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[OM] Re: Analog Forever

Subject: [OM] Re: Analog Forever
From: Andrew Gullen <andrew.gullen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 08:20:32 -0500
on 2005/01/29 1:22 PM, Joel Wilcox at jowilcox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>> The digital rush is beginning to concern me. As a beginner, I want to
>> believe that film-based analog systems have a serious edge over filmless
>> digital both in terms of ultimate performance (interpret as you wish here)
>> and in terms of durability of media.
> 
> I think we should hope that digital capture exceeds current expectations a
> thousand-fold.  That still does not diminish film in any way.

There are limits. According to an article a year or so ago on formate-doped
films, current films take about 10 photons to show a response (make a
crystal developable). With doping they think they can reach 2 photons, thus
either increasing speed or reducing crystal size.

The fundamental limit is photon flux - how many hit a film/sensor element at
a given light level, shutter speed, etc. The point is that we're already
pretty close. To the public, the advances in digital and computers generally
may appear magical and inexhaustible, but they can't make up information
that isn't there (or at least we try not to let them do that, as the results
are generally not happy :-) ).

So I think that digital will slightly surpass film in the end for resolution
at a given speed, but be cleaner and have a massive edge in convenience of
processing and consumption of materials. Nevertheless, I hope to continue to
have a choice in what I use, partly as I think a fully computer-mediated
life would be pretty dreary.

Andrew


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