All Forum Comments
Comment by George Lazarette posted on Nasty stripes appearing on some pictures at 22/04/2007 - 18:34
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I'm not expecting any Wunderplastik to stick it up my 4X5,....well. not this year anyway....
We'll have to just wait and see what the Pentax 645D is like, and whether it comes out this year.I'm not expecting any Wunderplastik to stick it up my 4X5,....well. not this year anyway....
G
Comment by George Lazarette posted on 'The Coming Earthquake In Photography' at 29/04/2007 - 22:48
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I found it a moderately interesting article,...but not as interesting as some of the excellent debate about it here.
As far as I'm concerned, trying to see into the future is essentially a 'fools errand' because the future has the nack of tossing in a key factor at the last moment that completely spoils the prediction.
However, I DO think that we shall see more and more blurring of still digital and what we presently call video.
Further, one of the important factors that has not been mentioned so far is exactly how images will be used in the next few years. I actually think there may well be very big changes in media such that the distinction between still and video will effectively be lost by means of blurring between, say, books and TV. LCD screens are getting bigger, better and cheaper and there have been some key patent applications recently such as that by Minolta for 'LCD fabric' which can be folded up and used to cover rigid surfaces. Once the TV screen / monitor is wall sized then there will be no need for printers and prints or for newspapers and magazines, or visits to art galleries etc. Up to now electronic newspapers, such as there have been, have tended to fail because the physicality of unfolding a newspaper on a train or at the breakfast table has not tranfered well to a screen. Once you can sit over your toast and read the paper on the wall without getting the corner of the morning paper in your tea cup!.......or read the headlines on the side of your breifcase in the train, Then the whole media world could well be very different, and that would include much more use of video clips rather like the pictures in Harry Potter's newspaper.
This is science fiction. Anyone remember the paperless office? Or the self-cleaning house? Or the voice-activated compurer? Or all the other Utopian dreams? I remember ging to a seminar at IBM fifteen years ago where the death of the book was claimed to be imminent. I found it a moderately interesting article,...but not as interesting as some of the excellent debate about it here.
As far as I'm concerned, trying to see into the future is essentially a 'fools errand' because the future has the nack of tossing in a key factor at the last moment that completely spoils the prediction.
However, I DO think that we shall see more and more blurring of still digital and what we presently call video.
Further, one of the important factors that has not been mentioned so far is exactly how images will be used in the next few years. I actually think there may well be very big changes in media such that the distinction between still and video will effectively be lost by means of blurring between, say, books and TV. LCD screens are getting bigger, better and cheaper and there have been some key patent applications recently such as that by Minolta for 'LCD fabric' which can be folded up and used to cover rigid surfaces. Once the TV screen / monitor is wall sized then there will be no need for printers and prints or for newspapers and magazines, or visits to art galleries etc. Up to now electronic newspapers, such as there have been, have tended to fail because the physicality of unfolding a newspaper on a train or at the breakfast table has not tranfered well to a screen. Once you can sit over your toast and read the paper on the wall without getting the corner of the morning paper in your tea cup!.......or read the headlines on the side of your breifcase in the train, Then the whole media world could well be very different, and that would include much more use of video clips rather like the pictures in Harry Potter's newspaper.
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Once the media world has been turned upside down, will people still view still images in the same way?....Who can tell?
Once video becomes a much bigger part of this 'new' media, will camera makers be happy or able to make wholly 'still' cameras.
I have long felt that the current DSLR models are actually transitional designs,...film cameras with sensors. I have no doubt that eventually the mould will be broken and second generation serious digital imaging systems will appear,..whether coventional still photographers like us will still want to use them, and whether we will have the chance to stay with dedicated still cameras remains to be seen.......
You're a strange one, Viewfinder. You are reluctant to accept that digital photography is in any way superior to film, or that zoom lenses can be very good, but you would have us believe that you can't wait to wear a newspaper and you think that there will be no need for printers.Once the media world has been turned upside down, will people still view still images in the same way?....Who can tell?
