On Sun, May 01, 2005 at 10:49:22PM -0400, Scott Loveless wrote: > On 4/30/05, Paul Stenquist <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > It's not bogus. Its a comparison of what is accessible to most > > photographers working with a normal budget. > I'm going to slightly agree with Paul here.
As am I. What is bogus is to lay the blame for the lowering of photographic standards at the feet of digital. Even before digital cameras showed up, it was getting increasingly difficult to find a lab that was capable of doing decent quality work - more and more were being put out of business by the minilabs. Add to that the commonly voiced argument that because digital is, perhaps, not quite capable of equalling the output of the very best optical printers (conveniently neglecting the fact that the cost of such services is orders of magnitude more than most photographers are prepared to pay) it must be contributing to a lowering of photographic quality. I'd dispute that, too; the average quality of photographic output (even based on some presumably discerning group such as members of the PDML) has probably increased since the *ist-D first showed up.