Frank Arthur enlightened us with:

To follow your analogy: if I want to get a chalk/blackboard-effect,
I'd use chalk on a blackboard instead of trying to "photoshop" a
realistic chalkboard. It'll be easier and more realistic. It's all
about using the right tools for the job.

Koekje

I use a typewriter to address an envelope or two.
I crank a telephone when it's a field 'phone that we used down on the farm
I use pen and ink to sign my photographs before selling them
And I use chalk on a blackboard where conditions do not favor dry erase
markers.

Knowing which tool is appropriate for the job is over half the battle.

Hi,

Yes, I still use a fountain pen, actually 5 of them and use 5 different
coloured inks.  I happen to like using a fountain pen, the feel and the
sound of nib on paper; it's an experience you don't get with a ball
point.  Try it, you'll be surprised.

And yes, I retired from teaching several years ago and wrote with chalk
on a blackboard for 32 years.  Students would thank me for NOT using
PowerPoint.  They were tired of sitting in dark classrooms all day long.
 There are things that you can do with chalk that you cannot do with
Powerpoint just as the opposite must also be true.

But just because it is new, does it make it better????

Think of navigating on the open seas.  Sailors still use the system that
derives from Newtonian Physics which dates back several centuries.
Newton has been surpassed by Einstein's Theory of Relativity and Quantum
Physics.  Yet I dare you to try and convince a sailor that he should use
Quantum theory for navigating.

Again, the sole criterion of *newer* is not adequate.  It depends on
what you want to do.  I bring a my Canon ELPh 2.8 to my niece's birthday
party and not my 8x10.  If I want to do ART the way I want to do it,
then it's the 4x5 or 8x10.

By your facile reasoning, painting with oils, acrylic or water colours
is obsolete.  Try and convince the artist of that. And Ansel Adams
should have been using a modern (for his time) Kodak Brownie to
photograph Yosemite instead of an 8x10.

Are oranges better than apples?  I prefer apples, does that make them
better  ;)

Cheers,
Bogdan

________________________________________________________________
  Bogdan Karasek
  Montréal, Québec                     bogdan@bogdanphoto.com
  Canada                               www.bogdanphoto.com

                  "I photograph my reality"
________________________________________________________________

yes, he does.  and he still uses a 286-25mhz with 10mb hdd and Windows
2.0;
he still playes 45's & LP's and 8-track tapes;

It wasn't that long ago that kind of thinking limited "art" as painting and
outside
the realm of photography.
Manipulated photographs began in the early days of photography. Retouching
desks,
specially retouching stands, negative scraping tools, opaques and other
liquid media
used to hide images were prouced by the hundreds of thousands- and that's
just
dealing with the glass plates or negatives.
Manipulation of the images during developing of the negatives were done by
use of
many different developing formulas to produce a specific effect as well as
change in
time & temperature.
Manipulated printing and enlarging consisted of extensive use of dodging and
burning.
Only with the use of Digital Photography do we have this extreme range of
controls that
the earlier, primative systems have we finally begun to explore and use
tools old timers
could only wish for and dream of.

I believe in your enthusiasm, you overstate a bit. I've recently seen
calculations indicating that to achieve the equivalent resolution of 35mm
file would require about 30-40mp.

The information on the following link is a bit dated, but it remains a
source of some compelling arguments in favor of film.  While I do not
believe that it is necessary for anyone to choose either film or digital, to
the exclusion of the other, the information in this link does tend to make
digital look not so much like the one-and-only solution:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060525071557/medfmt.8k.com/mf/filmwins.html

Here is an interesting quote from Bob Monaghan's old web site.

Image Quality - 6 vs 8 lpmm in the Print?
The original Leica standard for a quality 8x10" print viewed at 10" distance
is 8 lpmm on the print. A younger human eye can see differences between 4
and 6 and 8 lpmm on the print. Most of us can readily detect 4 versus 6 lpmm
resolution on the print. But few adult eyes can resolve or see quality
differences from more than 8 lpmm on the print at the specified viewing
distance.

Many photographers are happy with less than 4 lpmm on prints which are
viewed at a longer distance (e.g., 20 inches or more). Larger prints are
often viewed from afar. So you can't detect the lower print resolution
without getting up close (e.g., 16x20" at 20"...). If you masked off an
8x10" section of these larger prints, and looked at it from ten inches, you
would see that the print quality is less than optimal (with experience). The
effects of low quality minilab prints has led to a further erosion in the
level of acceptable print quality too.

Most digital printers use a relaxed print quality standard as a way of
expanding the size and area of an "acceptable" quality digital print. The
math is again simple arithmetic. For 300 dpi printers, you divide 300 dots
per inch by 25.4 millimeters per inch. The result is 11.8 dots per
millimeter. Unfortunately, it takes a row of black and a row of white to
make a line. So we have to divide that 11.8 dots per millimeter by 2 to
produce circa 6 lpmm on the final print. So a 300 dpi printer is capable of
producing nearly 6 lpmm quality prints.

To reach the Leica standard of 8 lpmm on the final print, you would need
over 400 dpi (25.4mm/inch x 8 lpmm x 2 dots/line).

What does a typical 3 megapixel camera deliver? First, start by ignoring
that many 3 megapixel cameras have really just 2.7 million usable pixels. We
will also ignore that most digital sensors are not 8:10 aspect ratios. An
8x10" print printed full frame has 8" x 10" or 80 square inches of area.
Dividing 3 million pixels from the digital camera by 80 sq. in. yields
37,500 pixels per square inch. The square root of 37,500 is 193 pixels per
linear inch. In other words, a 3 megapixel camera can only produce 193
pixels of true color data when making an 8x10" print. But many color
printers print at 300 dpi, or 600 dpi, 1200 dpi, or even 2400 dpi. So where
are all those millions of extra colored dots coming from?

In practice, software is used to interpolate or project a smoothed set of
data for the printer even when printing at a modest 300 dpi. As we
calculated above for a 3 MP digicam, we have circa 37,500 pixels/sq. inch.
For 300 pixels/inch, we need 300x300 or 90,000 pixels/sq. inch. We have only
37,500 pixels/sq. inch. In other words, the software is interpolating
roughly 2 out of every 3 pixels in a typical 8x10" print at 300 dpi.

Now you know why digital prints have such a smooth and "creamy" texture to
them. The vast majority of printed color dots are interpolated between the
relative handful of actual or real color data points from the digital
camera. The higher the printer dpi, the more dots and the more smoothing
that goes on.

Given that 400 dpi corresponds to 8 lpmm, 193 dpi corresponds to less than 4
lpmm. So an optimally sized true 3 megapixel camera is delivering at best
less than half the 400 dpi needed for a Leica quality standard print. Stated
another way, a Leica quality print (at 8 lpmm) will have four times the
resolvable image data on the same size print. That is quite a quality
difference!

To get a Leica quality standard (8 lpmm) 8x10" print out of an optimized
aspect ratio (4:5) sensor digital camera, you need not a 3 megapixel camera
but more like a 12 megapixel camera (4 times more sensors). Assuming future
2:3 aspect ratio (corresponding to 35mm film's 24x36mm) digital cameras, a
16 megapixel camera will just about produce an 8 lpmm quality standard 8x10"
full print on a 300 dpi color printer.