[Leica] end of film??? consumable leicas?

[lambroving at worldnet.att.net (William G. Lamb, III)]

Jean,

The November issue of LFI reaches some of your conclusions.
Received my copy today and find it full of interesting articles on
all kinds of topics.

The Leica newsletter described it thus:

"__Don?t miss LFI 08/2004! Available from November 3rd
Does film have a future? LFI spoke with Kodak, Fuji, and
Agfa about the prospects of analogue photography.
M ? la carte ? which viewfinder is the better choice? 0.58x,
0.72x, or 0.85x ? Peter Karbe, head of Leica optics
development, helps you with your decision.
How to sharpen digitally. When do digital sharpening tools
make sense? How do they work? Our tutorial explains
Portfolio: Double Exposure. The beauty of banality ? a
team project by William Eggleston und Wilmar Koenig.
Further information on the current issue at
www.lfi-online.com"

Someone send a copy to B.D. while you're at it... :-)

William


At 08:23 PM 11/09/2004 +0100, you wrote:
>In the fifties and sixties, piano production dropped dramatically because
>many families were already equipped with good instruments and for many
>others the priority was to buy a TV set. However the major companies
>survived. In the nineties, sales of cheap upright pianos dropped again
>facing the competition of digital pianos. However most of the best
>traditional production survived. You can still buy a brand new Fazioli,
>Bluethner, Steinway or Boesendorfer concert grand (if you can afford it).
>
>I agree that the difference between a real and a digital piano is much
>greater (on a user's point of view) than between two similar cameras, one
>running film and the other running a CCD. However I believe it is still
>impossible to extrapolate sales statistics and predict any date for the
>death of film. Coarse statistics are unable to detect the existence of
>niche phenomena. It has been the same with 650B-wheeled bikes, almost
>disappeared from the market 10 years ago but now back into high-end
>production. When a niche market appears, it is often some time after the
>market has apparently dropped to near zero, because of the 2nd hand
>"existing park" that may satisfy the needs during some time.
>
>I would be more scared about the quality/durability issue. Most car
>manufacturers are now - in theory - able to build cars that would last,
>say two million miles. Only half a dozen companies have been actually
>making such cars, but in the nineties they anticipated the market's
>saturation by either using electronics to decrease the reliability
>(M******s) or using a new mechanical design to increase maintenance costs
>(V***o), so that replacing the car becomes more cost effective than
>keeping it. This is the real risk with the future of Leica.
>
>Having been working in the digital imaging area for 25+ years, one of the
>factors which keeps me off digital cameras is the way ALL builders are
>preparing their own future through _not_ implementing JPEG2000 technology
>into the cameras they are currently selling. JPEG2000, a wavelet-based
>compression standard, typically allows a 5 to 20 times greater compression
>ratio than ordinary JPEG compression, with similar visual quality and
>without the "tiling effect" that gives so much trouble when photoshopping
>that many of us use memory-spilling raw (bitmap) formats.
>
>My own feeling is that builders are waiting for digital camera market
>saturation before lauching jpeg2000 as a marketing booster. Just in case
>some of the cameras they are selling now would be able to survive long
>enough... (Lifetime warranty is easy if life is short).
>
>If the future "digital-M" does not include JPEG2000 or doen't have at
>least the possibility of upgrading to jpeg2000, then I won't consider
>spending so much money to buy outdated technology.
>
>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>  Dr Jean Louchet       COMPLEX Project     INRIA Rocquencourt
>                        BP105   78153 Le Chesnay cedex, France
>  Jean.Louchet<at>inria.fr  http://fractales.inria.fr/~louchet
>  mobile: +33 6 7347 7707
>  ------------------------------------------------------------