Comments interspersed below.
At 3:25 AM +0000 12/22/02, olympus-digest wrote:
>Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 10:04:02 -0800
>From: Jan Steinman <Jan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [OM] Re: Dipping our Toe Into Digital (LONG)
>
> >From: Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@xxxxxxxxx>
> >
> > >From: Jan Steinman <Jan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > >
> > >My research indicates that an optimal 35mm frame may contain as much as
> > >18Mpx.
> >
> >Hmm. I see. The 18 Mpix appears to assume the typical compromise
> >red-green-green-blue pattern...
>
>It was from actual measurements, primarily RN Clark's and Norman Koren's. Most
>folks who are serious about this point out that there is no simple equation --
>film has one equivalence if you measure one way, or a different one if you
>measure some other way.
The compromise is the camera makers', in that they don't provide full-color
(tricolor) pixels.
> > >In 1997, I predicted that price/performance parity between digital and
> > >35mm was 8 years off. I stand by that: it's now 3 years off.
> >
> >I assume that you used Moore's Law, that holds that semiconductor technology
> >doubles in performance (halves in cost for the same performance) every 18
> >months. Confirmed below.
>
>Thanks for demo'ing the math I was too lazy to type in! As I mentioned, I
>first went through this exercise five years ago, and it looks like it's
>holding true.
Yes. Despite the non-electronic parts, discussed below.
> >What will take the longest is movies...
>
>Perhaps not... Movies don't require the maximum amount of information that the
>format can supply, and movie films are accordingly NOT even close to Velvia,
>in terms of resolution. (Don't believe me, shoot some of that crap that
>Seattle Filmworks -- or whatever they're called since the re-org -- or Dale
>Labs, or any of those movie film repacking houses sells.)
>
>It may be true that if you were using each frame to its utmost, but the human
>eye cannot discern all that detail at 24 frames per second. It would appear
>that MPEG formats do a pretty darn good job of containing as much "useful"
>information as is needed.
I've seen computations from the film industry for when they would go to
digital, and they too get terabytes if one wants to have full traditional
quality. If one will settle for less quality than the traditional methods have
delivered for decades, then of course the crossover day comes nearer.
But it isn't clear that the movie industry will do any such thing, or else the
standard movie film size would be 16mm, not 35mm (used for typical stuff) and
even 70mm (used for very high quality). But, 16mm was used only for
educational films and the like, where price and convenience were more important
than quality.
Does anybody remember 8mm home movies, and Super8 format (because 8mm picture
quality was just too poor)? Not that Super8 was that great. Videocams pretty
much killed all that off.
> > >Then kiss film goodbye in ~2013.
> >
> >No; nothing is ever that clean. There will be a very gradual transition,
> >because people will wait for their current equipment to wear out.
>
>I'd be more inclined to accept this if digitals didn't offer typical typical
>consumers so much more. Digital cameras are supposed to be "the" gift this
>Christmas. These will be "sold forward", to people who already have computers
>and printers. The infrastructure for digital is in place. The "gradual
>transition" has been going on since 1984, when the first graphics-based
>computer (Apple Macintosh) was mass-produced.
The question was when film would die, not low-end consumer film cameras.
That's why talk of the movie industry was relevant. And those disposable
cameras show no sign of dying.
Only about 250f homes in the US contains any kind of computer, PC or Mac, while
something like 950f homes have at least one camera. So, the infrastructure for
digital is *not* in place for 750f the population. For them, film cameras are
by far the better choice, as they don't need to buy or deal with a computer.
Dealing with a computer is a very big issue for many people. While my wife
could afford a computer, she would never have bought one without someone to be
the home IT department because she could never get a computer to work without
IT support. Not even the iMac she loves. She's the Art Department, not
Engineering.
> >And the movie industry will still need vast quantities of film.
>
>Again, I dissent. Figure the angular area of a movie screen for the average
>viewer. (Not the front row seats that are always empty!) It isn't much
>different from viewing an 8x10 at 12".
I don't think that the movie industry would have standardized on 35mm film if a
smaller width would have sufficed. There would have been so much money to be
saved if they could have used 16mm instead that the transition would have
happened decades before TV cameras became practical, and Leicas would be 16mm,
not 35mm.
>The movie business is capital intensive and very price conscious. Given that
>the 8x10 print is most people's idea of "a nice picture," I see the movie
>industry's movement into digital as an indication that the format has achieved
>price-performance parity for the masses, and I think it will happen in three
>years.
>
>The larger problem is theaters. They have considerable investment film, and
>don't turn over investments as fast as movie production companies do. But I
>expect the large chains, which are more capital intensive, will switch to
>digital in three years.
This is exactly backwards. The more capital intensive the industry, the
*slower* to switch to a new method: they have to wait until the old equipment
has paid for itself and worn out before they can afford to go out and buy new
stuff. The classical exception has been where the new technology was literally
ten times better than what it replaced, such that the new stuff could be
purchased for a few years of the maintenance budget of the old. It is *very*
rare that a new technology is this much better, and digital photography does
not qualify.
