Post #121,906
10/19/03 6:37:44 PM
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Pentax Optio 550
5 mega pixel, 5x optical zoom.
Great camera. I picked one up for baby pictures, and find that I'm using it for lots of things. A digital camera is like a scroll wheel on a mouse: until you have one, you don't know what you're missing.
The Pentax was $500 after a $50 dollar rebate. Similar in cost to 4mp cameras from Canon, but much easier to use. I skimmed the manual once and now I don't really need it.
The camera will take lower-quality videos (about 3 minutes worth on a 16M SD card) with sound. Pictures can be sound-annotated as well. The movies are .mov (AVI format) and the sound annotations are .wav files. There are 3D and panoramic modes that give you ghost pictures to match with the current viewfinder - this makes matching the subsequent pictures fairly easy.
The quality is amazing. Look in [link|http://www.iwethey.org/images/scott/stuff|http://www.iwethey.o...mages/scott/stuff] for a few examples (the chromed one is courtesy the Gimp). Warning: this pictures are large. Notice the pollen grains on the flowers. The camera has a macro mode and a super macro mode; super macro mode can take pictures as close as 2cm. Note that these pictures aren't even using the highest quality setting.
Plenty of flash settings, manual focus/fstop/exposure. Diopter setting on the viewfinder, but I find myself using the built-in LCD panel instead. Built-in effects like greyscale, sepia, etc., but it's easier to just take the picture in color and munge it in Gimp later on. There are plenty of other features as well, as you would expect from a medium-high end camera.
The camera works great in Linux since it's a USB mass storage device. I plug it in, mount the device, and browse the pictures in Nautilus. Easy peasy. Once I get autofs working I won't have to mount it manually, either. The SD card is quite fast. I recommend getting a camera with SD over the MMC type.
Cons: A little heavy, and it can take a few seconds to start up. The 16M SD card that comes with the camera is a little small; I bought a 128M card ($50 from newegg.com) to go with it. Autofocus can be a little finicky in super macro mode.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #122,155
10/21/03 10:25:31 AM
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Does AF work in low light?
That's been my problem with my Cannon A40. It uses main CCD to focus, and that needs too much light to see.
--
OK, George W. is deceptive to be sure. Dissembling, too. And let's not forget deceitful. He is lacking veracity and frankness, and void of sooth, though seemingly sincere in his proclivity for pretense. But he did not lie. [link|http://www.jointhebushwhackers.com/not_a_liar.cfm|Brian Wimer]
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Post #122,157
10/21/03 10:35:11 AM
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Seems to work fine.
The only place I couldn't get AF to work (other than in Super Macro mode) was in a pitch black room. I think the issue is more size of focus area when it's looking at something really close.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #122,159
10/21/03 10:38:30 AM
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Re: Seems to work fine.
Just for completeness, the real issue is - in low light the lens opens, and depth of field gets shallow. My Nikon N2200 (alas, ripped off) would go "zztt zztt zztt zztt" as it bracketed the focus in low light. I'm sure they've improved these days, but it's still an issue.
-drl
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Post #122,165
10/21/03 11:13:02 AM
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Not in this case.
The issue seems to be that with very close subjects, the AF field of activity is too varied to be able to peg the correct depth properly, bright light or no.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #122,183
10/21/03 1:08:39 PM
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In my case, I think, it's a different issue
The camera is looking for the cleanest edges, while changing the focus. If there is not enough light to produce the picture w/o noise, the eges are drowned out, and the focus cannot be registered. I can actually see it happening on the built-in display
--
OK, George W. is deceptive to be sure. Dissembling, too. And let's not forget deceitful. He is lacking veracity and frankness, and void of sooth, though seemingly sincere in his proclivity for pretense. But he did not lie. [link|http://www.jointhebushwhackers.com/not_a_liar.cfm|Brian Wimer]
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Post #122,182
10/21/03 1:07:12 PM
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Bought my wife a Sony 5 Meg.
And she is really pleased. Her only complaint is that I won't use it, touch it, or help her with it in any way.
As I prefer "actual reality" to "virtual reality", I also prefer "actual photographs" to "virtual digital approximations of photographs".
bcnu, Mikem
The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice and always has been...We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had-- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.
