Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/02/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>Felix - Whether or not one thinks digital is at a point where it is >competitive with film, there is absolutely no way to argue that film is >not a more mature technology than digital - film has been around, and >refined, for how many years, compared to digital's commercial life of, >what, a decade? ;-) > >B. D. > >Film has been around for over 150 years. The digital imaging revolution is >maybe 10 - 15 years old, if you dig deep enough. > > >Feli B.D. and Feli Perhaps things are not so simple. Though it was long time ago, more than forty years, I was learnt in my university about the product maturation under the commercial and technical point of view. Some one gets the idea; let's say he's the inventor. Some years of R&D and the idea has shape and body. There is then three clearly defined phases. The taking off of the product where is growing up to the moment where is adopted for consumers and is part of the "culture". The second one is all the time this product stays being consumed. At a determinate moment, due to the alternative technologies or other circumstances, this product begins to be less and less demanded up to the moment of his technical and commercial death. There are, always, some guys who love, why not, living in the past (I even studied an economist, Schumacher, who thought that coming back to horses and so was the economic panacea) and they like vinyl records, etc. I'm one of them. For me, film photography, was mature when reached the final of "first" growing period and stabilised. This was more or less precisely with the success of Oskar Barnack camera. I doesn't matter, after that, how many years have been this product, film, on top. Now clearly it is in the descending phase though splendid new improvements have been recently produced either in film and in cameras. And, perhaps only in my opinion, digital photography, however it will enormously improve in the next years, has already reached the point where is accepted as a consumer culture object. Has got the final of taking off phase and is here and will stay here among us. Nowadays this process is much quicker than fifty years ago. Under this point of view I firmly believe that digital photography has reached maturity. More or less than film? I don't know how measure maturity...but is mature. Please excuse my rather poor English, especially for this dissertation. Regards Felix - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html