[rollei_list] Re: Digital Advice

  • From: Douglas Nygren <dnygr@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2008 13:19:10 -0400

If you read on line some of the reviews of the Epson 3800, you will give the 4800 serious consideration. It appears to be a better printer. That's what I gathered when I was researching printers this past winter. How the paper is held, I recall, is better on the 4800. I also recall you can put a roll of paper on the 4800 and not the 3800. I also recall a comment that the 3800 left unwanted marks near the edges at times. In sum, it seemed a consumer level printer vs something more oriented towards professionals.


Doug


On Jun 7, 2008, at 11:21 AM, Mark Rabiner wrote:

Why the Epson 4800? an odd choice for every one of those sold they sell
several hundred 3800's by far the standard of the industry right now for
Just over a thousand including inks.
Plus the savings in shipping. Its far more compact.


mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mark William Rabiner



From: ERoustom <eroustom@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2008 09:33:53 -0400
To: <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [rollei_list] Re: Digital Advice

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 $600
Canon 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: $15,137.75
Another $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.  Naturally
replacing the polaroid, the instamatic, the plastic zoom autofocus
35mm
p&s, and filling a niche for the "gotta get it now" boys, folks who
live
on the internet, and those who haven't learned (& never will) that
"virtual reality" ISN'T, digital is their toy.   What can they do
that I
can"t with my Leica IIIC?  Computer animation?

I live near the Univ of Missouri J-school.  I'll go to events with 2
Contax IIs and a Super Ikonta, and kick their digital butts.  Its
about
skill 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 be
recorded.

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!

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