When film is really dead, what will film Leicas be worth?

[Uhooru]

<p>@ Danie and Mattl, just gotta say, if you had bothered to look at Ray's photos you would see that he's been shooting film for many years. I was teasing him, because I know how much he shoots and enjoys film but your remark sort of magnifies not only arrogance but ignorance as well. </p>

[ilkka]

<p>Never say never, but not in our lifetime. Good mechanical cameras will retain value because they will be much more expensive to produce in the future, and will remain usable and repairable for decades to come. The less electronic, the better. I have an M6TTL, bought new, and I am keeping it. I have four Hasselblads as well, but they can easily be converted to digital (apart from my XPan). Black and white film is still available in sheet films and 127 sizes, etc etc. There are many small companies making it, even if some day Fuji and Kodak decide not to make it anymore. But even these big ones are still introducing new emulsions. Chemicals are easy to get and mix even if commercial mixtures eventually disappear. The biggest near term problem is colour processing. It is already hard to find labs processing colour transparencies in smaller cities.</p>

[mark_mitchell5]

<p>I agree with a number of posters here - I don't think film will ever completely go away, nor should it. Just a different medium, that's all. Having owned numerous Leicas & Hasselblads (and I'm ashamed to admit it, seriously, I've owned just about major brand of film camera), I never got the collector mentality. They are tools, no more no less, use them, that's what they were made for. If you have a nice collection, I'd hang on to them, stock up on your favorite emulsions and chemicals.</p>

[sitemistic]

<p>And yet Kodak's film sales continue to decline quarter over quarter. All of these stories of increased film sales don't seem to translate into benefits to the makers of film.</p>

[Alex_Es]

<p>Back to Ray's original question, I think that by the time we see the last of film our film cameras, if we use them to take photographs as opposed to collecting them, will be quite worn out and only fit for museums' sections dealing with ancient technology and ancient history. It is not unlikely that our remains will also be on display in the same museums. </p>

<p>Film is not going away soon, if ever. Film may die only when civilization dies. </p>

<p>At this point in time, movies are still made on film, though a digital revolution is supposed to be coming. That is a big market for film right there.</p>

<p>Like Ray, I have a brace of film camera--Leicas and others--that I will not let go of. It is not pure sentimentality, though there is that. I prefer film for deep street photography because film cameras are less obtrusive than their digital counterparts. I like the way film scans. And film is forever. We still do not know if two hundred years from now whether people will be able to read our jpegs, RAWs and tiffs. Since my Photo.net subscription expires in 2107 I won't be able to see what folks will be doing in 2211.</p>

 

[Matt Laur]

<p>Barry: Ignorant? Arrogant? Really? I based my remarks on what Ray actually said. My mistake if I mistook a tongue in cheek original post for being an actual question about the value of his cameras and the timing involved in getting the most back from them in the context of film going away (an issue <em>he</em> brought up, not me!). I likewise won't make myself feel bad about commenting on his question without researching his user profile and portfolio first. If he thought that was an appropriate step in answering his question, he'd certainly have alluded to that, or come right out and suggested it.<br /><br />The topic of photography equipment as an "investment" comes up a lot, with that word almost always used incorrectly. Except for a small number of for-real collectors who really are gambling in the interests of having something more valuable (usually, to sell) later, photography equipment represents a cost, not an investment. Nothing wrong with that. But when that issue is at the heart of the OP's actual question, it's not arrogant to mention that dimension of the issue. People who actually take cameras out and use them every day them know they're not investments.</p>

[kevin_omura]

<p>Scott makes a very valid point about digital media. A good example would be the Media used by Canon's Xapshot cameras which were mini floppy disks, the extremely hard to find cards that Apple's Qucktake 200 and it's Fuji twin shot or the PCMCIA hard drives that were used in the Canon/Kodak DCS-3, want to say you could use CF cards via an PCMCIA adaptor but the camera I used was very picky with it's media to say the least.<br>

I collect old computers and software, mainly because I own a lot of old media and I do recovery work for others. Remember Syquest, Bernoulli and Zip drives? How about MO drives? I get requests from folks now and then desperate to recover old files from media they have found but no longer own the drive or own a working drive.<br>

Repairing old cameras, now that is a good point. A lot of experienced repair people are starting to get pretty old and that could become a problem at some point. I might have said parts but that might depend a lot on the particular camera, some parts are probably getting harder to find though spinning back to digital I think older batteries might get increasing hard to find since a lot of camera makers change the battery design as fast as they change their model lineup.<br>

I think the death of film may be greatly exaggerated....</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>Kevin: You're definitely in a good but niche market, helping people out with fading media formats like that. But I think that a lot of those are relics from a very transitional period, and that people are starting to understand the need (and ease invovled) to archive the stuff they care about in multiple places/formats. Your specialty won't go away, and there's no helping people who keep everything they care about on one laptop drive, but things are better that way now than they used to be. <br /><br />Now if I could only find those couple hundred negative strips I'm missing from 1982. Hmm. Will have to check another pile of boxes and binders - my sophisticated film archiving system! :-)</p>

[ray .]

