Digital cameras hold value?
"Bob Monaghan" wrote: rafe noted: But Stacey's oft-repeated complaint is irrelevant to those of us who actually use cameras as tools, or to produce income -- as opposed to being collectors... endquote: If I buy a $5k digital camera, But Bob, you don't buy a $5k digital camera unless you have very good reason to: for example, you are a sports photographer. If you have a good reason, you get your money back. If you like having the latest and greatest toy, then you get your money back immediately. No one expects a digital to last 3 years. Except Stacey, that is. The rest of us, who spend $900 to $1500 on a digital body, will shoot enough that we get our money back. and it is worth $29 salvage value after x years, and I buy a $5k film camera, and it is worth $2,000+ after the same X years (maybe more), then the difference in salvage value is pretty significant economically IMHO ;-) Again, the $5,000 camera is a straw man. The big costs in digital currently are the high rate of depreciation of the camera, associated media and support items, computer and related software, and the lost time invested in mastering digital techniques. Other than the camera, those are the same for film for a lot of us. (The media and support items can be used with the next camera.) And mastering digital techniques isn't lost time: much of that is stuff that can't be done in the wet darkroom. There is also evidently a lot of time spent editing out lots of digital shots after the shoot. Time is also money in most activities... I assure you, the time associated with scanning it is a lot worse than editing digital shots. And waiting for the film to come back from processing is a serious irritation. Other than Maniac, getting MF slide film processed is close to a week. With digital, I can look at the shots that night and determine if I want to go back and shoot some more, or what I need to do differently for the next day's shoot. With scanned MF, I have to wait for next year (for things like spring flowers). Most serious amateurs shoot a roll or so a week; even the pros & serious amateur mix at shutterbug shoot only 4 rolls/week, with $11.5K photo gear investment; see http://www.shutterbug.com/images/mediakit/mediakit.pdf The cost of prints for similar numbers/sizes is essentially the same, esp. at labs which scan and print film ;-) If you are shooting 4 rolls a week, you get your $1500 investment back in well under a year. And unless you are shooting Provia/Velvia (or MFg), you are getting better quality from the dSLR. For a handful of high volume shooters, the benefits clearly outweigh the costs. For the majority of modest volume shooters, today's high depreciation of digital photography offsets the losses from paying for film and developing. For a lot of people, $1500 and the ability to shoot as much as you want is better than $350 (for the equiv. film camera) plus worrying about film costs every day. Most people who actually try digital find the freedom from budgetary constraints incredibly liberating. Most of us who continue to use film do so partly as a result of such factors, and because we like using film ;-) There's really very little to like about film, other than one can get better results by using MF or larger. David J. Littleboy Tokyo, Japan |
Digital cameras hold value?
"Stacey" wrote in message
... David J. Littleboy wrote: "Stacey" wrote: Here's an example -maybe- you can comprehend. I figiured out I almost never use 35mm anymore because medformat is "better". So I sold some of my 35mm gear for what I paid for it But you didn't recoup the money you spent on film: your actual cost of using the camera was a lot more than just the cost of the camera. Film cameras have a minimum per-frame cost that you can't get away from. It's really not that much if you don't print every frame. Also keeps the "shoot everything that moves without thinking" mentality at bay. :-) That's the converse of your recent "If I only had a lens" refrain. And why not shoot everything that strikes your fancy? There's no incremental cost associated with digital. If you don't shoot a lot, it's nice that your fixed costs are low. But if you use your cameras heavily, the running costs become significant. .... So your claim here is incorrect economics. You assume that everyone shoots a ton of film. I'm "lucky" to shoot a roll or 2 of 120 on a full day of shooting. He addressed that. Twenty five bucks is twenty five bucks. Pretty soon, you could almost buy a Hassy. It's one thing to buy it a roll at a time, and pay the quickee mart to develop one roll at a time. It amounts to the price of a bad cheeseburger. But stack up the B&H invoices at month's end and it tells a different tale. I spent more on film and chemistry last month than I did on the gigabyte card. I went through 3 generations of consumer digital before I went MF, had lots of fun, relearned a lot of photography I had forgotten over the previous 15 years. Every penny was well spent. And the total costs for all that digital were a lot less than the costs for MF. Depends on what MF you get into. And when you get tired of this MF camera, you can recoup most of the investment. Well! **THAT** depends on what MF you get into, and you almost certainly will not with the Kiev. I fully understand and appreciate the resourcefulness and determination it takes to make a hobby work on a shoestring. I only recently decided that photo deserved a budget of its own, rather than continue to squeak it under the discretionary spending radar. So I do know a thing or two about the financial pressures, and the distortions it can have on your public opinions. Privately, though, how can a thinking person not recognize that digital has reached a usability, affordability, and maturity threshold? Every generation or "smaller format" went through the same thing. This 6 cm crap is tiny compared to the "real" photographs of its era. But it stayed around on its own merits, as will digital. And beyond that, digital has the potential to eventually surpass its predecessors in image quality. That was never possible at any point in the past. Medium format and smaller was always a compromise. All that aside, I now have to confess to shooting a lot more film lately than I did digital. Before you ask why, when digital is all that and more, I'll explain. Twenty square inches; 200 megapixels if you care to scan; dorm-room poster size at a very reasonable 8x enlargement. No mere Hassy or Kiev will ever hold a candle to that. And if you really want to know where the cheap, first quality German glass is, you'll find it in used large format department. The huge irony is that it's very definitely a buyer's market. This "recoup your investment" thing isn't washing there. You are stubborn. |
Digital cameras hold value?
