Weird Logic

I came across this via a link from another photographic forum..

This quote has some weird logic which I don't understand..

"All we had was radio in in 1939, so how did they know how to make High-Definition DVDs back then? They didn't, but by having the forethought to shoot on film, they knew they always could scan the original raw film images with better equipment in the future. This way we always get results which are to modern standards, regardless of when something was shot".

1. "but by having the forethought to shoot on film". - Film was all they had in 1939.

2. "they knew they always could scan the original raw film images with better equipment in the future". - Did they?

Yea, that's some weird - and flawed - thinking. Your first point is exactly what I thought of, too. The second point is sort of logical if you follow from the first, but is still questionable at best. There may have been those who had the forethought to think of better technologies coming out in the future, but I highly doubt that it was an industry standard to think "Oh, it's going to look bad for now, but some day we'll be able to make these images look like they should because of high resolution scanning"...

There's one of those fancy latin phrases that describes various logical fallacies. I just don't remember what this one is.

They shot with what they had. Fortunately, what they had was pretty damn good. There's not going to be any way to get "more" out of a 2010 digital file in 50 years from now than there is now. One of the benefits of film.

All I can do is...

Drew,, you raise a good point..

I can see the logic after the fact by scanning negatives shot 70 years ago..

Exactly.

The real question is... if the money being sunk into digital sensors was put into "film" (and the things that go along with processing film), how would the world of photography look?

thedrewster77 wrote in post #10811072
There's one of those fancy latin phrases that describes various logical fallacies. I just don't remember what this one is.

Reductio ad absurdum: the reduction of an argument to an absurdity by the introduction of elements that have no context in the argument.

In this case, the introduction of both the concept that they had a choice other than film (they didn't), and the concept of scanning (didn't exist at the time).

Heh! It does sound screwy -- there's only so much "forward thinking" that is possible or practical!

But sometimes it's interesting to see what progress brings.

For instance, I was reading/browsing a book of Ansel Adams portfolios a little while back and one of the features was color shoots. The author, who was an acquaintance of Adams, noted that Adams had shied away from color prints, although he had over 3000 color transparancies, because the process of color printing was to him very unsatisfactory (at the time -- Adams had worked with the early Kodachrome color film). But in this book, they printed from these transparencies and the results were quite nice, and I'd imagine that if Adams were alive and kicking today he'd be quite happy with both color prints and the ability to show high quality images on the InterWebs!

thedrewster77 wrote in post #10811283
Exactly.

The real question is... if the money being sunk into digital sensors was put into "film" (and the things that go along with processing film), how would the world of photography look?

Professional and technical photography would be only slightly better than they were in 1999. The technology of film had reached the upper end of it's curve, meaning that a lot of time and money would have to be put into it to achieve even a small improvement.

Consumer photography, on the other hand, would be pretty much unchanged. There simply would have been no real incentive to put in the time and money.

Cameras, especially consumer-oriented cameras, would be slicker and more portable, but that's also a very small change.

The advent of digital effected much more than a technological change. It effected a profound sociological change as well. Just think of all the things we have that are either radically changed from their "analog" equivalents, or simply didn't exist in the pre-digital world.

#1 agree...#2, no they did not, technology has progressed logarithmically and they could not have conceived of digital photography.

Yeah right...tell that to Adobe.

Logical fallacies aside, the quote asserts that "all we had was radio" in 1939. This is not true.

In 1927 in San Francisco Philo Farnsworth demonstrated his new invention, the "image dissector". It wasn't television - it was actually a scanner. It produced an analog output, not digital, but it was indeed a scanner (although it didn't record the signal).

In 1928 he demonstrated the first all-electronic television (earlier efforts involved mechanical rotation of disks). He was awarded and ultimately defended a number of patents.

In 1939 RCA, having finally lost their patent suits against Farnsworth, entered into a licensing arrangement with him and demonstrated live television broadcasting at the New York World's Fair.

-----

So we had real TV in 1939 and a real scanner in 1927.

-js

tonylong wrote in post #10811334
Heh! It does sound screwy -- there's only so much "forward thinking" that is possible or practical!

This is true.

The fallacy of most backwards-looking "logic" is the use of anachronistic concepts.

Put simply, if a concept does not exist, then it cannot be planned for. The concept of scanning (digital or analog) did not exist in 1939, ergo those dealing with photography at the time could not have and did not plan for it. Period.

This would be like saying that because the gauge (track width) of standard U.S. railroad tracks is based upon the width between the wheels of Roman chariots, the Romans must have foreseen the coming of the railroad.

Such arguments are illogical. There is no logic to them.

number six wrote in post #10811475
So we had real TV in 1939 and a real scanner in 1927.

-js

Not a scanner in the modern concept of the word as used herein, i.e., a photographic scanner. There were such in the mid-40s, most notably the facsimile, but they were outgrowths of WWII, and not yet conceived in 1939.

And Farnsworth's image dissector was indeed a television, electromechanical, but a true television nonetheless. His all-electronic version of the dissector provided the basis for all modern analog television systems.

" get results which are to modern standards, regardless of when something was shot"

Are they taking into account the fact that film (analog signal) cam deteriorate?

The entire logic makes about as much sense and people claiming that morals and values come directly from ancient religion (and not within our minds).

DStanic wrote in post #10811563
The entire logic makes about as much sense and people claiming that morals and values come directly from ancient religion (and not within our minds).

Morals and values come from society. It is not only legal but quite honorable and common to do some things in Japan that are illegal and considered immoral in the U.S. And I'm sure the reverse is true.

After all, the French eat snails!