REALLY serious photographers use large format sheet film cameras or at the very least, a medium format (usually Hasselblad). The technology might be close to catching up to 35mm film, but it will be several years before it overtakes medium format (somewhere in the 80-100 MP range) and decades before they achieve anything near the equivalent to sheet film. Even so, when that day comes, digital will still be lacking in certain areas, such as the ability to do pre-exposure to reduce the SBR of a scene by raising the zone the shadows are in by one or two (or three in some rare cases) stops.
But of you're into photography, have $5000 to burn and feel left out because you haven't been playing in photoshop like all your friends are, you can always use the money to buy a decent scanner to scan your negatives in with and feel happy knowing that you can get higher quality prints at a photo lab than your lexmark spits out if you ever get one that you actually want to hang on a wall. Then you can take the left over money, buy a cruise ticket to some adventurous place and go take some really nice photos while having the time of your life. Don't get me wrong, I like digital cameras, the digital point and shooters are particularly useful. I'm just waiting until they have them running a Perl interpreter before I shell out a large hunk of cash for one myself. I mean come on, right now their asking price is 3-4 times that of a medium format Hasselblad and yet they still don't quite match the resolution you can get from 35mm film.... the least it can do is run my scripts! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark J. Dulcey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, October 01, 2004 5:38 AM Subject: Re: Cameras Re: [Boston.pm] Tech/Social Meeting w/ Randal Schwartz > Chris Devers wrote: > > > Megapixels shmegapixels. > > > > Is the lens any good? > > > > It's this one, right? > > > > <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001G6U5C> > > > > It looks like just annother fancy point & shoot (albeit one that takes > > images of unweildy size). > > > > Maybe next time you can get a nice SLR instead... :-) > > Wrong. Actually, it's this camera: > > http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=ModelDetailAct&fcategoryid=1 39&modelid=10464 > http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0002XQJFA/ > > Nope. Randal's camera IS an SLR -- a digital SLR. That should have been > obvious when you saw it in operation -- non-SLR cameras don't have the > sound of moving mirrors when they take pictures. And if you don't like > the lens it comes with (I believe he had the EF-S 18-5mm lens -- the one > that Canon sells with the camera as a bundle -- which is quite good, by > the way), you can put any Canon EF or EF-S (EOS system) lens on it. > > Amazon lists the EOS 20D at $1600 (with lens). For comparison, the > EOS-1D Mark II is $4500 (without lens). For the extra money, you get > another 8 megapixels, a full-frame sensor (in other words, you can use > your SLR lenses with no conversion factor of focal length, but you can't > use the EF-S series lenses, which are designed to cover only the smaller > image area used by the consumer digital SLRs), full (rather than > limited) compatibility of accessories, and a fancier autofocus system. > > I would say that both cameras are solid entries in their respective > price categories. But, at a total price of $5000 or so (including lens), > you have to be REALLY serious about photography to buy an EOS-1D system. > > _______________________________________________ > Boston-pm mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm > _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
