Hi Team, This short rant/rave/vent was prompted in part by my recent digital camera experiences and occasional disparaging comments regarding the discussion of digital imaging on the list. I don't mean to increase the list B/W unnecessarily however whilst I appreciate that this is a Pentax equipment list a great deal of the list traffic consists of discussion regarding technique and media and I believe that it should, so here I go.
In simple terms it seems to me that debates over digital vs film imaging are often fuelled by parties with supposedly divergent interests. Most often heated head to head discussion seems to be between photographers interested in image capture regardless of media vs the parties where media plays a larger part of their photographic experience. Film has been here for some time now and many of us are well acquainted with it's virtues and limitations however digital image capture is now here and it should be considered as valid as any other photographic media tool just that it offers an alternate set of features and benefits. Aside from its obvious advantages digital image capture presents a new complex set of determinants to the photographer, a paradigm shift of sorts. Unfortunately the availability of digital image capture as a media is unlike film capture in that the media performance is in a large part a function the photographic equipment manufacturers capabilities, finances and their willingness to bargain for licenses to utilize new technologies. The past promise of a 135 digital film cartridge whilst a great concept was obviously far more difficult to implement than first proposed. It appears that after much reading and discussion a digital camera really needs to be quite a different beast from a film camera using the same lenses. So development costs are high and are compounded by the marketing problem that we are coming to appreciate. IE the fact that in most 135 compatible digital imaging SLR cameras the digital imaging technology will be integrated in the body and most likely will not be upgradable. This is where film shines, my 35 year old Leica body, Pentax MX and 50's Balda 6x6 is effectively upgraded every time a new improved film is made available, I appreciate this very much. My relatively recent purchase of a digital SLR has been educational in this regard. Whilst it still has a reasonable pixel count its speed of operation compared with a current miniature point-n-shoot digital camera of the same pixel count but two years its junior is embarrassing to say the least. However I think that we are now at the technological point where most processing/storage performance hurdles have been overcome so hopefully this area of concern will diminish a bit. There are only so many pixels that you can stick under any lens before return diminishes, I imagine that a 6-8MP sensor would keep quite a large proportion of serious photographers quite pleased. Even though I appreciate some of the economies and other determinants involved in the recent announcements regarding the commercial production of a Pentax digital SLR camera I still harbour an underlying resentment for being forced to go to another brand in order to have available to me now commonplace digital imaging technology. I won't defect of course, it's the bloody glass :-) Pentax have been so good regarding product range in the past, let's face it, they are one of the few photo companies that produced a constant and consistent range of compatible MF and 35mm cameras (and one of the cutest 110 SLRs ever), let's all hope that they can get their digital act together, soon! My pro lab just stuffed another film, my back-up digital shots from the same session are all perfect and are now saved to three CDs. Cheers, Rob Studdert HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA Tel +61-2-9554-4110 UTC(GMT) +10 Hours [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications.html - 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 .
