Digital BW, The Print

There are alot of advantages in being "instant."  There are some 
environmental issues with film - heat and humidity for example. I have a 
G2 which is  a fine camera for taking pictures on vacation. It is also a 
fine camera for exploring a subject prior to lugging out the 4x5 to take 
the shot.  It takes good pictures. It, however, is not a fine art 
camera. It might be in the future digital will also be the choice of 
photojournalist - get the shot, throw it on a satellite link and it's up 
on CNN 5 minutes after it is shot. But the quailty demands for 
photojournalism are not the same as fine art. With good scanners 
available, an effective link between processing in the digital format 
and film has been made. With printers becoming better and coming down in 
price, the gap is closing in on printing on silver. In fact as scanner 
technology and printer technology advance, it may impact the digital 
camera. The scanner technology in particular will allow the 
photojournalist to have his shot back to CNN within an hours if not 5 
minutes. I see this as a very fluid market currently and it will flush 
out over time. The camera makers seem to be concentrating on the "low 
end" point and shoot maket, feeling their way in the high end digital 
SLR market.

It is going to be very difficult - at least in the immediate future for 
any digital camera to compete costwise with film cameras of the same 
construction and same optical quality.  The digital processing and 
storage issues and batter implications have their cost and given this 
additional cost I would rather it go into the optics.

Truman

Austin Franklin wrote:

>
>
> > But, alas, film has some drawbacks.
>
> Like what, aside from it isn't "instant", like digital?
>