarly self-destructive manner.
Comparable ill-discipline is seen in modern architecture, in “free verse” poetry,in art for art’s sake, in art for the artist’s sake, in art for hire, art for self-gratification, and so on, into the vapid dry sands of modernity and satanic post-modern aesthetic depravity. There is no retreat and no going back. The Judgement of Mankind and its few achievements is immanent.
This is called the labor theory of value, a cornerstone of Marxism.
IMO, the value of all art is in its relation to the mass of a particular piece of art in kilograms.
You should look up “Marginalism.”
What will happen if Pentax bring out a new film SLR?
Don’t forget that the custom in ancient Greece and Rome was to paint the sculptures, so the Renaissance practise of not doing so, in imitation of the paint-lost remnants, doesn’t quite match how the real sculptures looked in ancient times.
However, that has its own good effect.
There was a poll over at Pentax Forums this summer:
“Would a revived Kodachrome bring you back to film?”
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/16-pentax-news-rumors/470998-would-revived-kodachrome-bring-you-back-film-best-pentax-forums-july-17-poll.html#ixzz8pcN8ESOc
Of 143 participants in the poll, 73 (49%) said they already shoot film, while 55 (37%) said they were “done with film.” Of course, Pentax Forums is a website for enthusiasts, hobbyists, pros and semi-pros already using Pentax cameras, and not frequented by the public at large, so the results of this poll are highly biased in that regard and not any reflection of general sentiments about film.
A number of pretty good older Pentax SLRs can be found for sale online, such as ME, MX, MV, MG, K1000, P30T, and others, including even the venerable Spotmatic, although prices for these and other film cameras have been increasing, which mayb be tied to increased interest in film, or it simply may be due to inflation.
The bad thing about SLRs and DSLRs is even the small ones are fairly clunky even with a pancake lens, when compared with a rangefinder, especially a rangefinder like the Olympus Stylus I mentioned above that slipped easily into a pocket.
Of course, with the new wave of film enthusiasts, the idea is certainly not to keep the camera tucked away out of sight in a pocket. No siree. You want to flaunt that trick little film camera so everyone can see just how cool and retro-grade you really are with a blast from the past all decked out in modern guise for techno-superiority signaling to the Retro-Cognoscenti.
Well, with Pentax, I suppose anything is possible, especially if it is somewhat quirky and comes in a variety of colors. I mean, do you want a chartreuse full-frame Pentax SLR, or not?
Wait and see, I guess.
The moneybags make the decisions, in this case to lower wages. Academia including sociology, orientalism, etc. follows suit. Western claims to understand others is steeped in delusion. What is taught must facilitate imperialism.
Japan is not any more alien than other cultures. Apparently, Japanese insistence on being treated as equals left a lasting impression. That is what Mao meant about power coming from the barrel of a gun.
It’s like the moaning over digital sound, or praise of high cuisine, or the invasion of the next great travel destination. When you have more money and time than you know what to do with..
Tradition and frugality endanger capitalism. Products must fail, or change even when popular. A UK minister lost his job because he was getting too serious about repairs and less trash.
No scientist or leader is interested in the effect on climate (if any) of the US military and US sales/donations of its armaments.
The good artist reveals mystical truths. Image making is a good enough term.
Japan resisted the white man until the Americans dropped two atomics on them.
Statuary in the ancient world may have looked quite gaudy because of those paint jobs.
Kodachrome would be amazing.. Iv never used it.
Colour talks too much. (Fred Picker)
If you want to mix your media and think of photography as language, color has a vocabulary of millions of “words” while B&W is limited to those 256 shades of gray. In the modern vernacular, you might think of B&W as
TwitterX for the eyeballs.The fussy aficionados of photography’s antique past cling to an outmoded technology as if it has some intrinsic value rather than being merely a reflection of the limited technology of the time, which limited photography to 256 shades of gray. Unfortunately, the human eye can detect only 64 shades of gray, but fortunately, we can see millions of colors.
No wonder then that most of the MSM of the world dumped B&W as soon as it could. Movies. Magazines. TV.
So it makes no sense, but hey! We’re humans, after all. Nothing necessarily has to make much sense.
I do enjoy authentic B&W photography, but I also enjoy seeing those old photos colorized, and pooh on the purists who don’t like it.
The long and short of it is I hate B&W. It’s a pale reflection of our brilliant full-color world. I suppose B&W must appeal to the same kind of people who are content with reading shadows on the cave wall, or something.
Of course, there are people into cosplay who dress up in Civil War uniforms and reenact old battles from the conflict, as if there was something memorable about all those poor lads who had their lives snuffed out in the conflict.
But again, we’re humans and war is what we do, in living and dying color, as if we needed any reminders these days.
So get out there and take some pictures of flowers and sunsets and the little birdies, or even dogs and cars and busses. Don’t forget your boyfriend or girlfriend.
But please, do it in color.
I don’t know, just more life-like.
I think this (the silver nitrate comment) may have been meant as snark!
“Want your photography to have intrinsic value and meaning? Start shooting on film.”
I often miss darkroom work. While I appreciated my Cannon AE-1, I am not sure anything compares to the Leica or the Hasselblad or even the Leica in the days of film.
Digital is fine for its fluidity and digital is dangerous because of the same.
Miss those days of black bags, reel winding, film cans and chemicals — dark rooms and ooopsie daisies . . . was i just in fixer or developer, darn it . . . timer right?
appreciated this article, if for nothing else, the nostalgia.
“But please, do it in color.”
Traitor, coward, bewitcher, scoundral, charlatan . . . purveyor of false magic and all things wrong with the world . . .
color . . . tragedy of tragedy . . . . sadness upon sadness . . . color . . . . wails of a thousand maidens innocence stolen in the deceptive, sinister twirls and allures of color, conned by promises galor truth betrayed . . . .
color “makes harlots of us all”
(sigh) kidding sort of . . .