----- Original Message ----- From: "David Dyer-Bennet" : 10k shots is a bit under 300 rolls. You can save money going to : Wal*Mart, but at a pro lab it's nearly $15 to develop and contact or : proof a roll, and the film itself costs around $5 (unless you're using : cheap consumer film). So 300 rolls costs $6000 just in film and lab : fees. More than that if you need scans done (or more of your time). : : $6000 will pay for a lot of hard drives and DVDs. : : So is 10k shots one year's work, or 5, for you? I'm an amateur, and : find I'm somewhere in the middle. If you're a slow, careful, artistic : landscape photographer (Ansel Adams type) 10k shots is probably a LOT : of years. $6000 also gets you a digi camera.. or partways toward a camera. Maybe a cheaper digicam and a new computer and a spare backup drive. then it's that again in a year or two when the old stuff isn't up to the speed some other folks are getting. It also works out at about the cost of data recovery from a hard drive crash, or multiply that by 4 if your hard drives were in a striped raid array. Or 30 genuine ink carts for an epson 7600. You could always spend that amount on a print server or even a cheap RIP, or maybe if you do lots of printing and find you cpu time is being chewed up too much, a hardware RIP will save you, though you might need up to another $54,000 for that.. If you're a 'filmy' (thats what I call myelf these days) it gets you a Canon F1N and a pile of lenses (sold by the kilo these days since they're obsolete), a jobo film processor, a good colour enlarger, lots of paper, chemicals and film. I kid myself and pretend I'm a craftsman, taking time to do mysterious things that other people can't do in a darkened room. A bit like one of those people who make tables themselves out of rare and exotic woods rather than just nipping down to Ikea for something cheap. It takes lots of time, but for some reason I feel it's worth it. I did after all spend lots of time, and in some instances a lot of money too in actually taking the shots. k
