Re: Future of Photography (was RE: filmscanners: real value?)

[Berry Ives <yvesberia@earthlink.net>]

on 1/31/01 7:45 AM, Clark Guy at guy.clark@sbt.siemens.com wrote:

> Hi, Berry!
> 
> D'Ohhh!!!   You are quite right... That's what I get for posting at the end
> of a long day!   
> 
> Sorry about the confusion!  Since we are actually 8X closer to that 30Mpixel
> goal mentioned earlier than I calculated, I concede that it is POSSIBLE that
> we may see a 30Mp camera come down in price to be affordable by the serious
> hobbyist in ten years.  My concerns about the size of the sensor still
> stand, but this amount of improvement might be achieved in ten years.

Hello Clark,

An easy error to make...not to worry.

I remember when (I think) the first pocket calculators came out, in the
early 70s, when I was still using my slide rule, and they cost about $300 as
I recall, and that was in uninflated dollars.  If you adjust for the CPI,
you're likely talking a desktop CPU in today's dollars.  You can get a good
pocket calculator now that is way better for maybe a tenth of that.  You can
buy a new Pentium for several hundred dollars (even though I paid $2K for my
Mac).  

When I think about those kinds of technology change, it does make me
optimistic about how long it will take to bring out a 30 megapixel SLR.  I
wouldn't be surprised if it happened in five years.  But I am certainly not
going to wait that long, unless it takes me five years to decide which
scanner to buy!

--Berry