[rollei_list] "digital" supreiority is about bad attitude

I'm not interested in big statements, only in what I see.  Digital is
convenient.  Digital is fast, it satisfies the itch once filled by
polaroid, it is perfect for the "virtual reality" generation who
experience life on a computer screen.  Digital puts images, via internet,
in the hands of buyers faster than ever.  And, for those (the majority)
who want images but don't want to learn how to make them, digital,
heavily automated, is perfect.  Never forget, its all a mass-market
economy we have, and the great mass, who once bot box brownies and then
126 or 110 instamatics, are the target market.  

After 14 years at a national magazine, I see the uncomfortable truth that
the advertisers call the tune.  The markup on film and film cameras
is/was a few percent.  The markup on DSLRs is ten times that -- and
you'll have to buy new lenses, new printers, new computers, and the
latest image-manipulating programs -- which will be obsolete in two years
anyway.  There's good money to be made selling the stuff.  Thus, the mags
push it, and the fashionistas and the wannabees, who "gotta have the
latest, so they'll be IN!" buy it.

The best DSLRs are pretty good, and getting better.  By the time you've
paid off the loan, there'll be a new one....

That's not the problem.  The problem is the same as that of rock-and
rollers who proclaimed "jazz is dead NOW!" and of keyboard synth players
who proclaimed the death of the symphony orchestra.  Attitude.  There's a
lot of room out there.  There's a lot of companies stepping up to the
plate to keep our 4x5, 2x3, 120 and 35mms filled.  This last month,
Freestyle finally answered my plea for 16mm cine film.....  No, we won't
go away, and we will continue to equal, even to surpass, the digerati. 
We will, of course, scan prints and negs; buyers want it.  But we won't
abandon our old classics anymore than the jazzman will park his sax or
the folkie his banjo; they work, and for many of us, digital synthesis is
not an improvement, merely a parallel means.  And if we can beat it with
50 year old equipment, why not just keep on?

Its the "us and them" attitude that gets me... the idea that if I buy the
latest gizmo, success is guaranteed, and that if I continue to use
cameras as old as I am, I'm meaningless, hopeless as a person, and my
work is of no account.  Balls.  Check out my MOMENTARY ARTIFACTS (at
www.peternebergall.com; there's not a single digital-camera image in
there.  The cover was shot with a Baby Speed Graphic.  

Alongside this is the internet revolution in image sales -- so now almost
all photo sales, save weddings, are carried out on line.  Film cameras
are at no disadvantage; you scan the prints.  I scanned everything for my
book -- but I didn't throw away anything because it was made with a film
camera....

We're not going away.  OK?

Peter Nebergall (who just bought a new Omega C enlarger at a jumble
sale...)
On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:08:47 -0400 "Robert Lilley"
<54moggie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> I would come under the hobbyist and fine arts photographer heading.  
> I
> follow all these digital vs. film discussions closely.  I don't 
> understand
> the digital world as much as I understand film.  So in the midst of 
> all this
> digital talk I am building a full sized darkroom complete with 
> utilities,
> ventilation, cabinets, sink, etc.  Am I a fool? 
> 
> I was in a gallery in Blairstown, NJ a week ago.  One of the 
> exhibitors was
> a silver printing photographer who had a little place card under her 
> work
> stating that folks better buy up silver prints now because there 
> isn't going
> to be any film or paper in the future.
> 
> I listened to a former head of photography at the Museum of Natural 
> History
> tell me that if she was buying large format today she wouldn't 
> purchase a
> 5x7 camera.  She doesn't think film will be in available in that 
> size soon
> 
> Five camera stores in my area closed this past year - the general 
> lament, "I
> can't compete in the digital market".
> 
> Then I read your folks on the internet who are slowly but surely are 
> going
> digital.  It seems that soon film will be relegated to just the 
> collectors
> who sound like tree frogs exercising their shutters as film's sun 
> sinks in
> the west.
> 
> Am I a Don Quixote de la Mancha tilting vanishing windmills, a 
> Luddite
> watching the world pass me by?  Do I not understand something, did I 
> miss
> the announcement?  
> 
> Rob 
> 
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