[none]

[pgs@thillana.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick Sobalvarro)]

(beamon@primenet.com)
Subject: Re: M-6 Rebate ends soon.......

   From: "Roger Beamon" <beamon@primenet.com>
   Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 17:30:45 -0700

   >This may seem a
   > little weird, but looking down the road 20 years or so, film may
   > be a much more expensive proposition.

   20 years! Ye Gods, I don't buy green bananas anymore!

   ...

   I don't think we can extrapolate 20 years into the future very 
   well. In the middle '70s, the Apple II wasn't yet on the scene. To 
   think what will be available in the future based on where today's 
   technology seems to be going is an endeavor filled with 
   uncertainty, often proved wrong in the past. (Cripes, even as I 
   write this, I'm proving the lie. After all, computers did evolve 
   along a projected line as far as speed and capability are 
   concerned.)

It's true that such predictions are really dicey.  But, as you point
out, transistors have been getting smaller and cheaper exponentially
for about 20 or 30 years now, and CCD's have been following a similar
curve.

I guess another thing that makes me think this digital thing is upon
us is that I've noticed an interesting phenomenon: companies that make
printers are working hard to make cheap digital cameras and cheap
"photo-quality" printers, and they're mostly being successful at it.
If they succeed in getting the point-n-shoot people (read: everyone in
America who is not a photo hobbyist) to go digital, sales of film
decrease drastically, and economies of scale go away.

It'll be like movie film versus video, and for the same reasons -- you
can see if the pictures "came out" immediately; you don't have to take
it somewhere to have it developed; copies are easily made at home, and
there's little ongoing cost.  But in a way it'll be worse than movie
film versus video.  Movie film and 35mm film use the same emulsions
and chemistries and manufacturing methods.  But I think that that
entire industrial base is mostly going to disappear over the next 20
years, the way the industrial base for flashbulbs mostly disappeared
when electronic flash became popular.

When that happens, to use our wonderful mechanical cameras, we're
going to need digital backs.  I don't think they'll be too hard to
construct, though -- probably easier than a Leicavit, for example.

- -Patrick