[photo-3d] Digital Revolution

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   Recently there has been quite a lot of comments on this group about
digital 3-d imaging. This is following the same sort of development
as the regular 2d groups. I was at NSA Green Bay in 1999 and when I
saw the tables that touted the digital stuff, I kept walking and didn't
stop. I am just not interested. And this coming from an ex-telvision
industry engineer!
   With all the hoopla about digital, I take a more practical look at
the entire system of digital so-called, photography. Keeping a laptop
with a large hard-drive and extra batteries for it withing reach when
ever doing digital is not my idea of a convinient system of photography.
   Oh yeah you can get extra flash cards for your really expensive plastic
digital cameras, but these cards aren't cheap either. I can buy bucketloads
of good quality hi-resolution film for the price of one good flash-card.
   Add the cost of a portable or laptop and you could do several vacations
of "old technology" film photography when you add it all up. Then there is
the image itself that consumer cameras produce. Nice television pictures,
but thats all. No dynamic contrast range and a serious problem with long-
-term storage. You want better quality, you have to spend serious money
well above the Hasselblad strata of costs.
   So sorry guys, I just can't get excitied about digital. Its way too
costly, a poor image performer and storage remains and will remain a real
problem for a long time to come. For those who are really wound up by now,
I can still take a negative that my dad shot in China in 1944 and get a nice
image out of it. How many of the CDs now being made will be able to be read
50 years from now? Try and find a 1.2 meg floppy drive these days.
   I like to travel light. A small plastic bag full of 36 exposure film
 and a Realist can make box-fulls of images at low cost vs the van full of
gear needed to make so-so digital images.
   I hope Fuji and Kodak make slide film for many years to come. When the
day comes I have to take out a loan to make "images" I will quit this
hobby.

   For those who are into digital, it does have its place if we must find
one for it. It will certainly kill polaroids. But, given the nature of
the polaroid system, we won't lose anything with its dissapearance. The
polaroid systems currently out there are about par with what digital can
produce in many ways. But I was never impressed with polaroid either.

-Fred Sole