>But is there any reason that down the road, in a few years when things >have settled down a bit, that more and more people might buy digital >cameras *without* owning a computer? Or without being highly computer >literate if they have one? And having their prints developed at a lab, the >same as before?
D. a. M. has a valid point. I believe that within a decade, things will have changed a lot as digital cameras settle down and become the norm in the point and shoot market at least. Far from the muddled mess that rightly exists now, with a mixture of media and labs and home computer printing, I think we will see the situation evolve into a fairly polarised one with manufacturers standardising ways of storing photographs and allowing prints using the high street labs, and home printing. Despite the manufacturers ducking and diving with their own ideas at what they want the world and his mother to use to record pics onto, I really think that consolidation will take place through what I would like to believe is natural selection, but what is more likely to be astute marketing. <oh crickey - he's not going to mention it again is he?> Kodak Digital Film! <he did> Okay, something like it. Something badged as an electronic replacement for film. Drop it into a lab, and prints come back. That's all that most P + S users want (IMO). No computer needed. Sure, they might have a computer, but they don't have the time nor the inclination to sort it out themselves. Paying for the lab to do it is a time-honoured tradition, and it works. It might not be as cool as doing it yourself, but it works. This is why I think that digital cameras do not necessarily follow computers. The majority of people that have both (after maybe a brief dalliance for the giggle factor) will not use the two in tandem. They are perfectly capable, but then so is developing your own monochrome neg film at home - how many of us do that? People not interested to the level that PDMLers may be will not wish to spend the time. Even feeding a media card into an auto printer has its downside. It's yet something else to go wrong. Let the lab do it! Within ten years. Fire away :-) Cotty ____________________________________ Oh, swipe me! He paints with light! http://www.macads.co.uk/snaps/ ____________________________________ Free UK Macintosh Classified Ads at http://www.macads.co.uk/ ____________________________________
