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[OM] The cost of film

Subject: [OM] The cost of film
From: Stephen Scharf <scharfsj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2003 18:02:41 -0800
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Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2003 11:59:34 -0800
From: Winsor Crosby <wincros@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [OM] Cost of Film!
<snip>

Sorry, but cost of film seems to be a bizarre argument when you
consider the thousands of dollars to purchase a digital slr, new
lenses, a high powered laptop to process high resolution images and
burn a CD for those same day sales. Although you are comparing apples
and oranges. A CD with 330 "keepers" are relatively low resolution
averaging about 1.8 megabytes compared to the 20 megabyte image
commonly obtained from a 35mm frame.

Well, I agree and disagree, Winsor. The cost of the SLR quickly pays for itself for a working pro in terms of sales over time compared to the cost of film and processing, not to mention the time spent scanning slides, which is considerable.

If I were a pro starting out, shooting film, to be honest I'd probably buy an EOS3 (sorry, I love my OM's, but let's be honest, here, Olympus abandoned the pro market over 20 years ago), which will cost you roughly a grand. And you'd be buying the same lenses for it regardless of whether you owned a digital SLR or not. Now, granted, I'm not a working pro, but maybe I'm in the process of becoming a working semi-pro! ;-) Figure the cost of shooting 500 frames/day with film at say, $75/14 rolls, and $125/processing. That's $200/day in film costs alone. Shoot three days with film, and you've just spent the difference in price between an EOS3 and my D60. Anything you shoot after, and you're coming out ahead with the digital body. And yes, you're right about the resolution difference betweeen the "keepers" and the slides. But you have to remember what the product is for. You don't need any larger resolution than is required for what the photo will be used for. For the racers, the digital image is the best product. They mostly buy 8X10's 950f the time, and for the rare ones, you can have Pictopia in Emeryville print you as large as as 30"X40" if need be. As for the high-powered laptop, I didn't pay for that.. I have two that work has provided me, a PowerBook G3 Pismo, and a Sony VAIO. The Sony has a built-in CD-RW drive. Buying CD-R disks is CHEAP! And for those that spend thousands building a conventional darkroom, enlarger, all the equipment, chemicals, paper, etc, etc, it's *still* cheaper to shoot digital and do everything on the computer and a good printer. And if you want to sell to print media, almost all of them demand digital now...they don't want to hassle with slides anymore. I'm sure Mike V can pipe in here, but I'll he found the E-10 paid for itself pretty quickly.

While I sometimes disagree, your thoughts are always interesting.

Thanks, yours too.

PS:  Why don't you respond with a subject that follows a thread?

I get my Oly list as the digest, and I usually respond to more than one post, so it is just easier to reply to the whole digest in parts...but I can be accomdating and create a subject that follows a thread. No worries.
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2001 CBR600F4i - Fantastic!

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