Mark wrote:
I certainly agree with what you say about the progress of digital technology. There are some problems related to the pace of this digital (r)evolution however:You can say digital does not have the resolution of film. It will have 10 times that tomorrow, and it already has 80% less noise, which is why you can get, better prints from a good 8M than you can from 35mm. You can say it doesn’t have the same latitude but, tomorrow it will have more latitude than you eye. You can say it doesn’t have the color gamut…again, tomorrow it will have a better gamut than your eye. Imagine settings on your camera for infared or ultraviolet. The D30 was a good infrared camera but they added filters on the D60. You can debate this stuff all day long but in the end none of it matters because economics is what will kill film. The price of digital will continue to fall as its volume increases. As film volumes decline, you will see prices go up, and you will see more and more film discontinued. Sure a few may stay around for a long time. DJs can still buy albums but not at Walmart. In a few years you wont be able to get film at Walmart either. Mark Rogers Frame Destination, Inc. http://www.framedestination.com
1.) all the improvements you foresee produce huge amounts of data. I'm sure cameras will also get better at storing these data, so you'll still be able to save such pictures in a reasonable time. However, doesn't that mean that all digital camera gear you buy now will soon be outdated? The camera itself, the storage cards, the accessories (CD/DVD burners), even the PCs and software handling such images.
Mind you, this is not a one-time revolution - it's an ongoing process, and there may never be the "right time" to buy your equipment.
2.) related to this is the question of data archival. Will you be able to read the CDs/DVDs you burn today in 5 years from now? I still have floppy disks that I can't access for lack of a fitting drive! This means a continuous data migration project. How many people will keep up with the development?
Today more images are being produced than ever before - but how many of them will be lost for ever in ten years?
Also, there's the format question: maybe your next computer with its Multi-Terabyte HDD and its Cell-chip ten times faster than a Pentium 4 will still be able to read *.jpg an *.tif formats, but what about all those different "raw" formats?
Of course, *if* you regularly migrate your data and have more than one copy, they should be even safer than on traditional film.
Mind you, I'm not against digital photography. I may buy a digital camera myself soon, - although I think it will be only my second body for the foreseeable future.
I'm quite happy, however that I still have thousands of pictures on slide film. Some of those captured on inferior quality films already have started to fade, but I'm reasonably sure that my Fuji and Agfa slides will be in good shape for several years to come.
Apart from the above questions, I don't really think it matters with what technology a picture is produced.
For me, a camera is just a tool I use to capture images - if I had the technical skills of a painter, maybe I'd use a brush instead...
As to the economic aspects: as long as manufacturers bring out new analog cameras and films there obviously is a market for these products.
It is quite possible that many people will only see the above problems after a while an may return to analog media, while others may be happy with snaps taken on their mobile phone which are "thrown away" when they are no longer current.
Laurenz http://www.travelphoto.net/ http://www.onlinephotogalleries.com/
