To say if Ansel Adams would have "gone" digital...
I don't really understand where this question or statement is viable. We are talking a totally different generation of technology here. Ansel Adams was a large format guru, since, that was pretty much the best format for what he wanted to do at the peak of his career. 35mm cameras back in his day sucked. It wasnt until the late 70's did cameras start to have quartz controlled, electronic, shutters. What you say? Before this the timing of the shutters was done with spinning weights, magnets, clockwork type mechanisms, and strings routed on pulleys within the camera. Plus, lens technology wasnt where it was at today, the light metering wasn't too good. Not saying that there are no cameras with spot or center weighted meters anymore, but, the light sensors themselves were slow to react and inconsistant. So, he was using the best technology at the time for what he wanted to do.
Now, to throw him into the "now" and give him the equivalant of what he had in digital. Who wouldn't go digital? Or, at the very least, go digital in means of image manipulation. I shoot slide film, and scan it in, do my manipulation in Photoshop, and print them out. I can see him doing that much.
Also, I highly doubt, in 1981, that Ansel Adams told someone that if he were to do it again, he would have gone digital. I just don't see that. He died in 1984, about 2-3 years after Sony created their first Mavica. Which was like, what, 640x480 8 bit? MAYBE?! Probably 4-bit. Had a proprietary 2MB disk drive. I don't even think it was available commercially. Sony just made it as a prototype. Sony Mavica's were like 640x480, 8 bit color in the mid 90's. So, I severally doubt they were better when they first came out. ESPECIALLY considering the insane advancemnts in digital processing within the camera itself with the past 5 years alone. Hell, CCD, CMOS, JFET advancments for the imaging device itself have made huge improvements.
Also, being old enough to remember technology the EARLY the 80's, I just don't see it. 1981? Come on man. PC's did not even come standard with a COLOR adapter. Yeah, we are talking that PC's displayed text and only text and being able to display 4 colors was like a $130 option. Having more than 640k of RAM was impressive. Maybe a 10MB HD? Not only was their a hardware limitation, there was a software limitation. Programs with the power of image manipulation like Photoshop or Gimp simply did not exist then at a consumer level or even pro level. Maybe at an animation studio using a Cray supercomputer? Which cost several million back then? Imagine doing what you do today with Photoshop on a 80186 8Mhz, 640KB RAM, and a 10MB scratch disk.
I noticed something odd... Veritest decided to run TWO different tests in the
P4, one with and without Hyper-Threading enabled. Hyper-Threading is enabled by
default on the P4 processor. Odd.
Then I decided to goto www.Spec.org and do a
benchmark search for Intel P4:
And yes, I did choose the latest results for the Intel P4.
It is very clear that the results obtained by Veritest and put forth in their
report is of a P4 3.06 GHz with Hyper Threading DISABLED. The last I checked, HT
is a feature which is enabled by default. WHY would someone purposely disable
HT? Purposely make their CPU run SLOWER? Hmmm...
Come on Apple, do a serious system comparison, the best versus the best. Not
the best versus a crippled system.
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To say if Ansel Adams would have "gone" digital... I don't really understand where this question or statement is viable. We are talking a totally different generation of technology here. Ansel Adams was a large format guru, since, that was pretty much the best format for what he wanted to do at the peak of his career. 35mm cameras back in his day sucked. It wasnt until the late 70's did cameras start to have quartz controlled, electronic, shutters. What you say? Before this the timing of the shutters was done with spinning weights, magnets, clockwork type mechanisms, and strings routed on pulleys within the camera. Plus, lens technology wasnt where it was at today, the light metering wasn't too good. Not saying that there are no cameras with spot or center weighted meters anymore, but, the light sensors themselves were slow to react and inconsistant. So, he was using the best technology at the time for what he wanted to do. Now, to throw him into the "now" and give him the equivalant of what he had in digital. Who wouldn't go digital? Or, at the very least, go digital in means of image manipulation. I shoot slide film, and scan it in, do my manipulation in Photoshop, and print them out. I can see him doing that much. Also, I highly doubt, in 1981, that Ansel Adams told someone that if he were to do it again, he would have gone digital. I just don't see that. He died in 1984, about 2-3 years after Sony created their first Mavica. Which was like, what, 640x480 8 bit? MAYBE?! Probably 4-bit. Had a proprietary 2MB disk drive. I don't even think it was available commercially. Sony just made it as a prototype. Sony Mavica's were like 640x480, 8 bit color in the mid 90's. So, I severally doubt they were better when they first came out. ESPECIALLY considering the insane advancemnts in digital processing within the camera itself with the past 5 years alone. Hell, CCD, CMOS, JFET advancments for the imaging device itself have made huge improvements. Also, being old enough to remember technology the EARLY the 80's, I just don't see it. 1981? Come on man. PC's did not even come standard with a COLOR adapter. Yeah, we are talking that PC's displayed text and only text and being able to display 4 colors was like a $130 option. Having more than 640k of RAM was impressive. Maybe a 10MB HD? Not only was their a hardware limitation, there was a software limitation. Programs with the power of image manipulation like Photoshop or Gimp simply did not exist then at a consumer level or even pro level. Maybe at an animation studio using a Cray supercomputer? Which cost several million back then? Imagine doing what you do today with Photoshop on a 80186 8Mhz, 640KB RAM, and a 10MB scratch disk.
I find it kinda strange how the SPEC results varied quite markedly between what Intel had listed and what was on display on the Apple website. So, I decided to look into it. First thing I did was goto Veritest's site and look at how they did the benchmark.
I noticed something odd... Veritest decided to run TWO different tests in the P4, one with and without Hyper-Threading enabled. Hyper-Threading is enabled by default on the P4 processor. Odd.
Then I decided to goto www.Spec.org and do a benchmark search for Intel P4:
SPEC.org results:
SPECint2000 : 1200
SPECfp2000 : 1229
SPECint_rate2000 : 14.1
SPECfp_rate2000 : 13.7
Apple.com results:
SPECint2000 : 889
SPECfp2000 : 693
SPECint_rate2000 : 10.3
SPECfp_rate2000 : 8.07
And yes, I did choose the latest results for the Intel P4.
It is very clear that the results obtained by Veritest and put forth in their report is of a P4 3.06 GHz with Hyper Threading DISABLED. The last I checked, HT is a feature which is enabled by default. WHY would someone purposely disable HT? Purposely make their CPU run SLOWER? Hmmm...
Come on Apple, do a serious system comparison, the best versus the best. Not the best versus a crippled system.