Film: How much longer?

I still have my Nikor tanks and spools. But I just got a new version of PS CS3. I predict black and white will be available for a long time. But C-6 and C-41 will have to be shipped to some place in the Adirondacks.

The contibutors on this forun do not represent the multitudes of photographers world wide.

They probably represent a small but well above average ability and interest section of the photographic community.

The vast majortity of 'ordinary' people use P&S digital. This goes hand in hand with the progerss of PC's becoming much cheaper and having graphics capability together with a £50 inkjet being able to print out

for what to most people is a acceptable 7X5. £100 gets you a good P&S. You have the PC and printer anyway. Simple processing software comes with windows so all you need is a pack of photo paper.

Thats why digital has suceeded. Even DSLR is a minority market compared to the global P&S market.

Digital has a long way to go yet - it is basically advanced but still in its infancy and Moores Law applies here also.

Every Nikon or Whatever will be better than the last at the same price and yes your present whatever it is is out of date already. Digital now equals film (for most). Now it will start to get better and so film will one day be a very niche product. It is a very clever person who can say when the tipping point will come but come it will.

That's the commercial world. Whatever we may think we are the minority. Film or digital. You pays your money and takes your choice. With film as time goes on it must be you pays more of you money and have less chioce. Digital isn't coming - It's here.

Remember when 8-Track tapes where going to male Vinyl obsolete? Then it was cassette tapes, then CD's then MP3

players.... Funny how after all this "New technology" I can still buy a USB Turn Table.... go figure.

 

Film will out live us all.

"What is going on in China has nothing to do w/ anything, other than what is going on in China. Hey, not many people drive Ferraris either. Does that mean they are going to stop making them?"

 

You missed my point completly. First, your Ferrari analogy is totally flawed. Ferraris aren't made for the general public and the people who buy Ferraris will buy them no matter what the cost because they are Ferraris. That's why they continue making them.

 

What's China got to do with it? It's the largest country in the world, population wise. It has huge potential. But the Chinese seem to be embracing modern digital photography even faster than people in the U.S. If the Chinese then most other "developed countries won't be selling film either. And poor countries won't be buying film or digital because they are too busy just trying to stay alive

 

In today's highly competitive business, if products doesn't sell great guns, stores don't keep them around. In the book fiction market, if a new release isn't selling gangbusters in six to eight weeks publishers have the remain books destroyed at the store rather than paying freight back to a warehouse. And that's the way most manufacturers work nowadays.

 

Some facts must be faced. The number of film users gets smaller with each passing day. As someone else pointed out, film salemen will tell you sales are up because they make their living selling film. But I can guarantee you that every month of 2008 the major film manufacturers sold less camera film than they sold in 2007. And the one hour photo places won't keep their film labs running unless they are turning a profit

 

Everytime I hear someboy say "But I heard film is making a comeback," I remember a song from the 1950s called "Save you Confederate money, boys. The South will rise again." That didn't happen with Confederate money and it won't happen with film, either.

While I agree that most tourists you’re seeing taking snapshots of each other are using digital cameras…..I would also state that those people are not taking quality photos for publication or display or sale.

 

I’ve seen many people as of late shooting with Leica and Bessa film cameras, old 35mm SLRs as well as MF & LF film gear. A number of friends recently have started using their digital P&S only for quicky vacation and birthday shots and have gone back to 35mm for higher quality stuff. The last vacation I went on to Hawaii, I only took my Bessa R2a and 8 rolls of Pro 160S. Dropped the film off and had 4x6 prints ready the next day. No time in front of the computer or anything…..just grabbed the shots and was done. Great using a nice light camera. Great having 35mm quality that spanks any P&S out there.

As Dave pointed out, most people using digitals are the modern day brownie users. Pros use digitals for their own reasons. Even when the quality isn't the same as many of the pro film cameras. MF and LF, especially. While amateur film users are camera buffs, that take pictures for the joy of it. And, don't care what others use. The only worry they have, if any,is that will the "modern Brownie users" and the pros, being in the majority, influence the manufactures so much. That someday, it won't be possible to use their film cameras.

