One reason for the probable survival of film

Ezzie said:
Quite right. Take VHS, it got the better of Betamax, but which was better?
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Video2000 was!

Manufacturer Philips was years ahead of the market when they launched the Video2000 system. The asian giants were still considering entering the home video market and which format to choose as their weapon, as the market for Video2000 started to collapse, it had gotten saturated. The darn things were just so good, they never broke down and Philips saw their sales drop. I had a Video2000 recorder in 1998, it was 16 years old by then and still utterly reliable. Supported double-sided four hour tapes, I used to record rock concerts from German TV during the night.

In journalism school we used U-matic, which was also a system as tough as a brick (and the tapes resembled them).

Betamax and VHS were the true consumer quality gear, that had the perfect lifespan for the consumer to buy a new one without grumping and kept those plants in business. VHS was best at that and won.
 
Comparison between film/digital and beta/vhs are not valid. Beta and VHS gave identical results, quality notwithstanding. Film and digital are different media, and have similar but not quantitatively identical results. As of now, the technology to reproduce prints using a completely digital workflow that are identical to photographic prints made with film/darkroom does not exist.
 
bmattock said:
Show me the surviving betamax manufacturing plant.
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Betacam still exists.

Dinosaurs are extinct; birds are all around us.

Fuji and Kodak films, facilitating scanning, have been released quite recently, and can be had cheaper on-line than color film in the stores ever before. In parallel new film manufacturers have been emerging (Ilford, Rollei Retro) in a different form.

The world evolves. Little really is black and white unless you are looking for an argument.

Roland.
 
batterytypehah! said:
Payasam is talking about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field#DOF_vs._format_size

It's a head-scratcher for me, too, but a fact.
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From that page: "To maintain the same field of view, the lens focal lengths must be in proportion to the format sizes. Assuming, for purposes of comparison, that the 4×5 format is four times the size of 35 mm format, if a 4×5 camera used a 300 mm lens, a 35 mm camera would need a 75 mm lens for the same field of view. For the same f-number, the image made with the 35 mm camera would have four times the DOF of the image made with the 4×5 camera."

Now c'mon mr. writer, 4x5 isn't 4 times bigger than 35mm. We can do better than that.

So, if 35mm were considered 1.00, how much would 6x9 be? and 4x5"? and the Micro 4/3 sensor?

It's probably dead simple calculating these ratios, but I'm such a dumbass when it comes to calculations like these...

I'd just like to know what the focal length equivalents of 28, 35, 50 and 90 are on a 6x9 camera...
 
Where does it say in that in that article that depth of filed can't be controlled if you use digital capture media. I understand that there may be certain limitations on the range of depth of field relative to film based on the sensor format, but DOF is still controllable. To suggest that you can't control DOF with a digital camera is just wrong. Do I need to post pictures taken with my D700 at f/22 and f/1.4 to illustrate this point??
 
Why do discussions so quickly veer off the original topic. DOF is a completely different subject than Betamax.

You can get limited DOF with a P&S, you just need to be really close. I wouldn't call the bokeh pleasing though.

L1000114s.jpg
 
keithdunlop said:
I'm still scratching my head about this. I use a D700 for my wedding and personal work, and have used an M8 as well. Using digital sensing as a recording medium hasn't prohibited my ability to control depth of field in my pictures.
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For the typical consumer using a digital P&S, the depth of field is huge when compared to a film P&S.

EDIT: fixed a typo as pointed out by payasam
 
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I spoke of "at least a few photographers". It seems that I must amplify. I do not mean the millions of "consumer camera" buyers who do not know what is depth of field, and certainly I do not mean those who want everything on their film to be pin sharp, for whom infinite depth of field is the ideal.

I'll add that there are many serious photographers, good photographers, who have nothing to do with "the hallowed halls of photo enthusiast web sites" because they know that being members of such web sites is not necessary to good photography, nor a guarantee of good photography except in the imagination.

Keith, of course depth of field can be controlled with most cameras and most lenses. It's just that with sensors smaller than 36 x 24 mm, there is inherently greater depth of field and, consequently, only a smaller degree of control is possible. I shall not speak of sensor sizes larger than "full frame", of which I have no experience: although the arithmetic is simple enough.

Antiquark, would you like to stand on its head what you said?
 
The masses are led by "Marketing"

The masses are led by "Marketing"

bmattock said:
Betamax was better than VHS. VHS won the battle. In the end, both lost to DVD, but Beta died first. There were lots of reasons Betamax did not become the dominant format, but the fact that it was better wasn't a factor in consumer demand. It never is.
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Mass Marketing will always win the battle over technology. Consumers don't want to be educated on the technology. They want to be told what to buy, and are always impressed first by the perception created through well designed (not necessarily correct) marketing campaigns.

Beta WAS better. VHS won the marketing battle. Consumer demand is dictated by marketing.

Another poster commented that eventually all Point and Shoots would be full frame. NEVER GONNA HAPPEN.