- Mark Twain, "Monarchical and Republican Patriotism"
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Post #122,187
10/21/03 1:31:32 PM
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I take much better pictures with this
Than with any analog camera. So for me, virtual digital approximations approach reality more than actual photographs. ;-)
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #122,227
10/21/03 4:19:00 PM
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Prima donna :-P
What you call "actual photographs" are just digital photographs with much smaller pixels, and a pseudo-random arrangement of those pixels on their medium. I have seen various measures of how many megapixels a standard 35mm frame is equivalent too, but we should be seeing it in consumer-grade cameras in the next ten years or so.
===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #122,419
10/22/03 6:28:10 PM
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Ha!
There will never, ever, ever be a "digital toy" that can make pictures as beautifully as my old Pentax K-1000 camera can.
bcnu, Mikem
The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice and always has been...We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had-- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.
- Mark Twain, "Monarchical and Republican Patriotism"
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Post #122,473
10/23/03 2:04:01 AM
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Famous last words.
The Moff Mikes'em: There will never, ever, ever be a "digital toy" that can make pictures as beautifully as my old Pentax K-1000 camera can. Yeah. And man will never be able to fly.
[link|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode|Christian R. Conrad] (I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.)
Resident [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=119792|zIWETHEY pilkunnussija]
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Post #122,678
10/24/03 9:23:15 AM
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Re: never be able to fly.
Here's another: you will never, ever, ever be able to experience the grandeur of flying an airplane whilest seated in front of a CRT.
As Ashton noted, Life is Analog. Digital == Approximation.
bcnu, Mikem
The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice and always has been...We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had-- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.
- Mark Twain, "Monarchical and Republican Patriotism"
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Post #122,481
10/23/03 5:14:12 AM
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Canon AL-1
Fie on the digital toys.
A friend grabbed it, all dusty.. at a garage sale. For $10!! Cleaned up near mint. I sent it to Canon when I couldn't get a certain small 'latch' at any parts supplier. {long story - ending at Pres. Office and a complete cleaning, etc. and my personal ***** rating for Canon customer service and especially, attitude.}
Did some sleuthing and found that this has one of the most accurate autofocus circuits ever (per several Pros, complete with optics essay on how they did it). Workd at light levels where I can't possibly focus as well by ground glass.
As to the pixillated ones.. It's simple: the world is analog. Only febrile homo-sap mind-fetishes for oversimplified math.. imagines digital can substitute. (And I've seen Ansel Adams up-close working, over several hours - using using his Omega 8 x 10 to do what no point n'clicky dabbler can even envision, when selecting Menu #3 + Special Effects #2)
As a Tek (scopes) wag mentioned recently - he can out-type Orifice-Word on his 1.3 GHz machine, whereas I defy anyone to out-type WordStar, Otrona 4 MHz Z-80 - and in 56K of RAM. But yeah.. by another decade they'll throw more and more pixels at it - and still never manage the dye-transfer characteristics of Kodachrome nor the gamma variations achievable with art, from exposure on through the processing of a final print. CRT view? [Hah]
Of course, you and I are confusing here, snapshots VS the art of photography. Seems quite likely that there will be fewer and fewer artisans capable of assembling a Nikon F or F-2 within a few more years -- given the mass market and the Corporate drift. Already.. fewer 'consumers' have the foggiest what an f-stop means or why depth of-field might matter; gamma?! What That?
Our cameras will be in museums in maybe less than a generation, but I believe that there will always be Sons/Daughters of William Frieze-Green who will preserve these marvels and somehow manage to keep photographic emulsions available, even after Kodak Inc. starts making special sauce for the WalBurger UniCorp.
Mother forgive them for they know not what they do do!
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Post #122,487
10/23/03 7:19:45 AM
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Damn straight.
If a digital camera can compensate for my ignorance in a field about which I have absolutely no desire to learn more than necessary, then amen, brutha. I'm there to take pictures of things I'd like to remember and share with others, not spend 5 minutes per shot fiddling endlessly to get the Perfect Settings.
