audio and photography parallels??

I am a photographer, but not a great one--very amateur actually. However, my father and many colleges including Carl Zapp--on this site and a client of Rives are great photogaphers. (I hope Carl responds to this thread--it's right up his alley)

I think the parallel is right on. I take digital photographs only now. I just recently got a higher resolution camera (could it be SACD?) It's got great optics but is still amateur based--not for a pro at all. My purpose is for documenting rooms we've done and taking pictures of the kids. Digital is so convenient--just like CDs compared to vinyl. My father has a very high end digital camera--way beyond mine. But for serious work he shoots 4 x 6 plates, i.e. large format film.

Carl Zapp did some photography for Rives Audio. He did a few snap shots with digital to show us what the setup was like, but when it was time to get serious--film only.

What I do find very interesting is in these cases where film is used to capture the image it's then scanned in at high resolution and manipulated digitally before it goes to print. That is the part where the analogy falls down somewhat I think. That would be like doing an A/D conversion and then equalizing and then going back D/A. Just doesn't make sense--oh yeah, that's why we made the Rives Audio PARC analog:) (sorry--I just couldn't resist)

Marco: I know the scanners are very high res. Even a 35 mm produces 100 megabyte file sizes. It's kind of like doing mastering in the digital domain with 24 bit 384 kHz sample rate. It's much easier to master in the digital domain, both photographically and in audio. However, unless you get up to the very high sample rates (Ray Kimber believes at 384 kHz you can't tell from analog) you do lose something. In film, I'm not a professional, so I don't really know how high the resolution and bit depth need to be in order not to lose anything. It would seem if you were at 1/3 the grain size of the film for scanning, but I don't know about bit depth. My original comment was really more of a philosophical one--but you do bring up a good point.

Marco: I know what bit depth is--what I meant was, what bit depth do you need in photography in order to go analog to digital and back to analog and not perceive any difference. In audio, 24 bit (PCM) is probably beyond the noise floor of any A/D so to go beyond that doesn't make sense. Most people say the ceiling is about 21 bits, maybe 22 bits, so digitize to 24 and know those last 2 bits are noise, but feel comfortable that we have captured all that we realistically can. In photography there must be a similar "ceiling"--I just don't know what that is.
Carl's remarks remind me of DLP, LCD, and D-ILA projectors of about 3 years ago. Blacks were struggling, but getting better, and the price was falling as well. Today, well CRT still has the best blacks, but the gap has narrowed.