"Gregory W Blank" wrote in message ... In article , "David J. Littleboy" wrote: the running costs become significant. Unless your being paid. Yes. Some photographers used to be able to overcharge their clients for film and processing (or get a discount from the labs or both), and can't gouge the cusomers like that any more. David J. Littleboy Tokyo, Japan |
Digital cameras hold value?
hmmm? ;-) quoting Mike: I'll explain. Twenty square inches; 200 megapixels if you care to scan; dorm-room poster size at a very reasonable 8x enlargement. No mere Hassy or Kiev will ever hold a candle to that. endquote: 4x5" = 200 MP; 200 MP/20 sq. inches = 10 MP per sq. inch. That's 50 MP for 6x6cm. Looks to me like digital has a looong way to go from 6-8MP to 50 MP equiv of MF? And of course, both film and scanners can improve again! Your faith in the future extension of this technology is ill-founded. I just digital video'd a talk last Monday by Dr. Robert Dennard of IBM, National Inventor Hall of Fame etc. on our campus, the guy who invented the single transistor DRAM memory now in virtually every computer and major digital product. His talk was about how we are running out of capability using silicon to sustain future improvements (cf Moore's law, and Dennard's law of scalability). When the guy who invented the laws of IC scalability says its broken, you can't say Moore's law will hold forever ;-) Yes, maybe we will get molecular computers working in alternate dimensions, but right now, we are basically pushing the limits of silicon now. In fact, Intel/IBM just adopted strained silicon designs to try and eke another 10-20% faster chips - why? because they can't get similar benefits from scalability as in the past ;-) We are at the limits of silicon now, or will be in the next cycle or two. Get used to it ;-) Then again, the guy who helped developed the CMOS process and Foveon's chips, Carter Mead, has made it clear that it is unlikely that silicon based sensors will get much denser than their 16MP chip (on 22x22mm die), due to purely physical limits in feature sizes and ability to make them. So don't expect to see silicon sensors which equal molecular silver's density anytime soon - or ever ;-) What you will see is sensors getting bigger, and lower noise/better, as mfgers realize that a modest density sensor (way below film's limits) produces "good enough" photos for most users ;-) But the cost of larger sensors, relatively defect free, goes up geometrically too, so don't expect any $1k cameras with 4x5" sensors anytime soon either ;-) Finally, my own analysis based on published scientific analyses by Harris of MF vs. LF and 35mm showed that 35mm could be enlarged up to 14X, MF by up to 12X, and LF only by 9.2X - and this was for symmar S 210mm at f/22 with Techpan, which achieved 44, 42, 34 lpmm with various contrast targets, and 37 lpmm in corners (high contrast). The hassy 80mm at f/8 hit 72, 72, and 45 lpmm on axis for same targets, and at f/16 hit 45 lpmm with techpan (see http://medfmt.8k.com/mf/mfbest.html). Which is all to say that LF delivered only 45% of the benefits we would expect from going to the larger format by geometry calculations alone. But you already know this, yes? That's why you picked an 8X enlargement factor, i.e., reasonable by harris' analysis (his optimal was 9.2X for LF). Using his 12X for MF and hassy lens at f/16 with TP, and we get circa 27x27" enlargement, or a 27"x33" for a 6x7cm camera. Using 4x5" at 8X per your posting, we get 32x40" or 30x40", or a bit more at a limiting 9.2X. But either way, these modest differences don't seem to justify dismissing MF against 4x5" even at poster sizes. And of course, lots of MF shots have been blown up successfully to poster sizes ;-) regards bobm -- ************************************************** ********************* * Robert Monaghan POB 752182 Southern Methodist Univ. Dallas Tx 75275 * ********************Standard Disclaimers Apply************************* |
Digital cameras hold value?
