I think the real issue with pro digital is the difference in maturity between the two technologies.
Rollei and Nikon and Canon and Hasselblad can--and do--wait years to release new models of pro film cameras, because the film technology changes very slowly (if at all), and the camera bodies and lenses basically just add features that pro's may enjoy but have lived without for decades; the changes are for the most part incremental. The 80-year-old Rolleiflex TLR is still used by pro's all over the world to make great images and has changed practically not at all. But digital cameras have the obsolescence and price-curve characteristic of computer chips, not of film or lenses. What comes out today is very expensive for six months, until the next better thing comes out. So far the next better thing has always been quite a bit better, not incrementally better. Then the technology for the previous top-of-the-line moves to the consumer level for much less money, and the bottom level of consumer product just drops away. And there's plenty of room to improve: maybe 6MP is 'good enough' in some sense, but only temporarily. Most digital images still don't equal film. The next thing will be even better. It's like computer hard drives. They came out with 6GB, then 12GB, 20GB, 30GB, 60GB etc., always for the same price. Each jump in capacity drivs all the older ones a notch cheaper, except for the one on the bottom which stops being manufactured altogether. You can't buy brand new 6GB hard drives for $15 today (which is all they'd be worth)....you just can't buy them at all. This is the state digital is in. 5 years ago a 640x480 digital camera cost $700...I don't think you can buy one today new. The EOS 3 is almost 4 years old already, and Jonathan Kwok's terrific list notwithstanding, what more does one really need? Now that the D60 is out, can Canon let the EOS 1D sit like it is for 4 years? Do you think they'll even be building them at all four years from today? Not a chance. They will still be building 1V's, however (or maybe 1Vn by then). So what do pro's do? They have to have the best; the best is very expensive; but the best digital changes every few months. Until this maturity curve starts to level off (i.e., for $5000 you get a 20Mpixel 35mm full-frame FOVEON noiseless super-high-speed sensor EOS with a 1GHz low-energy CPU in the camera to clean up the images in real time and give you 10fps for 40 frames), I think plenty of pro's will stick with film. It's too hard to pay big bucks for something you only get a year to amortize. Sure it's just a matter of time before pro film cameras become irrelevant, but I don't think anybody knows how much time yet. I don't think the 1V will be the last pro EOS film camera. --Ken S. * **** ******* *********************************************************** * For list instructions, including unsubscribe, see: * http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/eos_list.htm ***********************************************************
