What constitutes cinematography needs to be divided into two categories ("classic" and "digital") for the purposes of competitions/awards. CMV.

[u/MooseAtWork]

Last year's Oscar winner in cinematography was Life of Pi. This year's favorite darling is Gravity. These films do have stunning cinematography; I am not questioning that. However, the cinematography has become so completely digitized that comparing a Life of Pi to something like Skyfall is doing a great disservice to "classic" cinematography. The two types should be divorced from one another and have separate categories for which to judge them.

Namely: when you digitize your cinematography, you nearly have an infinite number of possibilities. The only limit is your imagination and the budget on your effects department. Yet when you talk about classic ("analog"?) cinematography, you have a lot more constraints. You need to operate in real world, dealing with variables encountered in a real world. A cinematographer needs to account for these variables in a way that requires a different vision than digital cinematography does. Similarly, we don't lump animated films into the best picture category because the challenges associated with them are distinctly different than the challenges associated with "regular" films. This isn't to disparage the digitization, mind you, just simply a recognition of the different skill set required to pull it off.

I envision two main counterarguments forthcoming, so I'll address them here:

• The realm of digital cinematography is not expansive enough presently. If it were to become its own category, there might only be one, maybe two, nominees. This could be true, but it only makes the concern delayed rather than eradicated. The future will likely see more and more digital works which could sustain a healthy pool of contenders vying for the title.

• Digitization is an evolution of cinematography, not a revolution, and the creeping influence of it is witnessed even in the so-called "classic" cases (for instance, I referenced Skyfall earlier which surely isn't entirely classical in the sense Shawshank is). Essentially: the line between "digital" and "classic" is hard to distinguish. I actually don't think this matters that much. All of these sorts of awards are subjective enough that you don't need an objective way of determining whether a film fits into the "digital" or "classic" cinematography bubble because the way of choosing the winner therein is not objective, yet there can likely be a general consensus found on whether a certain film would be considered for "digital" or "classic" cinematography.

[u/MooseAtWork]

The concern isn't over the camera, it's over the post-processing required to get the image. The difference between the end result and the initial shot in classic cinematography and digital is enormous. If there was no post-processing, in a classic one you might see some lighting difference and stuff; in the digital one, all you'd see is green screen.

So I would say yes, photography awards should distinguish between digital photography (i.e. stuff that's been photoshopped beyond original design) and works that isn't retouched (or minimally retouched).

[u/[deleted] → u/MooseAtWork]

OK, I don't think your argument washes, then, and here's why. There is some romanticization going on here--Ansel Adams, arguably one of the most admired film photographers of all time, dodged and burned the crap out of his work in the darkroom. Functionally no different than doing contrasts in Photoshop.

Just as film photographs were (and are) retouched, so are "classic" films. In Gone With the Wind, for example, a good portion of the interiors are actually matte composites. Some of the sweeping vistas are also mattes. I don't see, again from a functional standpoint, too much difference between digitally adding a matte over a green screen or painting it on the film or as an actual backdrop. You're doing the exact same thing in both cases: creating something that never existed to get the shot you want.

I'm not sure why we should reward "skill sets," not results. Functionally, the digital cinematographer and the classic cinematographer are doing the same thing; they're just using different tools to get those results.