Re: [Largeformat] Re: Photo 101 - Class 25 - Incident meters

[Verna Knapp <vernak@navicom.com>]

> 
> You photo purists create great envy in me.  I have long since lost
...
> Having said all that, I would like to cart my equipment out on the
> edge of some primeval cliff and photograph nature sans mankind---me
> and God sort of thing.  I will never really be a member of your club
> until I do I suspect.  However, as I get older I am looking more and
> more like Ansel Adams so at least that is a step in the right
> direction.
> 
> That may never happen though....my photo purist phase.... because I
> am lost to the evil world of Macs and Microsoft.  Instead of learning
> how to make platinum prints I spend all my time learning the latest
> techniques in Flash and Dos platform databases.
...
> 
> --Bill Diebold


So sad... Last week I went to the Seybold conference in San Francisco.
It is a publisher's conference, inhabited by a huge trade show with
photo and printing and software and all such related gear. It was
totally digital. All the latest and greatest digital cameras were there.
All the new announcements in the digital world. The Nikon 880. The
scanners. The new sleek elegant Macs. Adobe Photoshop 6.0 (easier to use
that 5.5). The fabulous wide format inkjet printers. Color management
gadgets, and digital rights management and digital asset management
systems. eBooks. As I wandered the trade show, talking to the sales
folks at the various booths, I uncovered one film lover after another,
stuck with making a living in the digital world. Same with many of their
customers. Pro photographers who wanted to spend time in a real
darkroom, but constrained to spend big bucks on digital equipment.
People who had done significant amounts of lf work on film, selling
digital equipment. It was so very sad to see.

Fortunately, I'm not a pro, so I can continue to use film, at least as
long as it is available. And it will be much cheaper for me than for
them, too. For a mere $30,000 I could upgrade all my equipment to a
dream digital outfit. With digital, there is the upgrade factor. Every
few years junk all the equipment and replace it with the latest. That
far outweighs the savings on film for me. And I don't really fancy
hiking into the wilderness with a computer, solar battery charger, loads
of batteries, and a digital back for the camera. Far too heavy. And too
much like work. 

However, I really felt sorry for all the people swept away from what
they love by the digital flood. 

You can't call me a technophobe. I've earned my living with computers
for over 35 years now. I'm generally on the bleeding edge, just for the
fun of it, too. However, the workflow is different, the process is
different, and I find the film version more pleasurable.

Verna