“I think there could be milage in digital. I took the photograph below on my daily training ride exactly four hours ago... and even whilst I was pushing the pedals (a period of quality time I usually utilise for thinking of nothing - impossible, of course, unless in a Zen-like state - but I assume you know what I mean) I was calculating the cost of argentique versus numérique."

Traditional black-and-white photography, not taking into account whatever investment previously made in equipment, has got to cost £4 minimum for the first 10x8 glossy (I'm calculating in English money because that's the currency I've used in most previous years). Assuming a discount warehouse price of £2.50 for a 36-exposure film, 50 pence for chemistry, 30 pence each for a contact sheet, a test-print and a finished print... and you or I have spent £4 of the hard-earned folding stuff. There are few short cuts unless bulk film loading and kit-processing your own.

Using these figures I have calculated that after 365 blogs I will have spent £1,460, or $2,700, or 2,170 euros on showing you whatever image per day I choose... and I have to like them whether you like any of them or not. This rough costing exercise was enough of a jolt to disrupt my regular attempt at maintaining a cadence of 90... a difficult enough routine when riding a fixed-wheel bike in undulating countryside. Added to which a very solid Nikon F2 and wide-angle lens slung over my back for the benefit of today's image didn't help on the downhill stretches either... piston-pumping legs (remember, fixed-wheel... no cruising without pedalling on my velo) repeatedly shifted the camera to a rib-bashing location in rhythm to my legs.

It was then I noticed my lengthy staccato-flickering shadow cast by the late-afternoon sun on the undulating roadside verge and scattered fields... so I made five exposures in a few seconds, the 24mm lens having enough depth-of-field for me not to worry about eye-focusing the lens. However, I had to manipulate one-handed-one-fingered-and-one-thumb the shutter speed down in steps from 1/250 to 1/125 to 1/60 to 1/30 and to 1/15th of a second whilst closing down the aperture by a stop each time to balance the exposure.

The best image popped out from the developing dish on the second attempt - it does if you shoot enough film and as a result there's always one shot that has it - has what you hoped for. So, £4 spent today on the image above is no big deal... today. But 365 of them multiplied by perhaps two hours a day on the visuals not counting the time for my accompanying words. Merde! Pardon my French... life's too short at 60-plus.

So back to the question that disrupted my pedal-pushing rhythm... for £1,460 (at 2004 prices) I could buy a 10mp Nikon D200 digital SLR with a storage card... or, a neat pop-down-my-bicycle-shorts 6mp Canon digi-compact for a third or quarter of that price and likewise upload colour or black-and-white images in a matter of seconds.

A photo blog done digitally for a third or one quarter of the price and around 730 hours free time (that's a month... a twelfth of my life) sounds very tempting and hard to argue against. I'll come back to this topic for sure.

Although I didn’t realise it at the time, it would take me two years, less one day to be exact, to post my first digital weblog which continues on the next page as part 1 of a Nikon D200 DSLR review.