Your price is not far off at all Marc, but it assumes a sudden decision to enter the profession, or the hobby on a professional scale.
Prices off the net (Apple, Amazon and Adorama): iMac (with all the frills) $2,199.00 Epson Pro 4800 $2,561.00 - Inks $600Canon EOS 5D (full frame) with 24mm 50mm 85mm 24-105mm (all L glass) $7,299.75 ($7,049.75 for the comparable FILM body and same lenses)
Adobe CS3 Suite $1,799 Apple Aperture $179.99 Total: $15,137.75Another $2000 can easily be spent on incidentals, back up hardware, luggage, memory, etc.
Add a good film scanner, film and processing costs, and film is actually more expensive. As a professional you will still need all the above.
A recent photo of my brother's two chihuahuas on the cover of the New Bedford Standard Times was taken by the staff photog with his cell phone. I couldn't tell the difference when I saw the printed photo in the paper (5x7). How's that for affordable professional gear? He took the picutre on Sat. morning, and the cover of the Sunday or the Monday had it. Could I match that with film? Since the quality was in the narrative not the medium, what advantage would analogue have? He got the shot, and made the front page - what more could anyone ask for?
For the social snap shooter, most everybody who would use a camera (kids, parties, visits, tours) an investment of around $300 or less ($900 on the high end) buys a very good p&s digital which will last for several years, and do everything their film cameras used to do and more. I always ask about storage and review, and I think they're on very shaky ground there, but 95% of those shots aren't kept, they're enjoyed for some time, shared, and then forgotten. I know some academic publications that ask for images of at least 5MP which most small cameras have now. Documentary work can be done for publication with a digital p&s, and it fits in seamlessly with contemporary "workflow".
"If I really limited myself I could get by with one film camera and three lenses, and do better work for much less than digital."
equals"If I really limited myself I could get by with one digital camera with a zoom, and do better work for much less than film."
For anyone who wants to combine constant learning with talent, discipline, patience, and a slow hands-on demanding process, that asks a good deal (in terms of space, time and attention span) of its practitioner and audience, and enjoy the limitless wonder of mechanical gadgets, there's film. Thank Goodness. It's not about cost.
E. On Jun 6, 2008, at 11:20 PM, Peter J Nebergall wrote:
Bravo! Digital is getting better, but it is about convenience. Naturallyreplacing the polaroid, the instamatic, the plastic zoom autofocus 35mm p&s, and filling a niche for the "gotta get it now" boys, folks who liveon the internet, and those who haven't learned (& never will) that"virtual reality" ISN'T, digital is their toy. What can they do that Ican"t with my Leica IIIC? Computer animation? I live near the Univ of Missouri J-school. I'll go to events with 2Contax IIs and a Super Ikonta, and kick their digital butts. Its aboutskill and experience -- and digital is changing so bloody fast, can anyone master that medium? Peter Nebergall On Wed, 28 May 2008 22:43:15 -0400 Marc James Small <marcsmall@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:Allow me to whine here as I have whined for years: a solid digital experience takes a LOT of money upfront and a LOT of money every year to keep up with the Jones's. Mark Rabiner sagely commented about the differences between results in digital b&w obtained from conventional cartridges on conventional printers and those obtained with special cartridges on high-end printers. Right on, my friend, but you have just jacked the price up by a factor of several hundred if not a thousand percent. Others have been disputing the qualities of higher-end digital cameras though I have been amused to note than none have yet suggested the Leica M8 with its apparent catalogue of woes. (Trust me, if I won the Mega-Millions Lottery last night, I'd buy an M8 and hire Mark or Austin to teach me how to use it, and make it worth their while, but it seems that it a piece of remarkable capability which has a learnig curve steeper and nastier than the North Face of Everest, placing it on par with Photoshop.) Again, to do digital properly, it costs Big Bucks. Thousands for an appropriate printer. Thousands for the specialty dies and the specialty rag papers. Thousands for a camera body, Thousands for the newbie lenses now cropping up. Thousands more for the new computer you need, and thousands for the 18 extra hard-drives necessary to process everything. Then $899 for the latest version of Photoshop, and $2,750 for a workshop in Boca Raton (plus the travel costs of $3,750) to learn how to use it. And, next year, you have to buy new and sell off and who will pay you for last year's printer or thousand-dollar cartridges or last year's Photoshop? So, by my calculations, it would take around $17,500 to pick up a really competitive digital kit, with an annual cost of around $5,000 or so to keep up with the Jones's. Six or seven years back, Bob Shell and I had a discussion on this List and my estimates were then around $30,000 for a start-up cost and $12,000 annually. Bob didn't argue with my figures but sternly told me to suck up and pay the freight. I spent forty years accumulating the perfect analog kit for me, a mixture of Contax RF and Leica RF and Roleiflex TLR gear with some exotica such as Retinas and a Werra III RF. I picked up a full darkroom kit including two great enlargers with great lenses, APO-Rodagons on the Beseler 23-CXII. I never could afford a JOBO but I had the rest, Kindermann tanks and Hewes reels. And then reality went and rained on my parade and digital came out. Argh. And I cannot comprehend Photoshop 5, now eight years or so old. I do miss the days when I could mix EP-2 color negative chemistry from scratch, but, now, that was in the longago though to me it is only twelve or fourteen years back. In any event, to do digital RIGHT costs a lot of money and will continue to cost money. Some months back, to be fair, I came across the plaints of a professional photographer in the 1920's who said the same and the prices he set out were, adjusted for inflation, on a par with those I am suggesting. We are really turning into three or more worlds: -- pro digital photographers -- pro chemical photographers -- advanced (VERY rich) digital photographers -- advanced chemical photographers -- digital snapshooters-- chemical snapshooters: when you meet such, get their name and address, as they might well be the last to berecorded. To do digital correctly costs huge monies. Analog was nothing like this in my lifetime. Pace Richard Knopppow, but I do own a Baby Speed Graphic which I had overhauled back in 2002 but have never used due to an absence for film. Maybe I ought to fuggedaboutit (a term invented, I believe, by Studs Terkel but picked up and popularized by the late Herb Caen in the San Francisco CARBUNCLE; Caen was the father of three-dot journalism) and just stick with chemistry. I lack access to the sort of funds you folks toss about as a norm, and I suspect that this is true for others on the List. Marc msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir! --- Rollei List - Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Online, searchable archives are available at //www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list____________________________________________________________ Beauty Advice Just Got a Makeover Read reviews about the beauty products you have always wanted to tryhttp://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/ JKFkuJi7UzupmI2A24rWWY8AH4b2xisNxBfiWpXpI7IhnCWYAFGyE9/--- Rollei List - Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org- Online, searchable archives are available at //www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list
--- Rollei List - Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Online, searchable archives are available at //www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list