From: "Godfrey DiGiorgi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Once that bunch headed out, I pulled out the laptop and started > poking at some more photos from the NY trip and from my junta to > Nashville, TN. I also pulled out the Pentax 645 and started fooling > with it, framing a composition of the tables and chairs across the > aisle from where I was sitting. There was a college student sitting > at the table behind me. > > "Excuse me, is that some kind of video camera?" > "No. It's a medium format SLR camera. Still photos." > "Where's the display screen?" > "It doesn't have one ... it takes a 6cm wide strip of roll film." > pause ... "Wow. It looks big and heavy. Why would anyone use film > when there are such good digital cameras on the market today?" > > The fact of the question is more important than any answer I might > come up with. Here we have a college student, maybe 20-22 years old, > who cannot see the point. We talked for a while about the photos on > the wall, about rendering and black&white vs color, about all kinds > of stuff, but in the end I could see that the notion of why one would > expose film, play with chemistry, etc just to take a picture was > simply incomprehensible to him. Cameras, even photography before the > present world of digital cameras simply is not a part of his > consciousness.
It can be easy to lament after reading a story like this. I wouldn't... The Art of Photography...this college kid probably grew up with parents who had point & shoots around and took poor pictures of various events. If his mom or dad had a Hasselblad and a home darkroom where they invited him to print, he might have connected to the magic of it. But he thinks, much like alot of folks who grew with B&W film, about the Utility of Photography. From that perspective, why would you mess with a large film camera and development and printing? This is nothing new...my parents and quite frankly, all of their friends, see it the same way as this college kid. This is true despite the fact that when we compare childhood photos, they have wonderfully sharp and preserved B&W prints and I have incredibly poor, fuzzy and faded color prints. This kids mindset has been present for a long time and we have a ton of cameras to prove it. The difference is that the digital cameras now are a pretty viable option. Evolution...I can see this conversation taking place 100 years ago during the dawn of cars and the death of the horsedrawn carriage. I don't think anyone on this list would give up their vehicles to go back. But maybe 100 years ago, one might held on to it given all the issues of owning a car. But in due time, cars got alot better and now we drool over the ones that Paul posts on the list. So I guess I don't have a strange feeling about this story. It's expected. I'm eager for digital to continue to improve. Mark -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
