8x10 digital would not work well. Digital sensors do not like light coming at an angle. Look at the details of Olympus/Kodak 4/3 standard
There is no need to make a 8x10 digital back. There is a limit on lenses anyway. 8x10 film gives you easier postprocessing, but not in terms of extra information recorded. Digital sensor will beat it silly sooner then you think.
Just try some of the 140Mp digital scanning backs.;)
>Digital photography does not yet provide the level of detail that Adams would have required
Bullshit. Digital back at 20+ Mp capture more information that your lense can transmit. Or you can buy a cheapo 5Mp Canon and stitch a 1Gigapixel landscape.
Can film make a seamless image with that much detail? Not even close. And digital is just starting.
If you just scale typical sensor used in smaller cameras to the new 4/3 format, you get 30Mp+. Best medium format lenses start choking at this level. And Photoshop violently rapes darkroom processing capabilities in the ass.
Amount of tinkering that digital photography allows is orders of magnitude higher then anything you can achieve in a lab. Photoshop can do everything film postprocessing can do and then some. It is an entirely different world. So both product and process in digital photography is richer and simpler for anything short of specialized medium/large format work. And that exception will also dissapear soon.
Yeah people still listen to vinyl, and you can argue CD quality is worse. But not DVD-audio or SCD. They kick vinyl ass so badly, it is not even funny.
So, before this turns into a book; if you're shooting for personal record (snapshots), a digital camera will probably be as good as any point-and-shoot, if not better. In some cases, a 10 MP camera would be good enough for professional use, depending on the final print size of the image; but nothing digial exceeds the quality of decent 35 mm, and nothing digital even comes close to exceeding the image quality of the medium format machines.
But how long will it last? What is the advantage of learning anything but digital photography and processing nowdays?
My answer is: NONE. Resolution is one, small part of a good shot. A beginner (or even a professional) will get NOTHING even remotely close to the abilities and flexibility of digital processing. You also completely skipped over the issue of noise. Digital has less noise, period. 10Mp on a good digital chip is far more usable information then a 35mm film.
With upcoming formats like 4/3, chips will easily scale to 30MP+. Few GB of storage is already easily available in a camera. More will come soon, but you easily can carry around a 100Gb in you bag with a small notebook. When you need to make 1000s of shot to get one good one, nothing beats the convinience of digital storage.
Get over it. Film is yesterday. Whatever perceived advantage it has - it will be gone in a decade. Why waste your time on learning how to use it?
I was shooting and processing film for more then 20 years by now, and finally made a switch last year. Incredible sense of liberation from cumbersome and obsolete technology.
he succeeded in casting the majority of his main characters out of cardboard (w/ few exceptions)
It is Tolkien's character who are out of cardboard. That's the nature of a myth. There is nothing wrng with it. Go and read it again.
I love LOTR, and the vision that Jackson brought to screen is an excelent job. Get over it it is not the book - it is a movie. Pretty darn good movie. Nobody took the book from you - it is still on your shelf. Or, is it?
What's different is that a film can be seen in a short time with practically no effort. To enjoy a book you have to master your letters and are willing to spend much more time on the story.
Since when is amount of hurdles is a measure of worthiness of a goal?
There is nothing wrong with absorbing digested, easy to obtain information. That's the cornerstone of the modern society, and there is nothing wrong with it.
Shut down your browser, damn cheater, and order your Slashdot news through pigeon mail. On clay tablets. And read it standing on one foot in cold mud. Then you will be worthy of your intellectualism.
You know, I am not a big fan of big brother - but what about not driving like an idiot?
I do not want one of the morons screaming down the highway to wreck my car, injure or murder me, and get away with it as there is no proof they did anything wrong.
On a road - you are a danger to the people around. I do not think you should expect privacy. Get over it.
Somehow I drive my BMW reasonbly, do not get tickets, and I would not mind information about the car to be available. But even more, I would like the data from cars of that teenage idiots who cut me off to be available if anything to happen.
And what I hear does not make me feel all warm and fuzzy.
I think I am a good example of the "missed audience" non hard core gamer. And for me the epitome of overly complicated game are those thirty-five button push sequences in "combat" games. Or split second timing of driving games, that require hours and hours and hours to master. Or fifty roaming units in a RTS hack fest. These are not "fun" to play. It is a frigging hard work. Tetris is fun to play.
And no, I am not a retard: just your typical thirty-something high-tech worker. Quite fit and alert and more then at ease with computers and technology in general, thank you.
"Dungeon Siege" was good, and nice looking. Do not underestimate eye-candy. I am your one customer who enjoys beautiful images thoroughly.
"Black and White" was OK.
P.S. Of course what I need is a mouse with trackball for scrolling wheel, so I can get away from al this key sequences.
We all know it is a superior system. And with $1.5M in licensing fees they will collect for this particular installation, they will develop it even further.
GPL software will be around long after Microsoft Office exists only in history books.
