>From: "Jens Bladt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Well, I got what I wanted from the tests. What I see is what millions of >people allready know; that digital cameras perform much better in the >real world, than all the facts, figures and calcultations suggest. >For everyday photographing and for most people it's pointless to invest >in a >lot of film, a bulky and expensive SLR outfit, a 1000$+ filmscanner as >well >as a computer in order to make photograpshs, that can easily be made with >amodern, digital camera that cost less than one of the four mentioned >objects. If you'll have to make expensive scans of every frame to compete >with ditital images, not a lot of people will want to.
OK, I'll agree with your central thrust that in the real world digital is quite good enough to compete with film for most uses since the theoretical quality of film is hard to realize and normally unneeded. The rest of this I take some issue with, though. What's wrong with the old-fashioned "take film to the photofinisher and get prints" approach? Why not buy a cheap film point-and-shoot for substantially less than the "modern digital camera"? Since when was Pentax accused of making "bulky and expensive" SLRs? The film-plus-computer-and-scanner thing is at the moment perhaps the WORST route for normal uses because it is expensive and tends to lose quality. However, what this really replaces is a FULL COLOR DARKROOM because it gives you custom control and such. For normal uses, this is overkill and you'd be better off taking your film to the corner store. Computer-based photoprocessing is really only for people who need electronic format output, or need digital editing. The photofinishing industry has been trying very hard to remove the need for computers from the digital camera workflow--the pool of computer-owning, computer-literate snapshooters is a lot smaller than the pool of people who can take their digital P&S to the corner store and get prints made. DJE