Case in point: my grandfather was an amateur photographer par excellence. We have very, very few photographs of him as a result as he was always fiddling with his damn camera during get togethers. I actually have a chance of being in a number of pictures now since this camera is usable by even my wife -- smart as she is in her own way, mechanical and visual things are as beyond her as gymnastics is beyond me.
Another case in point: my father has an old Canon nearly-professional quality camera (can't remember the model). He knows all about f-stops, and exposures, and ye verily even unto the manual focusing and many many different lenses. He's preparing to let the old dinosaur rest forever in favor of a digital after seeing mine. Same with my mother, and she's the type that used to develop her own film...
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #122,782
10/25/03 3:43:58 AM
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There need be no actual argument about 'better'.
Both have their uses; they just aren't the same uses.
As you say, for 'documentation' - where's the need for "art"? Was grandpa here? Yep - here's what he looks like.. And a photographer can very well augment his real camera with digital, to see about a proper perspective, or to document the means of some complex project. (Still. and always - the eye + brain do not 'see' as does a camera.. a topic on which volumes have been written.)
Photographs we see on walls - always tell some story. So does the occasional fortuitous snapshot; but that's usually a happy accident.. no?
As to the inefficiency you describe.. that's the photographer, not the availability of options. Yes, lore helps you to exploit those options / or not, just as most Pros keep a camera set at reasonable exposure, depth-of-field, etc. for an instant shot, today made even simpler by the automated exposures which you may switch on/off. ie a few seconds of setup is most often enough - if you know what you are trying to do; if you aren't sure: you 'bracket' the shots. Ditto with transistors, if there's time for more than one shot. Seems many digitals now facilitate multiple exposures. Much cheaper too than motorized film, where cheap matters.
Still, ignorance of the effects upon any picture of a knowledge of depth-of-field (and its psychological effects in the viewing) or of film-gamma - a more subtle factor determining available tonal gradations via special development actions - that ignorance will always limit results. Older digitals provided choice in neither speed nor f-stop; no doubt expensive ones will now approximate everything but.. the film characteristics.
Finally, the gross difference between snapshots and say, a final print of A Adams - is that many of his nature pictures required days to weeks for "that object and its lighting" to become realizable on that piece of film. It would be foolish to imagine homogenizing All That into anybody's one-size fits all. I think.
Just as, there will be no transistorized Bach Stradivarius trumpet as will enable me to play like Sergei Nakariakov (or amplified guitar that will sound like Segovia).
Vive la diff\ufffdrence !
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Post #122,794
10/25/03 10:15:00 AM
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Wasted shots aren't all about bracketing.
I took 10 shots of my wife holding my son the other day. Every single damn one of them, other than the last one, had her doing something funky with her eyes or her expression.
With respect to depth-of-field: granted. With respect to film gamma: that's what the Gimp is for. ;-)
As you said, they both have their place. For snapshots, IMO, digital rules.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #122,491
10/23/03 8:28:33 AM
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Re: Canon AL-1
"Real" photography will need film for several reasons:
1) Dynamic range and color
2) Actual resolution
3) Archival purposes
4) Cost - a $400 dollar film camera outperforms a $10,000 digital rig
Neener. Nikon analog ru7eZ.
-drl
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Post #122,496
10/23/03 9:05:45 AM
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Today's $10k digital rig will be $400 on eBay in 10 years
Just ask Ashton what he's paying for scopes. That'll be today's pro digital rigs in a while.
Ah, and one thing that nobody seems to talk about that makes a huge difference in quality between the typical 35mm and the typical digital: the diameter of the lens. For the same focal length, a larger glass gathers more light. Most digital cameras should be compared to 35mm instamatics, not a Nikon Fx.
===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #122,506
10/23/03 9:39:25 AM
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Right.
We moved from an instamatic 35mm to a digital. Compared to the 35mm, the lens is pretty much the same size, or perhaps even a bit bigger. Compared to my dad's 35mm, there is no comparison.
Another aspect: film and processing costs. With a digital, I don't pay for either. I also don't pay for wasted pictures because I can immediately tell if the picture is bad or not.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #122,783
10/25/03 4:10:57 AM
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Subtle, important differences..
