Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/09/20

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Meta Photokina
From: Guy Bennett <guybnt@idt.net>
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 10:48:31 +0100

erwin,

a couple of thoughts - not a rebuttal - on your post regarding the future
extinction of analog photography: as long as film and chemicals to process
it continue to be made, analog photography will be accessible to those who
wish to practice it. not every existing technology disappears entirely when
a new technology appears on the horizon. though we have cameras, people do
still paint pictures (and the photograph was to replace the painting, as we
all know), though we have computers with word processors and laser
printers, folks still write by hand and - and more than just a few
stragglers, i believe - with a typewriter. (and having worked in publishing
for almost a decade, i can assure you that a fair amount of contemporary
writers still use a typewriter...) obviously the typewriter is a dinosaur
(it has long ago hit the end of its evolutionary life span), but it is a
functioning dinosaur for those who still wish to use it. so it will be, it
seems to me, with analog photography.

i'm not a diehard zealot of analog anything - digital photograhy may well
be more suited to certain photographic tasks (as ae, af, and zoom
technologies are), and should i find myself needing what it has to offer, i
will gladly make use of that technology. for my own purposes, i'd much
rather work analogically, and as long as the material is available to me, i
will continue to do so. though i may be wrong, i'd like to believe that in
50 years, my m6 (and maybe even my dianas) will still be functioning
properly and i will still be able to make pictures with it, though i'll be
one hell of an old mofo by that time...

guy