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Hello from Austin, Texas (but grandmother from Sussex so I squeak in under the wire,,,)
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2016
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You know it's true David. Metric is miles easier than imperial!
I use metric all the time. Generally much easier, especially if calculation is involved.
I live in a Victorian house, so DIY can sometimes involve a bit of juggling. Not a huge problem.
Those of us with ten fingers should be thankful. There must be people who have eight or sixteen, which makes them resist metrication.
I live in a Victorian house, so DIY can sometimes involve a bit of juggling. Not a huge problem.
Those of us with ten fingers should be thankful. There must be people who have eight or sixteen, which makes them resist metrication.
- Joined
- Dec 19, 2017
- Messages
- 3,036
I was talking to someone in the US via Whats App last week who said his children are not taught the Metric system at school. He's had to explain it to them, it's all he uses in his darkroom.
For nearly 20 years I had to be able to quickly convert Troy Ounce precious metal Spot market prices into Grams and Kilos, twice a day, I can still remember the conversion 31.1035 today, another 20 years later
Ian
For nearly 20 years I had to be able to quickly convert Troy Ounce precious metal Spot market prices into Grams and Kilos, twice a day, I can still remember the conversion 31.1035 today, another 20 years later
Ian
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2020
- Messages
- 1,240
Some of our children know about "kilos" for all the wrong reasons.I was talking to someone in the US via Whats App last week who said his children are not taught the Metric system at school. He's had to explain it to them, it's all he uses in his darkroom.
For nearly 20 years I had to be able to quickly convert Troy Ounce precious metal Spot market prices into Grams and Kilos, twice a day, I can still remember the conversion 31.1035 today, another 20 years later
Ian
I grew up using fractional measure for building things and metric for doing scientific and technical work. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to expect educators to instill both. Again, US experience here, but it seems that many of even the maths teachers cannot switch between these gears well, at least at the lower grades where this would ordinarily been taught.
While I am grumbling, I vote for bringing back slide rules as a teaching tool. They helped students develop a sense for magnitudes and how math is "shaped". Going to calculators perhaps made the answers more often correct, but all too often are producing innumerate button pushers ...
Before getting a sliderule, it was log tables. Making corrected tables was one reason for Babbage’s Difference Engine, I believe.
It seems to me that there’s a considerable benefit in learning how to do things in the basic way. When we transfer to more advanced tools, we know what’s going on.
Many of us on this forum must have started in the darkroom and this makes many operations in Photoshop (and other software) much more understandable. We know what unsharp masking is and why it acts to increase apparent sharpness; we understand the terms dodge and burn, but not why Affinity Photo’s icon is a little bonfire.
Another benefit seems to be a commendable restraint in using digital tools. Would anyone who has printed in a darkroom would commit those HDR abominations?
It seems to me that there’s a considerable benefit in learning how to do things in the basic way. When we transfer to more advanced tools, we know what’s going on.
Many of us on this forum must have started in the darkroom and this makes many operations in Photoshop (and other software) much more understandable. We know what unsharp masking is and why it acts to increase apparent sharpness; we understand the terms dodge and burn, but not why Affinity Photo’s icon is a little bonfire.
Another benefit seems to be a commendable restraint in using digital tools. Would anyone who has printed in a darkroom would commit those HDR abominations?
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- Aug 29, 2020
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Could not agree more. Learning advanced tooling without understanding the basics, results in blind acceptance of what the tools says, even when it's nonsense. My favorite example of this is people doing calculations out to 8 decimal places when the input data is only precise to 2 decimals. I've given up trying to explain why that's nonsense to people who so do.
I similarly concur on the horrific abuse of HDR as yet another example. When people ask me about why I still shoot film, I explain the idea of Subject Brightness Range and how film does this differently and better than digital in most cases. The digerati quickly point to HDR compositing and thus why this really isn't a thing. I usually avoid "sharing" my view that this results in images barely better than cartoons.
Interestingly, in my various travels through the world of low agitation development, I managed to discover ways to make film images cartoonish as well (for rather different reasons).
Yes there was some very enthusiastic use of calculators, that led to strange results.
I’m not sure you have quite hit the nail on the head with digital cameras. it’s not compulsory to push everything to the limits and I’m sure there many digital photographers using restraint and taste.
One area where the digital camera excels is macro photography. To see an entire insect or flower rendered perfectly sharp is astonishing. The film photographer is always wrestling with depth of field.
I’m not sure you have quite hit the nail on the head with digital cameras. it’s not compulsory to push everything to the limits and I’m sure there many digital photographers using restraint and taste.
One area where the digital camera excels is macro photography. To see an entire insect or flower rendered perfectly sharp is astonishing. The film photographer is always wrestling with depth of field.
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2020
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- 152
Same thing with clocks that have hands on them. Is easier to estimate time frames for how long things take because you can see lengths of time by the distance of where the hands are. Not possible with digital clocks.
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2020
- Messages
- 152
Howdy pardner. New Jersey here. This is a nice site, with less angst than other forums. British ya know.
I started large format during covid out of boredom. It allowed me to escape into the field on my own and not infect anyone or be infected. I bought a Chamonix 45H-1. Very challenging. Have 75, 90, 150, and 300mm lenses.
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2022
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- 244
I was ‘converted’ to decimal at primary school, which means I tend to estimate in imperial and measure in metric. Good thing too, given that most of my cameras focus in feet.
Thank you for the ‘HDR’ reference. I’ve been trying to figure out what makes some of the photos I see online look so weird - now I know (I think . . .). Bizarre looking images reminiscent of illustrations in cheap mid C20 children’s’ books.
Thank you for the ‘HDR’ reference. I’ve been trying to figure out what makes some of the photos I see online look so weird - now I know (I think . . .). Bizarre looking images reminiscent of illustrations in cheap mid C20 children’s’ books.
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2016
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- 667
The reference to HDR reminds me of a friend who is heavily into digital photography and used to subscribe to a magazine called "How to Ruin your Photographs - monthly" well, it wasn't called that exactly, but that was its effect. Through a series of steps in a tutorial you could start off with a really nice photograph, and end up with something that looked awful. He only did it to please the camera club judge, apparently... He gave up on the magazine eventually, but still spends hours messing his photographs up. He has more Adobe plug-ins than Ian Grant has cameras. Well.....maybe not quite that many. But he is happy, and at least he isn't sitting around watching day-time TV....
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- Aug 29, 2020
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I think @David M hit the nail when he noted that people who start with film/silver tend to show restraint when working in digital. What little digital I do gets very little modification in post processing most of the time exactly because I want to produce beautiful things not garish caricatures of reality.
This may, however, also be generational. In my youth, there were blessedly few stimuli to distract me from growing up. The advent of the internet, and more particularly smart phones, has created several generations of people who experienced nothing but stimuli from very early on. I suspect this leads to needing more- and more powerful signals to cut through the noise as one ages. I've seen some absolutely beautiful work done digitally by my younger fellow travelers, only to see it utterly bollixed up with over-saturated HDR in post...
I wonder if this is part of a cycle. The notion of what we expect a photograph to look like has changed over the years. From WHFT the expectation was that a photograph mirrored reality (“…mirror with a memory.”) Along came the gum bichromists and now it had to mirror the photographer’s soul. They were, in their turn, supplanted by f64. Every print was expected to demonstrate to deep, deep blacks and shrill highlights, at least by the more fanatical Zoners.
And just when the Zoners had it all wrapped up, along comes colour.
HDR is probably just another rung on the ladder. It will pass. Who knows what will replace it?
And just when the Zoners had it all wrapped up, along comes colour.
HDR is probably just another rung on the ladder. It will pass. Who knows what will replace it?
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- Aug 29, 2020
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I am fairly sure what will replace it are AIs rendering the image that they think you wanted not what you actually captured. Apple is well on the way there with their onboard and cloud assisted image enhancement and the endgame is probably image product with only enough human input to define intent.
Fortunately, AIs are scared of the dark so my darkroom should remain safe...
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- Aug 29, 2020
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Actually, it's worse than that. I am a technologist by profession and know a bit about this evolution of AI. There is great promise for good things with this stuff but it has a tremendous downside. Properly speaking there is no "intelligence" in AI. It's really little more than machines being taught to look at vast sets of rules and data relationships which then can morph over time. And there's there rub. He or she who creates the initial model is implicitly steering the outcomes. You no longer can just sift through the seed data, you have to have the assurance that the model is fair. This opens the door to all manner of mischief.
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- Aug 29, 2020
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