I don’t own a digital camera. I like film. It’s the texture–film has a texture a digital photo just can’t capture. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the appeal of digital photography, and being able to spread photos far and wide and fast is something that film photography can’t compete with. For myself, if I’ve shot something I want to use on my webpage when I have it developed I’ll do a picture-CD at the photo lab, but that still takes time. Digital photography is for a faster age.
But there’s a dark underside to digital photography. Digital pictures are freaking huge. Not huge in size of the picture. Huge in the size of the file.
Here’s the situation. I’m in the analog age, I’m still on dial-up. I don’t need much more from the internet, connection speed isn’t a priority for me. But when I’m sent uncompressed, uncropped photos as e-mail attachments I can spend hours downloading my e-mail. Yes, hours. Happened last week, actually, when my supervisor sent me something like twenty pictures in a single blast. This evening was only an hour–three photos. One of which was then sent to me again, from a different source.
Grr.
Compress! Crop! Resize! There’s no reason these photos needed to be a meg each in size. No reason at all.
Grr!