Re: [APML] Film vs Digital - Not Just Astrophotographers

["Joseph O'Neil" <joneil@multiboard.com>]

-snip-

>When enough consumer and professional photography business moves over to
>digital, the Kodaks of the world will either go belly-up or adapt by
>dropping film and going all digital themselves. Which will probably be the
>last nail in the coffin for film AP. I hope by that time, the cost, quality,
>physical size, and ease-of-use of astronomical CCD cameras will make the
>point moot.


         CCD & digital cameras have just as many problems as film.  I use 
both professionally and personally.     Speaking also from the point of 
view of a family business that litterally switched over from a 100 year old 
printing  to desktop publishing, I can tell you the switch from analog to 
digital is full of many nasty surpizes.  Not the least of which, the profit 
margin is less.
         You see, part of the problem here, most of the peopel on this list 
are hobbists, or in the case fo professionals, they are producing , one, 
two, three limited prints, etc.  No offence meant, but when you go all 
digital, and you are trying to product 100, 200 or 1,000 custom copies of a 
document, it is a completely different ball of wax.

         Finally, my "hobby" photography - which is large format - is 
undergogin something of a rebirth.  A recent camera show I was at, allt he 
large format gear was beign snapped up, and i heard - no exaggeration at 
all - more than one pro say "I am sick of this digital stuff, I need 
something different".  I knwo what they are saying.  If i hear one more 
customer complian that their 12 year old with a  $1000 ink jet printer can 
do jsut as good a job as my $5,000 printer, I'm ever going to go insane or 
go postal .  Maybe both.  :)

         Companies like Cooke optics and Schneider optics have actually 
come out with brand new, top of the line large format lenses, and there are 
new large format cameras comming out now too.   So film is far from 
dead.   If Kodak is willing to commit seppiku out of stupidity, others are 
waiting to take thier place.

         so while the flood is clearly going digital, I can tell you, 
there's also a backlash, both professionally and artistically.  All I can 
say - again -  is from somebody who from first hand experience dumped all 
our "analog" gear (printing press, lead type, etc) and went 100% digital 
(desktop publishing, including photograhs), it's not as good as all these 
articles make it out to be.   I find after reading these articles the 
practical problems of dealing with CCD and /or digital are either 
unacknowledged or clearly downplayed/made fun of.
joe






http://www.oneilphoto.on.ca
http://www.multiboard.com/~joneil
Una salus victis, nullam sperare salutem



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