Matt, my bad, "investment" was apparently the wrong word for what I intended to convey. In the original post I should have

substituted "cash outlay" for "cash investment." I was merely asking how much of the cost might be

recovered if film was practically speaking... kaput. I've never purchased cameras as one would purchase stocks or bonds or gold, in the hopes that the cash value of them would increase.

[ray .]

I should add that I asked the question in the context of the Leica forum, because more so than most

cameras, Leicas have always held their cash value pretty well. In other words, particularly if you

purchase one used, you can expect to shoot with it for quite a long time and later down the road, if need be, sell

it for a good portion, if not all, of what you purchased it for.

[Matt Laur]

<p>That's pretty well true of some other gear too, Ray. I'm a Nikon guy, and it's true of good lenses, if not most bodies, of course. I do wrestle with the same sort of thing, thinking about when/whether it's time to unload a $1300 lens that's peculiar to one format, as another format looms larger in the future. I get it. </p>

[joshroot]

<blockquote>

<p>I think Marc said it best, or at least addressed the main issue. Who will be able to repair them?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Who repairs pocket watches? Or old motorcycles? Or fountain pens?</p>

<p>If there is a market, someone will do it. If there is no market (meaning that nobody cares to have film cameras fixed), then the whole conversation will be pretty moot.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>Good point, Josh. I know someone that repairs muskets. </p>

[apostolos_tournas]

<p>There may be other kind of future for a Leica, too:<br>

<a title="blocked::http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2074841/leica-camera-reaches-world-record-price-auction" href="http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2074841/leica-camera-reaches-world-record-price-auction">http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2074841/leica-camera-reaches-world-record-price-auction</a><br>

Paul</p>

[robert_hooper1]

<p><a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FILMS_FADE_OUT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-05-30-15-11-59">Apparently, the film market is shrinking by more than 20 percent annually.</a></p>

[plasma181]

<p>Film will be dieing for a thousand years. </p>

[kevin_omura]

<p>Thanks Matt, I don't actually pursue that as a living. Folks seem to find me somehow and I try to keep a low profile. At work we have this habit of throwing out perfectly good but antiquated hardware so I try to sneak it past the vigilant stare of my wife. Granted my basement is becoming rather full.<br>

Film is still probably the most archival media for photography, I'm not so sure I trust most of the magnetic media.<br>

Sorry for going off topic, in terms of the 'investment' value of Leica equipment in a non film world. I don't know about newer cameras. For one thing a lot more people are 'collecting' them. In other words not even putting film through them so I suspect we will always have some supply of mint in the box unused cameras. The Leica that went for big dollars is from a time when people actually took photographs with Leica cameras and used them then discarded them once they were no longer serviceable. Investment value never came into the picture and you also have to consider supply and demand, because folks used them, abused them and then discarded them we don't find a lot of them in the market. I hate to say it but perhaps it's just a fad?<br>

Bottom line, it's hard to say since a lot of collectors won't consider putting film into their cameras and using them so it may be a rather moot point having film available for them.</p><div></div>

[Uhooru]

Jurrasic technology persist. I know people who make a good living shoeing horses...in So. Cal.

 

@matt. I get what you're saying. I just think if you are goin to assert that someone " . . . buy some gold to put in the

same cabinet where you've been keeping the camera bodies.", you might want to know what the guy actually does

with his cameras before sharing that assumption.

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>I'll give up film when they pry my cold dead fingers from the film box in my freezer.</p>

<p>Okay, so I admit that I shoot a lot more digital these days, but there is still nothing quite like going out and squeezing off a few rolls of film--and then dropping them off at Walgreens because I just don't feel like sitting in front of the computer all evening.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[dhbebb]

<p>Just out of interest - does anyone know of any concrete case in which classic cameras have proved to be a viable investment? By this I mean, totally disregarding any emotional appeal or usefulness as picture-taking instruments, cameras which have been bought and sold again and generated any appreciable financial yield (i.e. above the rate of inflation). I suspect few if any cameras could meet this criterion.</p>

[Uhooru]

<p>David, funny you ask. Just a few days ago check out the thread in this forum about 9 down from the top.</p>

[Uhooru]

