I'm taking a bit of a contrarian view to most in this thread. It may or may not be true regarding the quality of a Kodachrome slide versus digital. Certainly the Kodachrome is better than your typical point and shoot, but with a serious digicam I'd imagine you can come close. Display technology is what really needs to catch up. We really need monitors with resolutions high enough to directly display, say, a 12 MP image. And not just for photography buffs. Such a monitor would be great in that electronic documents would appear as they do when printed. But so far these monitors are nowhere to be found at any price approaching reasonable.
One big advantage of digital being overlooked here is how accessible it's made photography. I know I never had much interest in taking pictures because it was expensive, you couldn't see the result for a week or more, and you were pretty limited in regards to number of exposures. I've probably taken under 1000 pictures in the ~20 years prior to digital, and literally tens of thousands in the 6 or 7 years after. The great thing about digital is that your prmary investment is the camera and memory card. Once those things are purchased, the pictures are essentially "free" if you use rechargeables. I still don't have a serious camera (I just borrow my mom's 2 MP point and shoot), but for most of my current needs it's just fine.
With digital you can still be creative, but it's in the post "processing" with an image editor of some sort. Granted, I agree on the annoyance of not being able to get the camera to do what I like, particularly if I want to get a decent beamshot. But I suspect this is more a limitation of the 6 year old, not so expensive camera I'm using than of digital photography. A decent camera would allow more control but for now I don't have money to invest in one.
I also take issue with the whole idea that storing digital photos isn't permanent. If your only copy of your pictures is on your hard drive then you're asking for trouble. Any data you want to keep should be stored on multiple media in multiple locations. My pictures are on hard drives in two pcs, on a dvd, and also on a usb flash drive. Because storage technologies change radically every few years, chances are good the pictures will be recopied to a new type of media long before a dvd degrades or a hard drive fails. I've already done that with documents I originally had stored on floppies. It doesn't matter if the original floppy is no longer readable. The documents were already put on CDs, then DVDs, hard drives, and in some cases my USB drive. So long as you keep multiple copies on different types of media, you will have your digital pictures long after your Kodachrome has faded.
chmsam said:
I'll sum up my reaction for people who might not understand. Imagine having to ride in computer operated vehicles and driving yourself not being allowed. Then walking into a museum and seeing a Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa or a 250LM that just sits there behind velvet ropes (Google those if you don't know what they are - and then imagine having to "drive" by sitting in some computer controlled cube). That's what I think of most digital cameras. The things do too much for you and make it hard to think for yourself.
On some occasions I do tend to agree that digicams do a bit too much, and that their automatic settings aren't always optimal for what you're trying to do. All digicams, even point and shoot,
should have an "expert" mode where you can control everything. I'm not sure the analogy with cars is a good one though. People take pictures all of the time but most people will never be in a situation to drive a high-performance sports car as it was meant to be driven unless they go to a track. Between traffic and speed limits you just can't do so on public roads. And I'm sure you'll still be able to drive cars yourself on closed courses in an age when driving yourself is no longer an option on public streets. But regardless, the fact is most people couldn't care less about doing the type of driving you might do in a Ferrari, probably couldn't physically do it even if they wanted to. Instead, they want to get from point A to point B with a minimum of fuss and drama. For them, not having the option to drive themselves is a good thing, not a bad one. Creativity in photography, whether digital or film, is a good thing. Not so with driving a car on public roads. That's one place we *don't* want any individuality at all, or any variation for that matter. But we'll only get that with complete automation. Ironically, one of the reasons I've never wanted a car is exactly the need to drive it yourself. Some of us just don't want control in areas of our life which are better handled by automation. If all cars were driven by computer, I know I have a better chance of getting to my final destination in one piece, not worrying if the drivers in the cars around me are distracted talking on their phones, high on crack, too old to react quickly, whatever. And having taken human reaction times out of the equation, I can probably get there at higher legal speeds as well. Then there's the freedom to do something besides the more or less monotonous task of piloting a vehicle at the tediously slow legal speeds necessary to cater to the least common denominator of human driver.
I guess my point is that digicams allow me to just capture a picture instantly without tinkering with the nuts and bolts of exposing film. I can be spur of the moment without worrying about things going terrible wrong as they might with film. I may not get things optimal, but better to get a slightly suboptimal image of a fleeting event than a frame of blurry or badly exposed film for want of not having time to get my settings right. Moreover, I can see right then and there if I've got it right, not have to wait a few days or a week. Also, perhaps not having control over every technical aspect of picture taking actually allows one to be more creative in some ways by focusing more on the scene at hand than the mechanics of the camera.
In some ways, all this is analogous to the adoption of the GUI over the command line. True that sometimes using a command line allows you to do very precise things while a GUI can only do whatever the programmer wants it to. But what you lose in control with the GUI you gain in productivity. You point a mouse and click to do complex tasks formerly requiring many command lines. In rare cases perhaps you can't do exactly what you want, but everything has its price. I doubt anyone would suggest we go back to command lines at this point. It's getting close to that with digicams. The compromises just get fewer and fewer, making film less and less compelling.
I'm surprised Kodachrome lasted as long as it did. Moreover, I'm even more surprised film is still around. I'm guessing the biggest market are those who aren't computer literate and don't wish to become so (probably mostly the over 60 crowd). And also perhaps those who have a large investment in "analog" equipment. I'd really be surprised if film in any form is still around 20 years from now, maybe even 10 years from now. Digital has gotten so close to the better films even most professionals have switched.
One thing I'm curious about though. How come nobody has made the equivalent of digital film? I'm taking about something which could fit in a, say, a 35 mm camera, contains a sensor, flash memory, advances to the next picture with the film advance lever, exposes similar to film, etc. It would take the place of film, allowing one to continue to use any film cameras they're in love with but with the advantages of digital. There has to be a market for something like this, especially among those with thousands of dollars invested in film-based equipment.
:laughing:
