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!

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 !