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Digital photography has not killed film - it has just provided a more universal method of capturing images. The vast majority of digital images are just "snapshots" - pieces of someones vision of life that get looked at and passed over quickly.
What we are seeing is the second bloom of SLR's. I remember that in the 70's SLR prices went down and every tourist got one. SLR's were tourist jewlery and Kodak/Fuji were making money hand over fist. With automation, anyone could take pictures with good glass, in focus and relatively well exposed. During the 80's the P&S came to the front. The 35mm auto everything that would fit in your pocket, go out in the rain, became disposable and so simple even your 10 year old could use it. These cameras became the auto-fied box cameras of the age.
In the 90's digital came out - and they were very-very expensive. DSLR's came out and the photojounalists, sport photographers and general news photographers jumped at the oportunity of getting images sent electronically back to their newspapers, magazines and other news outlets in nearly real time. This is something that news people have always wanted. The arts people started to notice when the digital image software got to the point where you did not have to deal with darkrooms as much. It was post processing that gave digital the big push.
Now we live in a world where people expect to see the image as soon as it is taken. DSLR manufactures are painting themselves into the same corner they did with film SLR's in the late 70's. High quality and cheap, soon everyone will have them and no one will be want the next best thing, because they can not justify the cost of getting a new camera for nothing more that 2 more megapixels or 2 more fps.
I still love film, still shoot film (once in a great while) and I understand that film does not require a computer to look at the images. I love slides, all you need is an eyeball, the same goes for prints. How many of us really print our digital images? Not that many I bet. If I could get a good cheap 4x5 digital back - I would, so for now I will be shooting film with the 4x5. Digital is fragile - no computer, no images. Change your software, no images due to no backward compatability - same goes for OS, hardware etc. Lose a hard drive - say good bye to your images forever. Wait 10 years and try to read your "archived" images - good luck in finding a device that can read your old format files or even find a plug to put your USB version 2.0 drive in, my bet is that the interface will just disappear.
I will still be able to pick up a slide and look at it with my eyeball.
Oh - the thing I miss the most about film --- B&W in particular --- watching an image appear on a blank sheet of paper in the "soup" in a darkroom. For those of you who are digital only, that is thing to behold - pure magic - and just plain fun.
I love digital too, but there are so many images, what to do with them that is the issue.
Remember:
"The truth is that anybody can make a photograph.
The trouble is not that photographs are hard to make.
The trouble is that they are hard to make intelligent and interesting”
John Szarkowski 2000 1925-2007
The Elitist - formerly known as PDL
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