Will digital photography ever stabilize?

"David J Taylor" wrote in
:

"Philip Homburg" wrote in message
.phicoh.net...
[]
Even for my film SLR bodies, I would like to have a view finder with
a miniature camera and a (wireless) connection to an LCD screen. I
have no problem in that direction.

I like that idea, either as an LCD finder or perhaps as an EVF which
could be worn like glasses.....

I don’t know what it would cost, but I want one too.

This must be possible, a small light unit that attaches to the viewfinder
and a lead to glasses with a EVF and maybe a lead to a power pack clipped
to your belt.

With enough resolution to allow accurate framing then you could take
pictures with the camera held high over your head or low close to the
ground or candids without making it obvious that you are taking pics.

Someone could make a lot of money with an idea like this!



--
Mark Heyes (New Zealand)
See my pics at http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~markh/
"There are 10 types of people, those that
understand binary and those that don't"

"Patrick" No e-mail thanks writes:

That is what I mean.
Your 300D is a 6MP (passed that 4 to 6MP technology break).
Now why would you buy a new one in 10 years if this one is not broken and if
your photographic needs haven't changed?

10 years from now people will photograph differently.

They will do much of their photographic work using their computer at
home: Cameras will have high-resolution, low-noise, high dynamic
range, and will be able to shoot fast sequences for quite a while.

Because of the high resolution (higher than needed for prints)
photographers will do much of the framing at home.

Because of the long and fast sequences photographers will capture the
decisive moment more easily.

Because of the high dynamic range shadows will be structured and
highlights won't be blown. The need for very exact exposure will be
reduced.

In these respects technology will once again simplify the technical
aspects of taking great pictures.

The good photographer will be distinguished from the others by being
on the right location at the right time, by seeing the picture, and by
being able find the best shot/frame from a vast amount of data
collected previously.

So 10 years from now people won't really photograph differently.

Patrick No e-mail thanks wrote:
That is what I mean.
Your 300D is a 6MP (passed that 4 to 6MP technology break).
Now why would you buy a new one in 10 years if this one is not broken and if
your photographic needs haven't changed?

Up to 20x30" prints from your 6MP or the latest 34MP your human eye won't
see any difference.

If you could tell me what would be developed in the next
ten years I could answer that.

The so-called "stable" 35mm film cameras evolved mightily
in a ten year period.

We might get built-in image stabilization in the body, thus
rendering many of those non-IS lenses very useful.

We might get a swing-out screen for image review.

We might get useful focussing screens on dSLRs or, more
likely, some sort of optical focussing aid.

We might get far more sensitive sensors. Or far larger
ones with characteristics better than present ones.
That would really help folks who want to do wide angle.
It is *hard* making 10mm focal length lenses...

I could go on and on. You describe a 2009 dSLR to
me and I'll tell you if I'm interested.

---- Paul J. Gans

In Message-ID: ,
"Mark Weaver" wrote:

"Richard Ballard" wrote in message

IMO, interesting times for photographers are approaching.

Consumer photographic technology is advancing _rapidly_
while the overall United States domestic economy is burdened
with rising food and energy prices, employment (and
discretionary income) are relatively stagnant and credit balances
are at all time record highs.

In a relatively short time I expect the 'used photographic
equipment market' to be _flooded_ with recent, good quality
equipment at very reasonable prices. (During the Depression
my grandfather purchased a good quality spinet piano with
matching bench for ten dollars, a nice piece of furniture
still in our family.)

HA! Well now there's one I haven't heard before -- wait for
the next great depression to upgrade your photo equipment

There's an old economics joke: Recession is when you lose
your job -- depression is when your wife loses her job.

I'm single and lunch hour is over -- back to work.

"All Rights Reserved"?
If I 'right' must I reserve?

