Re: Levels & Curves

[Arthur Entlich <artistic@xxxxxxxxx>]

gary wrote:

 > It sucks because I have to junk the old equipment when better 
products come
 > out.
 >
 > Think how long a good 35mm camera will last, then compare that to the 
half
 > life of a digital camera, printer, etc.
 >
 > Disagree with me. It is nearly a free country.
 >


You have struck a nerve.  Of course, you are correct that the
improvement curve is steep in these newer technologies.  Then again,
chemical photographic technology have been around well over a hundred
years, so they had their growth spurts (nothing to do with giclee ;-)) too.

We may not recognize it, but we have all become "early adopters" in this
market, and we finance it and the research to improve it.  The nice
thing is that most of it is relatively inexpensive based upon today's
cost of living, due to the fact that there is a larger population of
early adopters than there used to be, and prices drop considerably with
time as new improved products appear.  My first color inkjet printer
costs $1000 CAN (and that was back when the Canadian dollar was worth
close to a US $).  Today, a much better performing printer (although not
as well built in terms of durability) costs under $100 CAN (at a $.62 US
dollar).

While my Hasselblad camera equipment continues to escalate in value each
year (and even some of my Nikon) I know any digital camera I buy today
will be a paperweight in 2-3 years or less.  Am I going to buy one, well
eventually, yes, but it won't be a $1500 model, because I can think of
better use of $750 a year in depreciation the camera is likely to
suffer.  So, maybe a $300-400 model, because I can probably justify $200
a year in depreciation for the savings in time, film, development and
experimentation costs.

If you want to know a really painful situation, consider software, which
becomes close to "worthless" in terms of resale (assuming licensing
allows for it) as soon as a new version is released, and often it never
was fully functional during its whole lifespan, due to bugs.

What we do need to remember is that a great deal of computer equipment
that is considered "obsolete" by today's standards, still performed
identically to how it did when it was "state of the art"{ a few years
back, it is just that we have moved the goal posts of our expectations.

Art



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