The "gap" being filled is one of information, not Internet access.
Yeah, you don't really say that. The "gaps" you explicitly mention are "computers" and "internet access," neither of which this device addresses (technically, it might be a computer, but not how we would think of one in the modern context.)
Couldn't the lack of information be better addressed by printed documents and local libraries, which don't even require electricity?
A nailgun is a nailgun, a hammer is a different tool.
Right, and I can't imagine there is much call for traditional hammers in professional construction work anymore. And I would hazard a guess that the professional's nail gun is much more expensive and robust than the home DIY version.
Having a huge, expensive set of zoom lenses for your camera is great, but not practical if you are planning to scale a mountain to take your photos.
If you're going to scale a mountain, then you will want the best quality-to-weight ratio. That doesn't mean a full set of lenses, but it means the lenses you do take will be the best you can get. Even if you take just one lens, it might cost $2,000 without the camera body.
A professional AV guy will know that a $20 stereo amp that has two RCA's in and two speakers out (and maybe the luxury of bass and treble dials) might be exactly what they need for a particular pair of speakers to do a particular job,
A professional AV guy would not recommend RCA connectors at all.
In summary, a professional is someone who knows how to get a job done, and how to do it well, and they know how much they need to spend to achieve that, knows what bells and whistles they need and what shiney features to ignore, and still make it better than Good Enough.
Right. And doing it properly usually costs a lot more than the amateur spends. Quality costs more than shiny bells and whistles. Hence the fallacy of the post I was replying to, which claims the professional always spends less than the amateur. This may be true in certain edge cases, but in general, it is not. The professional usually spends more up-front to get a better result over the long-term.
You, dear music producer, seem to equate things of limited quantity (food) to things that are infinitely reproducible (digital performances). This is simply idiotic.
You don't seem to understand what a chef does. He doesn't cook the dishes, he comes up with new recipes, and directs the kitchen staff.
Think back to that chef. Imagine he can prepare a dish one time and copy it infinitely forever. He could serve one helping to every person on the globe with no additional cost or effort on his part.
That is essentially what chefs do. They draw paying customers to their restaurants though their creativity or fame, with little physical input.
You're just not able to grasp the difference between physical resources and creative effort.
Actually, you seem to be the one not understanding this, as the position of chef is primarily a creative position.
The middle price point is for the professional. The pro understands that he doesn't want the cheap crappy hammer that'll ruin his carpals in a day of framing, but he also understands that the laser guide and designer handle on the $100 hammer are just crap to bilk the amateur DYIer. So he buys the $20 hammer that does the job, is well balanced and skips on the frills. Because he's a pro and confident in his ability to pick a *good* $20 hammer.
That's pretty much wrong for all your examples, except perhaps for hammers. The amateur photographer buys the mid-priced camera, $1,000 to $2,000. The professional buys the $2,000 to $20,000 camera. The amateur in AV systems might buy a 2,000 to 10,000 home theater system. The professional buys a $100,000 to $500,000 Digital Cinema system.
It probably even applies to hammers. An amateur buys an expensive hammer, the professional buys an industrial-strength nail-gun system. (Disclaimer: I don't know that much about construction tools, so my example might be way off, but I know that professional builders use some pretty specialized equipment beyond the budget of non-professionals).
2) Instead of the cable, buy This card [newegg.com] for $6 more ($25).
Where does it say that this card is Mac compatible? When I found out my Mac Pro didn't have any spare SATA channels (I have a Blu-Ray and a DVD drive installed) I bought a couple of different models of eSATA card, but neither had Mac drivers, and would not work. The only option I found that explicitly mentioned Mac compatibility was an expensive one from a Mac specialist company (it was Newer or Sonnet, I think).
... and if you want e-sata, just buy an extender cable [macsales.com] for the two extra on-board sata channels in the Mac Pro.
What extra SATA channels on the Mac Pro? For the 2009 Mac Pro, they changed the optical drives from PATA to SATA, so those previously-unused channels are now used for the optical drives. I haven't seen the 2010 model yet, but I imagine the situation would be the same.
It sounds like you're the type of person he's talking about in the quote I put in my post. You seem very hung up on your own conception of what constitutes photography, and you're upset when someone talks about it in a different way.
how the fuck would you get that out of my posts? the opposite is the truth.
As I said before, the point of the article is to encourage people to think of serious photography more broadly than just DSLRs.
