Re: [photo-3d] Digest Film Days are Numbered?

["Robert J. Vaughan" <k0mz@xxxxxxxx>]

These are just some thoughts on the film vs digital subject.  Revenues
for digital imaging and cameras now dominate the imaging industry. 
Digital camera sales in North America will reach $1.9 billion this year
exceeding film-camera sales revenues by almost 10 percent.  Point-n-click
entry level cameras make for the largest segment in both revenue and unit
sales at about 3.1 million units this year.  Total sales volume for all
digicam units is expected to surpass film-camera units by 2002.

Standardization in digicam systems is not a priority yet.  There are 3
main storage systems, floppy disks, SmartMedia, and CompactFlash plus
some other systems.  CD-R mini data disks are soon to be on the scene. 
Perhaps this lack of standardization will be similar to that of the
different video recordings systems between Beta (some say it is the best
format) and VHS (some say it was best marketed at first).  It took a
while but VHS won the consumer market and then really took off.  Perhaps
this will eventuate in the digicam systems.  Maybe this lack of
standardization will slow the takeover to some degree.  Maybe it will
never be standardized.  (Example; PC vs Mac.)

What has this all to do with stereo photography?  Lots as most of us use
chemistry based imagery for our beloved medium.  It seems that our film
will be displaced more and more by electronics over time.  When and how
much? I don't know.  That is and will be up for speculation for some time
to come.  Film is still King as to resolution and imagery quality.  That
alone will keep it around for some time to come.

The future is inevitable.  We can't stop it.  So, I would hope that the
digital imagery of the future will include a packaged custom twinned
digicam systems complete with reasonable custom software for the creation
of stereo pairs both in print and projection.  Prints could be made on
standard color printers and LCD projectors could be coupled for stereo
projection.  The futuristic stereo digicams could be similar in concept
to the RBT cameras of today in that they would be more than just a pair
of digital cameras on a bar.  They would even perhaps share a custom body
and memory circuits so that the downloaded stereo pair would be treated
as a single entity and editable as to stereo window and such.  Sure, this
would be more expensive but because of their desirability, there are a
lot of expensive RBT cameras around now.  As the coupling would be more
electronic and software based than is in the RBT which is more mechanical
and hardware based, perhaps the cost could be comparatively lower for
customization.  Electronic obsolescence would require careful
consideration in model selection.

Film will probably be around for some time to come.  The lowly Phillips
cassette is still around as the audio CD has not removed them from the
shelves for the last 20 or some years.  At least, I hope so as I have my
film based stereo cameras still consuming film which is what the film
manufacturers want and need for film continuum.

This is just my spin on this  Nothing more.

Robert J. Vaughan