I'd disagree about the camera costs. With what I've seen from Frank, he
seems to shoot spur of the moment grab shots, with an emphasis on
quickly getting the shot, which a 4MP consumer P&S will not do due to
shutter lag. He's either looking at a high-end P&S like the Canon G6 or
a DSLR unless he wants to spend the ridiculous amount Epson wants for
the RD1.
-Adam
Herb Chong wrote:
i go on vacation and come back to this. has it occurred to any of you
to work out how much it costs Frank to shoot each year doing what he
does today? how many rolls do you think he shoots in a year? you can
figure that out just by counting the times he posts and his discourses
on the rolls he has shot. how much does a roll of film, processing,
and printing cost him? do the arithmetic and you will find he is
spending a fair fraction of that $600 already. wait until the cost of
materials goes up. so i have every reason to ask if saving $600 over a
year is a hardship, why isn't what he spends already a hardship?
as for the actual dollar figure, $600 is the most possible that Frank
needs to spend. he has a scanner and scans his B&W prints to show us.
that means he has an adequate image editing program on a good enough
computer right now. if his scanner is a USB scanner, he is done. no
computer upgrade needed for B&W. the monitor quality isn't so
important because he's doing B&W. if his computer doesn't have a USB
port, he has a couple of options. looking for a hand-me-down from a
friend that has a USB port for perhaps $100, go to a refurbished
computer place that takes them off-lease and resells them for perhaps
$150 for an older but adequate system unit (on occasion, i've seen
some refurbished desktops for $80 that will do the job.), go to PC
Connection or some similar place and configure a new system unit for
$250. i walk around computer shows and see some new system units for
$200 and under. getting a laptop like Rob suggests is about the least
cost-effective way of buying computing power. even then, i see
refurbished laptops at computer shows for $200 that will do what Frank
needs doing.
then the camera. if you pay attention to what Frank posts, you'll see
that sharpness isn't especially important. neither is high resolution
since he doesn't go beyond 8x10 often. he can get a more than adequate
camera that will take 80% of the shots he shows by looking for a used
4 megapixel P&S camera set to B&W mode. that's assuming that he
doesn't have a friend looking to upgrade and letting him have their
old one for next to nothing. if Frank really were interested in
getting into digital, he could do it for about mostly likely no more
than $150, $250 at the outside if he has to buy another computer, and
at close to the same quality he shoots today. that camera would cover
about 80% of his shooting that he shows us, all except the indoor shots.
the rest of you who responded with all those negatives, i thought i
saw plenty of group no-think on other mailing lists, but this takes
the cake. just about no-one questioned whether Frank needed a new
computer to go digital or not. only a few people questioned the cost.
just about no-one questioned whether Frank needed a DSLR or not. just
about no-one questioned whether he even needed a new anything. i do 5
seconds of arithmetic in my head and conclude that Frank spends a fair
amount of the actual cost needed to go digital on his photography
already and would save a lot of that by buying a small digital camera
and not printing as much. some of you thought of this, but none of the
negative responses did. Frank's $6000 figure was disingenuous
posturing for not going digital. my system didn't cost $6000,
including the *istD. if he had just stayed with just saying he didn't
like digital or didn't want to spend the time, he would have been like
a bunch of other people on this list, agreeing to disagree. instead,
he spouted a nonsensical figure and you swallowed it all. next thing i
know, the lot of you will cheer Frank's heroic sacrifice for refusing
to save up for a car because he'll never afford $100K for a decent BMW.
Herb...
----- Original Message ----- From: "Ann Sanfedele" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <pentax-discuss@pdml.net>
Sent: Friday, November 25, 2005 1:15 AM
Subject: Re: Shoot now, focus later
Herb Chong wrote:
as Rob said it earlier, $600, not $6K. if that is a hardship, should
you be
shooting anything?
Herb...
What a very bigoted comment , Herb. How sad.
ann, to whom $600 is a hell of a lot of money