That's the exact opposite of what the article is trying to do, which is to mislead people into following Rockwell's particular conception of photography, and not think intelligently.
As I said before, the point of the article is to encourage people to think of serious photography more broadly than just DSLRs. That message doesn't seem to resonate with you,
But that's not what the message of his article is! Why would I think photography is just about DSLRs, when I own and use cameras of many different formats, including 4x5, medium format, digital, etc, and have done for decades? That doesn't make any sense.
That message doesn't seem to resonate with you, but there's no reason to get angry about it.
Firstly, I'm not angry. But I do not like people writing misleading things, especially when their audience is impressionable and doesn't know better. He has no excuse for misleading writing.
Bottom line: Ken Rockwell is a hack writer, who should be ashamed of his website, and the damage that he's done to photographic education. He preys on ignorance to drive page views.
Your original quote was ""you are only allowed to share source code under strict conditions"" which is *completely* different from the point you're now making.
How so? It's exactly the same point. It forces you to share source code, and attaches strict conditions to that sharing.
Secondly, you'll note that you have fewer rights without the GPL then with it.
How so? Under a BSD license, I'm not forced to share source code, so I have more freedom to develop software on my own terms.
GPL code is still copyrighted code. Do you think you should just be able to steal other peoples work?
This doesn't make any sense whatsoever, as there are other licenses that allow more freedom than the GPL, yet are still copyrighted code. Using a different license than the GPL is not "stealing."
This is only valid if you shoot hundreds if not thousands of photos.
And recommending a 4x5 camera over a 35mm form-factor DSLR is only valid if you only shoot pictures of things that don't move, and you don't mind lugging around heavy equipment everywhere, and you specialize in architecture or landscapes.
It's just such a stupid thing to suggest, especially given Ken Rockwell's audience. Anyone who has a need for a 4x5 camera is not going to be visiting his website for advice.
Rockwell just glosses over all this, in order to make a misleading argument. Do you know how you operate a 4x5 camera? You set it up, you put a black cloth over your head, make adjustments to tilt and shift geometry, focus the image using a magnifying loupe on a ground glass, take measurements with a light meter, insert film holder, remove the dark slide, make an exposure, replace the dark slide. For one shot. You might even make Polaroid test shots first, if they still made Polaroid film.
Whatever your opinions of film versus digital, I think anyone with a brain and an understanding of the subject can agree that Rockwell's article is highly disingenuous and misleading. He's comparing two extremely different use cases and presenting them as equivalent choices. But that's not where the retardation ends. He also can't write very well, he doesn't explain topics clearly, he just rambles on irrelevant tangents, he can't stick to one idea. I think his audience probably come out more confused and less informed after they read these stupid articles.
Looking at your clarkvision page, the Velvia graphic (Figure 4) is not there. However Fuji's Provia 100F [luminous-landscape.com] is better. The bad part is it comes only in 100 ASA. Here's a discussion on Velvia on Flickr [flickr.com].
And similarly, there are better digital cameras now than the ones used in these tests. And you need to cherry-pick low-speed film stocks to even have a chance of coming close to digital. In the real world, you don't always shoot at low speeds in controlled conditions.
but if you are comparing media, you need to take all aspects of it into consideration, and I think how a medium performs beyond its limits is important aswell.
What a meaningless statement! If a medium has gone past its limits, by definition, it can't "perform" anymore, otherwise it would be within its limits.
Can you give any citations? There are pro photographers, those who make their living as photographers, who disagree with that. Here's wiki's article on digital vs film [wikipedia.org].
Perhaps you could read one of the only serious tests linked from the (very poor) Wikipedia article that you cite: Dynamic Range of an Image
Ken Rockwell, quoted in the wiki article, has the article Why We Love Film
Ken Rockwell is a hack with no credibility, and no test data to back up his statements. I don't know why anybody takes him seriously.
"I made this shot on a Contax G2 with a 21mm Zeiss lens at f/8 on Fuji Velvia 50, which was processed and scanned at the same time at NCPS. The dynamic range is so great that the hellacious sunbursts you see are just what's naturally coming off the diaphragm blade at f/8, as if 1,000 suns were shining in the lens in the two-minute exposure."
Well, that's an odd statement, because Velvia only has about 5 stops of dynamic range, compared to around 10 for modern digital cameras.
