Lucius,
DIGITAL FILM
I am responding to your post from one week ago.
Thanks for bringing up some important points...
If CompactFlash doesn't fall in price fast, it will be
cheaper for average (occasional) users to rely on film.
I think your comments on digital photography are important.
There still are some kinks to be worked out. As someone
stated recently on this thread, the value chain is still
short one important link, image viewing. The current paradigm
is a permanent hard copy. Cost is a second important area.
The initial investment plus printing costs is a vital consideration.
Try to justify your digital camera purchase by exploring new
ways to share pictures with family and new ways to view photos.
There is some value in the convenience of digital
photography, but it requires one to actually go without hard
copies for the time being, unless you are a serious hobbyist
and decide to purchase a high resolution inkjet printer. It is
currently feasible to take flash memory cards to some standard
film labs for prints using the same process as 35mm film,
and at a reasonable cost.
In a few years...[upper end digital camera resolution]...
will probably be around 10 MP or so, which should satisfy
most quality needs at the consumer level. How are these
images going to be stored on Compact Flash without spending a fortune?
Specifically regarding image resolution, I think your concerns
are valid, but recall that file sizes of less than 500KB are
perfectly adequate for 4x6 and 5x7 prints in cameras with
2.1 megapixel resolution and above.
Most of the following photos have file sizes under 50KB.
To view file size, right click the photo and click "properties"...
albums.photopoint.com
Here is a link that outlines consumer purchasing habits in the aftermarket...
Through our research, we found that the majority of aftermarket buyers purchase memory cards from 32 Mb to 48 Mb, opting to increase their capacity to what would typically be a roll of film or enough for a short vacation of shooting.
Please see this link for more details and a description of bundled and aftermarket flash memory card sales...
Message 14485532
As you see, most users have no need for large, uncompressed images and therefore can do without high capacity flash memory cards. If you are worried about cost, SanDisk and Toshiba just announced as single 512Mbit chip which will allow 64 megabytes of storage. Just a year or so ago SanDisk and most competitors needed four (4) 128 Mbit chips to make the same card. Costs will fall!
Best,
Aus |