IMhO the fact that I can 'steal' a working instrument (incidental that it is also so well made as to qualify as 'art' too) Too-cheaply -- indicates something important about the present society and its near-future, especially as regards "technical education" and 'our' expectations for the future of that.
Such an instrument could not be produced today except at exorbitant cost - the CRT fabs themselves have been scrapped. (It would be like Shrub's decision to recreate Plutonium fabs - but only sorta like that: we already have 1000 tons and access to Russia's. Another thread on Sanity, that one.)
The digital replacements, while generating all sorts of automatic data for repetitive waveforms - still cannot 'see' certain random events, nor ever - in real-time. That's what I mean by Too- (== 'artificially') cheap. This is a loss in *capability*, in the physics sense. And no - there are no foreign equivalents either, though there are some also-ran analogue scopes maybe still in production. You'd have to be an EE to fully appreciate what a "scope" means as ... "your eyes".
The price of digital toys OTOH simply reflects the easy mass production of SiO2 derivatives and the cheapness, after early profits amortize development costs. No personal Artisan skill is required in assembly (which is fortunate, one might suppose - as we lose those).
(But the loss of widespread 'film' cameras will be a loss of an Art; that of communicating something about an instant in time, using many human sensibilities. Digital will always be capable of 'documenting an object's appearance' for one's files. Different.)
Ashton
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Post #122,795
10/25/03 10:16:22 AM
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Re: Subtle, important differences..
But the loss of widespread 'film' cameras will be a loss of an Art; that of communicating something about an instant in time, using many human sensibilities. I don't think that has anything to do with digital vs. film. Communication with a photograph is about the photographer, not the tools.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #122,814
10/25/03 3:52:41 PM
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Not really
All of Ansel Adams' work happened in the darkroom, and was made with his hands - I don't mean dragging the film and paper through the chemicals - I mean an elaborate shadowing with the hands of the print as it is being exposed in the enlarger. It can take many seconds to expose a print - during this time a skilled photographer will often use his hands, or some other object, to lessen the exposure on particular parts of the print. It may take hundreds of attempts to get it just right - so the final print is a unique work of art and not a copy of the negative.
A good example is the famous photo of birch trees - another is the Moon over - is it Santa Fe? The copyright Nazis removed the good Ansel Adams net exhibits.
-drl
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Post #122,821
10/25/03 4:14:24 PM
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Again, that's the photographer, not the tools.
It's possible to do such things (more easily after the fact, of course) with digital as well.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #122,509
10/23/03 9:44:05 AM
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Kodak DCS Pro 14n
This is a 13.7 million pixel full-frame 35mm format digital camera in a Nikon F80 body. It saves in RAW mode by preference rather than a processed format like JPEG or TIFF as all processing - white balance, gamma correction, exposure adjustment, colour saturation, noise filter - is designed to be done on the PC with the RAW file, not in camera. This is to my reading a much closer approximation of the "analogue" process by digital tech than I've yet seen.
Still, the thing works best in well-lit conditions at ISO 200, so there are limits. And it does cost well over 4000 pounds.
Wade.
Is it enough to love Is it enough to breathe Somebody rip my heart out And leave me here to bleed
| | Is it enough to die Somebody save my life I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary Please
| -- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. |
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Post #122,558
10/23/03 2:54:09 PM
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The world is analog.
Your eyes are not. You have tiny little pixels in there, don't you know? And the communications between neurons are discrete, the last time I checked. May be not digital, but discrete impulses.
As my co-worker said once, anything made of silicon will eventually cost 10 cents. That includes digital gear approximating your eyes. Eventually.
--
OK, George W. is deceptive to be sure. Dissembling, too. And let's not forget deceitful. He is lacking veracity and frankness, and void of sooth, though seemingly sincere in his proclivity for pretense. But he did not lie. [link|http://www.jointhebushwhackers.com/not_a_liar.cfm|Brian Wimer]
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Post #122,524
10/23/03 10:30:14 AM
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Just figured out what I was trying to put into words
No cd player/stereo/speaker combination will ever sound as good as a concert pianist at a concert grand heard live. But I can't play the piano, so there's no reason for me to ever have one. But a stereo I can play. Same with cameras.[1]
[1] Okay, actually I can operate a "real" camera pretty well, but most people can't.
