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http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,33244,00.html
New Camera? Go Analog
by Declan McCullagh (declan_at_wired.com)
3:00 a.m. 23.Dec.1999 PST
Here's a last-minute warning to
procrastinating holiday shoppers: Before
you drop US$1,000 on that feature-filled
digital camera, consider going analog
instead.
Yes, analog technology sounds so
oxymoronic, so 70s, so reminiscent of
33-rpm albums, Studio 54, and corduroy
blazers.
But believe it or not, that dusty old
analog 35-mm your father squirreled away
in his attic can give you images that are
clearer and more colorful than digital
ones. And its resale value won't plummet
like an Aeroflot jet come Y2K.
The first thing to know is that the
cheapest 35-mm camera beats even a
$5,000 digital camera in terms of
resolution. Most good photo labs offer the
Kodak PictureCD and PhotoCD service,
which scans in images from any 35-mm
film at 3072 x 2048 -- a 6.3 megapixel
resolution.
That's a lot better than the expensive
Nikon D1 camera, which tops out at 2.6
megapixels and retails for $5,000.
Resolution is important. The more pixels
an image contains, the more you can
generally enlarge an image without an
unacceptable loss in quality. A 6.3
megapixel image, for instance, is detailed
enough to allow attractive prints of up to
8 x 10 inches.
Some analog cameras allow even larger
images. At around $2,000 they're not
cheap, but medium-format cameras use
film that's about four times the size of
35-mm slides or negatives. Christmas
photos I took with a 6x6-format
Hasselblad simply wouldn't have been as
clear with a 35-mm or digital camera.
[...]
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Received on Dec 23 1999
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