One thing that has always amused me in threads like this is how strong of a desire we all seem to feel in order

to justify our own decisions. Those who finally went out and got that DSLR they've been eying for a while write

pages and pages of high prose on the imminent death of film while others, who just spent their cash on a film

scanner will type up response after response about the soul that is lost in digital sensors, superior mid-tones

that only HP5+ will produce and so on and so forth.

 

The only thing I personally want to say to the original poster is a simple suggestion. Take that DSLR of yours

and, drumroll, take more pictures. The time you waste writing and re-writing the same two or three arguments is

better spent doing just about anything else. This got old a long time ago. It really has.

 

And no, film is not going away any time soon. It will likely get more expensive, but will be available to

hobbyists for the foreseeable future. It's cheap and easy enough to produce (unlike vacuum tubes) and is bound to

hold on to a small but dedicated following pretty much indefinitely.

 

Enjoy.

 

And yes, I shoot film. And digital too.

Joe Grodis, that's my "local" in Shinjuku! Although they have less enlargers available since those pics were shot, they've

added more photo papers, including a company called Argentone and the new-look Bergger. They've still got loads of film,

although no Delta 3200 120. I have no idea why the OP gauges the future of film by what Chinese vacationers are shooting.

I was in Target yesterday and looked at the film selection. Only Fuji 200,400,800 and some disposable camera's.

They have no Kodak film, no film camera's for sale at all. They do have a low quality photo lab that will develop your

35mm film after scanning to digital. I would say it's hit bottom around here. I have a brand new copy of shutterbug

that I picked up at the market last night. Going over toBHPhoto they have 1/3 page of film advertisements and 2/3rd

page of film cameras. There are 10 camera's there and 2 are digital anyway. The two Nikon camera's are

discontinued. So that leaves 6 in production (not sure about that) camera's advertised. Compare that to to many

digital camera's to count and you find a film meltdown.. Oh all the local professional photographer's they are all

shooting digital now. I know them all or about them. The reason for it is that digital offers high quality imaging,

directly interactive with your computer, thumb drive, ipod and other digital devices that now consume our lives..As

much as people feel you have to photoshop everything you acutally do not. My daughter's digital point and shoot

gets printed straight from her memory card. The images look fine. They have good white balance, sharp enough but

not great and very accurate colors. She can upload her images, shoot vidio and share her pictures easily with

anyone in the world. She does not want an expensive film camera, long drives and wait times to a cost co for

developing and scanning and then computer downloading and all that. No the film thing is not what people want

anymore. I am talking about the average person and not a high end hobbyist like you folks that are shooting film with

great results. Film is going down, but not all the way. Nothing completely vanishes. But I see that is kind of good

because that makes film photographers more interesting. It's also very bad for those that lose their jobs or those that

have personalitities that have to hang on to yesterday and are not willing to move on with new stuff. We are all like

that in some ways. I refuse to give up my Vinyl.

I bet in the future, what will happen is while pros and serious amateur photographers will use a digital camera. And, the general public will take their pictures with a cell phone.

I don't hang to the past. But, for me, since all I shoot is B&W, and my prints are carbons and other old processes. Digital is too costly

From a usage view, the compare of vinyl and film to digital is, I think, legitimate. From a practical view, I doubt it. While film does have unique characteristics, it isn't necessarily better than digital today nor is it likely to pull ahead tomorrow. Lovers of vinyl either hear or imagine they can hear differences between the analog recording method and the digital method. I can't hear it but they seem sure that they do. So there is a practical side to the nuisance of vinyl which, IMO, doesn't exist in film.

 

Just as tintype or wet plate never died as there always were and probably will be practitioners of those techs (and other retro crank techs) film won't die but it'll fade to be a esoteric hobby. In fact, it's darn close to that today.

 

A few days ago a fellow showed me some old slides done to 'prove' the wonder of Kodachrome. I didn't wonder much. I just shot a few digitals, cranked the sat up and there I duped that wonder. IMO, film is over and has been for a few years. It just hasn't vanished and never will.

Now that it's getting cold out how does one manage to take digital shots in very cold weather? Last winter while in up state New York my Fuji S700 and Nikon D40 completely stalled and locked up. So, I used a Nikon FM3a on very cold days without a hitch...