> Thats technology for you! How often do you buy a computer and see > something better advertised for less 3 months later. I knew that with > digital bodies, you have the early adopter price (high), and then as the > market matures and the body becomes obsolete the price comes down a bit.
There are two sides of this story. On the one hand, you know that at the moment you step out the store, a new model will arrive and yours will be much less worth (BTW, if you buy a new car, at the moment you ride out of the store, your *new* car falls immediatly into the 'second hand' category, lossing at least 15% of the value)
I've read that new cars loose about 20-30% of their value the first year.
On the other hand, the early adopters will master the technology when the late comers (who called them 'mature' consumers??) step in. That will certainly give the first category a technical advantange.
The question is how important it is to master new technology when it comes to photography. After all, there are still large format photographers around.
And, if you're making the switch from a film based unit, the saved cost of film will make up for the fast depreciation of the unit over time. For example: I bought my 10D for EUR1899 three months ago. Now you can have one for EUR 1600,thus, a EUR 299 value "loss". So far, I've taken a bit more than 4000 photos, that translated into my usual slide film would have costed me: 4000/36* EUR 20 (film + dev/cut/frame)= EUR 2222.2. Get it?
I don't want to start a debate of digital versus film, but this example you give would
only make sense if you had taken the same amount of pictures with film in the
same period of time. It's my experience that digital owners are, understandably,
very trigger happy.
What it comes down is how many pictures one is left with after getting rid of the
bad ones. Perhaps one only save 1% of digital pictures compared to maybe
20% with film. On a more philosophical side, one could look at how much increased
failure a digital camera brings (99% failure versus 80% in this case) although that's
a different discussion altogether. As an engineer I've always felt photographers have
a rather casual attitude towards their own failure, but then again it's not a matter of
life or death.
Still, I'd like to have a digital camera but it's a lot of money and hard to justify for
me.
-- - Marius
* **** ******* *********************************************************** * For list instructions, including unsubscribe, see: * http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/eos_list.htm ***********************************************************
