Re: Goodbye to APS, and Question About CD-Rs.

"mort" <mort@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:41CA1241.EA32AAB1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> After 8 years of using my Elph and Elph 2 cameras, I have finally
> succumbed to the siren song of digital, inspired by Kodak's worsening
> processing of APS and their taking longer and longer to deliver the
> prints and reprints, all with the data on the back smeared and
> illegible.
>

I believe that you've missed the point.  APS was never marketed toward
serious amateurs.  It was an attempt to serve the consumer market, with a
format that was near idiot-proof.

Studies revealed that there were a significant number of consumers that
couldn't even get their 35mm film loaded correctly.  APS addressed that
problem.

APS also exploited the recent advances in wide exposure latitude films, by
allowing for a simple camera, without much in the way of exposure control,
to record the image on the film, and for the lab to then correct for
exposure at the processing level.

All of this was just a continuation of Kodak's long-held objective of
making
photography easy for consumers.  ("You push the button, we do the rest").
That was a laudable objective.  It was NOT meant as a replacement format
for
serious amateurs or professionals.  I defy you to show me where Kodak ever
marketed the format to any but consumer purchasers.

The APS format was stymied by the advent of inexpensive 35mm Point & Shoot
cameras, that featured autofocus and sophisticated on-board automatic
exposure controls.  I doubt that Kodak and Fuji would have developed APS
had
the autoexposure P&S cameras come out just a few years earlier than they
did.  Those P&S models even made loading film a fairly automated task. 
And
with the advent of P&S cameras with zoom lenses, it really made the APS
format irrelevant.

Kodak has had a long record of trying to bring photography to the masses.
Granted, those of us that have more sophisticated equipment tend to look
down on those consumer formats.  But they have served to put photography
into the mainstream, and have made it possible for the rest of us to be
able
to buy film and to get it processed at countless locations.

It also enabled many of us to get exposed to photography at an early age.
Would I have become interested in photography, had my parents not owned a
Brownie Starmite?  I wonder . . .

There are many millions of family photos, shot on simple cameras, that
survive today.  They make no pretense to being "professional."  Yet my old
family photos, many of which were taken before I was even born, are among
my
most cherished possessions.

Thank you, Kodak.