[Leica] The high price of progress

[jshul at comcast.net (Jim Shulman)]

For the casual user, yes, digital's more expensive than its predecessor.  It
may be thrilling to see instant images, and it may be a convenience to
transfer images directly from camera to computer without processing, but it
is going to be more expensive than film if you're only shooting a few rolls
of film a year.
For the active photographer--someone who shoots dozens of rolls of film per
year--it's a real economy.

I remember typewriters!  Had about five of them in college, and remember
cursing my two zillion typos.  Also remember swapping the Smith-Corona
correction cartridge in and out about twice per line.  Hell, I even had a
few boxes of carbon paper--back when the library copier ran a quarter a copy
(and five quarters paid for a six-pack of Schmidt's).  I still remember the
torture of threading the film ribbon through an ageing Royal electric--it
tangled up about every five pages.  You could also use a cloth ribbon in the
machine, which made for less-elegant typewriting but also saved a bunch of
money.

Funny, the model in the manual was able was to change ribbons without so
much as scratching a lacquered nail or uncoiling her bouffant.

About every month I had to scrape out the "e" and "o" when they became
encrusted with ribbon bits.  I also remember driving my roomie crazy with
the sound of typing at 2AM; between clattering keys and the whirr of the
electric motor (not to mention the report of the electric carriage return)it
was quite a production.

Could you imagine telling some poor college student of 2005 that he or she
could not easily swap paragraphs and lines in an essay?  Tell them that they
has to create their own sub and super-scripts for footnotes.  Then tell them
about the cost-effectiveness of a nice mechanical typewriter.  

MS Word is a blessing--well worth a new Smith-Corona a year!

Jim Shulman
Bryn Mawr, PA



-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+jshul=comcast.net@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+jshul=comcast.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of dnygr
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2005 9:06 PM
To: lug@leica-users.org
Subject: [Leica] The high price of progress

Someone wrote regarding Contax that certain camera manufacturers didn't
predict how quickly the change to digital would be and noted how typewriter
manufacturers had done the same thing.

What a costly change it has been to move from typewriters fo computerized
word processing. Every few years, our equipment needs to be replaced because
it is dated. That rate of change and its accompanying cost was not true of
the typewriter age. I'm not speaking against the change, but I am noting
that many of us now are spending a lot more money to type our messages than
we would be if we still used typewriters. I fear the same will be true for
our photography. We will be spending money on new cameras as ours become
obsolete. If we print our own photos, we will be spending outrageous amounts
on printer ink (doesn't it seem that printer ink sells for about $3,000 a
gallon!). 

What it boils down to, in my estimatin, is that you and I will be spending a
lot more money in the digitl camera age. It looks like the price of
progress.

Doug Nygren