Community weekly poll: Dynamic Range.. yeees, but getting back to the point..

Dynamic Range.. yeees, but getting back to the point..

baldwinl is talking specifics, as do others; each have their pet point to make. But the question is really a generality which is being answered but the buying public as we speak (so to speak..)

The fact is, film cameras and film will become exceedingly expensive to buy and use whether we like it or not. It doesn't matter if Lee Koo's mom left the digital camera in the cupboard due to fear or whatever, film cameras; except expensive ones; are almost done, just give it a couple more years.

OK, so current commercial digital cameras don't have the Dynamic Range of a reasonable film camera, FOR NOW, but they soon will have. In EVERY area digital cameras have been improving in leaps and bounds and if they don't very shortly produce sensors that get very close to the level of current film in Dynamic Range, I for one will be astounded.

Does one seriously imagine that NASA and various "spy" (etc) satellite users, actually use FILM? Hardly, yet the quality of pictures their satellites are able to receive from 100's miles away, are incredible, and, again improving all the time.

WE are the final beneficiaries of that technology and in EVERY area, digital will come to equal film and in some areas, even overtake film. Consider one area alone, where almost any digital camera can take a picture in almost any light, whereas only very fast film with a "good" camera can handle very low light. The result may not, currently, be great - but it soon will be!

Digital is already king in the area of cost of picture production. Digital already offers adequate quality for over 90% of BUYERS, and it is buyers that control production, and that's why film-cameras will mostly be left to a few specialist manufacturers: though not Kodak for example, they've already given up, and I'm damned if I've seen a new FILM model from Nikon and Canon for quite some time. If they are making or improving film-camera models, I bet they now concentrate only on their highest end models.

12" records (now NEVER heard by 99.99% of the population under 20!) were replaced by DIGITAL cd's, NOW being replaced by DIGITAL dvd's: Film will follow.

This might be regretted by some professionals and other film aficionados, but even they will have succumbed in the next 10-15 years.