by Bob Atkins
Rembrandt van Rijn - Belshazzar's Feast (slightly modified...)
...In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote "MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN"...
Like it or not, digital rules. Digital Audio, in the form of CDs and MP3 players, have taken over the roles previously occupied by vinyl disks and analog cassette tape. TV and radio are going digital, more so in Europe than in the US, but the US will surely follow. Cell phones are digital. Computer data is digital. Why should photography be any different?
Of course it's not. Despite some wailing and gnashing of teeth by photo purists, digital is taking over - indeed has essentially already has taken over - photography. Now talk of "film is dead" is, of course, something of an exaggeration, but if it's not dead, it's certainly not feeling well. I doubt any of us will live in a world totally without film, just as we don't live in a world devoid of horses, hot air balloons, vinyl records, model T Fords and 8 track tapes, even though inventions like the automobiles, airplanes, CDs and Ferraris have pretty much replaced their technological ancestors.
Most camera makers seem to have stopped film SLR development. Last year Kodak stopped making slide projectors. If more writing were needed on the wall, recently Dixons, a major chain of high street photo retailers in the UK, announced that it would no longer be carrying 35mm cameras. Whether or not 35mm film objectively gives higher quality images than current consumer digital cameras is a moot point. Dixons own research showed that 93% of their customers couldn't tell the difference and digital cameras were out selling 35mm cameras by a ratio of 15:1.
So it's not a question of whether or not digital will replace film. Essentially it already has.
"OK" the purists will say, "but your average consumer wouldn't know a quality image if it sat up and bit them on the leg. Those who care about image quality will still use film". Really? Have you looked at what wedding photographers are shooting with these days? Catalog photographers? Sports Photographers? Nature Photographers? These are professionals who depend on the quality of their work to make a living. More and more are switching to digital.
Yes, there are still film users shooting with 4x5, 5x7, 8x10 and larger cameras and it may be a long time before they move to digital (if they ever do), but like I said earlier, there are still people riding horses and flying in hot air balloons, but that doesn't alter the fact that transportation is ruled by the car and the airplane. Some people like to do things in traditional ways, and for them film will be their choice (some may even chose to use even earlier technology in the form of Daguerreotypes). A few photographers will value the ultimate quality of 8x10 contact prints, and for them film will be their choice. But for the vast majority of both casual, serious amateur and professional photographers, digital will be the medium they use. This is neither good nor bad. It just is. Film is (or will soon become) a niche medium.
So if film is in its decline, where is digital going? I think the answer depending on the application.
For consumer cameras I see two directions. One is small and one is the "Swiss army camera". There's always a demand for small, pocketable cameras. Such cameras are already fairly easy to find. We'll maybe see an increase in pixel count, but going beyond about 8MP doesn't seem realistic for various technical and practical reasons. Size constraints will limit the zoom lens range on such cameras to something of the order of 35-105mm (35mm equivalent), though we can always hope for a 28-105! I wouldn't be surprised to see the absolute number of digital camera models fall. The market is saturating and a number of camera manufacturers are being hit hard by falling prices and reducing market share - and pulling out of the market in some areas. Maybe eventually we'll see the market dominated by just a few major players (Sony, Kodak and Canon will probably be among them)
The "Swiss army camera" won't be pocketable, but it will be smaller and cheaper than a DSLR but with similar capabilities (up to a point), maybe ending up with something like a 28-420mm zoom (image stabilized of course), a 10MP sensor, and a continuous video mode limited only by memory capacity. We're already starting to see early versions of such cameras (Samsung pro815, Canon S2 IS). Such cameras will be able to do most of what consumers will want and could eat into the low end DSLR market if aggressively priced.
There's also the cell phone camera. The first ones were pretty useless, but there are some available now which don't do a bad job at all and the ones next year will be even better. As cell phones become even more ubiquitous (if that's possible), cell phone cameras will follow them. A number of camera (and phone) makers seem to think that cell phone cameras will be big sellers, and who am I to argue with them. I'm also seeing greater marketing and advertising of cell phone cameras, always a potential pointer to things to come.
When it comes to DSLRs there are lots of "small is beautiful" evangelists who praise the use of small sensors, pointing out that they can make cameras and lenses smaller, lighter and cheaper, though the lower prices and smaller sizes of these lenses don't seem to have been realized yet. I vaguely remember such arguments being put forth when the camera and film makers attempted to foist the APS system on consumers and we all know what a success that wasn't. With digital cost is the driving force for smaller sensors, no matter what the marketing departments of the camera makers say. If full frame sensors were inexpensive, I doubt we'd see anyone claiming that "smaller is better". At this point only Canon is seriously selling a full frame 35mm digital SLR (the 1Ds Mk II) and it's expensive ($8000?). However there are currently some fairly believable rumors that Canon may surprise some people with a full frame sensor camera at less than half that cost this fall. Are the rumors true? Who knows (that's why they're rumors, not facts), but if not this fall, then sometime soon someone will do it (and it's more likely to be Canon than anyone else right now). If someone does market a high quality full frame sensor camera at a price between $3000 and $4000, can the other camera manufactures afford not to follow suit?
All is not lost for the smaller format enthusiasts though. I think the proliferation of lenses with coverage only sufficient for APS-C sized sensors (1.5x and 1.6x), as well as the lower cost of such sensors may well result in a continued market for consumer oriented small sensor cameras for a long time to come, so I see the market splitting between professional DSLRs with full frame sensors and consumer DSLRs with APS-C sensors for the forseeable future.
Could I be wrong? Absolutely. If I could predict the future I wouldn't need to work for a living!
