21st april 2003

Whenever I tell people that I shoot digitally they invariably look at the picture in their hands and pull a perplexed expression. How could this come from a digital camera they wonder, aren't those the £150 point-and-click things I saw in Dixons yesterday? So, for your education and entertainment I thought I'd write a bit about the digital world and how I see it. Prior warning - some of it may be a bit technical, and other bits may contain profuse swearing - stop now if either will offend, but it's your loss...

shooting digitally - a brief appraisal of digital camera hardware

Digital cameras still have a little way to go before they fully replace traditional film cameras, but there seems to be a widely help perception that they're still way down at the bottom of the food chain. This view is held by those who know little about technology beyond what they see in the high street electronics shop, but also by many traditional photographers who make blasé comments about never going digital because it's crap.

From a technical standpoint there are really two basic aspects that govern the performance of a digital camera. Firstly the CCD (or equivalent) that replaces conventional film and actually captures an image. Secondly, the components of the device operated by the user such as lenses and shooting controls. In terms of lenses many cheaper cameras are saddled with fixed, non-zoom lenses, and therefore appear very basic. However, this is primarily for reasons of cost, and more expensive amateur and professional models feature either SLR style fixed lenses, or fully interchangeable lens systems like a traditional SLR (the Nikon D1, for instance, is effectively the same as a digital or film model, the only difference being whether the body of the camera contains film or electronics - lenses are the same for both). Technically there is no difficulty in using existing lenses with digital cameras, except for the trivial focal length change required due to the difference in area of a CCD compared with film. Similarly control aspects of the camera such as aperture and shutter speed are not implemented in cheaper models, but are present in more expensive cameras.

Returning to the first point - the CCD. This component is still evolving, and I shall discuss it in more detail later; suffice to say that it's not quite up to film quality yet, but good enough for most uses except very large format pictures. The only other technological aspect of note is the operating system, processor and memory of the camera which govern how fast it operates - this does not generally affect the quality of the pictures, but again more expensive models will handle more like their mechanical counterparts.

So, technically - apart from the CCD - there is little to differentiate a good digital camera from a conventional model in terms of basic operation. All the features we're used to in a mechanical SLR can be implemented in an electronic camera, albeit sometimes at a much higher cost (this cost will of course drop over time). Therefore, for the traditional photographer, and lovers of fine photography, there is essentially no difference in creativity and style between traditional and digital - something which does not seem to be widely acknowledged.

There are also many benefits to going digital that are not acknowledged by digital-haters. These include the ability to change the ISO of the camera without changing film, similarly the knowledge that you can shoot in colour or black and white (or convert to black and white using the computer at a later date) without changing film. There is also the more obvious benefit of seeing your pictures immediately, enabling a re-shoot if required. Cost is another aspect, because although digital equipment is expensive to purchase the running costs are minimal - no film costs, and the ability to choose which pictures you want to develop (or, rather, print). If your pictures are intended to be used digitally anyway, on CD, web etc, then the running cost of your camera is nothing except the electricity required to recharge the batteries. Over the time I've had my digital SLR these benefits have all proved immense. Using film I would never be able to fund the hundreds of pictures I take, nor play around with camera settings until I achieve exactly what I want from a particular location... no going home disappointed!

a scientist's view of the digital world - continuity is just an illusion

The above hopefully goes someway to redressing the view many people have of digital cameras - a view which sits better with models from 5 years ago. But what I'm really interested in is more fundamental, namely an overall comparison of analogue and digital technologies and what the future may hold. As a scientist as well as a photographer I probably consider this in a slightly different way to most. Specifically I regard the divide between analogue and digital to be an artificial separation, nothing more than a convention derived from convenience.

The crux of the matter is quantum theory. Before I launch into this a disclaimer: I don't have the space or inclination (or probably the comprehensive knowledge) to provide more than a very basic overview of the relevant bits of quantum theory, so those of you who know what I'm discussing please don't berate me for over simplifications or slack technical terms - we're talking ideas here, not specifics; conversely, those who don't know but want to know more I heartily encourage you to go forth on the web, or to a library, and learn!

The main conclusion of quantum theory is that everything is built from basic building blocks which cannot be sub-divided. This is generally termed "quantization". For (everyday) matter there are various quarks (which group to form protons and neutrons) and electrons. These particles together form the atoms of the elements that make up our world (I won't go into the many other elementary particles that exist - not nearly enough time!). Similarly energy is quantised into discrete chunks. Yes, the word discrete. And what is digital data? Discrete. Exactly the same as the world we see, and therefore the same as any analogue system. QED.

a question of scale

It's obviously not quite as simple as that, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this. There is the question of scale, for that is all that separates analogue and digital versions of our gadgets. By working with mechanics and a certain finesse analogue systems use what we perceive as a continuous medium for recording and playback. We like to think of film as an object that will record the light it is exposed to and no more. In reality it is molecules of silver iodide in the film that record the light due to the interaction of photons (quanta - or discrete particles - of light) with the molecules. This highlights the discrete nature of film.

In a digital camera CCD incoming photons interact with microscopic electronic detectors, the electronic impulse from the interaction is recorded. The final image is formed by millions of these interactions. So, the only thing preventing a digital camera being the same (in picture quality) as a film camera is the number of detectors making up the CCD. Once this is comparable to the number of active molecules in a standard piece of film there will be no difference in image quality between the media.