Once video becomes a much bigger part of this 'new' media, will camera makers be happy or able to make wholly 'still' cameras.
I have long felt that the current DSLR models are actually transitional designs,...film cameras with sensors. I have no doubt that eventually the mould will be broken and second generation serious digital imaging systems will appear,..whether coventional still photographers like us will still want to use them, and whether we will have the chance to stay with dedicated still cameras remains to be seen.......
In my experience, there are seldom revolutions, just gradual transitions. Digital photography isn't a revolution, it's just a better way for the camera to record the original image. Photography hasn't really been changed at all. The end result is the same.
G
Comment by George Lazarette posted on 'The Coming Earthquake In Photography' at 23/04/2007 - 10:01
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CDs have replaced vinyl albums; transistors have replaced valves; fuel injection has replaced carburation - but doubtless you'll find a few that still use the former in each case.
The point is, technology moves on. And at every evolution, you find those that are resistant to it, not because of genuine objections, but because of an emotional attachment to the technology they've grown up with. This isn't even all that unreasonable - it's a pain to have to keep learning new things sometimes, especially if it seems that what you already have does the job fine.
I think you were correct.viewfinder wrote:
120 roll film never was replaced by 35mm.
Good grief. Ok, so I chose a bad example maybe. But 'replaced' in this sense doesn't have to mean 'replaced in every instance'. And if I'd said "replaced in the consumer camera market" you'd probably have been less exercised over it.120 roll film never was replaced by 35mm.
CDs have replaced vinyl albums; transistors have replaced valves; fuel injection has replaced carburation - but doubtless you'll find a few that still use the former in each case.
The point is, technology moves on. And at every evolution, you find those that are resistant to it, not because of genuine objections, but because of an emotional attachment to the technology they've grown up with. This isn't even all that unreasonable - it's a pain to have to keep learning new things sometimes, especially if it seems that what you already have does the job fine.
120 film (and similar sizes) probably accounted for 90% of all film produced in 1950. Very few people could afford 35mm cameras then. Most people were using Brownies and folders.
Ten years ago, I doubt if 120 film accounted for more than 1% of all film sales. Virtually all amateur and virtually all journalism used 35mm, consigning 120 to the professional studio, and to a small part of the landacape market.
If that isn't replaced, what is?
G
Comment by George Lazarette posted on 'The Coming Earthquake In Photography' at 23/04/2007 - 09:37
The human bottleneck, in this instance, is the time it takes a human being to assimilate and respond to the millions of frames in a piece of video. A computer can read a huge file in seconds. A human takes much, much longer. The fastest computer in the world won't help you to edit videos much faster than you can now with your existing PC.
The idea that video cameras will supplant proper still cameras in the near future is absurd. It reminds me of those dreadful all-in-one office machines which are printer, scanner, and fax rolled into one.
A specialist machine will always beat a general purpose machine.
The machine gun approach to photojournalism may yield acceptable results on a consistent basis, but it won't yield great results. I'd back HCB over an army of photographic machine gunners any day.
G
The idea that video cameras will supplant proper still cameras in the near future is absurd. It reminds me of those dreadful all-in-one office machines which are printer, scanner, and fax rolled into one.
A specialist machine will always beat a general purpose machine.
The machine gun approach to photojournalism may yield acceptable results on a consistent basis, but it won't yield great results. I'd back HCB over an army of photographic machine gunners any day.
G
Comment by George Lazarette posted on 'The Coming Earthquake In Photography' at 22/04/2007 - 22:18
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Try telling a video editor that can remember physically splicing film strips that the technology is irrelevant!
But just as darkroom skills have given way to software skills, when it's possible to extract the perfect high quality still from a piece of video, the skill required of the photojournalist to perfectly anticipate the moment will be lessened.
People were saying that digital would never be good enough to replace film and not all that long ago at that.
