Can you feel it comin' boys and girls? Can you?

[pesphoto]

Al, you're my hero!!

 

[steverett]

For those disappointed by no VF:

 

[totst]

So... do you really believe that you'll be able to hold onto film when you're faced with a $1000 Voigtlander M-mount R7A with incredible auto-ISO and a dynamic range exceeding film? I'd say no more than 5 years from now... Can you feel it comin'? 😀

Yes ,I believe I will hold on to film when I can get leicas for $200++ on ebay. Why would I want to spend $1000 on a digital that will need an upgrade a few years time? I'll stick with film. It's actually much cheaper where I am.

 

[yanidel]

Jamie, I feel it coming, give it another 12 months. I handled the G10 over the weekend and the controls and build quality surprised me positively (I am still boycotting Canon though as they erased my gallery at some point base on some storage constraint bull....) I also saw the wooden prototype of the future interchangeable lens Micro Olympus and I played a bit with the LX3. And there is the DP1 IQ. Now one manufacturer will eventually mend all the pieces together and come with the small digital rangefinder we are waiting for. It is not here yet but huge progress have been made in a few months

 

[Papercut]

the thing about these "debates" that I find baffling are the small-minded and defensive people who somehow seem to think that the technical choices they make are the only "correct" ones -- people's priorities and needs and preferences are all different and what is essential for one person may be of no importance for another. There is no one right way. Both sides are guilty of this myopia so often that it is nauseating. Why people have to be so petty and nasty to GO OUT OF THEIR WAY to rain on others' parade, I have no idea ... only thing I can come up with is that they must be so riddled with insecurities that they find such differences direly threatening.

Fact is that pretty much any lens, camera, and photographic "process" developed in the last 150 years can be used to make stunning images -- use what you like, get excited about it, be happy for those who find/own gear that THEY find inspiring whether or not their choices are the same as yours, and go make images that please you (and your audience).

 

[kxl]

For color images, I am now all-digital - DSLR, DRF, digi P&S.

For B&W, I prefer the entire experience of using film.

 

[amateriat]

"I simply think the digital camera world has more than a little bit to sort out before someone can shout, "Lads, I've GOT it!""

i'm quite certain the boys and girls responsible for the d700 have shouted it a few times.

I'm certain they have. And, mind you, the D700 is quite an achievement...for a digital SLR. It's the second camera to help put Nikon back in the game (although Sony seems on its way to becoming a FF dSLR superpower). But I'm rather past the SLR thing, for a number of reasons. I'm looking for a rangefinder that puts most, if not all of it together, starting with a working FF sensor (remember, it took Canon a few tries to get their flagship FF dSLR to where it is now). What's out there now isn't doing it for me. Until something does, bring on that Ektar 100!


- Barrett

 

[Jamie Pillers]

Yes... You've said it nicely. There are a lot of interesting "pieces" out there now that, when they all come together, look like they're going to make it possible to build a M-mount DRF that I can afford! 🙂

Then, after they get the ergonomics and price right, I'm REALLY hopeful that the guts of the thing can deliver images that obliterate the NEED for film. Not that I won't want to keep my beloved Nikon, Olympus, and Zeiss cameras around... but it sure would be nice to be able to have the choice not to spend the cash and environmental $$ on the film process. We'll see.

 

[jwhitley]

No, I can't feel it comin'. Maybe you're selling your film cameras, but I sure as hell ain't selling mine.

Ditto, spoken as someone who's been moving into film work from digital. 35mm and 4x5 so far. Funny thing, earlier this year I was passionately hoping for an affordable digital RF body. Currently I'd rather have a Zeiss Ikon or a nice used film Leica M....

 

[Jamie Pillers]

D**n... good point! A nice black MP for $200++? OK, OK... I'll throw a few bricks of Tri-X into the freezer. 🙂

 

[Jamie Pillers]

I agree... I need to move my computer back up onto my old darkroom sink. 🙂

 

[Trius]

Do camera makers really care if their digital cameras create "authentic" B&W? Relatively few people are interested in B&W.

Except those who shoot it and love it. And some buyers/collectors. And museums.

What's your point? Is B&W part of the '08 election?

 

[uinku]

Unfortunately, this does very little for the long-term archival picture. A drive in use, whether current disk drives or flash-based solid-state, will suffer wear that will cause data loss. Any disk stored as an unused archival backup will become unreadable due to no hardware supporting its combination of filesystem storage and electronic interface long before it suffers problems from having moving parts.

Also, we have no idea how good we're going to be at being able to read various data formats (images, documents, music, etc.) in the future. It's frankly a bit of a lottery, because this is a social problem not a technological one. That is, which formats will continue to be decodable in ten, twenty, fifty years? What about five hundred?

Digital is interesting because its lack of a physical body makes it easily destroyed, but also at the same time it is easily replicated around the world, as you've mentioned.

I don't wanna drag this thread too far off-topic, but I see this longevity argument so much, and most of the time it's biased against digital. Backwards-compatibility is not that hard. We're still use the FAT filesystem, and that's ancient. Sure, JPEGs will be archaic in 20 years, but they will not be unreadable. Furthermore, the actual physical media takes up is comparatively so small that many copies can be made and easily transported to other archival shelters.

If anything, think how quickly sextapes spread on the internet and their longevity on all the thousands of hard drives out there...