So the reason we're so aware of the discrete nature of digital pictures is that the number of individual elements in a photo is not yet comparable to the number in a traditional photo. We cannot yet put enough detectors into a CCD such that it is directly comparable to a piece of film. However, even when the CCD is developed to the point where it is comparable to film I still think there will be a tendency for people to view the digital world as different, when all it is is more convenient; a re-casting of the world from a chemical to electronic basis not a change of the world. A paradigm shift in the way we interact with our surroundings rather than a change in those surroundings.

why bother?

Of course there is a great benefit to digital technologies, otherwise we wouldn't be championing their rapid development. Even though the CCD is not quite up to film quality many still use digital equipment because of the electronic nature of the devices. No longer do we need to use film, where each segment can only be used once; no longer do we need to spend hours developing; no longer do we need to let nature hoodwink us into believing that the world is continuous. Now we can reuse everything bar the paper and ink our final result is rendered in. We can store our archives on hard disks, CDs, DVDs, the internet; all preferable to bulky filing cabinets filling our houses. We can make these archives searchable, navigable by name, date, place, keywords, theme. There are few limits.

These benefits arise from a better understanding of image formation. Electronics allows us to harness the mechanisms of a traditional camera and augment it with these benefits. So digital technology is not physically altering the photographic process, merely changing the media we use to store the data.

photography meets painting

Many purists contend that digital technologies which enable the editing of pictures down to pixel level are not natural, not to be trusted. I contend it is the most natural of things to be able to edit a picture in this manner, in the same way that chemists try to control reactions on a molecular basis, physicists try to understand the creation of individual particles... why should image creation not be concerned with the control of every aspect of a picture? In some respects this ability is no different from the ideas that drove the pointillist movement in painting. They too were aware of the individual components forming the image we see. All we are trying to do is work with images on a more fundamental level than that previously possible. It is true that it has taken new technology to enable this, but it is not the fault of the technology that the world is the way it is. Thus there is no reason to hate the technology, to lambaste all things 'digital'. To do so is to hate the natural world, or at the very least our ability to shape it.

The only thing that may be a concern with digital is the credence it may provide to those who want to subvert the truth. Given enough time and skill, pixel-by-pixel digital editing may mean that documentary photography will need some form of regulation; governments, police, historians - all will need some means to verify if an image is true or a perfect fake. For me this is the only possible aspect of improved image control that could be bad, but forgeries of this quality are still some way in the future and not yet a concern. Naturally this aspect of digital imaging is also not the fault of the technology we have created, but the fault of human nature and our desire to use technology in this way. However, looking at digital imaging from a purely artistic point of view the only limitations are skill and imagination.

I find the artistic view very interesting. Photography has always been separated from other disciplines, such as painting and sculpture, and is often viewed with suspicion by their devotees. The underlying feeling seems to be that anyone can be a photographer - they just need to pick up a camera - compared with the skill and patience it takes to paint for example. What this ignores is that good photography involves just as much vision as other arts, there is still as much skill in composition, tone, mood... As with other art forms the inspiration may be natural - a photograph of a landscape - or a work of imagination that leads to the creation of sets, the use of certain styles and techniques; the fact that the result is then rendered by pushing a button rather than picking up a brush is therefore a matter of choice rather than artistic integrity. The medium is not the message. Digital technologies can enhance photographic creativity further by bringing together these traditional strands, creating digital artworks from photographs can involve diverse techniques such as drawing, painting and montage. This is something which is often true of 'mixed-media' art, but is all too often ignored when referring to digital. In this way digital imaging can be a unifying force; enabling collaboration between many traditional disciplines and creating new forms on the way, a digital artist may be fluent in painting, photography and computer programming for example.

the bit with the swearing in

Despite the above comments on the skill of photography there is a great talent danger that has arisen with the widespread availability of digital technology. Will this availability and the wizzo-one-touch operation of mass-market digital technology flood us with endless, useless, pointless digital art? Will everyone and their brother succumb to the 'apply one special affect in photoshop and call it art' mentality? From "TV Go Home" by Charlie Brooker (ISBN: 1-84115-675-2; www.tvgohome.com):

"Nathan Barley perches on a bench in Battersea Park fiddling with the special effects settings on an achingly futuristic Sony digital camera, taking motion-blurred monochrome snaps of his old school friend Crispin, who needs a portrait for the opening page of a website showcasing his own downloadable garage MP3s, and is currently standing in front of the Peace Pagoda, sucking his cheeks in and staring at a tree in the distance.
Do you think you're some kind of fucking Renaissance man just because you've got a few ostensibly creative applications and a shitload of money to spend on high-tech gadgetry? Do you have any idea of how many other fuckheads all over the world are, right this very minute, using precisely the same technology to produce precisely the same pedestrian results as you? Why don't you just take all you software, all your gadgets, all your pointless digital fuckery-foo and hurl the lot right into the fucking sea? You're using it to churn out shit. Get a fucking grip. You're a cunt; you always have been a cunt, and you always WILL be a cunt - a useless, artless, soulless, worthless, hateful, sickening, handful-of-your-own-shit-fucking cunt-chewing cunt-eyed cunt. And your lazy, delusional stabs at creativity aren't fooling anyone, so stop trying. Prick."

Wise words for us all I think.

some kind of conclusion

Well that was all a bit rambling, but I hope some ideas have become clear. My main point is that digital versus traditional is a nonsense argument. The electronics we use in digital technologies are still evolving, but the fundamental principles are sound. You may still prefer traditional photography, but hopefully by considering these base ideas you can appreciate digital for what it is and what it will be - not just what it once was and what you think it is.

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