In good old USA ligislative climate - I am honestly not so sure about it. They always will get another DMCA on our asses.
For the next 20 years it will work, for archival, there is RTF and PDF.
Instead of bragging - better work on making a better OpenOffice standard.
BTW, as a member of one of the OASIS XML standardtization committee (I work in security), i do not keep my hopes high for the standard to be extremely practical and useful.
So it would be better to continue using archived closed and opaque programs under emulators than migrate
If anything ever happens to MS, you would have to convert once (to RTF for example). Migrating to open source program at this point IS NOT AN OPTION. (in case you missed my point - I wish to have an open file format, and hope that MS are forced to do it). I do not really care about the tools to use with open format - as long as it is the best and at least compares in functionality to the office.
You missed my point completly - it is not about what is desirable, but about what is the reality of the day. Second point was - there is nothing seriously wrong with it, iti s all solvable.
BTW - you always can print your Office document into PDF. Ghostscript driver does it just fine.
Daily memos are better as plain text. Data-entry forms are done better in HTML.
You are not doing either. That's not a question, but a statement.
For all my affection for such tools as LaTeX, reality of life shows that they are NOT comparable to MS Office, Framemaker and Quark.
The is nothing like inline changes control in word in LaTeX, and CVS diff is big pile of steaming poo for collaborative work.
Seamless integration with life Excel charts, and to PowerPoint is not duplicated anywhere. I use it often. Ironically, I have to run Windows under VMware to do that quite often (my code development is 90% Linux). Word still quite happy with most ancient word files, and frnakly I would expect OpenOffice to be forgotten before Microsoft (or whoever inherits Office after it is split) goes through its pile of cash. Let's be realistic.
For the future generations, there is always the archival code for Office and i386 emulator.
On another point: 99.9% of documents are not large. When they are, there are other tools for that indeed.
Even with that - I had no problems with 200+ pages documents in Office XP.
And yes, I submit ApJ papers in LaTeX. Appropriate tool for the job.
ANdno, I do not think the Office is an end all golden standard. I wish they are forced to publish the format and start useing public XML schema. It would be an even better tool then.
Non-trivial documents should be done in LaTeX or Docbook, anyway, because they are much more robust and capable than Word.
I am not a big MS Office fan, but it seems to me that you do not know Word capabilities. LaTeX and friends do not even come close.
Yes, typesetting in LaTEx rules, and I still write scientific publications in it. For most of the daily routine work LaTeX suck rocks, with ugly slurping sound. Even when used with a WYSIWYG shell a-la Scientific WOrkplace (and yes - I can write Latex in EMACS without a manual)
As long as securities regulation require quaterly reports and valuation of company and manager performance is judged in three month interval we will keep getting screwed.
Typical development cycle is from 6 to 18 month. If public companies reported once a year there would be less pressure to "close a quarter" and less pressure to do shoddy work for that on elast deal.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no need to make a 8x10 digital back. There is a limit on lenses anyway. 8x10 film gives you easier postprocessing, but not in terms of extra information recorded. Digital sensor will beat it silly sooner then you think.
Just try some of the 140Mp digital scanning backs. ;)
If you just scale typical sensor used in smaller cameras to the new 4/3 format, you get 30Mp+. Best medium format lenses start choking at this level. And Photoshop violently rapes darkroom processing capabilities in the ass.
Film is pretty much dead.
So both product and process in digital photography is richer and simpler for anything short of specialized medium/large format work. And that exception will also dissapear soon.
Yeah people still listen to vinyl, and you can argue CD quality is worse. But not DVD-audio or SCD. They kick vinyl ass so badly, it is not even funny.
But how long will it last? What is the advantage of learning anything but digital photography and processing nowdays?
My answer is: NONE.
Resolution is one, small part of a good shot. A beginner (or even a professional) will get NOTHING even remotely close to the abilities and flexibility of digital processing.
You also completely skipped over the issue of noise. Digital has less noise, period. 10Mp on a good digital chip is far more usable information then a 35mm film.
With upcoming formats like 4/3, chips will easily scale to 30MP+. Few GB of storage is already easily available in a camera. More will come soon, but you easily can carry around a 100Gb in you bag with a small notebook. When you need to make 1000s of shot to get one good one, nothing beats the convinience of digital storage.
Get over it. Film is yesterday. Whatever perceived advantage it has - it will be gone in a decade. Why waste your time on learning how to use it?
I was shooting and processing film for more then 20 years by now, and finally made a switch last year. Incredible sense of liberation from cumbersome and obsolete technology.
It is Tolkien's character who are out of cardboard. That's the nature of a myth. There is nothing wrng with it. Go and read it again.
I love LOTR, and the vision that Jackson brought to screen is an excelent job. Get over it it is not the book - it is a movie. Pretty darn good movie. Nobody took the book from you - it is still on your shelf. Or, is it?
Since when is amount of hurdles is a measure of worthiness of a goal?
