Digital BW, The Print

>I am afraid John Sexton is in the same position as the man who yelled at
the
>driver of the early Ford Model T "HEY BUDDY GET A HORSE." And as we all
know
>the rest is history.

Bad analogy

After ten years a horse is still alive and kicking . . . most cars are in
the scrap heap.

Silver based image making is going through some changes, not the least of
which is the rapid shrinking of the amateur market (probably one of the
largest sectors in the marketplace). Sadly the ranks of ill-informed
consumers who are gobbling up their 2-3-4 megapixel cameras don't realize
that they are trading DOWN in quality and UP in price (see PT Barnum for an
explanation). There are certainly less and less films to choose from than in
the past, but I feel that it was a little oversaturated in the first place.

The John Sextons and the commercial "pro" are in a little squeeze because
their sector, the one that most of us were interested in was always a
miniscule part of the market for Kodak, Fuji, Agfa etc . . . in a word, we
were important to them, but not that much other than a marketing ploy to the
amateurs, "shooter X always trusts his CanNikkoltaflex 3 and
superduperchrome II, . . . you should too".

It is interesting to see the small "boutique" manufacturers in Europe
literally crawling out of the woodwork to fill in the gaps that have been
left . . . some with very good products.

Silver imaging is still here and will be for a long time to come . . . now
it has a new partner, that's all.

Paul Aparycki