Are we at the last decade of film based photography ?

Kodak unveiled a

 

 

<a

href="http://www.dpreview.com/news/0209/02092304kodakdcs14n.asp">Kodak

14 M digital SLR</A> at Photokina<P>

 

 

13.89 mega pixel is equivalent to linear density of 127 pixel/mm

or 63 lpmm.

A present the best 35mm APO lens and film combo yield about 100 lpmm

on film, after going through enlarger or scanning, this 100 lpmm

will be further reduced.

Digital 35mm is fast catching up with film based 35MM.<p>

It is just a matter of time we will see 20 mega pixel 35mm camera<P>

In another ten years, probably few people still using film and

darkroom.

Digital camera, Photoshop, print will replace film, developer,

fixer, enlarger, scanner.. as the norm.<p>

No wonder Kodak, Agfa are have discontinued many films

Yes....and interestingly, its the slow speed heroes that have bit the dust; Agfa APX 25, Kofak Ektar 25, Agfa Ultra, to name a few.

 

Could it be, that the film manufacturers had foreseen that digital would be more desirable (eventually), if the sharper films were not there to compete? Hmmmm.

You'll also notice lots of "new" films from companies that at least I had never heard of before. Companies from behind the old iron curtain. Sooner or later others will spring up to feed the millions of camera out there.

 

Personally I doubt that stuff like photoshop will make it. Eventually the digital cameras will be good enough to have more power then your current computer. Then later many human photographers will be replaced. I bet that within 25 years high end silver based portraits will be one of the few areas still be done by humans and not very smart cameras.

<I>In another ten years, probably few people still using film and darkroom</i><P>Cool, just think of all the money I will make selling new <i>old fashioned</i> prints in B&W.

I think to predict the demise of film based photography is to be unduly pessimistic. Think of the 'alternative processes' that are being used still. It's not for the ultimate in image quality that some of them are still in use but the fact that people love to use them and love the effects that they produce.

 

Certainly where 'Time is Money' the market will follow the digital route. I imagine that press photography is already pretty much digital, who else is buying the high priced Nikon & Canon digital cameras that will be superceded and of little resale value within a few months of being put on the market?

 

At various levels amateur photography is a vast market, from the happy snapper to the large format enthusiast who will spend days in a darkroom in an effort to produce a single superlative print. The holiday/family snap sector will surely go digital but I'm sure that for the forseeable future there will be a large enough market for films - especially B & W ones - to continue to be made. Certainly there will be a narrower range of emulsions but they'll still be there.

 

If this is wrong we, or more likely the next photo generation, will have to go it alone. The chemicals are out there; we'll coat our own emulsions and mix our own processing chemicals!

 

Trevor Littlewood

 

PS. Wasn't the death of painting predicted once photography became a viable and cheaper alternative?

Haven't we been here, like, a million times already?

I doubt the cameras will exceed the PC of the day in power. The PC always has the option of being bigger and is accepted as such. Silly goose.

I think you are being pessimistic. Sitting in front of a computer screen farting around with photoshop is not fun for many of us. Nothing like the hands on time in a darkroom. Kind of like reading a newspaper as opposed to trying it on the internet. Two entirely different experiences.

Large Format camera sales are brisk & seem to be getting better all the time. There is a lot to be said for craftsmanship and quality rather than the endless repeatability that comes from the computer printers. B&W and color film will be around a long time. I can still use 50 year old cameras with no problem yet try that with a 10 year old computer. Film lasts & to date nothing in the digital capture field can safely make that claim.

I don't think we have a lot to worry about.

I really think we need a film vs. digital filter on PN.

My current PC has more CPU power,HD space,HD speed and memory then the Vaxen I first used. The video card in my PC has more memory and power then that Vaxen did. All in a package smaller then the drives on a Vaxen. My PC isn't even near state of the art. That Vax served something like fifty people. Anyone who thinks the current high end PC won't fit into something the size of a camera in the future is being very pessimtic. Lets not forget special purpose chips. No one is every going to put custom photography chips and software into the generic desktop PC.

