----- Original Message ----- From: "Kristian Walsh" Subject: Re: Analog vs digital by Herbert Keppler
>. It's ironic that we only started to get good > quality (cheap) prints from C41 film when the all-digital labs arrived > :-) Sorry, but this statement is beyond bullshit. You are just plain and simply wrong. William Robb I'm not sure I completely disagree with her on that. While I do believe, like you, that an analog printer in the hands of a skilled and properly trained technical will print noticeably better then a digital printer, most of them were at higher end minilabs. Once the drug store chains and big box mega-stores started doing 1 hr processing the price to develop and print a roll of film dropped almost in half. In my area it went from about $12 a roll for a 24 exposure single prints at the independents to $6.99 at the chains. The problem was that analog machines need technicians that understand color printing and are willing to put the effort into it. The programming in the new digital machines does a much better job at color and density setting on automatic then the older analog machines, and the technicians at most chains are going to print on full automatic most of the time. You could build an analog printer with better programming, but I don't see enough of a market for any manufacturer to seriously consider it. So, if we're defining good quality as decent color and density and cheap as $6.99 a roll or 39¢ a reprint, then she has a point. I'm currently printing on an analog machine, a Fuji SFA 250, and am slowly building my business by 1) good and consistent quality prints, 2) good customer service, and 3) good photographic knowledge. But given the consumer shift to digital I'd jump at a chance to get a Frontier, even though we currently offer prints from digital media via our Fuji PrintPix and Aladdin. Butch Each man had only one genuine vocation - to find the way to himself. Hermann Hesse (Demian)
