An analogy with analog

Trying out a smartphone app suggests similarities.

Our photographer was recently looking into smartphone apps that work with the device’s camera.  For reasons we may go into later, he is considering using it more seriously, and doing more advanced things.  To complicate matters, he has access to both an iPhone and an Android, and was exploring each possibility.

Each phone of course has a native app to operate the camera.  However, a photography blog that he respects had recommended a certain third-party app for the iPhone.  It allows certain operations, like manually controlling settings or saving the image in raw form, that most people wouldn’t want or need but are useful for photographers.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be available for the Android.  He has been sorting through websites that review photography apps to find what’s out there.  Most of them concentrate on manipulating the image after capture, applying what is now generically known as a filter.  It came to him that using different apps is sort of like using different film types in his analog cameras.  Any of them can capture a scene adequately, but each has a different look.  The differences are sometimes subtle, and often require special handling in the darkroom to bring them out; but some are obvious.

Of course the analogy isn’t exact.  For one, a roll of film comes with a slip of paper with all the information you needed printed on it; to get all the information on using a smartphone app, he’s contemplating what seems like hours of YouTube videos.  And while he could think of good situations for almost any film he knew of, most of the “filters” do nothing he wants.

But the analogy can be useful.  A professional film photographer would generally have a favorite emulsion and processing technique, suited to his or her style and objectives; anyone seriously using a smartphone camera (there are more of those than you might think) would certainly stick to a particular set of software and workflow.  Of course the same holds for a photographer using a dedicated digital camera.

And there is a truism that holds both for film and digital: the original capture is the important part.  A properly exposed and processed negative is very flexible, and can easily lead to the desired print.  Grave defects are exceedingly hard to work with.  The amazing things that can be done with digital files in post-processing cannot rescue a failed original.

So our photographer is concentrating on apps that allow the most flexibility in the taking of digital pictures.  Those will be worth learning, and maybe he’ll have a good analog for his favorite film.