The New York Times has an article on digital holdouts to the digital camera ‘revolution’
Personally, I have no qualms with people not wanting to go digital for their photos. It’s merely a matter of perspective in the set of systems you use for taking photos. I use my computer a lot. A digital camera to me is very practical and useful as I can input directly from a digital Camera into the computer and do most of the image manipulations I know.
However, what works for me might not work with someone that has already invested a lot of time in learning the ins and outs of traditional photography methods and has a lot of equipment and process to working with that well. And they might not even own a computer which is pretty much a requirement if you get a digital camera.
Let’s call it for what it is. It’s a ‘system’ composed of smaller parts that make up a larger whole. One person uses a traditional camera, I like using a digital one. Calling these people ‘luddites’ is moronic since you have to look at the system it’s placed in to understand why. Yes there are some people that don’t know any better but there are plenty of people that have measured the pros and cons of each for their particular photography purposes and like what they have now better than the ‘brand-new and improved’ method.
For example, one thing that digital cameras definitely cannot do as well as traditional cameras is the ability to take many camera shots in a short amount of time. Many digital cameras must take the captured image and write it into memory which makes it impossible to take another picture until this write process is done. Perhaps with ever increasing speedup in interconnect technologies this process can be sped up. But this requires waiting for newer models to integrate methods (Some friends mention buffering the images then write back into permanent storage solutions ARE available) to allow this. But for now, there is no competition in that category. However, if you don’t take those type of camera shots then this is a non-issue. If you’re a photographer that uses those type of methods you’ll be sorely disappointed with current digital solutions.
