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[OM] Re: Digital v real photography - slightly OT and long

Subject: [OM] Re: Digital v real photography - slightly OT and long
From: Winsor Crosby <wincros@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 09:50:22 -0800
I am no fan, yet, of digital cameras, but I have to add a few things.

Hi,

Just got back to the list after a VERY restful (but not very photographic) couple of weeks and caught the tail-end of the discussion that appeared to be convincing people that digital still has some way to go before us dinosaurs finally become extinct. Here's my 2 pence worth. Forgive if I'm repeating anything that's already been discussed.

My friend bought himself a N*k*n digital and I was vaguely captured, mainly by the immediacy of the pics.

Your subjects may not always be thrilled as you check the results and ask them to pose again and again and again.


BUT

In my view, even ignoring the quality issues that you've all talked about there are still too many downsides:- This camera even on "low resolution" whatever that means can only store 8 frames, and a digital wallet is the cost of perhaps 100 - 150 rolls of film. But that doesn't get over the fact that you can buy film anywhere in the world that has a shop/tea-room/kiosk/ticket booth/etc, so although I like to buy known good quality, well stored film it isn't a big deal if I'm away and use up my stocks... It'll be a looong time before electronic storage gets cheap enough to compete on that count.

Not really. You can get an iPod now with a Firewire connection and a 5 gigabyte hard drive for $399 that will slip into your pocket and which will store lots of images. That is down to about 50 rolls of film. So the cost of portable storage is changing rapidly.



Also currently inkjet ink fades after a couple of years (even "photographic quality" paper manufacturers only say the prints wont fade for 10 years... i.e. 6 years if your lucky) So the option is to keep the jpeg or whatever for ever... once again we're talking big bucks for storage

I have photographic color prints that have faded after 5 or 6 years stored in the dark. Black and white prints were what we looked at when we were children.

I thought the Epson 2000P inks were pretty well established at 25 plus years.


The other ignored bit is longevity. Yes with digital you only print the ones you want, how much does your family treasure the naff image of great-great-great grandma 150 years ago, normally an image that would have been ditched. I've got boxes and boxes or "2nd-rate" images in my loft that even after 20 years fascinate my kids -> "Did you really think you looked cool with that haircut?"; "What on earth did Mum see in you?", etc... If I'd not bothered printing these my kids would have though I was good looking.

You are absolutely right. That is the best argument for me. The whole digital process is really tentative and the image may not ever make it to print that someone can see years later. You have to invest so much energy into completing the photographic process that there is never a final image, the thing Ansel Adams so valued. And somehow the kids or grandchildren popping the CDrom archive into a 30 year old PC with a still functioning CDrom drive and wrestling with networking it to the current system to extract the images, just doesn't warm the cockles of your heart like seeing kids rummage through a box of old prints.


Have I convinced you, or did no-one get this far

Sam

Winsor
--
Winsor Crosby
Long Beach, California

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