Karl Brilliant post: you really have too much time on your hands !!!! > The computers really have freed them from some pretty mundane mechanical > processes and works that would have required some of the highest skills, > attained only by the most dedicated experimenter with a staunch heart and a > good eye are available to the masses. > it brings a tear to the eye.. It sure does!!!! Bloody nostalgia. > They seem happy with the two Epson 7600 banner printers even > though a 4 year old RA4 hanging in the digital darkroom remains unfaded > while 12 month old Epson Ultrachrome prints beside them have faded to a > nasty orange. Some students have returned to printing RA4 from negs, but > they are in the minority. The longevity issue is not really an issue once you lose the old fashioned idea that permanence means anything. So what that images will not be available for our ancestors 100y for now? They will have plenty of thier own. Photos - for the masses - are for the now. All but a triflingly small minority have a short shelf-life anyway. At work, for marketing handouts, the company logo changes every 2 years so the whole caboodle gets reprinted anyway ;o) > They all buy 'Pro' films (because they're 'professional') and none test their films. That made me laugh a bit. I remember a workshop given by a pro Wildlife photographer (Wildlife Photog of Year category winner). Some of the participants were rambling on in the evening about the finer points of which pro films they used in thier top-range EOS / Nikon bodies. When they forced an opinion from the pro his reply was "Sensia 100, EOS 5 (mid range) and even, cough, some Sigma lenses!!!! You really could not fault his work on quality: streets ahead. Asked why he didn't use the "pro" films advertised so heavily in AP magazine <G> he replied "it was a business ... "the cheaper films / equipment were fit for purpose". > Photographers were once the force which pushed quality over output. True again. The world is coming to accept lower "quality" and rebadging it "spontenaity". "Output" is part of the new "quality". > were the guys who would explain to customers that while smaller formats were > 'acceptable', the larger would have a different 'feel' to it, irrespective > of reproduction size. I certainly rememeber arguments at work (in a former Government job) where we had to (were required to) use our in-house pro department for all developing and printing. We wanted to get 5-dollar D&P done for "record shots" but were being billed $50 at least for extremely high quality but OTT standard stuff. It took years to break that. OK, our efforts contributed, indirectly, to the dept being downsized - we got permission to get cheap prints to stick in our lad record books!. > Scribes were once necessary in society. We used to have typing pools, people to operate the photocopiers, drivers, odd-job men with hammers and drills, a design dept with CAD. Now everyone has to use Word, Excel, Access and Power Point and are expected to put thier own shelves up ... The "scribes" have already gone. > I wonder if we writers of light will follow the path of the scribes. Yup! Happy New Year Bob "If I climb a mountain and the mountain disappears tales of strength and stamina will fall upon deaf ears" SOS