> >Look at us -- we happily use mechanical cameras from thirty years ago...
>
>Then there's the Society for Creative Anachronism, who joust and traipse
>around in three-hundred-year-old designer clothes... there's always room for
>outliers!
We should wear bell-bottom pants while using our OM-1s?
> >electronics are only a part of the total cost of a camera, and the optical
> >and mechanical components do not follow Moore's Law, except that much of the
> >mechanical complexity of cameras has been eliminated: a camera today has
> >simple mechanicals controlled by a little computer chip.
>
>There you go! And they're injection molded of plastic, rather than milled from
>metal. And the lenses are computer-generated, rather than designed with a
>slide-rule. And the lenses in the eventual price-parity product will be much
>smaller.
To have an apples-to-apples comparison, one must compare cameras of equivalent
build quality and ruggedness. And some are injection-molded from metal.
Lenses will be no cheaper, because optics is a very mature industry, and the
mecanics to hold and move the elements is already pretty well optimised.
Computer design of lenses does speed the design process, but has no effect on
the labor to actually make the lenses. Current digital cameras get away with
low-grade and thus cheap lenses, but as the CCD reaches 35mm camera resolution
and coverage, the lenses will need to improve to match.
Camera body cases and their finger-operated controls won't be cheaper, because
they need to be dust-tight enough and robust enough to live in the real world,
and the size and dexterity of the human hand is not changing. Viewfinder
optics will also remain about the same, as the human eye isn't getting any
better. In fact, it declines with age.
What's left are the camera body innards, where various mechanical things are
being simplified or eliminated, with the complexity being moved into the
digital electronics. This (plus the CCD chip) is where Moore's Law applies.
>I agree that mechanics and optics don't follow the identical 18 month curve
>that electronics do, but they do have a curve of their own.
Compared to Moore's Law, mechanics and optics do not improve at all. These are
very mature technologies. A skilled 16th century instrument maker could
duplicate a Leica III (except the lightmeter) albeit at great expense, as it
would all be done by hand, right down to the making of various optical glasses
from sand.
>And to the extent that many parts of digital and film cameras are identical in
>function, that forms the basis for a price-parity point. When the sensor costs
>the same as the various motors, soleniods, and mechanical parts that are
>unique to film cameras, price-parity will be achieved.
Not so fast. People buy into systems to make photos. The price of the CCD is
only a part of the equation. Don't forget the entire infrastructure needed to
make cameras of either kind practical for the masses. Right now, actually
making a digital photo print is far too complex and expensive for most folk.
In time, five or ten years, this will be solved. In the meantime, buying a
disposable camera, taking the pictures, sending the whole thing off to be
processed, and getting the prints back is by far the cheapest and simpleset way
to get photos that usually much exceed the quality of point&shoot digital
cameras, all for far less trouble and money than anything digital.
> > >(Of course, there will always be a niche market for fine art
> > >photochemistry, just as some brush-media artists still mix their own egg
> > >temupra.)
> >
> >Or develop their own photos?
>
>Please don't take what I write about marketplace and technology trends
>involving hundreds of millions of people as a personal affront.
Huh? Just drew the obvious parallel. And pointed out that the parallel is
off by a century or so.
Actually, the 40,000-year-old cave paintings in Spain were done with a form of
egg tempura, so if anything the egg tempura market has been growing ever since.
>There will always be an artistic niche for film, just as one can still buy a
>horse-drawn carriage and buggy whip today.
My point is simply that by then I will be dead, buried, and forgotten.
Transitions between major technologies happen very very slowly, taking decades.
How long did it take for electronic flash units to replace flashbulbs? That's
the fastest transition in photography I can recall. One way to tell is to
count by sales volume when various cameras dropped their FP sync option.
>Simply by preferring Olympus gear, this group can be defined as an outlier in
>the larger scheme of things.
Thirty year old *mechanical* cameras! Cibachrome! Black and white!
>However, I expect a gradual return to sheet film. It will require far less
>infrastructure to produce than sprocket-punched roll film. Roll film is a
>convenience, and convenenience is digital's middle name! The fanatics will be
>willing to take the time to mess with sheet film.
It will be a while before digital systems (camera, photo printers, etc) will
equal the quality of large format at any price. An 8x10 image contains
(7.75*25.4*100)(9.75*25.4*100)= 487,499,025 tricolor pixels, or 975 Mpixels (as
digital cameras are usually advertised). By Moore's Law, this will take
18*log2(975/4)= 142.7 months, or 12 years to come down to the price of 4 Mpix
camera. This would likely be the minimum delay, as the market for large format
is far smaller than for 35mm, so far less money will be invested in pusing into
the large format market. Also, the quality requirements and expectations of
the 8x10 crowd far exceed that of the 35mm crowd, even the pros.
>There may even be a niche market for sprocket hole punches, for those of us
>who want to keep or OM's alive long after 35mm roll film is no longer
>commercially available. (Requisite on-topic content. :-)
The movie film market will ensure that the sprocket-hole punching machines will
be around long enough that none of us will ever need to worry. Not to mention
all those disposable cameras.
Joe Gwinn
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