To me, truly obsolete is something that has been replaced by something else that is equal or superior in EVERY aspect for same or less money, CURRENT NEW COST.
If the new item has even one shortcoming or costs more than the old one isnt truly obsolete. This is based on buying new products of course and when the old product reaches this defintiion, it ceases to be made anymore due to marker forces. That doesn't mean if you already own the old product its still not useful, it may be, but you couldn't/wouldn't buy a new old if it died because its been replaced by something absolutely better for less or equal CURRENT NEW cost. JCO -----Original Message----- From: Godfrey DiGiorgi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 12:18 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: What Would Make a DSLR "Obsolete"? This requires a definition of obsolete. The one I use is: "A product is considered obsolete when it is no longer produced, that is, when it is replaced by something else by the original manufacturer or by another manufacturer." By that definition, my Nikon FM was obsolete as soon as the FM2 model appeared. I bought the FM body, used, after the FM2 appeared on the market and used it for another 19 years. Someone else bought it after me and, presumably, is continuing to use it. Obsolete does not imply not used or not usable. Usability is gated by battery availability (not a problem), storage (not a problem) and software compatibility (not a problem). Also by reliability and durability ... so far (8000+ exposures on the DS body) I have seen little evidence of poor reliability or durability. Most people these days seem to think of obsolete as meaning they must have the latest model or what they are using is unusable. The ramp up to current DSLR technology has been steep, but my feeling is that the industry passed a plateau point with the introduction of the Canon 10D three years ago. I consider nearly any DSLR of that generation and beyond to be just as future usable as any 35mm SLR I've ever owned. No longer state of the art in speed, possibly no longer the best in noise, etc, but still perfectly usable for a long time despite being obsolete. Regards: Battery - AA and CRV3 will be with us forever, practically speaking. Storage - There are already MILLIONS of flash storage cards in the world, each of which can be used for thousands of write/erase cycles. Just one represents at the very least 100,000 potential exposures in its lifetime. It will be a very very long time before there are no flash storage cards left to use. Software - The software in use today for the handling of the storage medium is all standards based ... USB protocol connectivity, FAT16 and FAT32 file system. That's not going to go away any time soon ... I can still read and write DOS floppies from 1982 (although I haven't in some years now) ... and new emergent file system standards generally speaking include compatibility to read older standards. Image formats like JPEG will be around practically speaking forever. Decoding and converting the Pentax RAW file format is something now encapsulated in open source C language code (dcraw by Dave Coffin) so even if current software products were to disappear entirely, someone could recompile a RAW converter utility on whatever operating system was then in place. Nothing to worry about, in my opinion. This technology is here to stay, and I warrant will be feasible to use for the remainder of my lifetime. Advantageous, probably not: advances in camera technology and my desire to obtain better quality/perform will likely have me buying something new again at some point. But I do suspect that today's digital SLR bodies will be just as useful into the future as film SLR bodies will. When film manufacturers give up their last gasp and close down production due to lack of profits, and the last roll of film is consumed, that's it as there is no reusability in film storage media. Godfrey On Aug 23, 2005, at 3:47 AM, Shel Belinkoff wrote: > As the time approaches for my purchasing a DSLR, the comments about > these > cameras becoming obsolete keep running through my mind. As a user > of older > film bodies, which don't become obsolete and which continue to make > good > pictures and use a wide variety of lenses, it's hard to consider > that in > six months or a year a new DSLR will have become "history." > > It seems that, unless there's a camera malfunction, these new > techno-marvels should continue to make decent pics for years to > come, yet I > keep hearing about how models just a few years old (or less) are > dated and > need to be upgraded. Am I missing something? Is it just the > techno-buffs > who are saying this - those who must have the latest and greatest, > or are > there hidden issues, like software compatibility, lack of peripheral > equipment (such as a memory card type being discontinued), and > things of > that sort? Maybe I've answered my own question. > > What's the reality of getting 10 years of use from now current > Pentax DSLR? > > Shel > > >
