Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/12/18
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Brent Dorsett wrote: > Now, after a year of shooting digitally ( E20N and D100 ), if I'm > really > honest with myself, I can see little future for film. (Oh dear. Here we go again.) Top five reasons film will still be around for quite some time: 1) Cost of entry. A film camera doesn't require a powerful computer, good screen, or photo-grade printer in addition to the camera. While it is true that one-hour photo services will probably accept memory cards and produce reasonable prints (to an increasing degree), the serious amateur is not going to be happy with this quality -- just as they are not happy with 1h pictures from Kodak Gold 400. You can buy a good secondhand MF TLR for a few hundred dollars, load it with come ISO 100 film and get fabulous chromes or negatives. A photo lab can then print large, wall-filling enlargements from those for a few tenths of dollars. The comparative quality in digital is about an order of magnitude greater in cost (unless you cheat, and drum-scan an MF negative). 2) Cost of use. No-one knows how long memory cards will last (I've read one estimate that they should be replaced after being filled to capacity ten times). CD-Rs (and presumably DVD-Rs too) have limited life span. Inkjets require expensive inks. Hard-drives fill up and require replacement. When digital equipment breaks, the remedy is replacement, not repair. My 1959 M2 and 2001 M6TTL will require service about once every 5-10 years at around $100-$200 a pop, but they will last (except possibly the electronics in the M6) for the next 30 years, and probably much longer than that. That's $1,000 in service cost vs. ten computer system replacements (assuming nothing else happens). By buying cheap film in bulk when available, and doing my own processing and printing, I can keep my costs down. I haven't done the calculation, but my guess is that it's less than digital on something like a yearly basis for the quantities that many serious amateurs (or fine art photographers) shoot and the uses they have. Not only that, but I'd expect the difference in cost to become more advantageous to chemical photography over time, at least in the next 5-10 years. Assuming that large numbers of people (not least, working MF pros) shed their cameras to get into digital photography, supply-and-demand in the s/h market suggests that the cost (user) gear will drop until it hits rock bottom, at which point, it ought to keep roughly pace with inflation (assuming it's still useful). (Corollary: collectors stuff (i.e., truly mint items) will probably rise in price [no more manufacturing, nostalgia]) 3) Ease of use. Many cameras do not require any batteries. You can do without a light meter in many cases and for those that can't, batteries for something like a Sekonic 286 last on the order of years. As a result, you can travel to remote corners of the world with little more than your camera and lightmeter and it'll work. You don't need to carry heavy extra camera and computer batteries, power supplies, card readers, cables, and a set of wall-socket conversion plugs so that you can actually use all your stuff. Skills you learn today in the darkroom don't need to be relearned in three years time, when the manufacturers bring out a new enlarger, or better trays. Try that with Photoshop. Or operating systems, for extra fun. 4) Longevity. The speed of digital technological development means that computers are effectively outdated three years after being introduced -- certainly after five -- at which point, they need to be replaced. Digital cameras seem to have a lifespan of about a year, after which you can't give them away (try selling a s/h Olympus C-2 today: discontinued about six months ago). I can still shoot with a 1935 Leica. I can't, in any practical sense of the word, use a 1985 computer any more, and forget about three year old digital cameras. Case in point: A few (2-3) years ago, Apple decided to switch from ADB and SCSI to USB and FireWire. Today, it is nearly impossible to find card readers, storage devices, scanners, or printers which will connect to those older machines. And lets not even talk about finding drivers for OSs which are a generation or two out of date. My negatives will still exist 30 years from now. Keeping them in a readable form is essentially free, assuming proper processing. Keeping my digital files in a readable form is going to require a considerable investment in new storage media every 3-5 years. A good machine shop can remanufacture out a broken or missing piece of a mechanical camera -- although it can be expensive, it is possible. Almost no resources can recreate an outdated proprietary integrated circuit that has burnt out. 5) Miscellany It's fun buying odd films and giving them a try. The look of Orwo-27 in Rodinal is vastly different from Tri-X in XTOL. Digital tends to look uniform, because the tools are uniform. I can decide one afternoon to mix up my own chemicals, as can most if they'd like to try it, but few can sit down and write Photoshop plug-ins. Especially not in an afternoon. Aesthetics are different. While digital is good, I'm sceptical as to whether it will ever manage to reproduce the qualities of an 11x14 platinum-palladium contact print from an LF negative. To some people, that sort of stuff matters more than resolution or colour fidelity. Digital encoding is great up to its limits, then it breaks down quickly. Pixellation and digital clipping are two examples. Analogue encoding breaks down gradually and "gracefully" -- grain and distortion are two examples. Some (most?) people prefer analogue degradation to digital. Pushing the limits and getting away with it is possible with analogue media -- but essentially impossible with digital. So, with digital media, you either have all the right (expensive) equipment to do the job right -- in which case, quality is great -- or you don't do it at all. Doing it "on the cheap" is typically not an option. (Seen fine art done with a Diana or Agfa Clack? Yep. Done with a 640x480 digicam? Didn't think so). Hybrid users are likely to be around for quite some time -- keeping chemical film alive, perhaps even after the demise of photographic paper. Buying a "normal" camera and shooting film, developing this, and then scanning it (either yourself, or having a pro lab do it) is a "cheap" way of getting into digital photography -- especially if you already have a computer and printer. You save the costs associated with camera technology and (some) storage devices. In fact, it's likely that many of the "prosumer" or serious amateur photographers will choose this route, thinking it's the best of both worlds (personally, I think it's the worst of both... ;) 6) Parting thoughts. I don't think that "digital is a fad". Nor do I think that "film will disappear in the near future". They will co-exist. For many professionals, digital photography offers many advantages over chemical photography. For most non-professionals, digital photography offers many advantages over chemical photography. But for most *serious* amateurs (including many on this list, fine art photographers [pro or amatuer], and suchlike), however, I would argue that chemical photography has many advantages over digital. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a resurgance of interest in chemical photography in about five-ten years, much like there has been in analogue audio (LPs, tube amps, horn speakers) with better materials and higher quality than today, but more specialized users. The wooden LF field camera has survived despite the advent of MF, 35mm, APS, Polaroid, and other formats. Despite the ease of use of 35mm AF SLRs. Despite the lack of 1h processing, or the ability to walk into Wal-Mart and find a replacement 8x10 film holder when you drop yours in the parking lot. I don't see chemical film dying any time soon, although it will, of course, change in nature. While naïve empiricism is the basis for all human experience (if you stare at it hard enough), it forms a poor basis for prediction of the future. OK, I've done it: I've stuck my head on the block. Keep this email (or go to the LUG archives in December 2007) and see how I did... ;) M. - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html