The need to have stills will probably be with us for the lifetimes of all those reading this forum. But the means of acquiring them and displaying them will continue to evolve. And when the 60fps, 30 Mega pixel per frame, auto-multi-element-metered auto-smart-fix video camera is the same price as a K10D, people will be buying them and using them. The skill needed to press the shutter-release the moment before the ball hits the racquet will become a thing of history.
You're still talking technology. We already have fast computers and fancy editing programs, but they can't deal with the human bottleneck, and never will be able to.George Lazarette wrote:
So we're back to stills, not video?
Well I didn't take the article as saying that the need for stills will go away, just that the means of acquisition - in photojournalism particularly - will change.So we're back to stills, not video?
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The time taken to edit video is a function of the number of frames to be edited, and the speed with which a human being can absorb the mass of information, and make decisions on whether to keep it, cut it, or modify it. The technology is irrelevant.
The technology isn't irrelevant at all, since it lets you do things quickly, once you've made a decision what to do - and the decision support available is increasing all the time. We already have automatic red eye removal and face recognition - it's only a matter of time before they'll be able to apply standard optimisations to video, just as Photoshop lets you do Auto smart fix, and have them run blindingly fast. The time taken to edit video is a function of the number of frames to be edited, and the speed with which a human being can absorb the mass of information, and make decisions on whether to keep it, cut it, or modify it. The technology is irrelevant.
Try telling a video editor that can remember physically splicing film strips that the technology is irrelevant!
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I think an appropriate analogy here is with newspapers. The mindless nitwits who read the Sun have not forced the quality press out of business. Likewise, I don't expect Youtube and its kind to be a serious threat to the still photograph.
Agreed. As I said, the time taken to view video will not change (until we have bionic brain implants that work like coprocessors, and allow us to assimilate information at different speeds). So the need for stills won't go away in the forseeable future. I don't think the article was suggesting that it would.I think an appropriate analogy here is with newspapers. The mindless nitwits who read the Sun have not forced the quality press out of business. Likewise, I don't expect Youtube and its kind to be a serious threat to the still photograph.
But just as darkroom skills have given way to software skills, when it's possible to extract the perfect high quality still from a piece of video, the skill required of the photojournalist to perfectly anticipate the moment will be lessened.
People were saying that digital would never be good enough to replace film and not all that long ago at that.
The need to have stills will probably be with us for the lifetimes of all those reading this forum. But the means of acquiring them and displaying them will continue to evolve. And when the 60fps, 30 Mega pixel per frame, auto-multi-element-metered auto-smart-fix video camera is the same price as a K10D, people will be buying them and using them. The skill needed to press the shutter-release the moment before the ball hits the racquet will become a thing of history.
I said at the outset: "He might be right about photo-jouralism, though I doubt it. He's certainly wrong about other forms of photography.". Photojournalism probably accounts for fewer than one percent of all photographs taken, so whatever the PJs get up to is not really relevant to the rest of us.
Note that the writer of the piece said: "These seismic shifts .... will literally change the way photographers take pictures."
He is claiming that what he predicts will apply generally, not just to his own field. And that is where I take issue with him.
G
Comment by George Lazarette posted on 'The Coming Earthquake In Photography' at 22/04/2007 - 20:12
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The point of my post was that this is not a technology issue, so analogies with 64Kb of RAM don't apply.George Lazarette wrote:
No amount of technology is going to change that.
Wasn't 64K more memory than anyone would ever need in a personal computer?No amount of technology is going to change that.
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I think it's the time to view, not the time to make, which is the really significant thing here, and if you can pull (and quickly enhance) a few really high quality stills from a video, even this objection disappears.
So we're back to stills, not video?I think it's the time to view, not the time to make, which is the really significant thing here, and if you can pull (and quickly enhance) a few really high quality stills from a video, even this objection disappears.
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Not that I've ever done it, but the darkroom skills of dodging and burning are redundant now, in the context of layers and HDR.
