[Leica] RD-1 and I

[bladman99 at yahoo.ca (Dan C)]

When I bought my first digicam, a Minolta Dimage 7, the quality it produced
was "good enough" for me to forsake about 80% of my film usage, even though
I could clearly see advantages that my film cameras had.  Now that I have
my first "real" digital camera, a Minolta 7D DSLR, I am amazed at the leap
in quality that the camera can produce over the Dimage 7.   The photographs
it produce no longer have any kind of a "digital look".  I honestly can't
think of an occasion where I would prefer to use film, other than the
occasional time where I may feel nostalgic and take my M6 out for a walk.

Yesterday I tried to describe to someone how I used to make colour prints
in my darkroom, using Fuji FA paper and a hand operated (rolled on a
counter top)  Cibachrome drum processor.  How I would go through the
iterative process of making a print, judging colour balance, fiddling with
the colour filters on my enlarger, making another print, judging it again,
etc., and that if I was lucky and/or good, I would end up with a truthfully
very beautiful colour print that may or may not be superior to a print that
can be popped out of a Canon or Epson or HP printer at a push of a button.

You can't go home again.

-dan c.

At 10:46 AM 09-12-04 -0800, Mark Rabiner wrote:
>Just one thought I have is that what it's looking like to me is that it is
>not the hard core experienced darkroom people who are rejecting digital
>technology; but people just getting into it not to overly informed and with
>romantic ideas of what darkroom produced "silver Prints' are all about.
>
[snip]