Jorge Torralba said:
You read correctly I am starting a film vs digital war! . I may be the only one out here to say this. But, I think DIGITAL cameras will not necessarily die but eventually the demand will demish and film will prevail. I see this happening in about 10 years!Here is why.
[SNIP]
Thus I say to you. The masses who want their pictures to pass on to the next geneartion will one day realize the consequences of digitizing their memories and say to themselves, I better print on RC and pass on down.
Nonsense!
NOTE: The following rant is firmly tongue-in-cheek and the insults are not intended in anything but good fun. You who know me know I love film, ok?
Film is dead, it just hasn't fallen over yet. I say this as a man who loves film and will be very sad when I can't buy a roll of Tri-X even from an enthusiast's fridge somewhere. That day may not arrive until my own life has been lived - but it will arrive.
Some in this thread compared film to jazz - to infer that both will always be around. Not so. Jazz requires no factories to process chemicals and produce product necessary to the making of jazz. One can simply pick up an instrument and play, or bang two rocks together, or sing scat. Film requires an industry devoted to making the tools necessary to production - ie, film stock.
One *can* of course, sensitize their own materials and process them with coffee and caffeine and so on - this is possible and some whackjobs will even do it. Good on them, but it doesn't make film any less dead. (By the way, I love all you whackjobs - I hope to become one in good time - but y'all ARE crazy, ya know)
Likewise has the time for LP records come and gone. Yes, you can still buy them. Yes, they have some advantages over CD's and DVD's in terms of sound. And there are even some new releases on LP records. But face it, vinyl is just as dead as the dodo. The fact that you can buy an LP does not make it any less dead.
The parallels are scary. Lots of 'nattering nabobs of negativity' who claim that music on CD's is a fad and will pass, and soon we'll all be spinning 45's again. Yeah. And horses are due for a come-back real soon now too. Elvis, preserve me.
The factory that made Ampex magnetic tape closed down a few months ago in the USA (US Impex). That left NO ONE in the US to make magnetic tape. When stockpiles are gone, that's it for tape made here. Some smaller factories are soldiering on with mag tape, but the writing is on the wall. Film WILL go the same way. Game over, boys and girls.
As I said, I love film, and prefer it over digital. But I am willing to face reality. Some seem to live in this dream world where if they complain loudly enough about digital it will go away - ain't happening. If they compare film to digital and point out the flaws in digital, everyone will wake up and recognize that digital is a bad idea - not happening. If they jump up and down and dare anyone to compare a 6mp file from a digital camera to one of their treasured Ansel prints in 11 x 14, that everyone will chuck their digicam on the trashbin and buy a large-format and tramp around on the sides of El Capitan - no way, Jose.
Is film better than digital? Yes. Today. Not tomorrow. Digital just keeps getting better, and the prices keep dropping. And more importantly - the public has chosen. Say what you want about the weekend snapshotters and the hoi polloi with their nasty little digital Vivitars that they bought at Walmart - they spend WAY more than we do in aggregate, and that's what the manufacturers hear - in spades. They get the vote, we don't. It has ever been thus, brothers and sisters in obsolescence. Get this through your thick heads - the PUBLIC HAS CHOSEN. The game is over. We can argue until forever - nothing matters, the decisions have been made. Film is a dead man walking.
As to storing digital files. Well, hate to disagree with anyone with a degree in library sciences, but the stated facts are wrong. You can make any number of digital copies of a digital file without loss of any kind. A bit is a bit - on or off, and it can be checked by checksums and more sophisticated methods to ensure that no errors crept in. Now, if you are talking about moving from one format to another by reading the file in and saving it in another format altogether, that may indeed be the case - just as moving a file from TIF to JPG involves loss. And any further 'save' on the JPG file will lose more data. However, copying it from an aging CD-ROM to a newer format, such as a DVD or whatever comes next, will not incur any loss.
On the contrary - the glass plates Jorge spoke of? I have some too, from the early 1900's. Mine are a bit scratched up and dusty and whatnot, but they look pretty OK for their age. Not as good as they were when they were new, though. They HAVE lost data. And some types of film has a lot less longevity than the old plates - color slides and color negs gone all wonky. Original 'non-Safety' films have turned to mush, and explosive mush at that, in some cases.
Look at Hollywood. The film industry has struggled to save all their old films, rotting inside the cans in film studio vaults. But even the best restoration and transfer job LOSES DATA. However, how much effort will it take to keep their exising DIGITAL films stored safely? Not that much, and it won't decay.
Do CD-ROMS and other digital media have a 'lifespan'? Certainly - what doesn't? And they don't live as long as was once touted, that's for sure. But they do live a long time, and moving them to a newer media as new medias come to pass won't be that difficult - nor will it involve loss of data - as long as 'transcription' to another format does not need to be done. Even then - if the data is important, a software engineer somewhere like me will make darned sure that it reads one bit, and writes one bit - no loss. TIF->JPG transcriptions only lose data because they are designed to do that on purpose - it doesn't have to be that way in the future.
No, folks. I come to praise film
AND to bury it. I can smell the coffee, boys and girls, and it smells all digital and shiny and stuff.
I will keep using film as long as I can reasonably buy a roll of B&W from some former soviet-blok nation that will churn it out for Luddites like me. But when that day comes, I will quietly mourn a good friend gone, put batteries in my new (then) digital SLR, screw on an ancient M42 lens, and go forth boldly into that new digital dawn.
Now, Doctor Bill says take two rolls of Tri-X and call me in the morning.
With Malice Towards None (Even All Y'All Dinosaurs),
Bill Mattocks, CIIU