He further states "A frame of 35mm film, scanned cheaply at a good photo lab to a CD, is about equal to the resolution of a 25MP DSLR."
That is completely laughable. Even the best 35mm film exposures aren't capable of that resolution, especially not one that was "scanned cheaply."
You ask me for citations? Then tell me what Ken Rockwell's citations are. They don't exist.
Using arguments such as 'this is nonsense' doesn't give you much backing here.
Where is "here," exactly?
A typical sunset pic will blow all three channels sequentially, be it film or digital. The difference is that when digital reaches 255 in the red channel,it doesn't go anyl further.
And when film reaches the limits of its dynamic range, it doesn't go any further, either.
In film, the characteristic curve has a shoulder, which tails back the clipping of it's channels, allowing for a smooth transition to white.
Yes, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about what happens when you go beyond that (very limited) shoulder.
Its a shame you didn't provide references.
OK then, I'll help you out. Try this for reference. An old digital camera, the Canon 1D Mk II shows over 10 stops of dynamic range, while color negative film has around 7 stops, and color slide film has around 5 stops.
What this means, is that your film is already at least 3 stops overexposed while the digital camera is still recording tonal detail. By "overexposed" here, we are talking about well past your "shoulder" which only applies to a minute range of values. The same applies to underexposure.
Your argument hinges on digital being technically superior, so that how the media behaves beyond its limits is not of any importance.
That doesn't make any sense. We were talking about what the limits are. Film reaches its limit well before digital fails.
But film still wins outside of what is measurable - where you exceed the resolution and dynamic range. All you get in digital is a metaphorical brick wall of digital noise, artefacts from bayer interpolation/sharpening/noise reduction, whereas on film you get (?artistic) soft grainy organic noise.
This is just nonsense. Current digital cameras exceed film in resolution and dynamic range. You have already reached "the wall" of film, while digital is still reproducing nuances.
The same applies to dynamic range - in digital you get harsh clipping of colour as you exceed the range of each of the R, G and B sensors, creating a stripy rainbow from red/orange/yellow to white in every sunset photo you ever take, with film you get a smooth gradation to white.
If you've already exceeded film's dynamic range, you don't get "a smooth gradation to white" because you've already gone past white, and have blown out all the highlights. But because digital has greater dynamic range, you still have gradations when you have gone well past film's limits.
OK, I'll bite. Even though I don't think Wikipedia is authoritative for anything, this entry [wikipedia.org] contains a better reference list than I could include here.
That article is horribly sourced. It even quotes Ken Rockwell, for Christ's sake - and he is just talking out of his ass, it's not like he did any real tests. Other sources are equally specious with people "estimating" resolution - why can't they just measure it?
To summarize, depending on the film, the spacial resolution of 35mm film ranges from 4 to 20 megapixels
It's nowhere near 20 megapixels for even good, fine-grained 35mm film stocks. A typical medium-speed stock is more like 6 megapixels.
And what does price have to do with it? If digital can beat film, then digital can beat film. You can get 20+ megapixel cameras reasonably affordably these days.
In terms of dynamic range, film can typically handle 9-10 stops (again, determined by film and processing used),
No, not really. 7 stops is more like the maximum for color negative film, slide film gets about 5 stops, and you can get close to 9 with some black-and-shite film and special processing. Modern digital in a RAW format is about 9 stops in color.
You can see this in practice. With a RAW file, you can recover highlights and shadows that would have been lost if you were using film.
Compression algorithms, particularly in JPEG files, do horrible things to gradients, as well.
Who the hell uses JPEG for professional shooting?
The equivalent issue for digital is thermal noise, which has been much harder to deal with, aesthetically, since it can vary depending on color (i.e. some cameras have more chroma noise in the blue channel, etc.), quality, and consistency
Noise in digital images is nearing the theoretical minimum for normal ISO ranges (100 to 400). Digital absolutely kills film on this metric. Look up studies done on noise on each, look at the graphs, the difference is staggering.
Also, while I can switch grain pattern easily with film by putting in a different kind of film (cost: $5-10/roll), doing the same with digital thermal patterns means buying A WHOLE OTHER CAMERA (cost: hundreds or thousands of dollars).
That's much easier with digital - because when you shoot at medium ISO ratings, noise is invisible, so you can add whatever grain pattern you like afterwards. With film, you're stuck with what you get.
