(erielack) A thought about digital

["Curtis Brookshire" <curtis.brookshire_@_verizon.net>]

I was an Army videographer for most of my 22 years in the service.  Back in
1990 I was visiting Peterson AFB outside Colorado Springs.  This was in
October and Desert Shield was underway with the big troop buildup in
preparation for the liberation of Kuwait.  I was introduced to digital
photography and the Sony ProMavica camera that seems like a dinosaur today.
It took a single frame of still video that could be displayed on an NTSC (US
TV standard) monitor.  You could also print the frame using a special
printer designed to take the image.  By using a compression program called
JPEG, you could transmit the image over satellite.  Digital imaging was
about to change the world of visual information.

We knew then that we were going to see the last days of wet process
photography and videotape.  I felt like I was witness to CNJ 1000 in 1925 or
the FT demonstrator in 1939.  Steam would be around for another generation
but would soon be doomed to be a curiosity.  So will it be with film.  The
Chinese announcement is akin to the Santa Fe going completely diesel.  Maybe
Baldwin (Fuji) will soon be going out of the steam locomotive business.
Let's watch and see what happens to ALCO (Kodak).

In the meantime, CVS processes my print film, gives me negatives and a
digital disk.  I'm making the most of the transition period.

Curtis Brookshire, former user of Kodachrome 64
Manassas, VA


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