[Leica] Re: digital and consumers

[Jim Brick <jim@brick.org>]

Double Amen!!!

Jim

At 03:20 AM 5/21/2002 +0000, richardporter@att.net wrote:
>Don,
>Amen!!!
>Rick
> > A lot of posters missed the point.  For the professional, digital makes a
> > whole lot of sense, it shortens the cycle time, is easily transmitted,
> > eliminates film expenses, vastly reduces time and cost to verify exposure
> > and composition.
> >
> > For the amateur who shoots 5-10 rolls of film a year what do you get.  You
> > spend $300 to get the equivalent camera you could have gotten for 
> $100.  You
> > will end up spending $30 to $100 for memory just to take 30 pictures at the
> > elementary school graduation.  You will drive yourself nuts keeping up with
> > charged batteries.  Ok, now that we have a full memory card we get to futz
> > with the hated Windoz machine and software that put the images in a Windows
> > temporary  file.  Our lucky consumer figures out where the files are and
> > just wants to make a print.  You know, they just don't look very good on
> > copier paper so it's off to get "photo paper".  Well you know, the colors
> > are really off with this stuff so now I get to figure out how to adjust the
> > color and by the way what is with all the choices for glossy, matte,
> > semi-matte paper.
> >
> > At this point the happy camper wanders into a store to get prints made and
> > asks for number 6 and 22 on the memory card.  Oops, was that in sequential
> > order or jpg6?  Wrong prints again.
> >
> > Lets review the situation,  consumer A buys a film camera with zoom for
> > $100, 6 rolls of 24 exposure film for $9 and takes pictures for most of a
> > year.  A brings her film into a Costco and has the choice of two day 
> service
> > for $2.99 or one hour for $6.99.  Lets choose one hour so we have spent 
> $151
> > dollars and has 140 some odd prints that can be given away, put on the
> > refrigerator, hung on the wall.  And, they will probably last 30 to 70 
> years
> > based on current studies.
> >
> > Customer B buys a digital 2 mp camera for $279, a 32 meg card for $25
> > dollars, rechargeable batteries for $15, that photo paper sampler for $10
> > and spends 30 minutes to a week installing the software and downloading the
> > images to the computer.  Finds out the 2 year old HP printer isn't so photo
> > realistic and is faced with another $100 to $300 to purchase a new printer.
> > So, customer bleeding edge b has spent $329 and has nada to put on the wall
> > plus is pulling down the Excedrin bottle to ease the pain.  Lets not even
> > mention high end Hilda who buys a Nikon Coolpix 5000 and an Epson 2000.
> >
> > Most of the members of this list are fairly sophisticated to find and join
> > this group.  Most members of our society just don't have the time or energy
> > to figure out digital.  It is selling because of peer pressure and the cool
> > factor when you show off the little LCD at a party.  However, where are the
> > prints?
> >
> > True story, SWAMBO was building out a ten story building for a 
> subsidiary to
> > use as headquarters and needed to document progress on such mundane things
> > as switch closets.  I loaned her an old XA, had the film printed, then
> > scanned the prints and put them into a PowerPoint presentation for the 
> folks
> > needing reassurance that all was well.  There were many digital cameras
> > present but no results a week later.
> >
> > Just another perspective
> >
> > Don
> > dorysrus@mindspring.com

- --
To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html