Even with higher ISO ratings you get much less noise - moderns cameras give a similar level of noise at around 3200 ISO to what we would get n film at 400 ISO. And the digital noise is much more easily reduced in post-processing than film grain is.
outweigh the imaging/aesthetic benefits of film.
WHAT aesthetic/imaging benefits? There are none anymore. You can make a digital capture look like any type of film, but you can't get the quality of digital out of film.
I showed you mine, now you show me yours. Where's YOUR data to back up your claim that "Digital beats film in every one of those characteristics"?
Do some fucking research, don't you know how to use Google? Look for articles with actual test data and proper technique, not idiots spouting their nostalgic opinions. It's ironic that you chastise me for not linking to data, when your sole link is to a dodgy wikipedia article.
That, and you could try looking at the images. I've worked with thousands of images from both the film and digital eras, and it's perfectly obvious to the trained eye. We would have killed to get the results you can get today in the pre-digital world.
Who runs any fan-cooled computer in the actual recording area? Standard practice is that the recording area is isolated from the mixing/equipment room.
If you have the model with the PCI-X, rather than the PCI Express bus, then probably the optimum usage is putting it in a recording studio. There are some great rack-mount multi-channel (like 10 in, 10 out) audio interfaces by the likes of M-Audio which use the PCI bus, and have never been updated for PCI Express compatibility, so they won't work in a Mac Pro.
The G5 has plenty of performance for audio work, and plenty of space for internal hard drives or RAID. This would really be the optimum niche for such a machine. For other purposes (file server etc), it sucks too much power and takes up too much space for its usefulness. But for audio work with dedicated hardware, it's perfect.
Slashdot Mirror
So, you made an entirely sincere troll? That doesn't make it any less trollish.
Bruce made a troll comment, so why shouldn't he be moderated as a troll? His fame should not make him immune from appropriate moderation.
I've found the best method is to involve family.
Hey, it worked for Vito Corleone.
Yeah, stupid socialism. It doesn't work anywhere except everywhere except America.
Yeah, stupid grammar. It everything inside except nested clause.
The "gap" being filled is one of information, not Internet access.
Yeah, you don't really say that. The "gaps" you explicitly mention are "computers" and "internet access," neither of which this device addresses (technically, it might be a computer, but not how we would think of one in the modern context.)
Couldn't the lack of information be better addressed by printed documents and local libraries, which don't even require electricity?
It makes no sense to design a device for areas without Internet connectivity and then require it to have an Internet connection!
But you say in your post that it helps give them an internet connection. Not making a lot of sense there.
A nailgun is a nailgun, a hammer is a different tool.
Right, and I can't imagine there is much call for traditional hammers in professional construction work anymore. And I would hazard a guess that the professional's nail gun is much more expensive and robust than the home DIY version.
Having a huge, expensive set of zoom lenses for your camera is great, but not practical if you are planning to scale a mountain to take your photos.
If you're going to scale a mountain, then you will want the best quality-to-weight ratio. That doesn't mean a full set of lenses, but it means the lenses you do take will be the best you can get. Even if you take just one lens, it might cost $2,000 without the camera body.
A professional AV guy will know that a $20 stereo amp that has two RCA's in and two speakers out (and maybe the luxury of bass and treble dials) might be exactly what they need for a particular pair of speakers to do a particular job,
A professional AV guy would not recommend RCA connectors at all.
In summary, a professional is someone who knows how to get a job done, and how to do it well, and they know how much they need to spend to achieve that, knows what bells and whistles they need and what shiney features to ignore, and still make it better than Good Enough.
Right. And doing it properly usually costs a lot more than the amateur spends. Quality costs more than shiny bells and whistles. Hence the fallacy of the post I was replying to, which claims the professional always spends less than the amateur. This may be true in certain edge cases, but in general, it is not. The professional usually spends more up-front to get a better result over the long-term.
You, dear music producer, seem to equate things of limited quantity (food) to things that are infinitely reproducible (digital performances). This is simply idiotic.
You don't seem to understand what a chef does. He doesn't cook the dishes, he comes up with new recipes, and directs the kitchen staff.
Think back to that chef. Imagine he can prepare a dish one time and copy it infinitely forever. He could serve one helping to every person on the globe with no additional cost or effort on his part.
