----- Original Message ----- From: "T Rittenhouse" Subject: Re: Am I Really a Dinosaur?
> As I have said before, I think snapshots, media, and other immediate > photography will wind up being 100% digital. While fine arts and other of > the more contemplative fields of photography will be silver based for a long > time to come. I disagree regarding the snapshooter. Here is why. The cost of admission to digital is, and will likely stay, very high compared to film. For the casual snapshooter, prints are the desired medium for viewing photographic images. I submit that the demise of the slide show in the mid sixties when colour prints became common as evidence of this consumer preference. I do wonder how reportage and news photography will convert to digital. There is still that little thing called a negative that can be used to prove the truth of the photograph. A digital file lacks that quality. > > As Bill says there is no reason the two have to be exclusive of each other, > especially as the internet makes niche markets more and more profitable. > This presupposes that our fine lawmakers don't decide to make film illegal. This is a very real possibility. So far the photofinishing industry has been pretty much left alone WRT the lawmakers and EPA types. We recover silver from our effluent, and then dump the waste chemistry into the sewer. This is common practice, and is how all labs that I have seen operate. All it would take is for some activist group to get a bandwagon going, and the whole methodology for waste chemical disposal (which, BTW, is less harmfull than dish detergent) would be thrown into chaos. This would impact the price and availability of photo processing. I know in Canada, the government is pretty good at passing knee jerk laws that have the effect of bludgeoning a problem to death. If the American experience is similar, the industry could well have some problems coming it's way. William Robb - 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 .
