Levi Wedel, a Canadian photographer, runs an interesting post on digital and film photography on his Images Seen blog. I turned to it after seeing a second hand Hasselbald HD4D 40Film and digital technologies medium format digital camera system with a comprehensive set of lenses for $25,000.

There lies the future of photography I thought, when I held it in my hand, before putting it back. Wedel argues that film and digital technologies are not interchangeable terms when discussing photography even though both can produce an image. He says that Every medium is distinguished by a unique set of properties which in turn affects the meaning of work produced within that medium. Digital cameras are built to mimic the function and ergonomics of film camera.

Digital cameras simulate the results of photography but generate image information only and not physical photographic information. Digital sensors measure light and are not affected or altered in any way by light. The mimicry of film technologies by digital cameras is detrimental both to the progression of digital technologies and to the practice of photography in which film and other photographic technologies are at risk of becoming displaced and lost in favour of a technology incapable of performing the same function, a technology ultimately destined for other largely unexplored functions. Such unexplored functions are very interesting and it should in no way be taken as a negative that digital cameras are not a photography but rather something new.