Things That Still Exist – and Shouldn't

Scott Hardie | June 10, 2007
It's the year 2007. Why are these things still around?

- Netscape Navigator.

- Barney & Friends.

- Chalkboards.

- Blurry, pixelated faxes.

- Making fun of the French for liking Jerry Lewis.

What's on your list?

Jackie Mason | June 10, 2007
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Steve West | June 11, 2007
- The English system of measurement

- The letter combination "qu"

- Olympic badminton

- Pauly Shore, "Dice" Clay, Paula Poundstone and all other comedians deserving residence in the home for the terminally unfunny

Kris Weberg | June 11, 2007
-- VCRs and VHS tapes; rare but still extant

-- National Lampoon as a movie franchise

-- AM radio

-- land line telephone service

-- The John Birch Society

-- 22-page periodical-style comic books; either go to tpb or use digital distribution.

Steve Dunn | June 11, 2007
Gotta disagree on pagers and AM radio. My wife carries a pager because she is a physician. They're a lot more reliable than cell phones for ringing every time. She can also receive text messages on it, so while it's almost always necessary to call back, it's not necessary every single time.

AM radio provides a voice to independent, smaller-market stations such as sports talk, Spanish language and religious formats. As far as I can tell, the crowded FM airwaves consist almost entirely of NPR and Clearchannel.

As for my list, I'll begin with Rocky as a movie franchise. I may have other suggestions later.

Anna Gregoline | June 11, 2007
Netscape is still AROUND? I'm shocked.

Tony Peters | June 11, 2007
FILM.....

as for the John Birch society without it moveon.org would just be silly....Oh wait just like the JBS they are silly

Scott Hardie | June 12, 2007
Yep, Netscape just released the beta of their latest version: (link)

I heard about a recent interview with a longtime AM radio host, who gave the impression that everyone working in that business knows that it's crawling towards its eventual quiet demise. On one hand he was disappointed because he knew it was a useful outlet free of national corporate influence (what Steve said), but on the other hand he appreciated that he had more and more creative freedom about what he put on the air because there was no concern about growing or sustaining the business. I guess he'll make the most of it before it someday finally goes away. :-\

Amy Austin | June 12, 2007
FILM.....

(gasp) Shut your mouth!!!

Tony Peters | June 12, 2007
yes film I have been assimilated into the digital world.....as much as I love the my medium format camera and my old F3's they are destined to become bookends. I figure we have another 3-5 years before film is truly obsolete...Kodak saw the writing on the wall years ago when the sold off the photo chemical part of the business (Eastman Chemical). Meanwhile I'm very happy with my D70

Anna Gregoline | June 18, 2007
Film will never be obsolete. You can do a lot with film you can never, ever do with digital, and legions of photographers will absolutely never give it up. There will always be a market for it, even if it becomes a bit more into the art scene than mainstream.

Tony Peters | June 18, 2007
As a Kodak shareholder I hope you are right but as a working photographer I have seen so much that isn't possible with film done very easily with digital (long exposures in low light are an example)....Films future (according to my Kodak yearly reports) is in the third world, where people don't have computers (this is changing) and believe it or not long term storage. Noritsu (the worlds largest photo printer machine builder) is actively working on eliminating the need for a computer in digital printing. Conversely when you order an new processor from Noritsu (one hour photolab) getting the hardware and software to even deal with film has become a special order thing. When I attended a training seminar at the Noritsu Factory in Wakayama JP 2 years ago we were told that they only manufacture negative scanners a few times a year because the market has dropped off soooo much everywhere but places like Africa India and China. As for storage it seems that common practice now for all (digital) films is to cut a black and white master of the film. I'm not sure how this will help my stock prices but who knows. It is true that the advancement of digital cameras has stalled and from what I understand this is because Moore's Law (computing power doubles every eighteen months) doesn't apply to Pixels like it does to transistors. My 6MP D70 which wasn't top of the line 4 years ago is still middle of the road 4 years later. An odd realization that came up in the last year is that when we actually do move to the next evolutionary step for the camera in terms of mega pixels a revolutionary step forward will have to be made in lens design technology to take advantage of the increased resolution of the CCD.
Back on topic since all professional video is edited non-linearly, on a computer based system like Avid, Adobe, and Apple It's wouldn't surprise me to see all forms of video tape disappear before film. Hard Drive cameras are just faster and easier to deal with than waiting for a tape to be ripped via firewire.

Amy Austin | June 19, 2007
An odd realization that came up in the last year is that when we actually do move to the next evolutionary step for the camera in terms of mega pixels a revolutionary step forward will have to be made in lens design technology to take advantage of the increased resolution of the CCD.
Back on topic since all professional video is edited non-linearly, on a computer based system like Avid, Adobe, and Apple It's wouldn't surprise me to see all forms of video tape disappear before film. Hard Drive cameras are just faster and easier to deal with than waiting for a tape to be ripped via firewire.

Well, I will agree with that... and I understand the market-driven obsolescence, too... but that doesn't change the fact that there are artists/purists out there who will continue to want to use film, even if (or maybe even *because*) it becomes harder to get. Heck, they may even just want to form a club that will eventually merge its declining membership with those hanging on to the notion that vinyl is more authentic/romantic/pure//insert preferred neo-Luddite adjective here and can/will never be replaced by CDs.

