Ah - high praise, coming from the PC evangelist.
Steve Hendrix
Phase One
Electronic photography is so proprietary compared to analog.
Could you ever dream of a board meeting at Fuji or Kodak where people actually made a decision to produce a film that only worked in one or two cameras and had to be processed in one lab?
Can you imagine Hasselblad making a camera that would only use Hasselblad film? (oops sorry, they've done that).
Who would have thought a polaroid proof would be such a difficult process.
Then again how many photographers ever dreamed (or better put had the nightmare) that they would become the lab, the retoucher and pre press house?
Looking at where we are today with digital, vs where we were 7 years ago, I would have thought today would have been a more mature, easier process than it is. I really would have thought that you could just drop in your digital film into any camera and go shoot, but instead it's gone the opposite way.
I'm positive it's way more consuming on the back end to shoot digital than it was film, though I'm also aware the possibilities are greater.
It's still a "roll your own" process. Just naming files can be a chore (see v-4), or some type of automated backup, takes learning a new software and hiring a dedicated assistant just to make sure everything runs well. Actually everything we do in digital photography takes learning a new software.
There is a reason that 99.999% of all retouchers do everything in photoshop, because once you've learned it . . . you've learned it. As a photographer if you own more than one camera you've probably learned about 4 software's just to get to the first proof stage.
As far as being an evangelist for Windows or Vista or any computer I'm not. I have no desire buy anything new unless it is easier, or superior and I know that since Macs are now PC's and PC's are now Macs there should be no reason whatsoever that one has a powered firewire port where the other doesn't and the other has a fast usb where one is slow as an old phone line.
Then again nothing in the electronic world makes any sense. Why a 24mpx Sony camera costs less than 1/2 of a 24mpx Nikon, or why a digital back costs more than new 3 series bmw is beyond my technical knowledge or understanding.
What I do know is that now that photography is a electronic business model where nothing is suppose to last for more than a few years then buying an $800 computer that will make a "polaroid" faster than a $2,500 computer, doesn't require a whole lot of decision making.
B
