michael j. mccormack

Every year at a convention that I attend (NSS2007.com is this year?s) there is a Thursday night slideshow. In this show we project onto 2 16x16 screens. There are at least 5 professional cave photographers, people who make their livings shooting, and sometimes dozens of accomplished amateurs presenting to 500-1500 attendees.

In past years, we actually used slides even for the titles. These slides were meticulously hand created by our professional presenter. Two years ago we started the transition to digital, as they no longer manufacture the slides that we used for titles. The first Slide and Digital salon was a virtual catastrophe as the projectors were not adequate. But leave it to technology to catch up quickly.

This last year (2006) when I ran the acquisition of equipment, I managed to convince Epson to contribute two of their highest quality digital projectors. We also had the largest number of entries in the salon in recent years because digital wasn't just allowed it was actively encouraged.

The film slide projectors were slow, and since we had a short throw on stage, the lenses offered slight distortion that required some focusing (they were run by a very accomplished professional). The digital projectors on the other hand were crystal clear and offered no problems at all. The professional photographers all swore they were entering their slides in digital format next time.

As for family slide shows, I use a Media PC, hooked into my 60" high-def plasma and the slideshow only stops when I go to bed or actually want to watch television. It takes me 5 mintues to set it up, and there is no chance of melting an irreplaceable slide (not that any of my photos are so important to be irreplaceable).

I would certainly argue that the slide show is not only alive, but is about to have a renaissance, the theme's are the same, only the presentation is different.

Now about those sticky paged photo albums...