first, to David, I don't still use my photoshop 2.0 for the mac, or even 3.01 ;-) Nor can I use my old video tape formats in my new Mini-DV digital video camera. So I am starting to see serious costs for more tapes every week, stacks of DVDs, and thank goodness the campus is supplying the G5 Mac and 500 gig drive and movie/dvd/cd/editing software ;-) But I use a much less capable PC and Mac at home, as I don't need much for papers and projects. In other words, the media and software costs go with each new generation of gear, and the upgrade needs are sparked by the digital rather than needs for 500 gigs for running MS office or AOL software ;-) for rafe, quoting: But with digital capture there's no longer a one-to-one assocation between frames captured and prints made. And images can be enjoyed and shared without being printed. endquote: I generally shoot slides, which I project at sizes impractical to blow up prints too on a student budget ;-) Most of my 35mm print film is for projects, and I send batches of 100 or so rolls at a time for developing, then pick the ones I want printed locally to 8x10". I dispute the idea that if you shoot a lot more in a given timeframe, you get more keepers. My own observations, and cf. Roger Hicks in MF and LF handbook, is that the ratio of good shots is pretty similar. With film, we just don't click until we have a better chance of a good shot ;-) With digital, you can click a lot more up to card/drive limits, but then you still have to sort them out. My suspicion is that you don't get significantly more great shots in a given day of shooting, mainly because I think we are limited more by our vision than by how fast we can shoot. ;-) grins bobm -- ************************************************** ********************* * Robert Monaghan POB 752182 Southern Methodist Univ. Dallas Tx 75275 * ********************Standard Disclaimers Apply************************* |
Digital cameras hold value?
"Bob Monaghan" wrote in message
... Your faith in the future extension of this technology is ill-founded. I .... and Dennard's law of scalability). When the guy who invented the laws of IC scalability says its broken, you can't say Moore's law will hold Is that a problem in the space we're discussing? The reason to bring up LF is an interest in image quality. Higher manufacturing yields on larger, same pixel size sensors would serve that end. Smaller sensors, where scalability would indeed become an issue, drags it into the circus of cellphones and gimmickry. That will have to take place in a different conversation. Also, image sensors are analog conversion devices, limited more by the physical properties measured, than strictly by circuit density. I would say that Dr. Dennard's contribution in this context, while interesting and I thank you for that, is more noise than it is signal. Finally, my own analysis based on published scientific analyses by Harris of MF vs. LF and 35mm showed that 35mm could be enlarged up to 14X, MF by up to 12X, and LF only by 9.2X - and this was for symmar S 210mm at f/22 with Techpan, which achieved 44, 42, 34 lpmm with various contrast targets, and 37 lpmm in corners (high contrast). The hassy 80mm at f/8 hit 72, 72, and 45 lpmm on axis for same targets, and at f/16 hit 45 lpmm with techpan (see http://medfmt.8k.com/mf/mfbest.html). Which is all to say that LF delivered only 45% of the benefits we would expect from going to the larger format by geometry calculations alone. But you already know this, yes? That's why you picked an 8X enlargement Not previously; thanks for the info. Tonality is also important, something your TechPan tests can't measure, but is immediately apparent on even a passing glance. Numbers don't necessarily lie, Bob, but they often fail by not being able to tell the whole story. But either way, these modest differences don't seem to justify dismissing MF against 4x5" even at poster sizes. And of course, lots of MF shots have been blown up successfully to poster sizes ;-) And the differences, even if modest in measurement, are real and easily perceptible. Being not as bad off as a direct area comparison might indicate is not in any measure a validation of equality. It's good for a smile, though; nice try. :-) But you're right overall. MF as a technology is being squeezed on both ends, an uneviable position. I often think that MF is much more at risk than 35mm. Bad for the seller; great for me, the buyer, which was the point of an earlier post. Once more, digital works for me personally on all levels. |
Digital cameras hold value?
