Is that while first Kodak discontinued making film camera's for the American market, and now Nikon is severly cutting back on it's film camera production, digital is still having problems. OK, let me clarify that - digital has one major problem that I see: archiving.
A couple of months ago I read Bob Krist lamenting that he wanted archival systems that were, ARCHIVAL.
.
His main lament was that he was repeatedly being let down by his archives. CD's don't hold enough data, DVD's are too slow, and he'd had two hard drives fry on him. He stated that he had an easier time producing photo's he made 30 years ago, then the ones he made three months ago.
Yes, there are RAID systems (very expensive) and there are now hard drives that are split to make backup data. I've been watching them, and while the prices are coming down, they're still a hefty chunk of change.
I lost my hard drive this past fall. I lost hundreds of digital photo's. Fortunately, I didn't lose all of them, since I had put some of them on another computer. I've since made CD's of those.
Then today, I see this article: http://msn.pcworld.com/news/article/...0.asp?GT1=7645
The gist of the article is that the CD's you bought at Wal Mart are only going to last 2 - 5 years! So much for being archival.
Part of the reason I've put off going digital is worries about losing photo's. Computers are now being made to address this (split hard drives), but the one's I've seen that look worthwhile run about $1200. Let's see, $1700 for a D200, $129 each for a couple of 1 gig CF cards, $325 for a digital compatible flash, then $1200 for a computer. So, anyone got $3500 they can spot me to get into digital? :-O
Yes, I'm playing devils advocate. I know the savings in developing will pay for the camera and related gear. But between the up front costs, and worries about the longevity of my photo's, I'm not in a big rush to jump headfirst into digital, despite Kodak and Nikon jumping on the digital bandwagon.
Besides, someone's got to keep Velvia alive! Right Rick?
:-D