What do you know about digital? by Michael Leyba

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I love digital. I love analog. Ever thought of the difference. Analog is approximate. Take a watch. An analog watch has a minute and hour hand. Perhaps even a second hand. When you tell the time you are approximating the time. If you tell someone I will meet you at 1:43pm it may be 1:43 pm or it could be 1:42 or 1:44 if you don’t have a second hand or you don’t have minute markings on the watch. With a digital watch you will know exactly what time it is. If your watch is synchronized with Ft Collins Atomic Clock then you know your watch is accurate to a few seconds. Why is that important?

It is important if you want to replicate something. If you had a chemistry darkroom and you wanted your water temperature to be 79 degrees fahrenheit and you have a hot and cold water valve and you have an analog thermometer you are going to go nuts getting the temperature just right; however if you have a digital temperature controlled system you put the system at 79 degrees and it adjusts everything once a minute to keep it 79 degrees.

In the darkroom when we used to enlarge and print photographs you had a timer, but it might not have been that accurate. You might have your temperatures off some. You might have color dials for Yellow, Magenta, and Cyan colors dialed in using analog dials. You might have an aperture on the lens that did not have clicks for different apertures, but had approximates instead. What would have been worse is the old fashioned camera with the lens cap as the shutter speed. They left it open for about one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, etc. It would be very hard to replicate a scene especially without a light meter and changing lighting conditions. Argh!

With that advent of digital it has made our lives easier. Or has it. There are still many variables in photography. What do you like about analog and digital?

My wife gave me a great present a few years ago. It is an analog watch with digital insides. It has an atomic clock receiver and keeps super accurate time, but doesn’t look nerdy like all my other watches of past. It is nerdy, but doesn’t look nerdy. Eat your heart out Bill Gates.

Thanks for listening,

Michael

Michael Leyba
Portraits by Michael
http://www.michaelleyba.com

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