Quite a bit go far out of their way to defend the stuff that they use? For instance. These days it's people defeinding their digital purchases, like the mortgage on their 4x5 back or their inkjet refill fees or photoreal paper. Not so long ago it was just people defending their purchase of a multi-quadzillion dollar unobtanium lens or supercalifragilistic camera body. How much bias do you think that people get when their wallet is suddenly relieved by a thousand or four?
This probably sounds a bit didactic, but I just have to ask since, after browsing forums, photo.net and here, I'm marvelling at the plethora of different responses. The most vehement defenses seem to be those in the possession of mortgages for digital gear, and I can't stand it. Just go take the damn pictures, I want to tell em. Who cares if you can blow it up to 80 feet by 60 feet. or 11x14" using an inkjet -or not. Is it archival or not? Good for you.
The only people that benefit from this are the camera companies, because they know that the more unobtanium they cook up, the more cash that gets spent. They weren't making enough profit when people were simply buying cameras (when they were still made with quality) then just keeping them for a good number of years. So they have to come up with schemes to get people to buy. The last example of this was Advantix. The camera companies colluded on that one to make an advanced new camera system that necessitated the buying of a new camera. Sounded great until you found out that advantix had a smaller negative.
Call me a purist or an old fart (actually I'm jsut 30) but I'd prefer to take pics with just me, my military speed graphic, optar 127mm f4.5, two grafmatic backs filled with fp4 and the snow outdoors. I was out in the rain the other day with this outfit, which total probably cost me less than $200 bucks. Was I concerned? No. Would I have been concerned with a digital camera? Hell yes. Electronics and weather don't go well together. Heck, weather and analogue don't go together, my Nikon F601 was killed by african dust. The thing I love about large format, is it's unpretentious nature. It's just a light tight box, and it doesn't have much to prove. A return to taking the pic. I tell you the camera companies are laughing all the way to the bank as they sell us more breakable stuff. Oh I know that some of the digital cameras have gaskets... but only the most expensive ones.
Having been a computer imager for a while, I'm painfully aware of how you have to control colour as you take a picture, So you have that flexibility, but then you have to view it on the computer monitor -oh wait now you have to retouch it. But your computer monitor and your inkjet, are they talking the exact same language? So depending on how calibrated things are between your camera, your monitor, and your output device, you will have to spend more time vaccillating around, making expensive reprints when the colour isn't right. So much for saving time, and so much for the experience of taking a photo, and so much for the money you saved by avoiding film..
Now, I own and use a digital camera, a 5MP Canon s50. It's great, I love it and use it. I am intending on replacing my old, africa-stained Nikon F60 with a D70 some day But I wish sometimes that people would stop defending after they've spent about as much as a small car on their gear. You certainly aren't going to COMPLAIN about it after spending that much!. (Your wife might kill you).
Cheers...
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