Something I think about whenever I read (as I did this afternoon and usually on a photography forum) about how someone just spent their life savings/retirement/insurance settlement to start a business as a professional photographer: In 1999, Nikon released the D1, its first prosumer digital camera. It sold for around $5,000. It boasted of 2.7 megapixel images. It was eschewed by professional photographers because of poor image quality. The same year, Nikon released the F100, considered by some to be the best consumer film camera Nikon every made. You can buy them now on eBay, fully operational, for less than $100. By 2004, a consumer could buy a digital camera for between $100 and $200. They captured images between 2-4 megapixels in size. They were gainy and their ISO settings sucked. (I know, Rachel and I had one.) White balance was hit or miss. Every year since 2004 both Nikon and Cannon have released at least one and often as many as five new digital cameras, each with increasingly accurate auto-focus and program modes. White balance and contrast settings on sensors produce amazingly accurate results. Lenses now come with VR settings that allow you to shoot as many as two full stops down without softness. Four-thirds cameras produce images so good that they rival anything produced with a SLR or a DSLR. And then, on May 13, 2013 - sixteen years after the introduction of the D1 - the Chicago Sun Times laid-off its ENTIRE full-time professional photography staff, including Pulitzer Prize winner John White, stating as its reason the need to move towards video. Yet afterwards, the company issued digital cameras to its regular reporters with instructions to take their own pictures. The digital revolution is not without its casualties.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 23:46:33 +0000
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