Re: Warning of major NHS IT overspend

[Brian Beesley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]

On Tuesday 02 November 2004 10:31, Ian G Batten wrote:
> On Tue, 02 Nov 2004, Adrian Midgley wrote:
> > It is unlikely that a new X-ray department would be built in the UK that
> > was not a direct digital one - Picture Archiving - PAC systems are
> > popular for several reasons, but one that may not be entirely appreciated
> > is that if you consider the bits around a film or several films, like
> > somewhere to walk to
>
> More to the point, in less than a generation it's likely that
> specialised film emulsions will be ferociously expensive, because they
> will no longer have the volume market to carry their fixed costs.

Umm. (1) make a big batch, it will keep for years; (2) self-fulfilling 
prophesy which need not be believed.

X-ray plates are in fact fairly unspecialised as it's very hard to stop 
silver halide reacting to X-rays. Just about any blue-sensitive plate will 
do. Panchromatic emulsions would work but would be less convenient as visual 
inspection could not be used to regulate developing time.

> Non-specialised photographers will have abandoned film within a few
> years, high-volume professional users already have, 

Survey in "Amateur Photography" dated 6th Nov 2004 shows more than twice as 
many professionals use film only as use digital only. (Though about half use 
both).

That _will_ change but film is far from dead.

> a lot of `film'
> production work is now done on progressive scan DV and that's likely to
> displace film within a decade.  Silver Halide 2010 == Vinyl 2000: a tiny
> minority can attempt to hold back the tide, but the market doesn't care.

The situation is rather different in that silver halide technology is so 
simple that it's perfectly possible to coat your own film. After all, 
photography existed before Kodak made it "convenient".

Brian Beesley