Ennui Vagaries

Photo by: Ailbhe Flynn via Unsplash

I was into photography many years ago (like over 40 years ago), and in all this time there have been several significant changes. The single biggest is the change from analog film based photography to digital photography. This one change has completely changed aspects of photography that cannot be understated.

For example, photographers today will never know the joys and horrors of working in a darkroom. Dealing with all the chemicals for developing film and prints. Having to heat up or cool down the developer, and having to be cautious with the timing involved in developing film or prints.

But, while switching to digital tools for “developing” and editing photographs will take some getting used to, that's not the part I want to focus on here. There is something more fundamental in the process of actually taking photographs that has changed. It's something I feel is overlooked if you have experience using film.

This is the ISO setting on the camera. It's easy to understand what this is in digital photography: you are defining / setting the light sensitivity of the sensor in the camera. It's a great feature that leaves the photographer with a lot of flexibility.

But, this quite different from old school film-based photography. Back in those days light sensitivity was defined by physical properties of the film being used. Typically, your camera was locked to the ISO of the film that you were shooting on. Yes, you could change the ISO setting, but then you were choosing to deliberately overexpose or underexpose your film.

There were exceptions in which this was desirable. But, you also had to remember that if you overexposed or underexposed the film you would likely need to adjust your development process to account for it.

Being able to adjust the ISO of the sensor has knock-on effects, since ISO sensitivity is inextricably linked to the range of shutter speeds and aperture settings the photography can select. And this can have other effects, like changing the depth of field.

Digital photography changes the rules in this way. You aren't locked into the physical properties of film anymore. You are, in fact, far more likely to change your ISO based on lighting conditions now than you were in the past. And this takes getting used to, and it changes the way you think about taking a photograph in fundamental ways.

This can make it more interesting in terms of being able to account for other things like aperture, shutter speed, and depth of field. Unlocking the ISO setting has fundamentally changed the way photographers think about the relationship between light and their camera.

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Categories: #Features #Tags: #photography, #technology, #education, #learning

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