olympus-digest Sunday, December 22 2002 Volume 02 : Number 3776
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2002 18:53:04 -0500
From: Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [OM] Re: Dipping our Toe Into Digital (LONG)
Comments interspersed below.
At 3:25 AM +0000 12/22/02, olympus-digest wrote:
>Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 10:04:02 -0800
>From: Jan Steinman <Jan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [OM] Re: Dipping our Toe Into Digital (LONG)
>
> >From: Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@xxxxxxxxx>
> >
> > >From: Jan Steinman <Jan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > >
> > >My research indicates that an optimal 35mm frame may contain as much as
> > >18Mpx.
> >
> >Hmm. I see. The 18 Mpix appears to assume the typical compromise
> >red-green-green-blue pattern...
>
>It was from actual measurements, primarily RN Clark's and Norman
Koren's. Most folks who are serious about this point out that there is
no simple equation -- film has one equivalence if you measure one way,
or a different one if you measure some other way.
The compromise is the camera makers', in that they don't provide
full-color (tricolor) pixels.
> > >In 1997, I predicted that price/performance parity between digital and
> > >35mm was 8 years off. I stand by that: it's now 3 years off.
> >
> >I assume that you used Moore's Law, that holds that semiconductor technology
> >doubles in performance (halves in cost for the same performance) every 18
> >months. Confirmed below.
>
>Thanks for demo'ing the math I was too lazy to type in! As I mentioned,
I first went through this exercise five years ago, and it looks like
it's holding true.
Yes. Despite the non-electronic parts, discussed below.
> >What will take the longest is movies...
>
>Perhaps not... Movies don't require the maximum amount of information
that the format can supply, and movie films are accordingly NOT even
close to Velvia, in terms of resolution. (Don't believe me, shoot some
of that crap that Seattle Filmworks -- or whatever they're called since
the re-org -- or Dale Labs, or any of those movie film repacking houses sells.)
>
>It may be true that if you were using each frame to its utmost, but the
human eye cannot discern all that detail at 24 frames per second. It
would appear that MPEG formats do a pretty darn good job of containing
as much "useful" information as is needed.
I've seen computations from the film industry for when they would go to
digital, and they too get terabytes if one wants to have full
traditional quality. If one will settle for less quality than the
traditional methods have delivered for decades, then of course the
crossover day comes nearer.
But it isn't clear that the movie industry will do any such thing, or
else the standard movie film size would be 16mm, not 35mm (used for
typical stuff) and even 70mm (used for very high quality). But, 16mm
was used only for educational films and the like, where price and
convenience were more important than quality.
Does anybody remember 8mm home movies, and Super8 format (because 8mm
picture quality was just too poor)? Not that Super8 was that great.
Videocams pretty much killed all that off.
> > >Then kiss film goodbye in ~2013.
> >
> >No; nothing is ever that clean. There will be a very gradual transition,
> >because people will wait for their current equipment to wear out.
>
>I'd be more inclined to accept this if digitals didn't offer typical
typical consumers so much more. Digital cameras are supposed to be "the"
gift this Christmas. These will be "sold forward", to people who already
have computers and printers. The infrastructure for digital is in place.
The "gradual transition" has been going on since 1984, when the first
graphics-based computer (Apple Macintosh) was mass-produced.
The question was when film would die, not low-end consumer film cameras.
That's why talk of the movie industry was relevant. And those
disposable cameras show no sign of dying.
Only about 250f homes in the US contains any kind of computer, PC or
Mac, while something like 950f homes have at least one camera. So,
the infrastructure for digital is *not* in place for 750f the
population. For them, film cameras are by far the better choice, as
they don't need to buy or deal with a computer.
Dealing with a computer is a very big issue for many people. While my
wife could afford a computer, she would never have bought one without
someone to be the home IT department because she could never get a
computer to work without IT support. Not even the iMac she loves.
She's the Art Department, not Engineering.
> >And the movie industry will still need vast quantities of film.
>
>Again, I dissent. Figure the angular area of a movie screen for the
average viewer. (Not the front row seats that are always empty!) It
isn't much different from viewing an 8x10 at 12".
I don't think that the movie industry would have standardized on 35mm
film if a smaller width would have sufficed. There would have been so
much money to be saved if they could have used 16mm instead that the
transition would have happened decades before TV cameras became
practical, and Leicas would be 16mm, not 35mm.
>The movie business is capital intensive and very price conscious. Given
that the 8x10 print is most people's idea of "a nice picture," I see the
movie industry's movement into digital as an indication that the format
has achieved price-performance parity for the masses, and I think it
will happen in three years.
>
>The larger problem is theaters. They have considerable investment film,
and don't turn over investments as fast as movie production companies
do. But I expect the large chains, which are more capital intensive,
will switch to digital in three years.
This is exactly backwards. The more capital intensive the industry, the
*slower* to switch to a new method: they have to wait until the old
equipment has paid for itself and worn out before they can afford to go
out and buy new stuff. The classical exception has been where the new
technology was literally ten times better than what it replaced, such
that the new stuff could be purchased for a few years of the maintenance
budget of the old. It is *very* rare that a new technology is this much
better, and digital photography does not qualify.
