I have officially opened my first exhibit here on the New Hampshire Seacoast.

My work is now proudly displayed at the Coffee Break Cafe on Ocean Boulevard in Hampton Beach. Drop on by and visit Lenny and Carol in their gorgeous and inviting shop, have some great coffee and panninis (I highly recommend the Roast Beef — it’s the best roast beef sandwich I’ve ever had!), and enjoy some beautiful artwork by myself and several other Seacoast area artists.

“High Definition” seems to be the buzzword of the new century. Everybody and everything seems to be going “high definition”. High Definition Television. High Definition Radio. High Definition Aspirin. OK, I’m exaggerating a little … but you get my point.

It occurred to me the other day that, even with the digital revolution and the new crop of 10, 12, 14 and even 20 megapixel cameras, photography has been “High Definition” for a very, very long time already.

Film photography is an analog process, so comparing it directly to the new digital media is an apples-and-oranges thing. Suppose, however, that we take a frame of film and digitize it with a readily available film scanner at a resolution of 4,000 dpi, which is pretty much the standard for film scanners that nearly anyone can afford to buy. (Industrial strength drum scanners have resolutions of upwards of 40,000 dpi, and tend to cost tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars.)

A standard-issue 35mm film frame is 24mm high x 36mm wide. That’s 0.944882 inches x 1.417323 inches (since we’re calculating in dots/pixels per inch). Multiply that out and you get a scan of 3,779 pixels high by 5,669 pixels wide, for a total image of 21,423,151 pixels — that’s about 21.4 MegaPixels. Even the best digital cameras on the market today are barely catching up with that — and we’re not even factoring in the vast advantage film still holds in dynamic range. (On a 40,000 dpi drum scanner, that same frame of analog film yields a scan of 37,795 pixels by 45,892 pixels, for a finished size of 1,734,535,761 pixels — that’s 1.7 GIGApixels! And yes, a properly exposed and developed frame of 35mm film really does contain that kind of data — a scan of this resolution will show every detail, right down to the individual grains of silver in the film.)

Take a medium format frame at 2.25×2.25 inches (6×6 cm): At 4,000 dpi, that’s 9,000 pixels on a side, for a total of 81 Megapixels. At 40,000 dpi, that’s 90,000 x 90,000 = 8,100,000,000, or 8.1 Gigapixels.

How about a small “large format” view-camera photograph, at 4×5 inches: At 4,000 dpi, that’s 16,000 x 20,000 pixels = 320 Megapixels. At 40,000 dpi it’s 160,000 x 200,000 pixels = 32 Gigapixels.

Figuring the gigapixelage of Ansel Adams’ favored 8×10 inch view camera is left as an exercise to the reader.

I would submit that, in this fresh new millennium of all things High Definition, good old-fashioned film photography is the original high-definition medium.

It struck me recently how risk-averse a society we have become. An atmosphere of paranoia grips our culture, suffocating us into passivity.

A good case in point was illustrated to me last evening, in a report on the new Wired Science program on PBS. They brought a segment on the good old-fashioned chemistry set, which these days comes — believe it or not! — without any chemicals! It seems that the manufacturers are so afraid of being sued, that they won’t even provide truly educational toys anymore.

Oddly enough, the lack of chemicals in kids’ chemistry playsets correllates directly with a 2/3 decline in the number of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering majors in our colleges.

We’re protecting our children right back into the stone age!

If you want kids to get interested in chemistry, how about letting them (GASP!) do chemistry?!?!?!?!? Will some kids get hurt by doing things they shouldn’t with chemistry sets? Sure, they will. Interestingly enough, though, I’ve never seen or heard of an injury inflicted by mis-use of a chemistry playset that was any more severe than what we see on High School football fields on a regular basis.

Yes, as parents we want to protect our children from the dangers of the world — but are we really doing them a favor? Wouldn’t we be doing better by our young people if we let them experience life, including it’s dangers, while they’re still under our care and supervision, rather than shielding them from everything and then turning them loose on the wild world when they’re eighteen, completely unprepared for what awaits them out there?

I’m reminded also, of an email I got some time ago, about the same general subject:

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930’s 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

-They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.

-Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

-We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

-As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

-Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

-We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

-We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

-We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

-We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

-No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

-We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

-We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms……….WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

-We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

-We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

-We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

-We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

-Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

-The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

-This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

-The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

-We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have been blessed to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good. And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.
Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it?!

Life is risk, reward, and taking ownership and responsibility for our own choices and actions.

Making art, doing business, pushing the boundaries of technology, all of these things are risky.

The artists risk ridicule, and the derision of peers and the public, by sharing their ideas and creations with the world. So do businessmen and inventors. Remember when the cell phone first came out, and people were talking about “Who would ever want to take their phone with them everywhere? That’s stupid!”?  Henry Ford’s family tried to have him committed to a mental institution, for wanting do make a “horseless carriage” affordably available to anyone who wants one.

It’s the artists, entrepreneurs, craftsmen and inventors that move our society forwards.

What if we went back to being a culture that, rather than fearing risk and responsibility, embraces and revels in them?