That is essentially what chefs do. They draw paying customers to their restaurants though their creativity or fame, with little physical input.
You're just not able to grasp the difference between physical resources and creative effort.
Actually, you seem to be the one not understanding this, as the position of chef is primarily a creative position.
The middle price point is for the professional. The pro understands that he doesn't want the cheap crappy hammer that'll ruin his carpals in a day of framing, but he also understands that the laser guide and designer handle on the $100 hammer are just crap to bilk the amateur DYIer. So he buys the $20 hammer that does the job, is well balanced and skips on the frills. Because he's a pro and confident in his ability to pick a *good* $20 hammer.
That's pretty much wrong for all your examples, except perhaps for hammers. The amateur photographer buys the mid-priced camera, $1,000 to $2,000. The professional buys the $2,000 to $20,000 camera. The amateur in AV systems might buy a 2,000 to 10,000 home theater system. The professional buys a $100,000 to $500,000 Digital Cinema system.
It probably even applies to hammers. An amateur buys an expensive hammer, the professional buys an industrial-strength nail-gun system. (Disclaimer: I don't know that much about construction tools, so my example might be way off, but I know that professional builders use some pretty specialized equipment beyond the budget of non-professionals).
The developing world has a glut of TVs but very few computers and little Internet access. These devices can help fill that gap.
How does this help them get internet access? It requires a pre-existing internet connection to work.
Until the "IBM PC" came along, most of us hooked our home computers to our televisions:
And it was horrible. We only did it because it was the only option available to us.
So cut out the middleman and make this common practise by rebilling I say.
Or just get Google to host it for you, and cut your costs while getting a higher level of service.
2) Instead of the cable, buy This card [newegg.com] for $6 more ($25).
Where does it say that this card is Mac compatible? When I found out my Mac Pro didn't have any spare SATA channels (I have a Blu-Ray and a DVD drive installed) I bought a couple of different models of eSATA card, but neither had Mac drivers, and would not work. The only option I found that explicitly mentioned Mac compatibility was an expensive one from a Mac specialist company (it was Newer or Sonnet, I think).
... and if you want e-sata, just buy an extender cable [macsales.com] for the two extra on-board sata channels in the Mac Pro.
What extra SATA channels on the Mac Pro? For the 2009 Mac Pro, they changed the optical drives from PATA to SATA, so those previously-unused channels are now used for the optical drives. I haven't seen the 2010 model yet, but I imagine the situation would be the same.
It sounds like you're the type of person he's talking about in the quote I put in my post. You seem very hung up on your own conception of what constitutes photography, and you're upset when someone talks about it in a different way.
how the fuck would you get that out of my posts? the opposite is the truth.
As I said before, the point of the article is to encourage people to think of serious photography more broadly than just DSLRs.
That's the exact opposite of what the article is trying to do, which is to mislead people into following Rockwell's particular conception of photography, and not think intelligently.
As I said before, the point of the article is to encourage people to think of serious photography more broadly than just DSLRs. That message doesn't seem to resonate with you,
But that's not what the message of his article is! Why would I think photography is just about DSLRs, when I own and use cameras of many different formats, including 4x5, medium format, digital, etc, and have done for decades? That doesn't make any sense.
That message doesn't seem to resonate with you, but there's no reason to get angry about it.
Firstly, I'm not angry. But I do not like people writing misleading things, especially when their audience is impressionable and doesn't know better. He has no excuse for misleading writing.
Bottom line: Ken Rockwell is a hack writer, who should be ashamed of his website, and the damage that he's done to photographic education. He preys on ignorance to drive page views.
Your original quote was ""you are only allowed to share source code under strict conditions"" which is *completely* different from the point you're now making.
How so? It's exactly the same point. It forces you to share source code, and attaches strict conditions to that sharing.
Secondly, you'll note that you have fewer rights without the GPL then with it.
How so? Under a BSD license, I'm not forced to share source code, so I have more freedom to develop software on my own terms.
GPL code is still copyrighted code. Do you think you should just be able to steal other peoples work?
This doesn't make any sense whatsoever, as there are other licenses that allow more freedom than the GPL, yet are still copyrighted code. Using a different license than the GPL is not "stealing."
This is only valid if you shoot hundreds if not thousands of photos.
And recommending a 4x5 camera over a 35mm form-factor DSLR is only valid if you only shoot pictures of things that don't move, and you don't mind lugging around heavy equipment everywhere, and you specialize in architecture or landscapes.
