A New Year

It's the morning of a new year! And in the spirit of things new, I thought I would write about some new views I have concerning photography.
As a photography instructor at a local community college (I don't teach in college... I teach in COMMUNITY COLLEGE!), I have seen amazing changes come about in the photographic profession in the last few years. Some die hards may think these changes are destroying what was photography, but I choose to see it as just one of those many hiccups we get throughout our lives.
Digital imaging is a new frontier, and we shouldn't be afraid of it. Even though all of our traditional views and processes are going by the wayside, new and challenging ideas are being created out of the debris!
It pains me to say it, but film is dead. Get over it. Ilford's film division is in bankruptcy, it is getting harder and harder to find professional films even in large cities, my favorite black and white paper (Ektalure) isn't even made any more, and digital output is all but indistinguishable from traditional forms of photographic output. I am even considering selling off all of my precious Hasselblad equipment! I shudder just writing that last line! Or perhaps I shutter...
As an experiment, I have purchased a Canon PowerShot S70 digital camera, a higher end point-and-shoot (is that an oxymoron?) and the Canon CP-330 dye sublimation printer that seems to go well with it. It has manual settings, and even a primitive manual focus (ha ha!), but let's face it, it's going to get used in Program! The initial tests are quite promising, and I notice that I am shooting far more than I have been in the last few years. It looks like it may be time to really sell off that old equipment and invest in a real digital SLR. Sigh. Change sure is a pain...