I got no problems.
Other people got problems.
00: 21 _8 02 03/35 06 09

Richard Ballard MSEE CNA4 KD0AZ
--
Consultant specializing in computer networks, imaging & security
Listed as rjballard in "Friends & Favorites" at www.amazon.com
Last book review: "Guerrilla Television" by Michael Shamberg

"Richard Ballard" wrote in message

HA! Well now there's one I haven't heard before -- wait for
the next great depression to upgrade your photo equipment

There's an old economics joke: Recession is when you lose
your job -- depression is when your wife loses her job.


That must be the updated version. I believe the original version was:
Recession is when your neighbor loses his job -- depressions is when you
lose yours...

Mark

In Message-ID: ,
"Mark Weaver" wrote:

"Richard Ballard" wrote in message

[RB comment: "Mark Weaver" wrote:]
HA! Well now there's one I haven't heard before -- wait for
the next great depression to upgrade your photo equipment

There's an old economics joke: Recession is when you lose
your job -- depression is when your wife loses her job.

That must be the updated version. I believe the original version was:
Recession is when your neighbor loses his job -- depressions is when
you lose yours...

Mark

I provided the economics version -- you provided the sociology version.

I am more interested in economics jokes -- for example,
"Accountants know the cost for everything and the value of nothing."

I also chuckle at oxymorons.

Richard Ballard MSEE CNA4 KD0AZ
--
Consultant specializing in computer networks, imaging & security
Listed as rjballard in "Friends & Favorites" at www.amazon.com
Last book review: "Guerrilla Television" by Michael Shamberg

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 20:35:16 GMT, wrote:

I've been doing digital photography for several years now and generally like
the convenience of it. But the quality of optics and photos could be better,
and hardware as well (I have a Canon Powershot S20).

Well, keep a little prespective -- the quality of optics and photos,
hardware as well, WAS better when you bought the Powershot 20. You
didn't want to spend that much, so you compromised. That's nothing
new; most folks can't buy everything they want. And that's hardly a
digital-specific issue.

I'm thinking of
upgrading to a newer camera but as a longtime film photographer I'm sort of
annoyed that it now seems to be the case that one has to upgrade one's
camera every few years, as though it were a computer. I had a Nikon F2 that
served me fine for 15 years.

Well, no, of course you don't have to upgrade. And I think you know
this. What you're seeing is that the price/performance is evolving
very fast, like computers evolved. So you WANT to upgrade every few
years, because things just get better.

Now, what's the real issue. You would prefer, maybe, that camera
manufacturers simply stop making improvements and snap-shot the state
of tech at 2004? No, didn't think so.

Question is, is this the wave of the future?

No, it's wave of the present. And it has to be this way -- that's the
only way tech happens.

Cameras of so-so quality that
cost hundreds of dollars that have to be replaced every few years?

Camera that cost a few hundred dollars have ALWAYS been of so-so
quality, digital hasn't changed this. Again, here is nothing forcing
you to replace your camera -- unless it breaks, it should work as well
now as the day you bought it. For the most part, there's actually no
obsolescene happening: memory cards are still used, JPEG is sill used,
etc.

Here's an example: I handed my old PowerShot 350 down to my son. When
I bough that, it was clearly a consumer camera, little more than a toy
really, but it got me instant 640x480 pictures, workable for the web,
eBay, etc. It did its job, and today, does that job just as well as
the day I bought it. I can still buy CF cards for it, batteries, etc.

Why don't I use it? Not because it HAD to be replaced, but because it
could be replaced, at an agreeable price, by something dramatically
better (a ProShot 90IS). And that one, some day after I get my video
camera upgrade, will get replaced by something better still, probably
a digital SLR.

Or are we
in a transitional moment when this new technology is growing very fast and
will stabilize someday?

It's actually many factors that conspire against you :-)

First is that new tech, by its very nature, grows fast. In the early
days, manufacturers are just getting their act together on the
manufacture, the specs (just what IS a digital camera supposed to be),
etc. They sell in small volume, they charge quite a bit. But they get
better, and better, and better at making the products. More people buy
them, so the unit prices drop at the same time the quality improves.

Lower prices together with infrastructure (eg, how do I get prints if
I'm not a computer wizard) lowers the threshold of acceptability of
the technology, bringing in more customers, quickly. This cycles to
ensure more and more rapid improvements in the tech, at increasingly
better volumes (and thus, prices).

