Where is the future of Leica M body or film camera?

read news about Agfa film will soon stop make film and went belly

up. Kodak and Ilford have the same satuation. If we have digital M

body match to film quality, who will buy Leica M body or other film

camera? If we look at the dark room, traditional dark room is almost

dead, enlarge paper will getting harder to find, chemical hazard is

another prolem. digital dark room print quality is very near the

traditional dark room print and give the advantage to retouch image

in the computer.

 

If in the future, someone can make high quality E-film to fit the

charmber of the film camera, maybe these film cameras get second

life, the digital waves come faster than I have expected

As long as people enjoy it, someone will make it. It is not a prohibitively advanced

technology. If eventually the very large companies stop providing it, there will certainly be a

boutique industry around it. Either way, will still have many years before that might happen.

Quick, Dan! Sell me your soon to be obsolete Leica gear at rediculously low prices before they become absolutely worthless! (The sky is falling. Oh my!)

Dan, you should read the news more carefully. Agfa in fact had meetings with their bankers yesterday (Oct 11). The news was that the bank is expected to approve the split and sale of Agfa Photo to two different groups, one out of England that wants to continue the paper/film production, and a German entity (backed by Cerberus, a huge investment firm) that wants to continue production of their minilabs. (this can all be found at Forbes.com). As well Ilford has refinanced and is considered to be, for now anyways, on fairly solid ground. This is what I hate about the 'net...people who read one article, and then don't do any follow-up.

Er, to sort of quote Fleetwood Mac: "Stop thinking about tomorrow" or

something.

 

In other words, instead of fretting about the week after next, or whenever, why

don't you go out and take some photos? Film is still available as I write this.

 

It's raining here.

Given the 5D and that digital tech is becoming so good and less expensive, and that the

demand for simple, involved, high performance photography will always be around, and

that Zeiss has invested into this niche, a seamless digital M body will come about sooner

or later- one that's a digital analog of the M7. It will be full-frame and how ever many

megapixels is current, long life battery, and mega-storage. The tech will overcome any M

mount/lens challenges.

I think certain film will go away- maybe color/B&W slide (I hope I'm wrong). I think color/

B&W print film will be around, hopefully ISO 100 (gotta figure it will), certainly ISO 400 and

800.

Ho hum. The umteenth post of boring speculation. I'll send you $1 USD and you send me in return all of your film based gear, then there will be no basis for unhappiness or anxiety.

I stoped to process my own BW film because the sewer chemical contamination problem (maybe you do not care), I have to bring these wastes to place that collect chemical waste, this increases the cost, so I start to use C41 BW film, If good digital M or DSLR come out, I am ready to switch, I can still use my lenses but M or SLR body will be useless. So send me you $1 deposition and your address I will send you my M gears when the day comes.

I don't care. I love buying and shooting the stuff. Fuji is coming out with new emulsions. I shoot digi too and don't care either what the future of the APS sensor is.

Dan - I don't thonk you will be sending it as you will be pushing up daisies by then

While I will continue to shoot film (probably for the rest of my life), I'm looking forward to the digital M and getting double duty from my lenses.

Any misinformation/disinformation about Fuji or have they just disappeared altogether along with KonicaMinolta ?

"who will buy Leica M body or other film camera?"

 

People will still be buying M body. Maybe not film camera in general. Using a Leica is a very different experience and this is what attract most people. I'll use a Leica body as long as I can find film. I won't be using any other film camera as no other bring me this particular joy of shooting.

Dan,

 

I'll quite happily use my Leica "M" gear as long as I can obtain color film and a

somewhat reliable color lab to process it. (The latter is getting harder to find all the

time as my experience in New Jersey this last weekend will attest.)

 

I'm learning more about scanning color media into digital all the time and see no

need to pitch my Leica gear into the river Thames yet.

 

-jb

Fuji has a new film coming out soon.

I guess that's why when wet plates took over the market from the cumbersome Daguerrotype process suddenly everybody stopped making oil paints, water colors, brushes, India ink, pen nibs, canvas, water color paper----Oh! Wait a minute! Isn't high quality water color paper favored by digital photographers for the base of their prints? Well over a century later, too!

HEY DAN! I agree that film is obsolete and environmentally unfriendly, additionally it is sending a lot of precious silver down the sewer never to be recovered. As a tribute to the once vibrant film industry I have decided to set up a private museum of the cameras and lenses that made film famous, and make images of and by these lenses avaiable to users of these forums. Therefore I will offer you a handsome remuneration for your DR Summicron. Please let me know how much you will take for it. It should be worth at least fify or so bucks, but I just might go for more. Think about it! ( :^]>

Particularly if it has the goggles with it!

It should be obvious, but apparently is not here, that film will be harder and harder to find and develop. Who cares what Kodak just said, but what they did say was, that film sales are declining much more rapidly than they ever predicted. The assumption here is someone will pick up the market for film at some point, but the world wide demand will be so small and declining that the economies of scale necessary to maintain a factory and distribution system will not be feasible. Additionally, RF film photography should give way to digital RF bodies which will eliminate a small niche segment for film that still exists. Since computer interfacing is the prevalent mode in photography whether one shoots film or digital, the sale of scanners is a good barometer of the future of film use.

Gee Dan, you're just a fountain of mis-information. B&W chemistry (dev, stop and fix) are relatively harmless and in fact when the dev and fix are put down the drain (in home user amounts) they actually tend to counteract each other. A typical drain cleaner or toilet bowl cleaner is more detrimental to the eco-system than B&W chemistry (not including the heavy metal toners such as selenium, which should be taken to a waste disposal facility). A few years back I attended a conference on just this...photo chemicals and their environmental impact. Here's an interestng fact...in a city of 500,000, a single large industrial chrome replating company (car bumpers and that sort of thing) was dumping more hazardous waste into the river than all the 1-hour labs in town combined, but because the photo labs are all at your local malls (and highly visible) they get picked on while the chrome replating shop (probably on the outskirts in some industrial area) isn't noticed.

distribution=internet+FedEx; factory exists if enough demand worldwide.

There is a chrome plating shop just several blocks down the street from where I live. The people that run it all have their teeth falling out. Even when this stuff goes through the sewage treatment plant, the heavy metals and other contaminants are still around. It is notable that medical imaging facilities employ special attachments to recover the silver washed out in film processing. I am not aware of any attempts to recover such contaminants from plating operations.

BOB: Perhaps my irony was lost on you. Didn't you see my emoticon, particularly the frown?

Film will be about for a long time (you can still get glass plates) and as for pollution the quantity of (fairly benign) chemicals involved in BW processing is minimal. As said before household cleaners etc. are much more hazardous especial considering thier universal use.

 

Dan, keep your M stuff and get back to home BW processing!