Digital cameras hold value?

Bob Monaghan writes:

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:

Obviously he has never used the fabulous 1Ds with Genuine Fractals.

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MikeWhy writes:

Also, image sensors are analog conversion devices, limited more by the
physical properties measured, than strictly by circuit density.

Yes, and this is often overlooked.

Computers use microelectronic circuits, but they need only be on or off.
It's not that difficult to design extremely small circuits that still
manage to distinguish clearly between on and off. However, designing
circuits that can accurately produce analog signal levels at very tiny
sizes is considerably more challenging.

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.

I don't see this at all. MF is a nice intermediate format. Unless
someone can develop 80-megapixel digital sensors in 35mm, or LF lenses
that open to f/2.8, MF will continue to have its place.

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David J. Littleboy writes:

And mastering digital techniques isn't lost time: much of
that is stuff that can't be done in the wet darkroom.

There aren't any "digital" techniques that require a digital camera.
Most of the digital stuff replaces the darkroom and exists for both film
and digital capture.

I assure you, the time associated with scanning it is a lot worse than
editing digital shots.

The results are a lot prettier, too.

Other than Maniac, getting MF slide film processed is close
to a week.

I'm sure there are other big cities where you can get MF developed the
same day, or even within an hour. Many minilabs handle both 35mm and MF
film, so it's just a matter of the lab's policies.

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.

For a lot of people, $1500 up front is too much, no matter what the
continuing costs might be.

There's really very little to like about film, other than one can get better
results by using MF or larger.

Or even by using 35mm.

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Bob Monaghan writes:

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.

I agree.

One thing I find is that many shots that aren't worth the 30 cents in
film required to shoot them also are not worth keeping even if they are
shot digitally. In other words, as a general rule, any real keeper is
worth considerably more than its cost in film and development, so
whether you shoot keepers digitally or on film is irrelevant. And since
the number of keepers doesn't change much no matter how much you shoot
(at least in my case), then shooting digitally doesn't help.

The only time digital helps to produce more keepers is if you don't
really know what you are doing and/or you depend a lot on random chance
to produce good shots. Then you can shoot thousands of pictures for
almost nothing with a digital camera and, sure enough, there will
probably be a handful of good ones among them.

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Raphael Bustin writes:

With digital capture the cost-per-capture is near
zero, so now the "average" shooter can work with
the same freedom and impunity as a Nat Geo staffer
on location -- click like crazy, sort it out later.

Only if he has a Nat Geo staff behind him, to do the sorting.

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Is this really meant as a rebuttal of Stacey's question about holding
value?

No, it wasn't. I originally suggested that one reason for the great decrease
in value was the fact that it wasn't a functioning camera, it was being sold
as a display piece. Stacey said I was wrong, I quoted the portions of the
sales pitch that showed she was wrong. She then changed the subject to
something about "it would be repaired if it was worth anything." So no, I
was just suggesting one reason why the camera wasn't selling.

* That same trend of devaluation can be seen with just about every digital
camera, but not with every film camera, which I think is Stacey's point.

I agree that digital cameras in general depreciate faster than film cameras
in general. That's true of almost any emerging technology. Part of the
reason film cameras don't go down in value as quickly is that there haven't
been any real improvements in a long time, depending of course on what one
considers to be a "real improvement."A film camera bought today is little
different in any meaningful way than a film camera bought fifteen or more
years ago (or a century ago in the case of large format cameras) so
naturally in the absence of any real improvements there is less reason to
buy a new camera and old ones hold their value. Digital photography, OTOH,
is constantly improving so the older ones go down in value.

But I don't buy photography equipment for its investment value and I don't
really care what any of my cameras would sell for today, I use them, they
serve the purpose for which I bought them, and I have no plans to sell them.
When I want to see what my investments are worth I look at the Wall Street
Journal. When I want to see what my photography equipment is worth I use it.

You and Stacey don't seem to understand that there is a fundamental
difference between stocks, bonds, and other similar investment properties
on the one hand, and photography equipment on the other. Investment property
has value only to the extent of its potential selling price. Photography
equipment has value completely apart from its potential selling price and
what it can be sold for has nothing to do with why it's bought (except
perhaps to a camera collector).

If you and Stacey wish to judge the value of your photography equipment by
what it can be sold for then I'd suggest you would do better buying another
type of asset, almost no photography equipment sells even for it's original
cost when inflation is taken into account. The fact that you can sell today
for $200 a film camera you bought for $200 twenty years ago doesn't mean
it's held it's value. In fact it's gone way down in value since $200 today
is about the equivalent of $100 or less twenty years ago. Had you invested
$200 even in a passbook savings account twenty years ago you would have had
about $400-$500 today, so the camera was a horrible investment. That
apparently bothers you and Stacey but it wouldn't bother me at all as long
as the camera was still useful.


"Neil Gould" wrote in message
hlink.net...
Recently, BCampbell posted:

Oh I didn't question that it was worth nothing, I just said part of
the reason was the fact that it wasn't a functioning camera. And who
knows, thirty or forty or a hundred years from now it might be worth
a lot.

Is this really meant as a rebuttal of Stacey's question about holding
value? If so, I see a few problems with that idea.

* There is no way to predict what might become "collectible" in the
future. It's equally possible that Cocoa Puff boxes will be as valuable a
hundred years from now.

* Potential collectible value is likely not a factor of the functional
usefulness of this camera.

* The devaluation from $5k to $29 *is* a reflection of the functional
usefulness of this camera.

* That same trend of devaluation can be seen with just about every digital
camera, but not with every film camera, which I think is Stacey's point.

Neil

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
Bob Monaghan writes:

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:

Obviously he has never used the fabulous 1Ds with Genuine Fractals.

That would be like scanning film. ;-) Bloating the image without adding
information.

In article ,
"David J. Littleboy" wrote:

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

That statement makes you sound like a Bozo.
--
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"Gregory W Blank" wrote:
"David J. Littleboy" wrote:

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

That statement makes you sound like a Bozo.

Hmm. It's an issue I've heard photographers* complaining about on photo.net,
so it's real issue. That I see that as gouging the client doesn't seem at
all unreasonable.

*: Well, at least one. And he was seriously bent out of shape that this
major source of income was gone with digital.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:

Computers use microelectronic circuits, but they need only be on or off.
It's not that difficult to design extremely small circuits that still
manage to distinguish clearly between on and off. However, designing
circuits that can accurately produce analog signal levels at very tiny
sizes is considerably more challenging.

Incorrect. They 'detect' differences in voltage, and not zero voltage.