Elgenper <elgenper@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > No problems here, Maggie: Slainthe Mhor! > > Thing is: while I feel innocent, I do in fact agree to your general > analysis: there IS a lot of fossil feeling about digital vs film > bubbling up right now. > > Try to see it this way: when most of us fossils started in > photography, it was a difficult and expensive craft that you learnt > and then liked to show off. > > You invested a small fortune in heavy metal (!) gear that you thought > would last your lifetime, you tested materials and processes, and all > was well with the world... > > Suddenly people without training can buy a small, convenient camera > and produce lots and lots of decent pictures. Your investment in > brass gears and glass falls enormously in value (I still almost cry > when I see what e. g. Hasselblad gear is going for now; luckily I sold > before that), and even big companies that produced your favourite > materials go bust (Agfa), > > Your world falls apart, you feel like the dinosaurs looking at the > falling asteroids... > > Some fossils do what I did: try the new, and try to find out how best > to use it. Others just sit down and MOAN. Can you really blame them? Actually, yes, I can. My mind generally doesn't work that way. I *like* teaching myself new ways to do things, finding the good ones. I realized a few years ago now that *every single thing* I've ever been paid money to do is something I learned on my own. (Of course, various people have taught me bits of all of these things over the years; but not in a classroom or official instructional setting.) And never with the intention of making money, when I started learning any of them, either. I don't see why I should think of my world falling apart because a new process is easier than an old one. My main career has been in computer software. I started programming professionally 36 years ago in assembly language on a computer made with discrete transistors (no integrated circuits). These days I do mostly web server programming in object-oriented languages, on servers where the whole CPU is on a single chip. And often is located a thousand miles away from me. I *like* change. I can't really bring myself to see more good pictures getting taken as a bad thing, either. I remember seeing some of the fringes of old wedding photographers feeling threatened by new ones using 35mm. Generally they were *right* that the quality of the formal portraits was impaired by that switch. The thing most of them knew, and had trouble admitting, was that the candid reception pictures were generally much *better*. They didn't officially become "dinosaurs" in my head until they backed themselves into a corner and refused to consider using 35mm for the faster-moving, more spontaneous parts of the process. -- David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@xxxxxxxx>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