Chips are small because of manufacturing considerations: you can fit more chips on a sheet. More chips, lower cost of manufacture, and then the market level price effects add in. Conventional image sensing chips cannot be made smaller. They must be larger in order to capture more data. It works BACKWARDS - against the principles that make chips cheaper. However, true 24x36mm chips have arrived. Let's see how cheap they get in, say, two years. At that point the market demand will have kicked in. Then wait for someone to 'stitch' four together to get a Medium Format, wait another few years... and by that time I'll be retired, shooting 8X10. Triva point: Miniaturizing was originally done to "lower shipping expenses". I am quoting the father of the microcircuit, Bob Noyce, founder of Intel, now deceased. No kidding. That's what he said in the very early days. He would probably chuckle knowing he's still qutoed. (Bob was a local boy where I lived and was later he was on the board of directors where I worked. A great fellow.) |
Digital cameras hold value?
"Stacey" wrote in message
... But you aren't including the costs to print the digital images or don't you ever print any? Framing and lab costs for prints come from "her" decorating budget. :-) But I do see how you might equate the two. I print the small ones on a 13" printer. I'm still hemming and hawing about finding a lab for the really big ones. I went so far as to print one in strips, intending to trim and mount them as one image. I couldn't get myself to cut them, so I framed them individually as a triplet. They look pretty good that, as though I intended it all along. Privately, though, how can a thinking person not recognize that digital has reached a usability, affordability, and maturity threshold? Why resort to insults? I never said "How could anyone with a brain... -not I didn't intend that as such. It was my foregone conclusion that everyone already conceded that as a given. We can go another round, then, where I try to make it obvious. agree with my POV-?" type of thing. I expect that from Rafe. BG You honestly think digital has reached it's maturity threshold?? They haven't come to any standard for sensor size, still are using single chip sensors and haven't come up with a sensor large enough to get a real wide angle POV with yet. Maturity as a standardized, inter-exchangable component system? I don't think that will ever happen. Nikon lenses don't fit my Canon bodies, for example, and I have no expectation they ever will. Multiple chip sensors make sense for video because of the fixed resolution, standard viewing device. Without that constraint, a single sensor can do just as well. I did hear of one upcoming sensor that uses two pixels for every dot location. The extra pixel is for dynamic range, not color as in the Foveon's three. Both multi-pixel dot solutions avoid the problems of critical alignment. Not sure what you mean by sensor size and wide angle. Full frame 35mm sensors have been around for a couple of years, a full generation. I'm expecting this to come down to a consumer price point in a few years, essentially killing off 35mm film, but leveraging the lens investment. In any case, I was referring to a certain level of usefulness that would be of lasting value, making obsolescense less of a concern. For me, that's image quality equal to 35mm printed 8x10. 6 MP dSLRs are there already. And yes to your question earlier, I'm comparing to scanned film on inkjet. My inkjet prints better than Costco's Fuji, both color and especially B&W. I have yet to compare to a "real" pro lab. as will digital. And beyond that, digital has the potential to eventually surpass its predecessors in image quality. Sure it does, it's not there yet. And again you assume film is going to stand still. My guess in a few years we'll see 800asa film that looks like todays 100. Do you think? TMX is a good twenty years old, and I understand that they shut down emulsion and chemistry research in Rochester some years ago. That could have been B&W only... Other indicators are that movie distribution is on the verge of going digital. I do hope you're right, even though I'm pretty satisfied with the current state of the art. Is a three stop advantage enough to make the difference for handholdable? I'm thinking in particular of one handheld that could have been great, but was shot at f/5.6 for 1/30. It really needed to be f/16 for 1/125; a five stop difference, or 3200asa. I keep a small version of the blurry scan as a reminder that there's little point without the tripod. That was never possible at any point in the past. Sure it was. By the 1950's a good med format camera with "modern" film at the time was as good as a large format camera was 10-15 years earlier. OK. But it never could have compared to, let alone surpassed, its contemporary in the larger format. Emulsion technology is transferable to the older format, as you pointed out. Nope but shooting 4X5 is a totally different thing than medformat/35mm/digital and always will be. BTW I've been shooting some Eighty square inch film lately. :-) :-) |
Digital cameras hold value?
MikeWhy writes:
Multiple chip sensors make sense for video because of the fixed resolution, standard viewing device. Multiple-chip sensors make just as much sense for still photography as they do for video, if not more. Without that constraint, a single sensor can do just as well. That's what people used to say in video, too, until three-CCD consumer cameras became available. It's a matter of pretending that whatever you can get is the best possible, sort of like sour grapes. I'm expecting this to come down to a consumer price point in a few years, essentially killing off 35mm film, but leveraging the lens investment. They'll have to provide better images than film at a lower price in order to kill of 35mm, and I don't think that will happen any time soon. TMX is a good twenty years old, and I understand that they shut down emulsion and chemistry research in Rochester some years ago. Since they've come out with new films recently, one wonders where the research is being done. -- Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly. |
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