The first models a company makes are, like the PowerShot 350, fairly
weak. They sell because they're a novelty, or a niche tool (web photos
only, for example). Only the early adopters like me buy this kind of
gear, and we absolutely do buy knowing it'll be replaced soon. That,
in fact, is an important part of jump-starting a new market like
digital cameras, because, if they can increase features quickly
enough, the manufacturers have less work to do to get me to buy a new
camera than they do to bring new people into the digital fold. Thus,
all those digital camera ads in the digital photo magazines, even
though you can presume that MOST readers have at least one digital
camera. Over time, though, the market's ready to expand beyond the
gadget freaks to regular people. At this point, which we're certainly
at today, the products cannot be toys, they have to actually do the
job.

Incidently, that's how personal computers were sold. My old buddy
Scott bought a PET 2001 -- it came with BASIC, 4K of RAM, a cassette
interface, a few games on tape, the promise that maybe we could do
something with it. My first personal computer came with 16K of RAM,
but could be expanded to 32K. Wow! These were tools or toys only for
people who knew them. Everyone who used a personal computer in the 70s
knew (or learned) BASIC, for example. And while expensive, these were
definitely replaceable. As computers matured (which took decades),
they stopping changing so fast. Most people actually have little need
for a really fast PC today (I do electronics CAD work, digital
photography, music, and videography -- some of the worst CPU and
resource drains around, but most people run wordprocessors, internet,
and only see the computer's speed at issue if they play games); the
cheap ones probably work fine. That's the same thing, in the market,
of saying the product is a mature consumer technology. Digicams might
have made it there this year, with 3Mpixel basically the low-end (more
resolution that anyone printing on 4x6 photo stock will need). And if
you look around, "regular people" seem to more often than not shoot
digital. My bartender was buying a digital camera last week, and she's
about as far from computer savvy as you get.

Another factor was what I'll call the "Digital Brand Grab". Everyone
knows people like to take pictures. The world of consumer photography,
with roots going back to the start of the 20th century, was pretty
much a done deal: Kodak, Fuji, Agfa, and maybe Konica and a few others
made film. SLRs were made by Canon or Nikon or Pentax or Minolta
(formerly Olympus, as my gear bag will attest), it's not a market that
had changed much, or quickly. P&S was dominated by Kodak and Fuji and
some cheap asian cameras for awhile, more recently by better quality
35mm P&S cameras made by, well, the same guys.

But many saw a gold rush. The camera markers, of course, had something
new to sell you, and years of repuation to supply. The film guys,
Kodak and Fujifilm particularly, noticed that digital cameras didn't
need film, so they had better sell you the camera (and, perhaps, the
memory cards). So they got far more serious than they had in the
consumer camera market before. And the consumer electronics guys, Sony
and Panasonic and Samsung, they say a new place to sell the "same only
thing with a microrprocessor and memory" in a different form (eg,
consumer electronics product). So they hit the market hard (Sony
actually had the first electronic camera, the Mavica, not even a
digital one at first). And even the computer companies, like HP and
Epson, got into the act. All are fighting to have a piece of where
this market settles out, ideally with more of a share than they once
had. Which of course means that share is probably coming from the
traditional companies' markets. So THEY feed off the increased
competition, a thing not known in the film camera market. So THIS,
too, is pushing the rapid cycle of improvements and cost reductions.

This makes me wonder about what to get for my next digital camera.

Since I got into consumer electronics, professionally, over 21 years
ago, I've been saying the same thing: never buy a CE item until you
need it (you get to define "need", of course). There is not a chance
that it'll be replaced with a better model, that is a CERTAINTY, and
it's probably going to happen the day after your return-policy
expires.

Another point-and-shoot that will last a few years?