Tony Peters | June 19, 2007
And like Vinyl it's getting harder and harder to find film. When I was starting out we had dozens of film and slide choices from Kodak alone now Kodak manufactures 14 types of negative and slide film. and the batch make real B&W film a few times a year with the rest of the of the B&W market being the C41 faux B&W (Color film without the dye couplers making it colorblind) These days more Kodak film is used in disposable cameras than all the rest combined and the "all the rest" is declining fast

Lori Lancaster | June 19, 2007
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Anna Gregoline | June 19, 2007
I'm afraid you lost me a bit there, Tony. Although I will say I don't think technology needs to keep advancing with cameras - at least for the casual artist or consumer.

You know what film's best benefit is to me? It's analog. There's no electronic equipment necessary to shoot a photo with it (my pentax is completely manual). Things happen with film that would never happen with digital - mistakes, tricks of light, certain richness of color. You can manipulate film in the real world, instead of on computer. There's a low threshold for new users to jump right in and mess around with it, no computer training needed.

I'm not against digital cameras - I love mine for the quick and dirty shots of things on the street and the ease of sharing pictures. But the hands-on experience of working with real film and in a real darkroom will never match the experience of digital for me. Art benefits from artists physically experiencing it, or at least that's how I feel.

Steve Dunn | June 19, 2007
For me, there is no substitute for camera obscura.

Denise Sawicki | June 19, 2007
For me, there is no substitute for camera obscura.


That is a pretty good band. :P http://www.camera-obscura.net
(Sorry... this just was the first thing that popped into my mind.)

Lori Lancaster | June 19, 2007
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Anna Gregoline | June 19, 2007
A person is no less an artist if they choose one platform versus another.

There are some people who negate other's experiences if they do not have the same as them.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here with that pointy remark, but if you think I was attempting to slam digital artists (I am one myself) or say it's a lesser art form, that's not at all what I said. I, personally, don't get as much art value out of digital as I do physically manipulating things, (although I love digital for many reasons) and I also think it's an easier thing to get into when there no computers involved. Which is basically what I already said, if you read carefully.

Lori Lancaster | June 19, 2007
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Tony Peters | June 20, 2007
Well....that was interesting...........
I will come out and say from an 18 year working photographer's POV Digital rules. Short of going into a dark room and hand printing color in the dark (which I have done and it sucks royally) all color printing done now is digital regardless of the image capture medium. This means if you shoot film it is scanned and then printed. Our top of the line R2D2 looking negative scanner on the boat scanned film at an equivalent of about 20MP at which point you could alter it in photoshop or the base photo printing software. Since we removed our film processors after Iraqi Freedom though the R2D2 has sat idle for years. Another issue that exists with the present wet print process is quality control, let the chemistry rise one degree over 100degrees and your color goes to hell fast; replenishment is all but automatic and there is no longer the need to hand mix chemistry (thankfully) but but temp and water quality still play a major roll and in truth photo chemical paper has neither the resolution or the color rendering capability of say and Epson 7 color inkjet printer.
Canon's abandonment of film is of no surprise to me a bit early, but understandable. I abandoned Canon for Nikon when they did the FD/EOS switch and Nikon came out 2 years ago saying that the current F6 would be the last Pro Film camera that they design/build. the funny thing is the F6 is full of trickle down technology from Digital cameras.
I am by no means a grand artist I have some things I am particularly good at though I believe that is more from experience than from any great talent, (I still remember the look of amazement on a certain airman's face when I told her what exposure to use for a photo under some trees). I also think that the loss of projection printing experience cheats people out of a valuable skill set that directly applies to digital editing along with the ethical rules of what you can't do..

Steve Dunn | June 20, 2007
The professional photographers I've talked to tend to break down about 20-1 in favor of digital. Among those who are actually working, it's 20-0.

I never took photos seriously before I had a digital camera. And I wouldn't do it now if it weren't for digital. My approach is to take 100 pictures in the hope of getting one or two keepers. You can't do that with film. I understand film is a different medium - it's just not for me.

Amy Austin | June 20, 2007
My approach is to take 100 pictures in the hope of getting one or two keepers. You can't do that with film.

So true...

Scott Hardie | June 20, 2007
I have no opinion when it comes to digital vs. film in photography, but I much prefer film when it comes to movie theater projection. One of the local theaters has invested so much in digital projectors that they've begun showing bumpers before the coming attractions promoting the technology and interviewing average filmgoers in the lobby about how much more vivid the colors are and how the picture quality is just as good weeks later as it is on opening night. The problem is, it doesn't look as good as film on opening night: Digital projection still shows compression artifacting, jagged diagonal edges, and the rainbow effect on high-contrast edges. I'm not against the technology in principle; I just think it's not ready yet and that these problems are being willfully ignored because digital projection is "the way of the future." How can theatrical exhibition get behind this while the industry is in such a perilous state with declining sales? If digital projection requires you to tell your own audience how much "better" it is, they don't care enough for it to rescue your sagging bottom line. Massive investment in expensive technology that isn't ready for primetime isn't wise. But maybe I'm just sick of promotional bumpers that lie to me.

Jackie Mason | June 20, 2007
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