It's just such a stupid thing to suggest, especially given Ken Rockwell's audience. Anyone who has a need for a 4x5 camera is not going to be visiting his website for advice.
Rockwell just glosses over all this, in order to make a misleading argument. Do you know how you operate a 4x5 camera? You set it up, you put a black cloth over your head, make adjustments to tilt and shift geometry, focus the image using a magnifying loupe on a ground glass, take measurements with a light meter, insert film holder, remove the dark slide, make an exposure, replace the dark slide. For one shot. You might even make Polaroid test shots first, if they still made Polaroid film.
Whatever your opinions of film versus digital, I think anyone with a brain and an understanding of the subject can agree that Rockwell's article is highly disingenuous and misleading. He's comparing two extremely different use cases and presenting them as equivalent choices. But that's not where the retardation ends. He also can't write very well, he doesn't explain topics clearly, he just rambles on irrelevant tangents, he can't stick to one idea. I think his audience probably come out more confused and less informed after they read these stupid articles.
Looking at your clarkvision page, the Velvia graphic (Figure 4) is not there. However Fuji's Provia 100F [luminous-landscape.com] is better. The bad part is it comes only in 100 ASA. Here's a discussion on Velvia on Flickr [flickr.com].
And similarly, there are better digital cameras now than the ones used in these tests. And you need to cherry-pick low-speed film stocks to even have a chance of coming close to digital. In the real world, you don't always shoot at low speeds in controlled conditions.
but if you are comparing media, you need to take all aspects of it into consideration, and I think how a medium performs beyond its limits is important aswell.
What a meaningless statement! If a medium has gone past its limits, by definition, it can't "perform" anymore, otherwise it would be within its limits.
Can you give any citations? There are pro photographers, those who make their living as photographers, who disagree with that. Here's wiki's article on digital vs film [wikipedia.org].
Perhaps you could read one of the only serious tests linked from the (very poor) Wikipedia article that you cite: Dynamic Range of an Image
Ken Rockwell, quoted in the wiki article, has the article Why We Love Film
Ken Rockwell is a hack with no credibility, and no test data to back up his statements. I don't know why anybody takes him seriously.
"I made this shot on a Contax G2 with a 21mm Zeiss lens at f/8 on Fuji Velvia 50, which was processed and scanned at the same time at NCPS. The dynamic range is so great that the hellacious sunbursts you see are just what's naturally coming off the diaphragm blade at f/8, as if 1,000 suns were shining in the lens in the two-minute exposure."
Well, that's an odd statement, because Velvia only has about 5 stops of dynamic range, compared to around 10 for modern digital cameras.
He further states "A frame of 35mm film, scanned cheaply at a good photo lab to a CD, is about equal to the resolution of a 25MP DSLR."
That is completely laughable. Even the best 35mm film exposures aren't capable of that resolution, especially not one that was "scanned cheaply."
You ask me for citations? Then tell me what Ken Rockwell's citations are. They don't exist.
Using arguments such as 'this is nonsense' doesn't give you much backing here.
Where is "here," exactly?
A typical sunset pic will blow all three channels sequentially, be it film or digital. The difference is that when digital reaches 255 in the red channel,it doesn't go anyl further.
And when film reaches the limits of its dynamic range, it doesn't go any further, either.
In film, the characteristic curve has a shoulder, which tails back the clipping of it's channels, allowing for a smooth transition to white.
Yes, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about what happens when you go beyond that (very limited) shoulder.
Its a shame you didn't provide references.
OK then, I'll help you out. Try this for reference. An old digital camera, the Canon 1D Mk II shows over 10 stops of dynamic range, while color negative film has around 7 stops, and color slide film has around 5 stops.
What this means, is that your film is already at least 3 stops overexposed while the digital camera is still recording tonal detail. By "overexposed" here, we are talking about well past your "shoulder" which only applies to a minute range of values. The same applies to underexposure.
Your argument hinges on digital being technically superior, so that how the media behaves beyond its limits is not of any importance.
That doesn't make any sense. We were talking about what the limits are. Film reaches its limit well before digital fails.
But film still wins outside of what is measurable - where you exceed the resolution and dynamic range. All you get in digital is a metaphorical brick wall of digital noise, artefacts from bayer interpolation/sharpening/noise reduction, whereas on film you get (?artistic) soft grainy organic noise.
