Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/05/20

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Leica and digital photography
From: Pete Su <psu@kvdpsu.org>
Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 22:40:49 -0400

whether digital is 'cheaper' or not depends entirely on whether you have 
a computer already and how many pictures you take.

my parents, not tech junkies by any stretch, have 3 computers in the 
house, so the marginal cost of making those computers into machines that 
can manage digital images isn't that high. disk is cheap, backup media 
is cheaper.

but, my mom, even for a happy snapper, shoots a lot of film per year, so 
the savings from the digital camera is pretty signigicant over time. it 
only takes about 50 rolls of film to make back the cost of the camera. 
and, they already have the computer...

for a photojournalist, who might not do their own printing anyway, one 
month shooting with a digital camera can make back the cost of the body 
in saved film/processing costs. easily.

ironically, for *me* the marginal cost of going to digital is a lot 
higher because i don't own a computer even though i write software for a 
living. i have computers at work, but only a small work bought laptop at 
home. also, i don't really shoot enough film to justify the cost of a 
digital body for capture.

still, i'm tempted because of two things:

1. i have to rebuild my darkroom sometime soon, and that's expensive. i 
don't have the skill to do it myself.

2. i hate scanning. i really hate it. it sucks. i like hooking the 
camera up to the computer and walking away, and coming back in 15 
minutes to look at all the pictures.

i'm still not sure what i'll do. i really like B&W printing in the 
darkroom, but i hate processing film (or paying for the processing), 
making contact sheets, filing negatives, and all the rest. digital 
provides the opportunity to more quickly work more directly with the 
images, rather than dealing with a lot of intermediate steps.

as with everything in photography, it's inane to make blanket statements 
about anything. the cost/benefit for any given technology or technique 
depends entirely on the user who is making the decision.

Cheers. Sorry for the length

Pete

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