Originally posted by Red Dawn
read my previous point carefully. i said operations and workflow are more efficient at news agencies - this has nothing to do with whether quality of newsprint are better or worse.
ok...i admit made a somewat irrelevant point in this issue of reproduction quality of film vs digital ;P
did the quality of the photos suffer in those magazines and books because there were digital? did not those images appear as full page / double page spreads? or is NatGeo setting some self inflicted high standards for magazine reproduction?
Now the qn is, does a 60 to 80 meg file scanned from a negative / slide necessarily contain MORE detail and GREATER sharpness than a file from a 6 megapixel digital SLR? it does not, in digital prints using Fuji Frontier machines, nor does it outperform in conventional prints.
I'm not the one to argue for quality of Digital vs Film. Heck, if I can afford a digital SLR, I'll go for one too. So yeah, if the quality of digital is superior, all the better for us.
My ONE and ONLY point in the post was to point out that Nat Geo is not necessarily less efficient using just the choice of equipment as a basis of comparison. Choice of equipment and adoption of technology is not the only factor to efficiency. If the process for a company has worked for them and continues to do so, who is to say which is better?
Certain considerations were left out in the argument, which if presented, might give the reader a more informed view of why a certain publication chooses one method/process/workflow from another. For example, magazines work with a longer deadline compared to the daily deadline of the newspaper, so the work process of a newspaper might not be necessary or better for them. (the speed of digital certainly beats film)
Also, there are also publications that go beyond the basic CMYK in printing. I don't know if Nat Geo is one of them. But in certain cases when faithful reproduction or special requirement is needed, additional colors are used apart from the basic four in the printing process to bring out a wider range of colors. This might not be relevant, but I have read previously that CMYK seperation is unable to reproduce certain colors correctly. (Again, am not making any statement about whether digital is good enough to capture all colours. They may very well be able to, but unless rigorously tested and color balanced, no one can know for certain. Whereas for some photographers who has used the films for sometime, they know which gives the best approximation to reality, ceteris parabus (sp). So might it not be more "efficient" for the editor and photographer to use what he knows? )
There are definitely many other more factors to consider, which I won't ever have thought of. Am sure some of the pros here, like Jed, can bring out much more.
Just want to clarify that I'm not debating whether film or digital is better. But we should refrain from making guesses seem like fact by making statements based on assumptions (even if those assumptions are pretty logical or close to reality)
My only aim was to ensure that we are not led into the blanket fallacy that technology adoption equals efficiency. What taste good for one man might not be palatable to aother.
And in closing, give me a D1x anytime!
:devil:
