Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/04/21

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Film demise - Watteau Advocatus Diaboli (?)
From: Stanislaw Stawowy <watteau@email.com>
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 17:00:15 -0400 (EDT)

- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff S" <4season@boulder.net>
To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2001 9:09 PM
Subject: Re: [Leica] Film Demise


> Digital is *not* as convenient as conventional photography
if > your final output is on paper (speaking for the masses
> who still follow George Eastman's motto "You push the
> button, we do the rest") , but it's wonderfully convenient
> if your final output is in electronic form, say an
> email attachment.

Good quality JPEG is about 1MB. Would you risk losing
friends by sending them couple of baby photos they will
be downloading for hours????
(56kb modem gives transfer ~7kB/s. couple of photos
will take about half hour of data sucking..)

> Emailing baby photos, personal web sites and of course
> eBay are all 90's cultural phenomena, and the digital
> camera is a natural tool of choice in these situations.

Not in majority of world. Only in some countries,
like US and, to some (not much) extent Europe.
Little percent of Earth' population....

> Though a 35mm negative contains more data than digital
> cameras can even dream of, I don't think image quality
> is inhibiting digital inroads so much as cost and
> convenience issues.

Nay. Prices of printing gear is still inhibitive in a
long run. Let's count this:

Silver:
Used Krokus enlarger with good 4-element lens: 30$
Gear (thermometer, easels, clamps, clock:      50$
100 sheets of Kodak MC paper:                  12$
3 rolls of Fomapan 800T:                        8$
Xtol + Fomafix (speed fixer) + W1 positive dev:10$
Total:                                       =110$

Digital:
Used Pentium 166 computer +  color monitor:   300$
Cheap inkjet printer:                         100$
Ink:                                           30$
Cheap digital camera:                         200$
Total:                                       =630$

So cost of digital is extremely prohibitive as you
see. And *majority* of human population doesn't
have a money to buy it and *won't* have money
either...

> But film manufacturing may face it's own problems
> due to environmental and public health concerns:
> Everytime there's an outbreak of Mad Cow Disease
> or Hoof & Mouth, I have to wonder what that does
> to Kodak's supply of gelatin,

I don't know how about you, but I am *not* finding
a satisfaction in licking my negatives.....
Also: There are other substances which you can
substitute for gelatin. Early Kodak experiments
in seventies were very interesting, but then
gelatine cheapened substantially.

My major argument is still the cost and need for
electricity. There are miliards of people who
wouldn't make use of digital photography because
of it.

- --St.


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