Has digital photography era actually degraded the photography?

[SgtPepper]

I see people with digital cameras clicking hundreds of photos out of which none of them are worth preserving.
I have answered questions where people hold a digital camera and expect it to do everything on its own.
My neighbours use digital camera and their images are now lying in the card, hard disc, few on internet servers and a lot of them have been lost too.

My impression of the general population is that when the digital cameras were not in existance, people valued every frame and worked hard to create something. Those who had point and shoots, tried to learn and get the best out of it. A single roll of film gave prints worth keeping for long time.

Now I see people buying the costliest camera they can hoping to create photographs like Ansel Adams without even reading the instruction manual and understanding how to switch off the camera.

Do you also feel that digital has actually degraded the quality of photography ?

 

[fhotoace]

You really have nailed it.

Photographers like Ansel Adams would sit for hours waiting to take just one shot. The moment was planned for in advance and the timing was perfect as the resulting images show.

Using a digital camera in the "machine gun" mode does in a way degrade the term, "photography" ... they are in many ways not even "snap shots".

We shall see in the next ten years or so if this phenomenon damages the expectations of those who use professional photographers or not.

Unskilled amateurs have been using photo programs to "save" their mistakes so assume that knowing how to use Photoshop is part of being a photographer. The darkroom, while it was a training tool while photographers went to school, it was not part of the pros job to do anything but create the image in the camera. The lab work and all the post production was done by other professionals.