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P3D Re: the future ??
- From: michaelk@xxxxxxxxxxx (Michael Kersenbrock)
- Subject: P3D Re: the future ??
- Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1999 11:38:52 -0800
> But affordable, consumer-grade digital photography equipment is still
> nowhere near up to the quality of photographic prints, much less slides.
For small prints with less than "worst case" scenes (not talking about
checking out the amount of detail in the shade portions of a snow picture,
etc) I don't think you can tell the difference. My brother-in-law's
Nikon camera (now old but his was about $800~900 early last year) makes
very nice images. And when talking about "consumer-grade" photography
(see quote above) I think the standards of quality can be lower than
for professional users.
But it's real obvious I think to anyone that prices are dropping very
rapidly and quality of the cameras are rising. Doesn't take a
futurist to know that the current state affairs isn't anywhere
near a steady state. Two-megapixel CCD's were being sampled to the
camera makers at the end of last year and at least one additional
maker of CCD's for cameras has joined the competition: IBM.
> On screen viewing is really not comparable to viewing a photograph, and the
> few high quality printers, such as the ALPS dye sublimation mode ones, are
> still not commonplace. (I'm not sure, but how does the cost of dye-sub
> prints on the ALPS compare with getting photographic prints made?)
Trick question. Answer depends on asumptions. ALPS 4x6 prints are much
more expensive than costco 4x6 prints which are under a dime (incl. processing).
However that film-based-print price is somewhat misleading to true
system-price for a print.
Reasons:
1.) Costco give prints for *EVERY* image on the roll of film. At
least in my experience, most of them could have been tossed.
In other words, with my ALPS printer I *only* print selected
images that I want and NOT the junkers. So if only one of three
on a roll of film are ones that I really want a print of (best
of similar pictures and/or ones of interest) then the actual cost
for that print is actually triple Costco's per-print price.
2.) Prints on my ALPS printer are custom prints. Not only are they
cropped, but some are touched up, color corrected, anti-redeye'd
if need be, etc. So the Costco print cost may not be the one
to compare with. At least in some cases.
3.) Because of the digital camera involved, the resultant print from
Costco also should have cost of the film added, and like #1 above
the cost per print is the cost of the film divided by the number
of keepers, not the full 36 (or whatever). Digital camera's runtime
cost would only be amortization of the nicad batteries lifetime (which
may be less or similar to the film camera's battery cost).
So, it's probably more expensive on a per-print basis, but probably not
anywhere near as much as one might first think.
> I do believe this will improve in time, but only to the point at which the
> majority of the consumer market is satisfied with it. There will be no
> motivation for companies to improve image quality beyond what sells.
True. But with competition the level required to sell *their* product may
have to go up to keep folk from buying the competitor's product instead.
Or be less expensive depending if the company is a differentiator or is
a cost low-baller.
Mike K.
>
> -pd
>
>
> --------
> Peter Davis
> Funny stuff at http://world.std.com/~pd/
>
> Boycott spammers and other intrusive advertisers!
>
>
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