In a message dated 11/12/01 11:32:42 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> This has been true for literally the whole history of photography, as each > improvement in convenience makes the hard-won expertise of the previous > generation of practitioners obsolescent. It was true in the 1880s when the > "hand camera craze" began and started to put portrait studios out of > business. > Each genre of photography survives, adored by some, eschewed by others but each genre survives. Large format photography, in the form of $495 4x5 Kadet field cameras, is flourishing again. Still Photography itself was pronounced dead with the arrival of the Video camera. SLR bodies "obsoleted" rangefinders and Box-pinhole-folding cameras... right! Polaroid's "instant gratification" photos were going to put KODAK out of the film camera/maker business... right? Surprisingly, millions of those who rushed out to buy digital whatever cameras are flocking back to the simplicity of the P&S chemical camera because they can now take their film to the drugstore, have their images transferred to CD and manipulate them on their PCs just as "digital only" folks are doing. We must also be aware of the millions of digital owners, none of whom will go back to chemical, who, finding that producing "acceptable," "photorealistic" digital prints too onerous, too labor intensive and time consuming, are simply parking their digitals on the same high shelf in the same closet where they parked their chemical cameras. **There is one crowd who has sucked up 110% to digital whatever: teens. But then, teens are also driving the "wireless" (electronic "talking gadget") craze. No matter how some might wish or predict that digital will or should "take over" the hobby/craft/profession of photography, it's not likely to happen soon, if at all. As long as there are BILLIONS of people around the world who will buy one-use or cheap point and shoot film camera, and if we remember, these categories of "picture takers" number in the gazllions, chemical photography will survive. ** Besides, there are NOT ~that~ many people in this world who can afford 1. ~Any~ digital camera 2. A computer 3. A printer 4. Electricity. As long as those conditions prevail in the world, chemical imaging will survive. Mafud [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