Through marketing, manufacturers are doing a wonderful job of convincing consumers that the IQ of tiny inexpensive sensors equals that of large sensor camera's. Have any of you looked a the image out of a Canon G11, compared to any of the APS-C sensor cameras, and some full frame cameras, either on screen or printed at 4X6.

I'm inclined to think that the broad mass of "consumers" will be side tracked by discussions of full frame, mid frame and tiny sensors, since those discussions only take place on forums like these. These forums constitute a tiny fraction of the camera buying market and I doubt have any sway with what camera manufacturers ultimately decide to bring to market.

Also, regarding those Mass Consumers and what they know (or don't), I thoroughly enjoy walking up to anyone with a Point and Shoot digital and asking them how they like the bokeh on their camera?
 
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bmattock said:
As I've stated before, just because technology A is better than technology B, that is no reason, or even indicator, that A will survive once B comes on the scene. It's not about which is better, it's about which the common consumer will purchase. I love film and it is better than digital. That fact does not make the slightest bit of difference.
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I am not completely disagreeing with your point BUT just because technology B becomes the consumer favorite does not mean technology A will disappear. As a silly example, just because ballpoint pens were invented didn't mean that pencils disappeared. Volumes, market share, etc. may be impacted but one doesn't have to preclude the other.
 
Ezzie said:
Quite right. Take VHS, it got the better of Betamax, but which was better?
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Bad comparison. Both Betamax and VHS (and European competitor Video2000 thrown in) were much worse than TV, and TV reception quality was not good for the majority back then. Video did not make it for the image and audio quality, but for the alternate content it offered over TV stations: Porn. Sony and Grundig supposedly made the capital error of refusing to license their systems to porn distributors until it was too late to catch up.

FWIW, porn may also have speeded the demise of film on the mass market - the ability to take naughty pics of your spouse without having to face the lab person at Walmart when you pick up the prints must have been a deciding factor for at least some digital camera purchases.
 
Shoot with a 25mm lens at f/1.4 and you'll get the same DOF as at f/2.8 with a 50mm lens. The 25mm f/1.4 has the same clear apperture as the 50mm f/2.8 so the same size front element and probably similar cost. There's nothing difficult technically about it. The only reason the Olympus lens is f/2.8 not f/1.4 is to reduce manufacturing costs because they figure the average consumer doesn't know or care about DOF.
 
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this is wrong

this is wrong

ok, so back to this DOF thing :p

Well, you actually get the same DOF with a smaller than 35 FF, if you know what you're doing, and know what lenses to use.

Leica says the DOF scales on their old film lenses are equivalent on the M8, and again, if you know what you are doing, you will get that equivalent shallow DOF. Even on an RD1 (APS).

Not sure about u4/3, but that format is a novel one, and will likely be gone by this time next year. Not extinct, but like BetaMax or U-Matic, not mainstream.

People ask me all the time for recommendations for wedding photogs. I would never tell them to seek out a film or digital medium only photographer, but I do tell them to ensure the photographer doesn't crop, and doesn't use photoshop, and will allow them access to all of the negatives and/or original digital files, so they can print what they like at Costco.

Everyone has always been happy bypassing the trendy photo-nerd croppers, and they get their shallow DOF as needed.


payasam said:
I spoke of "at least a few photographers". It seems that I must amplify. I do not mean the millions of "consumer camera" buyers who do not know what is depth of field, and certainly I do not mean those who want everything on their film to be pin sharp, for whom infinite depth of field is the ideal.

I'll add that there are many serious photographers, good photographers, who have nothing to do with "the hallowed halls of photo enthusiast web sites" because they know that being members of such web sites is not necessary to good photography, nor a guarantee of good photography except in the imagination.

Keith, of course depth of field can be controlled with most cameras and most lenses. It's just that with sensors smaller than 36 x 24 mm, there is inherently greater depth of field and, consequently, only a smaller degree of control is possible. I shall not speak of sensor sizes larger than "full frame", of which I have no experience: although the arithmetic is simple enough.

Antiquark, would you like to stand on its head what you said?
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Don't confuse consumer Beta (I,II,III record speeds) and the "Betacam" formats; they weren't (and aren't) the same thing. Betacam (and digital Betacam) are still around; but it's not consumer Beta.

I have a diploma in some drawer for having completed Sony's consumer Beta repair course, back in the 1980s, so I have some fondness for the format. But VHS has better tape path handling, and because the upper head drum in Beta machines didn't rotate, they would eventually wear down due to tape friction, become too smooth, and eat the tape due to "sticktion" (loss of the boundary air layer between tape and head drum), which could be alleviated by either burnishing the upper head drum with emory cloth, or replacing it. VHS didn't have this problem, but its signal wasn't as wide of a bandwidth. Also, Beta-HiFi, which came out prior to VHS-HiFi, was a superior audio format. The later 8mm/Hi8 video formats used much of the learnings from Beta; these were actually a great consumer tape format, too bad it didn't take off for other than camcorder usage.

End of luddite rant.

~Joe
 
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