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plenty of dead film formats

And the deadest of the all is the Kodamatic. When Polaroid sued Kodak in the 80's, the film supply disappeared. Consumers got a $50 rebate, and Kodak lost billions. So in the most prominent case of IP concerns leading to bricking a consumer device, the consumers got something. (This assumes DMCA blocks someone from providing an alternate cloud service for the Revolv.)

It's so realistic you could almost swear it was motion captured. In a way it was. Some animator spent hundreds of hours watching film of how people's hair and clothes move while they danced that scene in real life, then used that knowledge to draw the cels in that movie in what your brain interprets as realistic motion. Nowadays, you just motion capture it and transfer it straight onto a 3D model via computer, without ever having to learn why it looks realistic.

Sorry, but that's not quite correct. Disney was famous for their use of rotoscoping, which basically involves filming live actors and then tracing their movements to create animations. Basically it was motion captured, just in 2D with far more primitive technology.

http://www.lomography.com/maga... etc.

It's retro. Retro is big right now.

Daughter graduated from high school two years ago. She took darkroom, created pinhole cameras, and later got a Holga. It's called Lomography, and it's become quite popular. Just recently she acquired a very old twin lens reflex and is experimenting with that.

One of the advantages is that old school cameras use 120 and 220 film, a format that's still being propped up by the wedding photography industry. So film and developing are readily available, at least for now.

One issue is that old passive handheld light meters degrade over time, and new handheld meters are kinda expensive. You almost need a modern camera to take light readings in order to accurately set up the retro camera.

I see this as the photography equivalent of the resurgence of LP records.

Digital is clearly killing off niche photographic product development and manufacture.

ah, well, i am going to disagree there. i can't ignore the resurgence in interest in lomography and the fact that chain retailers are selling the Holga. for example, redscale film is just newly being manufactured so that you don't have to wind it yourself. i would argue that the niche is alive and well.

in my estimation, it is the mainstream casual photographers that have converted wholesale to digital. good riddance. most (like my parents) couldn't get a film snapshot that wasn't jacked up to save their lives. for casual point and shoot, digital is more convenient. if you don't know what you are doing with the camera, it is also much cheaper to throw away the 60% of your shots that are ruined by your lack of skills.

Digital is clearly killing off niche photographic product development and manufacture.

ah, well, i am going to disagree there. i can't ignore the resurgence in interest in lomography and the fact that chain retailers are selling the Holga. for example, redscale film is just newly being manufactured so that you don't have to wind it yourself. i would argue that the niche is alive and well.

in my estimation, it is the mainstream casual photographers that have converted wholesale to digital. good riddance. most (like my parents) couldn't get a film snapshot that wasn't jacked up to save their lives. for casual point and shoot, digital is more convenient. if you don't know what you are doing with the camera, it is also much cheaper to throw away the 60% of your shots that are ruined by your lack of skills.

This was done a long time ago during the cold war, it's slightly less inconspicuous than a tripod, though much more likely to get you shot by the police.

http://shop.lomography.com/zenit/fotosniper/

Lomo makes some interesting cameras using multiple lenses. Not 3-D, but interesting.

A "Brand New Holga 120CFN lomo toy camera" is not an 8x10 view camera

So anyone even vaguely interested in photography won't give this a second look.

It's not the tools, it's how you use them.

Ever heard of Lomo, or the even-more-respected-by-"art"-photographers-but-not -as-hyped Holga? which comes with a lens that's not only crappy, but has serious camera-to-camera variance so you have to buy a few ($15 each in lots of 2-5), find & tape up the light leaks, then shoot to find out which distortion you like the best.

Every photographer doesn't have Greenspun's aesthetic.

Some people like cheap cameras 'cause you can shoot on any street in the world without worrying about getting ripped off. This guy has a Leica, but check out his ode to the lowly Canonet of the golden age of 35mm (1967-1988)

Do you know that Leicas from the 30s still work and are repairable, but LCDs have finite lifetime and spare parts mfg a the same time as the original cameras age the same way, so NO Nikon F5s will be operational in 50 years?