> >Look at us -- we happily use mechanical cameras from thirty years ago...
>
>Then there's the Society for Creative Anachronism, who joust and
traipse around in three-hundred-year-old designer clothes... there's
always room for outliers!
We should wear bell-bottom pants while using our OM-1s?
> >electronics are only a part of the total cost of a camera, and the optical
> >and mechanical components do not follow Moore's Law, except that much of the
> >mechanical complexity of cameras has been eliminated: a camera today has
> >simple mechanicals controlled by a little computer chip.
>
>There you go! And they're injection molded of plastic, rather than
milled from metal. And the lenses are computer-generated, rather than
designed with a slide-rule. And the lenses in the eventual price-parity
product will be much smaller.
To have an apples-to-apples comparison, one must compare cameras of
equivalent build quality and ruggedness. And some are injection-molded
from metal.
Lenses will be no cheaper, because optics is a very mature industry, and
the mecanics to hold and move the elements is already pretty well
optimised. Computer design of lenses does speed the design process, but
has no effect on the labor to actually make the lenses. Current digital
cameras get away with low-grade and thus cheap lenses, but as the CCD
reaches 35mm camera resolution and coverage, the lenses will need to
improve to match.
Camera body cases and their finger-operated controls won't be cheaper,
because they need to be dust-tight enough and robust enough to live in
the real world, and the size and dexterity of the human hand is not
changing. Viewfinder optics will also remain about the same, as the
human eye isn't getting any better. In fact, it declines with age.
What's left are the camera body innards, where various mechanical things
are being simplified or eliminated, with the complexity being moved into
the digital electronics. This (plus the CCD chip) is where Moore's Law
applies.
>I agree that mechanics and optics don't follow the identical 18 month
curve that electronics do, but they do have a curve of their own.
Compared to Moore's Law, mechanics and optics do not improve at all.
These are very mature technologies. A skilled 16th century instrument
maker could duplicate a Leica III (except the lightmeter) albeit at
great expense, as it would all be done by hand, right down to the making
of various optical glasses from sand.
>And to the extent that many parts of digital and film cameras are
identical in function, that forms the basis for a price-parity point.
When the sensor costs the same as the various motors, soleniods, and
mechanical parts that are unique to film cameras, price-parity will be achieved.
Not so fast. People buy into systems to make photos. The price of the
CCD is only a part of the equation. Don't forget the entire
infrastructure needed to make cameras of either kind practical for the
masses. Right now, actually making a digital photo print is far too
complex and expensive for most folk. In time, five or ten years, this
will be solved. In the meantime, buying a disposable camera, taking the
pictures, sending the whole thing off to be processed, and getting the
prints back is by far the cheapest and simpleset way to get photos that
usually much exceed the quality of point&shoot digital cameras, all for
far less trouble and money than anything digital.
> > >(Of course, there will always be a niche market for fine art
> > >photochemistry, just as some brush-media artists still mix their own egg
> > >temupra.)
> >
> >Or develop their own photos?
>
>Please don't take what I write about marketplace and technology trends
involving hundreds of millions of people as a personal affront.
Huh? Just drew the obvious parallel. And pointed out that the
parallel is off by a century or so.
Actually, the 40,000-year-old cave paintings in Spain were done with a
form of egg tempura, so if anything the egg tempura market has been
growing ever since.
>There will always be an artistic niche for film, just as one can still
buy a horse-drawn carriage and buggy whip today.
My point is simply that by then I will be dead, buried, and forgotten.
Transitions between major technologies happen very very slowly, taking decades.
How long did it take for electronic flash units to replace flashbulbs?
That's the fastest transition in photography I can recall. One way to
tell is to count by sales volume when various cameras dropped their FP
sync option.
>Simply by preferring Olympus gear, this group can be defined as an
outlier in the larger scheme of things.
Thirty year old *mechanical* cameras! Cibachrome! Black and white!
>However, I expect a gradual return to sheet film. It will require far
less infrastructure to produce than sprocket-punched roll film. Roll
film is a convenience, and convenenience is digital's middle name! The
fanatics will be willing to take the time to mess with sheet film.
It will be a while before digital systems (camera, photo printers, etc)
will equal the quality of large format at any price. An 8x10 image
contains (7.75*25.4*100)(9.75*25.4*100)= 487,499,025 tricolor pixels, or
975 Mpixels (as digital cameras are usually advertised). By Moore's
Law, this will take 18*log2(975/4)= 142.7 months, or 12 years to come
down to the price of 4 Mpix camera. This would likely be the minimum
delay, as the market for large format is far smaller than for 35mm, so
far less money will be invested in pusing into the large format market.
Also, the quality requirements and expectations of the 8x10 crowd far
exceed that of the 35mm crowd, even the pros.
>There may even be a niche market for sprocket hole punches, for those
of us who want to keep or OM's alive long after 35mm roll film is no
longer commercially available. (Requisite on-topic content. :-)
The movie film market will ensure that the sprocket-hole punching
machines will be around long enough that none of us will ever need to
worry. Not to mention all those disposable cameras.
Joe Gwinn
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End of olympus-digest V2 #3776
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