Well, that's a question. I have a P&S, of sorts, in the Pro90IS, which
has, in fact, lasted me for years. What does this mean? Well, it means
it didn't break -- that's the only true measure of "will it last". It
has pro-enough features (optical image stabalization, 10:1 zoom lens,
eye-level viewfinder, same type of controls as on my EOS, works with
my Sunpack 555 flash, etc) I wouldn't outgrow it (I do recognize the
limitations vs. an SLR, but that's not the same thing... and I have
plenty of film SLRs, if I need them). It uses CF cards, which show no
sign of vanishing from the market, so I can always get film. It uses
the same battery system Canon uses in their pro digital SLRs, so
that's safe, too. What other measure it there?

Certainly, there are better cameras: that new Canon Pro with the
L-series zoom, the D300/Digital Rebel, the D10, etc. If one comes
along with a low price and dramatically better features, maybe I'll
buy it. That's NOT "it didn't last", that's "I couldn't resist".

Should I invest in, say, one of
the Leica Digilux models and expect to keep it longer?

Well, you could. Of course, if you bought a Canon or Nikon P&S of
similar spec, then put the $1000 in savings in the bank, you'd have
more than enough for your next upgrade. I do believe the Leicas are
well made, with good glass. Unless you're buying ultra-cheap, though,
so are many others. Panasonic's teamed up with Leitz on glass; Sony
with Zeiss. Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Minolta-Konica, Pentax, most of
those guys already made good glass. But don't expect a digital P&S to
necessarily compare to a more expensive digital, anymore than a film
P&S compared to your Nikon SLR. That's a P&S issue and always will be,
not really a digital issue.

Should I get a Nikon
and use my Nikon lenses (The F2 was stolen 12 years ago and I now have
12-year-old AF Nikons and lenses)? (

My Dad bought a D70 recently and loves it, but he had the more modern
lenses, for his F100, N60, etc.

This latter option is probably less
attractive since I don't do that much serious work anymore, though I do
demand high quality equipment and results).

I think today, you have an overall wider selection of cameras than
ever, due to the competitive environment. There are those "rangefinder
replacement" digitals, like the Canon "G" series, the ZLR/electronic
viewfinder cameras (same form as the Pro90) from practically everyone
now, with long zooms, sensors up to 8Mpixel, all kinds of pro-like
features. There are entry level digitals not much more advanced than
the old Instamatics. Your call.
Dave Haynie | Chief Toady, Frog Pond Media Consulting
| Take Back Freedom! Bush no more in 2004!
"Deathbed Vigil" now on DVD! See http://www.frogpondmedia.com

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 22:29:07 GMT, Phil Wheeler
wrote:



Alfred Molon wrote:

Jimmy Smith wrote:

The DSLRs available today are spectacular.


They are huge and heavy, with no live preview and no fold out LCD
screen. They are like horse carriages with a combustion engine added. My
guess is that in a few years the DSLR design will evolve into something
more advanced and DSLRs will look less like film cameras.

The 300D, at least, is not all that "huge and heavy".

With SLR TTL viewfinder, I really do not miss live preview.

If you're coming from a film SLR, going to a 300D or other digital
SLR, you're not missing anything because nothing changed.

I'd be surprised if the basic design changes much. The film SLRs
evolved based on ergonomics and unless we evolve hands which have more
fingers, what would motivate a substantial change in design?

Electronics. The film SLRs also evolved based on the fact they use
film. So there's no issue of realtime preview, EVFs, etc. But look at
the "near SLR" EVF/ZLR cameras -- they all have the eye-level
viewfinder and the back panel swivel display. That's The Market
speaking. That's the same thing you have with camcorders. Most of the
time, I have any camera to my eye. But when following motion, I need
to see more than just the framed subject. Rangefinder users know this,
too. Older SLRs, like the Nikon F-1 or the old Canons, they had
available sports finders for this.

I would be surprised if SLRs don't gradually evolve in that direction.
I don't think they'll rush to it -- their market is oddly more
conservative than the consumer market.

Dave Haynie | Chief Toady, Frog Pond Media Consulting
| Take Back Freedom! Bush no more in 2004!
"Deathbed Vigil" now on DVD! See http://www.frogpondmedia.com