[at-l] Cameras part Deux

[jbullar1 at twcny.rr.com (Jim Bullard)]

At 04:20 PM 8/26/2003 -0400, greyowl@rcn.com wrote:
>Lots of interesting discussion.  I am really picky about my
>photographs, so picky that I usually shot in black and white
>because color film will fade in a couple of uears.  I use
>fine grain slow speed black and white film.  I have not seen
>anything beat the pictures from this film.  THe added
>advantage was that I use to have a dark room and it was cheap
>to develop and make prints.  For color pictures I us slow
>speed (ASA 50) slide film and have the film developed as
>slides.  This is still very cheep and I can exam all the
>slides to determine which I want to make into prints.  This
>is expensive (different type of photograph paper is used) but
>since I used to print maybe only one or two pictures from a
>roll of film it was not terribly expensive.

Ah, a B&W traditionalist. Yes, you are a fussy guy. I did that for years. 
Still do actually, though not exclusively. Digital opened up the 
possibility of color for me. Color was always way too expensive and 
required very specialized printing skills to do well. When digital finally 
got good enough to do what I wanted I already had the computer so all I 
needed was the skills which my employer was kind enough to pay for me to get.

>Prints from digital cameras will fade within a year, so if
>you want hard copies you will have to reprint them every
>couple of years.  Of course the reply is that I have the
>digital image so the life time is almost infinity minus one.
>My response is do you remember betamax, VHS (almost dead),
>eight track tape, 10" floppies, paper tapes, IBM cards (OK
>air traffic control computers still use them) and CD's
>(rapidly being replaced by DVD).  In five years you may not
>be able to get the data off of your storage device.  In
>addition I have had audio CD's stop playing after a couple of
>years.

Film dies after a while too. I have some old negatives made by dead 
relatives that are deteriorating. Guess what? The best method for 
restoring/preserving those images is converting them to digital. Will my 
digital files have to be converted to another format at some point in the 
future? Probably, but I think we are too hung up on permanence anyway. I've 
learned to be comfortable with the thought that someday all trace of *ME* 
will disappear from the Earth.


>As Jim would say CYOC (Carry Your Own Camera).  My choice is
>an SLR.

I can't argue with that.

Saunterer