There is nothing wrong with absorbing digested, easy to obtain information. That's the cornerstone of the modern society, and there is nothing wrong with it.
Shut down your browser, damn cheater, and order your Slashdot news through pigeon mail. On clay tablets. And read it standing on one foot in cold mud. Then you will be worthy of your intellectualism.
Put down, pout down..
And you can not have me. On the behalf of the estate of the Axe, I refuse.
No use to go too much beyond your eyes resolution. Just like 96Khz/24bit audio is most likely all you need.
Digital photo are of CD quality now - close to perfect, but not quite for an audiphile.
More important limitation is the dynamic range, not resolution. Even 20x24 camera platinum negative is nowhere NEAR the dynamic range of you eyes.
But the end is near. Rather soon our eyes and ears will be the final limitation.
I do not want one of the morons screaming down the highway to wreck my car, injure or murder me, and get away with it as there is no proof they did anything wrong.
On a road - you are a danger to the people around. I do not think you should expect privacy. Get over it.
Somehow I drive my BMW reasonbly, do not get tickets, and I would not mind information about the car to be available. But even more, I would like the data from cars of that teenage idiots who cut me off to be available if anything to happen.
"I can eat glass, that does not hurt me."
WTF?
And I should confess - I like it. ;(
I think I am a good example of the "missed audience" non hard core gamer. And for me the epitome of overly complicated game are those thirty-five button push sequences in "combat" games. Or split second timing of driving games, that require hours and hours and hours to master. Or fifty roaming units in a RTS hack fest. These are not "fun" to play. It is a frigging hard work. Tetris is fun to play.
And no, I am not a retard: just your typical thirty-something high-tech worker. Quite fit and alert and more then at ease with computers and technology in general, thank you.
"Dungeon Siege" was good, and nice looking. Do not underestimate eye-candy. I am your one customer who enjoys beautiful images thoroughly. "Black and White" was OK.
P.S. Of course what I need is a mouse with trackball for scrolling wheel, so I can get away from al this key sequences.
And I HATE all this complicated crap that requires 15 year old time commitment and reflexes to master.
With all due respect - attitude like your is what making game developers write overly complicated bullcrap, taking all the fun out of the games.
We all know it is a superior system. And with $1.5M in licensing fees they will collect for this particular installation, they will develop it even further.
What a shame. Freeloaders. They would never be able to achieve such performance if not for the fruits of labour of SCO .. eeeh.. lawers?
In good old USA ligislative climate - I am honestly not so sure about it. They always will get another DMCA on our asses.
For the next 20 years it will work, for archival, there is RTF and PDF.
Instead of bragging - better work on making a better OpenOffice standard.
BTW, as a member of one of the OASIS XML standardtization committee (I work in security), i do not keep my hopes high for the standard to be extremely practical and useful.
You missed my point completly - it is not about what is desirable, but about what is the reality of the day. Second point was - there is nothing seriously wrong with it, iti s all solvable.
BTW - you always can print your Office document into PDF. Ghostscript driver does it just fine.
Daily memos are better as plain text. Data-entry forms are done better in HTML. You are not doing either. That's not a question, but a statement.
For all my affection for such tools as LaTeX, reality of life shows that they are NOT comparable to MS Office, Framemaker and Quark.
The is nothing like inline changes control in word in LaTeX, and CVS diff is big pile of steaming poo for collaborative work.
Seamless integration with life Excel charts, and to PowerPoint is not duplicated anywhere. I use it often. Ironically, I have to run Windows under VMware to do that quite often (my code development is 90% Linux).
Word still quite happy with most ancient word files, and frnakly I would expect OpenOffice to be forgotten before Microsoft (or whoever inherits Office after it is split) goes through its pile of cash. Let's be realistic. For the future generations, there is always the archival code for Office and i386 emulator.
On another point: 99.9% of documents are not large. When they are, there are other tools for that indeed.
Even with that - I had no problems with 200+ pages documents in Office XP.
And yes, I submit ApJ papers in LaTeX. Appropriate tool for the job.
ANdno, I do not think the Office is an end all golden standard. I wish they are forced to publish the format and start useing public XML schema. It would be an even better tool then.
I am not a big MS Office fan, but it seems to me that you do not know Word capabilities. LaTeX and friends do not even come close. Yes, typesetting in LaTEx rules, and I still write scientific publications in it. For most of the daily routine work LaTeX suck rocks, with ugly slurping sound. Even when used with a WYSIWYG shell a-la Scientific WOrkplace (and yes - I can write Latex in EMACS without a manual)
It is the sampling rate at 96Khz tha's more important in the formats.
Nyquist is your friend.
Of course, pretty damn soon there will be the same problem.. ;)
What it means is that someone with a bigger legal brain has to improve GPL.
Typical development cycle is from 6 to 18 month. If public companies reported once a year there would be less pressure to "close a quarter" and less pressure to do shoddy work for that on elast deal.