 

Sorry but I have no doubt that digital will kill off digital camera operators long before it kills off film.

<blockquote><i>

Haven't we been here, like, a million times already?

 

<p>-- Jim Kish , September 25, 2002; 11:14 A.M. Eastern</i>

<blockquote><p>

Yup, and the real answers haven't changed. Film is dying as far as new 35mm cameras are concerned. MF can't be far behind. B&W 120 and 4x5 E9 trannies will be the charcol and oil-painting of the 21 century. And there'll be those <b>real</b> nut cases trying to cut and reload 135 from whatever emulsion they can; and fabricating parts & controllers for long-obsolete semi-mechanical shutters. I plan on being one of them :-) <p> But then I've just bought a 40 year old camera and my favorite amplfier <a href="http://www.cantech.net.au/~supra/">glows in the dark</a>. As a friend of mine in marketing quipped - I'm demographically incorrect.

Will I be able to project the digital images as I currently do with my slides?

Hi Martin,

 

I agree with Dan, but if the day ever arrives, when digital far exceeds the quality of my home produced conventional black & white 645 images, then i certainly hope those scientist chaps develop a digital eyeball, for me to stick in my eye socket, as its hard enough for me to see all the available detail with my present set up.

 

cheers

"<cite>In another ten years, probably few people still using film and darkroom</cite>"

<P>

Today few people are using the darkroom. The heights of the 70s went the way of all mass fads.... And don't bet too much on a long term trend of these HR digital cameras either... Nor those silly "<cite>Personal Computers</cite>"...

<P>

I suspect that salted imaging will long outlive any of the kinds of digital imaging models we are looking at today.. It'll be a niche.. but it will likely survive just as painting has survived photography.. and Cinema the TV.. and Radio.. the Cinema.. About the only thing that is probably clear.. is that the trend among the masses is...

<I>In another ten years, probably few people still using film and darkroom</i><P>You mean...people will actually be able to concentrate more on photography rather than dorking around in a dark-room or having to choose between 50 different amatuer print films (all of which suck), or the double razor of decreasing exposure lattitude and color accuracy of increasingly advanced slide films?<P>Sounds like a good thing to me. <P>I still don't get this digital vs film debate and why so many of you are concerned what other people are doing. Film is *dead*....as a utilitarian means of recording images that is. The lame film horse has already been shot and the body is starting to rot, but some of you are trying to prop it up like the movie "Weekend at Bernies". Most people I know still using film would welcome a higher end digital camera, and many others should have the film camera taken away from them, the dark-room turned back into a closet and GIVEN a digital camera.<P><I>Cool, just think of all the money I will make selling new old fashioned prints in B&W.

</i><P>Sometimes I wonder Daniel if you and I have the only brains working in all of this. Film/silver halide is rapidly being confined to a specific form of artistic representation, which is where it should be in the first place for it's OWN BENEFIT. Those of us who know how to work the film/silver halide medium for it's own artistic merits will continue to do so with no real reference to what digital does or doesn't do. Who cares how many pixels 6x7 or 4x5 Tri-X is equivelant to? Seriously....who cares? The implied objective of LF-MF photography is to produce images 'different' than conventional means in the first place, so I don't get what all the controversy is about. I see wonderfull monochrome images from digital capture all the time, and I see ones best left in the recycle bin. Sometimes I can desaturate color slide film and produce a stunning B/W portrait, other times I need to stick with XP-2 or Delta. Sometimes I can make a fantastic digital B/W print on my Ink-Jet, other times it requires silver gelatin to pull it off.<P><I>Sitting in front of a computer screen farting around with photoshop is not fun for many of us</i><P>And I don't consider 'farting' around in a dark-room as a social recluse to be much fun either, especially when I can be out taking pictures. You remark about 'craftmanship and quality' is also more of the art-nazi drivel being preached by those who need film and paper to think for them as well. Many of you simply want to keep photography in the dark ages where large format B/W pictures on Antelope skulls are the devine litmus by which all other forms of photography are judged against. Be afraid...be very afraid<P> I'm looking at my latest LighJet images that I toiled for hours with on my computer vs the first generation direct Cibachromes I hande made 10 years ago. The quality and over-all brilliance of the digital print is so far beyond the original it's almost sad. I'm no longer limited by the contraints of the paper, or in many respects the film, but my own vision.

