Future of Photography (was RE: filmscanners: real value?)

[Clark Guy <guy.clark@sbt.siemens.com>]

HI, everyone!

I guess I'll weigh in with my opinion on the future of photography...

In ten years....

I believe that digital cameras will continue to get better and better, but
the rate of improvement will be less and less as time goes by.  Unless there
is a dramatic change in the methods of manufacturing the sensor elements,
resolution will not get much better than what is available now.  WHY?
because we are already approaching the limit of how small a single pixel can
be.  It can't be smaller than a wavelength of light, and we are approaching
this limit even now.  On top of that, the smaller they are the more noisy
they become, so that creates a limit on size as well.

Better we should be making the sensor arrays bigger, but there is the
manufacturing yield issue there.  The larger the chip, the more likely a
defect will be present in it, rendering it useless.  This is why I prefaced
my comments with the proviso that there be no dramatic change in the
manufacturing process.  Possibly there will be some non-silicon method of
manufacture that will not have so much chance for defects, and that will
cause another rapid improvement of image quality.

Therefore, I see amateurs going to digital photography much as we see now,
but the amateurs will have something like 5Megapixel cameras.  For
professional photography, there will be specialized digital camera backs
that can do perhaps as much as 25Mpixels or better using scanning
technologies.  The other pros will be using silver chemistry much as we are
today.  35mm film will become a professional gauge, much as 16mm movies are
pretty much the domain of professional cinematographers these days (I used
to use old amateur 16mm equipment for vacation and sports movies while in
High School, but I was a photo geek! ;-)  ).  Medium format will still be
used for the highest quality wedding and other location photography, and
Large format will be used for posters and other large final image uses.  

Scanners will phase out much of the darkroom work, however, with the
exception of certain specialized applications, and resolutions will increase
much as the camera CCD resolutions, but will continue to increase beyond
what is done in cameras because of the possiblities offered by not needing
to make the image in an instant.  Multiple CCD linear arrays can be made
much more easily than multiple two dimensional arrays, and the scanner
hardware/firmware can compensate for offset arrays.  In fact, with optics,
one could actually ENLARGE the image of the film on to a very large linear
array to get tremendous optical resolutions that will require gigabytes of
RAM to deal with.  I see this coming too!

I guess I'd better take my turban off and put my crystal ball away before my
boss sees me!!

Feel free to disagree with me!!!

Guy Clark -- photo geek

-----Original Message-----
From: Laurie Solomon [mailto:laurie@advancenet.net]
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2001 10:30 PM
To: filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
Subject: RE: filmscanners: real value?


And, of course, we will have a paperless society, advanced artificial
intelligence, and Dot Coms will rule the world replacing the traditional
principles of economics and finance with new principles of finance and
economics where producing a profitable product is unnecessary as long as you
believe in vaporware. :-)    Color photography was suppose to completely
eliminate black & white photography except as a anachronistic specialty,
which accounts for the recent resurgence in black & white photography in
advertising as well as the fine arts photography to mention a few
applications that not only refused to die but actually came to life despite
color photography and all the predictions of death and doom for B&W.  :-)
In short, I think you are being much to optimistic about the futuristic
predictions.  However, I do think that any sort of ten year projections or
forecasts into the future are very risky and daring.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
[mailto:owner-filmscanners@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of Berry Ives
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2001 8:15 PM
To: filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
Subject: Re: filmscanners: real value?


on 1/29/01 2:21 PM, Michael Wilkinson at michael@infocus-photography.co.uk
wrote:
> If you really want good value for money allied to something which will
> last a decade you have to look at what you want from the product.
> ....buy it at the right price and you are set for
> the next Decade
> Make no mistake about it.
> if a scanner is doing a good job now the chances are that only a real
> expert will be able to see a difference in your final output in 10 years
> time.
Very daring of you to make a 10-yr forecast about anything digital.

Here's my forecast:  35mm film will be rarely used, except for very
specialized applications, since digital will take over that market.  Digital
SLRs will be as affordable as the Pentax XZ-5n.  The scanners will still be
around, though, since there are so many old images on film.  But the ones we
are buying today will definitely be in the landfill.

--Berry