karl shah-jenner <shahjen@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > ----- 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.. $6k gets you well over twice my current DSLR; more like 4 to 8 times it in the current market (I've had my S2 since the very end of 2002). I've spent perhaps $500 on drives and media. I don't think my computer expenditures have changed since I began using them for photography, but even if I included them, it's another maybe $1500 over the life of the current camera. Any way you look at it I'm way ahead financially. And that camera is nowhere near dead yet. Do you have any idea how many prints 30 220ml ink cartridges will make in a 7600? It's a *really* huge number. > 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. Which keeps you going for a year or less, then you need to spend *another* few thousand on chemicals, film, and paper. And you use a lot more paper, since that's the only way to see your work. > 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. I'll accept that argument for Ctein's dye-transfer prints (I've bought 9 or some such of them over the years). That's a craftmanship I can understand and appreciate. Those prints do things with those images that other kinds of prints can't, or at least couldn't when they were made and when I bought them. Artist-made inkjet prints are much more in the "craftsman" category than lab-made RA4 prints, though, IMHO. What I know about *my own* color printing skills is that I can do immensely better with digital and an inkjet than I ever could in a lab. And I don't have the patience to learn dye transfer (besides, the materials are discontinued). -- 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/>
