Most people will know Andy Summers as the guitarist of The Police, but he has also been an active photographer for many years. The following quote is from an interview in B&W magazine:
There is always a spirit of experimentation with photography. You never settle on one particular way of working, I don’t think.
On digital:
I’m not happy with digital. I think it has been forced upon us. I shot this tour digitally with Canon gear but I was not happy with it at all. I felt like I wasn’t connected to my shots any more. Digital is so disposable and people seem to loose sight of composition and basic camera craft. They become result orientated and not into the moment. Digital is information. Film is nature. It’s the alchemy between light and silver that turns me on. That magic is not there for me with a microchip.
The film vs. digital comments are so distracting by now and you tend to dismiss anything or anyone stating them and you get into the CD vs. vinyl thing. Also I am always uncomfortable when people over 50 years old make such statements, but I suppose those are experienced folks and the people we should ask for experience, not the 20 year olds.Nonetheless I think he makes some interesting points that resonated with me, especially the first statement and the part about becoming result-orientated. I actually think musicians have a lot of credibility because there are certain commonalities between the media that lets you draw parallels. Also in music they have had digital recording for a long time and get nobody has given up electric guitars for synthesizers (well, they tried in the 80s).
You know, there are the two halves of digital: printing and shooting. And the bridge between. Face it, processing and scanning is a doggoned chore but by gum, my AE-1 is still a more facile camera than the 5D, it weighs a tiny fraction & costs about $60 these days.
Film cameras – especially older ones – remain the gold standard for presenting a minimal amount of crap between the eye and the scene. No power-on delays, no 3-pound standard zooms, decent viewfinders, and you don’t have to sink $8K just to get a minimal decent detup.
For all the rest digi kicks ass though.
I am printing digitally for seven years now and I am very happy with it. I do far better work now that I ever did in darkroom. I am tempted now to use digital also for creating of images. As I never did that I can only speculate. I certainly will keep all my film equipment and I may come back. But to know for sure I need to try. There is always way back, nobody force me to stay if I do not like it.