Car alarms, screeching subway cars, loud bars and barking dogs are only a few of the annoyances that can harass people on a daily basis. In a large metropolitan city, these things are the norm and are actually harmful to your ears.
If you are exposed to this constantly you can suffer permanent hearing loss. A rock concert has the noise level of 110 decibels. Even a crowded restaurant can be as much as 96 decibels. And if the sound was not enough, it can damage your ears immediately. When noise is loud it can kill the nerve endings in the inner ear. There is no way to restore nerve endings that are dead. Hearing loss happens gradually, so you would not know about it unless you have your ears tested. By then it can be too late.
Noise also has other detrimental factors. It can cause high blood pressure, fatigue and headaches. It can cause anxiety and difficulty focusing on chores.
New York city became the first city in the United States to adopt a noise code in 1972. It is still in effect today. The law says that no car alarm can ring for more than 3 minutes and that construction can only occur weekdays between 7 A.M. and 6 P.M. and weekends 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. The only way it is enforced is through complaints. You can be fined $45 for “unreasonable noise” and as much as $8,000 for larger violations (say, in a nightclub).
Listening to an iPod? Don’t spin the dial up more than two thirds. Earbuds can increase the volume and put your ears in constant danger.
The average rock concert has 115 decibels, fifteen minutes is the most you can handle without ear plugs. If they are properly fitted, ear plugs work very well. Foam earplugs are made to last only a couple of days. Wax ones are stronger. There are also custom made silicon-rubber earplugs, which you can wash and re-use for years. They can cost as much as $125.
Sound proofing your home is a good idea as well. Hang heavy window curtains and use acoustical tile where possible. If you really need some quiet time, go to the beach, swim, or go to the library.
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I was reading a piece the other day, written by a photographer who offers both film and digital capture to his customers. I am always interested to hear other professional photographer’s opinions on the subject. I was a film devotee for over 30 years, and only made the switch to digital a little over three years ago.
In the piece I mentioned, the photographer/author sited the fact that film is more ‘forgiving’ than digital when it comes to proper exposure. This is certainly true. Especially in the highlights of the image. You can overexpose negative film by more than two stops, and still get details in the highlights.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with photo-geek speak, for any given scene framed in the viewfinder of a camera, there is a correct exposure to the light coming from the scene and onto the film, or digital sensor. Over exposure by one “stop” means twice as much light as should be getting to the film or sensor, is getting to it. Two stops over is twice that much more, or four times the amount of light as the correct exposure.
Do that to your digital capture and there’s no recovering data from the highlights. Sorry, it’s gone! Actually, positive film, or “slide” film also has a much lower tolerance to overexposure, so not all film is that much more ‘forgiving’. But the point here is… ta DA…”Forgiving”, (and may I finish the thought), of bad exposure!
The author of the piece I refer to here also is a photographer in Hawaii, as I am. He writes of how the light here changes so quickly and frequently with the trade winds blowing the clouds over the sun, then away from the sun, etc. And it is true that on many days, especially in the earlier afternoons the brightness and intensity of the sun can vary quite a bit.
Personally, my solution is, knowing that about the light and the sun, clouds and trades, 1) be aware of it, and 2) know your equipment so you can make rapid adjustments, and then, 3) make the adjustments as needed!
Then there was the assertion that, “Prints made from negatives have more ‘depth’ than prints made from digital files.”
As I mentioned, I was a film devotee for over 30 years. And I used medium format cameras using negatives over 3 times the size of 35mm negs. Print quality was one of the main factors that kept me from converting to digital earlier than I did. I insisted on seeing my own images printed digitally, that matched the quality of the prints I was used to from my film processing labs.
The simple truth is that prints are two-dimensional. Prints have no depth. What creates the illusion of depth in an image are the contrasts in the image. Shadows and highlights, perspective, and the human mind. It is up to the photographer to shape, frame and capture the elements that create the illusion of depth. That’s why professional photographers create images, while others catch snapshots.
The other evening at a meeting with some art directors, when I was asked, “How do you feel about digital? Has the quality caught up with film yet?” I unhesitatingly responded, “It has caught and surpassed film!”
Of course I was speaking from the perspective of a professional photographer. When you have a correctly exposed image, and you use state of the art printers, you simply cannot beat digital imaging. My big, medium format negative film prints would start to get grainy at 30×40, but my 6 mega pixel digital images, printed on Epson Stylus Pro printers look tack sharp at 40×55.
So, strictly on an image comparison, print to print, film and digital, I would have to say there’s virtually no difference up to about 16×20, or maybe 20×24. Larger than that, digital is superior.
All this being said, visual arts are very subjective, and this is my opinion.
About the author: Stan P. Cox II runs a Portrait and Commercial photography studio in Honolulu, Hawaii, and has been a professional Hawaii photographer for 31 years. His web address is: http://www.ParamountPhotography.com This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.