Re: filmscanners: OT? - Review on Canon FS4000/film is dead

["Mark T." <markthomasz@ozemail.com.au>]

At 10:54 PM 25/08/01 +0200, Tomas wrote:
>I have a question to people writing to this list: do all of you use still
>film only because digital cameras as not good enough yet?

Yes.  At least from an 'aspiring amateur' viewpoint. More accurately, 
digital cameras with sufficient resloution (ie from about 5 Mp upwards, 
preferably 10) are not within my budget.

>Or are here people
>who see clear benefits of silver halide technology for themselves?

Vice versa for me - as soon as the resolution becomes usable, the 
advantages of digital are very attractive to me:
- low consumable costs
- consistent reproducible colour
- auto white-balance
- instant feedback of result
...etc

>For me it seems that on the net you can find only extreme opinions (like the
>one cited above). You can either find statements like "film is already dead"
>made by self-styled prophets

In five years, I would guess it will be like the recording industry - vinyl 
is not dead, but it is now occupying a niche market.  Some people *love* 
grain, and faking it just isn't the same!!

>or "digital will never be good enough" said by
>"die-hard analogues" who didn't even try digital photography yet.
>I don't believe either of them.

You are wise!  If digital wasn't good enough for a large portion of the 
market, why on earth are people buying these over-priced cameras 
already?  For the average Joe who only occasionally wants an enlargement, 
2Mp is quite adequate.  It's only the snobbish who look down on that side 
of the market.  As was said in another post, TRY printing a good digital 
image at say 100 dpi and 200 dpi, and then show it to a 'normal' person, ie 
one not carrying a loupe....

>I worry that
>photography will share the fate of other noble technologies sacrificed in
>the name of cost/speed/decreasing standards.

That's just life as we know it..  Given the market penetration of film and 
the existing amount of silver-based images, there should be a very long 
migration.  I was a little surprised at the speed at which CD's replaced 
vinyl, but the analogy is a bit suspect - you could immediately replace 
most of your favourite LP's with CD's.  When it comes to dragging out the 
old photo albums and digitising them, however..  And there is also the 
question of portability - in most cases people still use prints to 
share/show their images - NOT PC's. Joe Average is probably not going to be 
getting into home printing for a while yet, and of course digital labs are 
beginning to spring up already to grab him before he even thinks about it.

>Sorry for this somewhat off-topic text. I hope you won't ban me from this
>list.

Oh, well, I'll go with you I guess!

mark t