Cleaning Digital Equipment

For those film gone digital users, I believe my story will get a resounding "Amen." The ever static charge digital sensor gets my goose. I am forever cleaning the mirror form dust, dog hair, even a fleck from the sensor cleaning brush itself. I do not ever remember cleaning my film cameras as often as I must with my digital equipment. My internal debate begins between leaving the digital for my commercial work and returning to the glory days of film. Sometimes I want to return to my Holga days; then, the inevitable question arises, " where do I go to process my film?"

Here I sit on a fence looking back at the days of innocence, slow moving, traditional photography. My Mamyia is lonely in a special plastic archival bag on a shelf with all the external hard drives. If a windfall of significant sum fell upon my bank account, I would be looking a medium format digital equipment. Until then, I am hunting for a dust free area to clean my sensor free of dog hair, couch fuzz, and sand tracked home from the beach. 

Digital vs Film

The debate continues between the die hard traditional (film users) and the technically savvy digital photographers. Today, as I rummaged around for a 4GB Compact flash card, a vision of my negative film storage boxes flashed through my mind. Each plastic sleeve was numbered, titled, and dated with a Sharpy. I can remember groaning over static, spilled chemistry, or exposed paper; at least, my sleeves of negatives with their contact sheets could be seen, felt, and even smelled. For a few hours I felt down right melancholy. Then, the light appeared and viola there sat the missing CF card waiting to be downloaded and work-flowed. The instant relief jet set me forward into 2008. I remembered that I was privileged to learn on film and have an entirely different understanding of photography as an art as opposed to a digital only student. Photography has history just as any other art medium, business, or science. As students, we must soak ourselves in the heritage of our passions and remain steadfast in our quest for understanding both the photography as an art form and the photographer.