This is just nonsense. Current digital cameras exceed film in resolution and dynamic range. You have already reached "the wall" of film, while digital is still reproducing nuances.
The same applies to dynamic range - in digital you get harsh clipping of colour as you exceed the range of each of the R, G and B sensors, creating a stripy rainbow from red/orange/yellow to white in every sunset photo you ever take, with film you get a smooth gradation to white.
If you've already exceeded film's dynamic range, you don't get "a smooth gradation to white" because you've already gone past white, and have blown out all the highlights. But because digital has greater dynamic range, you still have gradations when you have gone well past film's limits.
OK, I'll bite. Even though I don't think Wikipedia is authoritative for anything, this entry [wikipedia.org] contains a better reference list than I could include here.
That article is horribly sourced. It even quotes Ken Rockwell, for Christ's sake - and he is just talking out of his ass, it's not like he did any real tests. Other sources are equally specious with people "estimating" resolution - why can't they just measure it?
To summarize, depending on the film, the spacial resolution of 35mm film ranges from 4 to 20 megapixels
It's nowhere near 20 megapixels for even good, fine-grained 35mm film stocks. A typical medium-speed stock is more like 6 megapixels.
And what does price have to do with it? If digital can beat film, then digital can beat film. You can get 20+ megapixel cameras reasonably affordably these days.
In terms of dynamic range, film can typically handle 9-10 stops (again, determined by film and processing used),
No, not really. 7 stops is more like the maximum for color negative film, slide film gets about 5 stops, and you can get close to 9 with some black-and-shite film and special processing. Modern digital in a RAW format is about 9 stops in color.
You can see this in practice. With a RAW file, you can recover highlights and shadows that would have been lost if you were using film.
Compression algorithms, particularly in JPEG files, do horrible things to gradients, as well.
Who the hell uses JPEG for professional shooting?
The equivalent issue for digital is thermal noise, which has been much harder to deal with, aesthetically, since it can vary depending on color (i.e. some cameras have more chroma noise in the blue channel, etc.), quality, and consistency
Noise in digital images is nearing the theoretical minimum for normal ISO ranges (100 to 400). Digital absolutely kills film on this metric. Look up studies done on noise on each, look at the graphs, the difference is staggering.
Also, while I can switch grain pattern easily with film by putting in a different kind of film (cost: $5-10/roll), doing the same with digital thermal patterns means buying A WHOLE OTHER CAMERA (cost: hundreds or thousands of dollars).
That's much easier with digital - because when you shoot at medium ISO ratings, noise is invisible, so you can add whatever grain pattern you like afterwards. With film, you're stuck with what you get.
Even with higher ISO ratings you get much less noise - moderns cameras give a similar level of noise at around 3200 ISO to what we would get n film at 400 ISO. And the digital noise is much more easily reduced in post-processing than film grain is.
outweigh the imaging/aesthetic benefits of film.
WHAT aesthetic/imaging benefits? There are none anymore. You can make a digital capture look like any type of film, but you can't get the quality of digital out of film.
I showed you mine, now you show me yours. Where's YOUR data to back up your claim that "Digital beats film in every one of those characteristics"?
Do some fucking research, don't you know how to use Google? Look for articles with actual test data and proper technique, not idiots spouting their nostalgic opinions. It's ironic that you chastise me for not linking to data, when your sole link is to a dodgy wikipedia article.
That, and you could try looking at the images. I've worked with thousands of images from both the film and digital eras, and it's perfectly obvious to the trained eye. We would have killed to get the results you can get today in the pre-digital world.
Who runs any fan-cooled computer in the actual recording area? Standard practice is that the recording area is isolated from the mixing/equipment room.
If you have the model with the PCI-X, rather than the PCI Express bus, then probably the optimum usage is putting it in a recording studio. There are some great rack-mount multi-channel (like 10 in, 10 out) audio interfaces by the likes of M-Audio which use the PCI bus, and have never been updated for PCI Express compatibility, so they won't work in a Mac Pro.
The G5 has plenty of performance for audio work, and plenty of space for internal hard drives or RAID. This would really be the optimum niche for such a machine. For other purposes (file server etc), it sucks too much power and takes up too much space for its usefulness. But for audio work with dedicated hardware, it's perfect.