Sorry, but the convenience and results in going to dcams are what drove the large scale consumers switch, NOT marketing-driven perception of convenience and results. The results and convenience are REAL. Particularly the IMMEDIACY part of 'convenience'. I spent 7 years working on Kodak's instant system; a lot of that time involved looking at customer surveys and customer feedback. The biggest item that drove instant sales (both Kodak and Polaroid) was IMMEDIACY; the ability to share the images almost instantly. I've spent a lot of time looking at photos coming out of photofinishing processors, and it was quite common to see a roll of film that had pictures from 2 (or more) different year's Christmasses on it. Instant, and now digital, give CONSUMERS immediacy that film doesn't offer (even with minilabs) and that's what sells!
I recognize that the above comments don't apply to the members of this forum, who, first and formost, care about the imaging technology.
To put my comment about convenience and results in an APUG approved context: George Eastman's 'You push the button, we do the rest' cameras made the underlying silver halide process completely transparent to the user, giving the user convenience and results.
Exactly. Mr. Eastman created a better (photographic) mouse trap, then went out and created among the general public a perception via marketing that it was more convenient and produced results at least as good as those pesky user-processed glass plates. And a new industry was born.
You see, I'm not disagreeing with you regarding the proclivity of the market to demand greater convenience with results as good or better than earlier versions. My point was that the higher one climbs on the technological product curve, the more complex those products actually become. And the buying public must be convinced of the exact opposite. That they are simpler and easier to use (i.e., more convenient). This requires the establishment of more and more marketing-driven perceptions to accomplish. And, generally speaking, higher and higher product reliability to maintain those perceptions.
You say you spent seven years wrestling with the issue of what the public said it wanted in a photographic technology. Well, I've been doing exactly the same thing with software technology for over a quarter of a century. Trying to give the marketers something that they can convince the customers is a sufficient upgrade in convenience and results that those customers will part with their hard-earned money. But they have to be convinced first.
The appearance of greater convenience is often just a shell game. The creators of a new technology will quietly substitute a set of new problems that simply replace the old familiar ones. Because the user is unfamiliar with the new technology, those new problems go unrecognized for a while. But the old familiar ones stand right out in their absence. So the new must be more convenient than the old, right?
Is a word processor more convenient than a typewriter? Sometimes. Sometimes not. Have you ever tried to open a newer formatted file type with an older version? Never had that problem with real paper. All you had to do to decode it was to look at it.
Is a digital camera more convenient than a film camera? Sometimes. Sometimes not. Have you ever lost all of your photos to a hard disk crash? I know someone who did. In an instant, all of the baby pictures, gone forever. Because the new technology simply gave her a new set of problems that replaced the old familiar ones. Got to see the photos almost immediately. Didn't have to buy film over and over. But DID have to buy a backup hard disk, and didn't recognize that critical new problem in time.
My argument is that
on balance digital camera technology is no more or less "convenient", and overall produces no more or less better "results", than film camera technology. The only meaningful difference is in the set of technology problems which must be addressed by the user. And that the paradigm shift from film to digital was primarily driven by the availability of a new technology that could be readily adapted and sold into a market that
always craves more convenience and better results in everything.
Digital cameras for the masses were not created to satisfy an unmet photographic demand. Everyone was already perfectly satisfied with their film cameras, because they knew nothing else. Digital camera technology came out of basic research, which was then adapted into products that could be marketed as better than film cameras, thus creating a new market where satisfied film camera owners could be convinced to part with their hard-earned money for replacement digital cameras.
In other words, the cart was being pulled along by the donkey. The donkey was not pushing the cart from behind.
Ken
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