</blockquote>

 

<p>

Just terminating the <blockquote>

</blockquote>

 

<p>

Sorry, I missed the second <blockquote> that Conrad inserted.

so...I've lurked here for some time, Scott, what's your hangup with art photographers...did someone slam your work and scar you for life, or what?

<i>Film/silver halide is rapidly being confined to a specific form of artistic

representation, which is where it should be in the first place for it's OWN

BENEFIT. Those of us who know how to work the film/silver halide medium for

it's own artistic merits will continue to do so with no real reference to what

digital does or doesn't do. Who cares how many pixels 6x7 or 4x5 Tri-X is

equivelant to? Seriously....who cares? </i><br>

<br>

Words of wisdom indeed. <br>

<br>

On a related note.. there was a story on CNBC a few months ago about

Michael's Art Supplies stores. It seems that they are one of the only specialty

retail stores who's stock is doing well over the past two years. I guess

someone should tell whomever is still buying oil paints, sketching pads,

pastels and modeling clay that silver-based photography passed them by

decades ago.

Somewhere I recently saw that 35mm film processing has been continuously climbing due to P&S as well as disposable cameras!

Just go to wallmart and you will find shelves full of these <$10 devices.

Rather doubt film will disappear for sometime as many consumers just want to pay to point and shoot.

MF & LF cameras will remain in the hands of professionals or ARTISANS that prefer to work in this media.

IMHO people are willing to sacrific quality for fast processing and they will either go digital or use the disposables to record important events. How many people do you know that own digital cameras and have not "printed" one picture..... I know of many!

 

Bob

Just the other day I saw a someone with a LF camera photographing a new office building. I stopped and struck up a conversation. He was 22, and was working for a local photographer who does mostly architecture and commercial work. He had been out of school for a year where the bulk of his phtography studies were in the digital realm. He discussed the wonders of the digital backs for the Sinar he was using and the MF cameras at the studio. I told him about my background and my use of LF cameras up 11x14. He became excited as he told me about work he had recently seen done as 8x10 contacts and platinum prints.

 

He said he was so mesmerized by the prints, both silver and platinum that he had purchased an older Toyo 8x10 and was building an 11x14 pinhole camera. So I have faith there will always be those who apreciate fine work in the non-digital media and will wish to persue it themselves.

Martin,

Please let me know when a digital camera yeild a 250-300MB file would you? That is what I get now with my 6x4.5 Provia 100F slide and a drum scan. And I still do B&W the old fashioned way. In the mean time work on improving your images. The very best images are most valued regardless of the tool used. You can get an idea of how rediculous these types of questions are by noticing the car has not obsoleted the bicycle of the foot and the backhoe has not replaced the shovel, etc., etc.!! Do you still use a spoon? Wow, how old fashioned! SHEEESH

Wasn't vinyl going to die once there was cd?

Dave wrote:"Martin, Please let me know when a digital camera yeild a 250-300MB file would you? That is what I get now with my 6x4.5 Provia 100F slide and a drum scan. "<p>

 

Dave, much sooner than you think<p>

Moore's Law states that circuit density of semiconductors quadruples every three years. <p>

 

The Kodak 14 Mpixel SLR yields 82 MB file

Three years from now, that is by 2005, we shall see 56 MP or 244 MB digital camera, and by 2008, we shall see 200MP / one GB digital camera.<P>

It is exponential growth.

There is an very interesting

<a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/1ds/1ds-field.shtml">Comparison between Canon 11MP 1Ds vs Canon 1V vs Pentax 645 </a>

<p> I appears to me that the Canon 1Ds is sharper.