<p>Josh lots of people repair old motorcycles. People repair old Alphas, and you could probably find a watch repair guy, hell there's guys that fix old Leica meters. Maybe they won't be around in 10 or 20 or 30 years. Camera's though, I think there are repair people here and there. Several classic camera repair people in Southern Cal alone. I wouldn't be surprised to see classic camera repair going for quite a bit. Old technology though no longer popular or prevalent, is actually from some standpoints quite aided and abetted by new technology in the form of the internet. Seekers of service, contact, networking, and sourcing of parts etc are all greatly empowered by the internet.</p>

[michael_kuhne]

<p>I still turn to film for a practical reason, and also for certain advantages it seems to have. </p>

<p>For multiple sets of prints, I am not one to stand at a drug store machine, waiting to use it, memory card in hand, for it to deliver inferior scans and prints. I sometimes shoot for a sports team, with multiple print sets for the coaches, and the athletes for their school photo albums. Same for some special events with multiple print sets. If most of my shots will be keepers, with multiple print sets, film is often best for me. I drop it off at a local store chain that sends it out to a Kodak franchise. Although scans on the CD I get back aren't too great, but good enough for email, the sets of prints are fine. I get 3 sets of 5x7 prints for about $18 per roll of 25 shots= 75 5x7's including development.</p>

<p>But if it is a very special event where I will want to do some finessing of the images in PS- a bit of cropping, etc. it is digital hands down, even with the expense and time of cranking out prints myself. If I will just be taking a few shots with few or no prints, or taking a ton of shots of high-speed action with lots of throw-aways, advantage is to digital. </p>

<p>As to other film advantages, print film still has more exposure latitude than most DSLR equipment, though digital has been greatly improved. Hence favored by many wedding photographers. OTOH, the standard for absolutely accurate exposure is still slide film. When new film cameras were tested up to about 2002, one aspect was exposure accuracy, which was possible to test due to this standardization offered by film. The same was true with lenses, which were tested for exposure accuracy and for close focus sharpness. No longer done with digital. I know, when shooting a good standard color tranparency film using an SLR that was tested as very accurate for exposure, that the result I got on my slides represents exactly what I shot in choosing my exposure. Many photography classes still have students shoot slide film to learn metering.</p>

<p>All that said, digital has so many obvious advantages of its own, I see no problem with continued co-existance. </p>

[je ne regrette rien]

<p>Actually, I realise that Ray's question is not about film, but rather about the resale value of Leicas. To that end:</p>

<ol>

<li>modern Leicas, which are no real collectibles, will drop in prices, even if slowly. They will be much dependent on the availability of film. Already now there is a crazy used market, offering "normal" M4, M5, M6, M6TTL, M7 at very different prices. Here we are speaking of the "<em>use value</em>", which directly influences the "<em>intrinsic value</em>".</li>

<li>ancient Leicas' prices depend on whether they are collectibles or not: rare models can be extremely high-priced and be considered an investment, but we are considering unique or rather unique models here. Here we are speaking of the "<em>intrinsic value</em>", which has no relation whatsoever with the "<em>use value</em>".</li>

</ol>

<p>If photographers will not be able to use the cameras any more because of the lack of film, the "use value" will drop and prices will fall accordingly.<br>

In case of objects with a high intrinsic value, this is independent from the usage value. If a prospective buyer expects a further raise in value, and therefore price, he will be willing to pay more.<br>

In brief: when film will no longer be there - and we don't know when - the use value of film Leicas will become zero, and therefore the price will become zero. If the Leica concerned is a collectible, regardless of its actual use value, meaning that it is sought for the mere "possession value", prices will keep up, even if they still will depend on the general propensity to invest in a collectible.</p>

[Alex_Es]

<p>"Who repairs pocket watches? Or old motorcycles? Or fountain pens?"</p>

<p>Pocket watches and other old mechanical watches. This guy in Kobe who runs a repair shop in Kitanocho. He overhauled two of my antique pocket watches. New pocket watches are fixed by their manufacturers.</p>

<p>Old motorcycles? Don't own one.</p>

<p>Fountain pens. New ones are fixed by their manufacturers. Antiques are fixed by places like Fountain Pen Hospital in New York City (Warren Street) and others.</p>

<p>My old Leicas are fixed by a brilliant tech who is connected to Motomachi Camera. DAG recently upgraded my M4 to take a Rapidwinder, Leicavit or current Leica motordrive.</p>

<p>Film is alive and well in Japan. I have two places within walking distance from where I live who do great jobs in developing film and having it in my hands in half and hour. I have a number of camera shops in Kobe where I can buy all the film I need. Yodobashi Camera in Osaka is a garden of worldly delights when it come to film. </p>

<p>What I want now is a dedicated scanner the does MF and 35mm panoramics.</p>

<p> </p>