===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #122,569
10/23/03 3:14:47 PM
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But that's not what the anal-ogists here are saying.
Drook writes: No cd player/stereo/speaker combination will ever sound as good as a concert pianist at a concert grand heard live. But a picture taken with an analog or a digital camera is not what it pictures, any more than either an analog or a digital recording is a concert pianist live at a concert grand piano. But I can't play the piano, so there's no reason for me to ever have one. But a stereo I can play. Same with cameras. True, as far as it goes, but not the comparison these guys are talking about. You're comparing "digital recording vs concert pianist"; they're comparing "digital vs analog recording (picture)". I can play both old needle-scratch analog turntables and "those dang newfangled dijjytol contraptions" that use the shiny little coasters... But I know which one I prefer -- and it ain't the needle-scratchers. That's the relevant comparison here. And it's going to come out -- is already coming out -- the same way for cameras as it pretty definitely has for audio recordings.
[link|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode|Christian R. Conrad] (I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.)
Resident [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=119792|zIWETHEY pilkunnussija]
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Post #122,586
10/23/03 4:19:52 PM
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Also, there's Kodak.
"We are acting with the knowledge that demand for traditional products is declining, especially in developed markets," [link|http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/09/25/kodak250903|Kodak CEO Daniel Carp said].
"Given this reality, we are moving fast \ufffd as digital markets demand \ufffd to transform our business portfolio, with an emphasis on digital commercial markets," he said. Also, there's HDTV which is digital. Anyone think that a regression? Hey, the telegraph, which started it all, is digital! Well OK, at least in the electrical domain. The earlier signaling lights and semaphores are digital too. Besides, the world only looks analog. :)
Alex
"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something." -- last words of Pancho Villa (1877-1923)
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Post #122,785
10/25/03 4:40:48 AM
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Re: But that's not what the anal-ogists here are saying.
Yeah well.. my ears are no longer capable of hearing the subtle differences of tubes VS early transistor designs: designs based on lots of wrong presumptions about both the acuity of human ears and.. about what might be required for "highest" fidelity reproduction of sound pressure waves.
Then too, most of today's popular music; certainly by-$$ marketing the vastly most: incorporates instruments and voices - intentionally altered, now most often digitally, though I see that early Fuzz-tone tube boxes command a premium price -- indicating a yet more subtle mix of 'production' and post-production massaging. Ergo, where the $$ is: no longer has very much to do with "high fidelity reproduction of actual musical instruments".
So the only valid comparisons of 'reproduction' must come from traditional instruments, orchestras, voices - as of yore. But the 'analog' source won't go away, though much may still be lost through carelessness and insouciance.
The slickest re piano must be the Vorsetzer! (sitter-in-front?) - a robot piano player with paper tapes encoded by several dead masters. In that technique, you can 'hear' Paderewski PLAY on a modern piano, just As sorta.. as anyway else.
Meanwhile there exists that library of Edisons, 78s, LPs of other Masters. And more and more statistical programs shall continue to reduce the clicks, pops and repetitive noises -- who can gainsay such an aim? Not moi.
Still and all: for as long as Russians have tube mfg. plants, there will be Marantz amps and new clones of such - playing through the closest we can still come to "KLH-Nines, Wharfedales" etc. - in preference to (the other multi-thousand-$ "Class A" type transistor yuppie-amps for big spenders), cause..
That's just the Way It Is. And what it is About is,
Goose bumps ...
(Now try and put Those in a spreadsheet, Smartass ;-)
Ashton
Senator Transistor-amp, I've met President Tube-amp.. Senator, you're no JFK !!
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Post #122,824
10/25/03 5:09:05 PM
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Vorsetzer = lit. "sEtter-in-front", actually...
...but can also be taken to mean something that is "set in front (of something)", which would be the sense it's used in here. Nouns ending in -er work like that in German.
Oh, and what "Vorsetzer" actually means in German, IIRC, is "tray" -- the flat thing you carry around coffee and cups and stuff (or whatever) on, in order to serve it to (=set it in front of! :-) someone.
HTH!
[link|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode|Christian R. Conrad] (I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.)
Resident [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=119792|zIWETHEY pilkunnussija]
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