To say what technology will or won't make possible (for which, read 'affordable'), is a little premature, methinks.
The time taken to edit video is a function of the number of frames to be edited, and the speed with which a human being can absorb the mass of information, and make decisions on whether to keep it, cut it, or modify it. The technology is irrelevant.Not that I've ever done it, but the darkroom skills of dodging and burning are redundant now, in the context of layers and HDR.
To say what technology will or won't make possible (for which, read 'affordable'), is a little premature, methinks.
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And in any case, quality is not related to how many people want to see it. The quality of most of YouTube is truly awful, but...
I think an appropriate analogy here is with newspapers. The mindless nitwits who read the Sun have not forced the quality press out of business. Likewise, I don't expect Youtube and its kind to be a serious threat to the still photograph. And in any case, quality is not related to how many people want to see it. The quality of most of YouTube is truly awful, but...
G
Comment by George Lazarette posted on 'The Coming Earthquake In Photography' at 22/04/2007 - 12:10
He might be right about photo-jouralism, though I doubt it. He's certainly wrong about other forms of photography.
The BBC website already serves up a mixture of still and video, and guess what? I seldom watch the video stuff.
Why?
Number one, it takes far too long, and number two, making good video is immensely time-consuming, and time is money. That means it's either not affordable, or it's poor quality. If it's not affordable, it doesn't get made, so what does get made is rubbish. No amount of technology is going to change that.
G
The BBC website already serves up a mixture of still and video, and guess what? I seldom watch the video stuff.
Why?
Number one, it takes far too long, and number two, making good video is immensely time-consuming, and time is money. That means it's either not affordable, or it's poor quality. If it's not affordable, it doesn't get made, so what does get made is rubbish. No amount of technology is going to change that.
G
Comment by George Lazarette posted on 'The Coming Earthquake In Photography' at 21/04/2007 - 23:52
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I'm with Don.
This forum is very unique as it concentrates on photography in a very open and objective way.
That's a very fine line to walk.
Congtatulations to our ever diligent moderators, and welcome mrbored!
Quite agree, Mac.I'm with Don.
This forum is very unique as it concentrates on photography in a very open and objective way.
That's a very fine line to walk.
Congtatulations to our ever diligent moderators, and welcome mrbored!
I thought I had been banned the other day, when the site was trying to stop spammers. So I contacted the mods, and got this reply:
"Who do you think we are? DPReview?
So welcome, indeed. Some of us do care too much about equipment (especially me), but it takes all sorts to make a world.
G
Comment by George Lazarette posted on Hello All at 23/04/2007 - 14:36
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I have a network with 2 PCs on it. Each has a different IP address.George Lazarette wrote:
Peter has just got me going again, once I gave him my IP address. To find out what yours is, go to:
http://www.whatismyipaddress.com/
G
1: How does that affect only one PC?. I assume you have another that was not affected, or do you have access via multiple IP's?Peter has just got me going again, once I gave him my IP address. To find out what yours is, go to:
http://www.whatismyipaddress.com/
G
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2: Any user who is still banned will not read your message until their ban is lifted coz they can't get in to the forum.
True, I suggested to PB that he put a message on the Banned page giving an email address to contact. However, he may not be able to do this without help,2: Any user who is still banned will not read your message until their ban is lifted coz they can't get in to the forum.
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3: My ban might have been lifted if my IP address changed, which it might, because my ISP (Telefonica) uses dynamic IP's (a pain).
I'm sure that's what happened. This must be useful for spammers.3: My ban might have been lifted if my IP address changed, which it might, because my ISP (Telefonica) uses dynamic IP's (a pain).
G
Comment by George Lazarette posted on Attn: Dan - still banned at 20/04/2007 - 20:48
http://www.ephotozine.com/photo/602104
Could this be the card, or the camera, or something else?
The funny thing is that it is far worse when viewed in Silkypix than it is when exported to JPEG. I don't know if SP is trying to correct the problem.
G