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Kodak To Stop Selling Film Cameras In U.S.
MikeDataLink writes "Kodak has announced today that they are no longer going to sell or manufacture film based cameras in the USA or Europe (except for disposables) and instead concentrate on Digital cameras. It looks like consumers have spoken and film is finally going to go the way of the dinosaur."
I have a crystal ball, and I predict most replies to this story will wax romantic about how much better film is than digital.
I personally have never owned, and I have never known anyone who owned, a non-disposable Kodak camera. Not that I debate that they exist, but rather that we should all just keep this announcement in perspective. A film company announcing that it will stop selling cameras is like a shipping company saying it's going to stop selling ships. Much more note worthy is that they were trying to sell them in the first place.
This is what the financial blokes refer to as a false indicator, especially if anyone reads the decline of film into it. Kodak has never been good at selling cameras (well perhaps it the 50s and 60s for a bit). Getting out of that business is a good move for them regardless of the viability of the film market.
fire
Film going away? You mean like films instead of numeric projections in Movie theaters? Fat chance. People like to see smears and tears in their movies it seems. Film will always stay at this rate.
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Film is not going the way of the dinosaur...you guys always have to take it to a level. The creative market still has a use for film, and I know plenty of people for whom digital is not yet good enough...
Good think I use a 1950's Stereo Realist. I hope they continue to sell film for a while longer, or at least offer a digital stereo camera someday. It's hard to make ViewMaster reels digitally.
Film still has the ability to store information that digital formats will take years to catch up to. For instance, my grandfather was in the OSS in WWII and had a collection of photographs he gave to me after he passed away. Going to the film (and even the prints), I am able to apply some image forensics pull out detail that would never be possible with digital images. There are street names, ID numbers on planes and names on nametags that I have been able to pull out to date photographs and identify individuals that has been a tremendous advantage in reconstructing his career with the Service. Through this analysis, I have been able to place him in places that history has labeled as occupied territory at time, identify other folks that he worked with etc....
Also, digital photography while convenient has archival issues just like traditional silver based photography and one has to wonder if we are going to have the same historical record 50, 60 or 100 years from now that we currently have.
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There are already too many kids that don't get the line "Shake it like a Polaroid picture" in Outkast's "Hey Ya."
C'mon Konak, Walgreens is sold out and I still need a hundred more for the bulet-time shot in my movie!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I can't believe this. While digital takes wonderful pictures, you can't actually print them in an archival format (something that will last more than 10 years). The people haven't spoken about this, Kodak's own board and shareholders have been pushing for the company to maintain it's current (and very profitable) line of 35mm based products.
Film. What is it all about... is it good or is it whack?
This was to be expected - they have done a great job re-strategizing their business and producing film based cameras is probably not as profitable. Although I'll miss film eventually, when it's really gone - it has a certain look & feel that is very unique. There is also still a lot of resolution left in film that has never been tapped, based on the nano-sized film particles. I wonder if that is a pre-cursor to theatrical film...
I work with both analogue and the digital photo production and can definitely confirm that this is a string global trend. However, the only apparent reasons for people to switch to digital are price and comfort; most pictures people shoot with their jpeg cameras are quite ugly and pixelated..
Good riddance. Except for a few special cases, film just sucks.
Personally, I prefer digital film than the good ole 35mm stuff. Reason? I buy digital film (sD card) and that is the only cost I incur. No processing fees, no worry about someone else seeing my pictures and keeping them for their private photo album, and the best part is I get to immediately have results. Combine that with a good color printer, and you've got your own photo lab right there.
The editor here reeks of technogeek bigotry. Kodak hasn't produced a really noteworthy film camera since the then omnipresent brownie, anyway.
They still make film, though, and that's what they do best. I don't see Kodak abandoning film anytime soon. Discontinuing classic films like Tri-X, Technical Pan or Kodachrome would only earn them a worldwide boycott from professional photographers. I think they learned their lesson when they discontinued Kodachrome 25 a while back.
It looks like consumers have spoken and film is finally going to go the way of the dinosaur."
How can you make this statement based on the actions of a company who hasn't been a market leader in non-disposable film cameras since the 1940's? I haven't seen a Kodak film camera (barring disposable cameras) since the "Kodak disk".
This is like saying the telephone is dead since AT&T will no longer make telephones.
I recently went on vacation, and my digital camera died right before I left. I picked up a couple of $9 27 exposure disposable cameras in the checkout line of the supermarket.
I took the pictures, came back and had them developed at the 1 hour booth in a CVS. It cost me $22.50 or so to get my 50ish pictures back.
Freaking expensive, plus half of the pictures didn't turn out, and had I had a digital camera I would have retaken them on the spot!
So everything that gets reported must be "human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!".
you can enlarge a 35mm print into a giant poster with no noticeable problems and no pixelation. as far as i know you can;t do that with digital yet, you actually have to have that high resolution. so, kodak is making a big mistake, because they will lose lots of customers who were using their film based products for things like posters etc.. just my two cents
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If they had announced that they won't be making film anymore this would be an interesting announcement. As it is, this is like Cheveron or Shell announcing that they aren't going to make automobiles anymore without mentioning if they are going to stop selling gasoline or not.
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I predicted this some time ago - it was only a matter of time.
Film will remain in niche markets for a long time, just like records vs CD's but Moores law means that sooner or later even disposable film cameras will be more expensive than a low end digital camera. Given than some US$20 toys come with processors & memory for speech/sounds, can't be too long before 1MP cameras with a few mbs of memory are that sort of price.
BTW - disposable film cameras are a rip-off. For less than the cost of a Kodak disposable camera I was able to pick up a Chinese manual 35mm camera with film and battery. So far seems better quality pictures and cheaper than a disposable cam that would have been in a landfill by now.
after all we have electric guitars and synths so who needs those old legacy products right ?
What is really tolling the death-knoll of film-based cameras for the general consumer is the entry of stores like Whalgreens, Costco and Walmart into the digital "development" market. When a digital camera required a computer and photo printer to produce photos you could hold, they didn't make financial sense for a lot of people. But now that you can "develop" a digital picture at the local drugstore for around twenty-five cents, digital cameras suddenly become economically competitive for the consumer taking snapshots.
The cake is a pie
I presume Kodak makes as much film as they sell, and I guarantee that film sales have fallen. As such, I'm sure their production has been gradually slowing for a few years now.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
It's only kodak, the film cameras industry is not dying.
Canon, Pentax, Nikon, etc all of them are selling MUCH MORE film cameras than kodak ever did.
Probably a good idea for Kodak because I think they only really sold low quality (aimed at the average Joe) film cameras and with digital cameras all over the place, this particular category is dying.
In the high end photo market you still have film cameras and I bet they are here for a long time.
Iraq: war to save the U
Digital cameras are great for consumers who like to take pictures for the web and to print cheap but passable 4x6 prints on inkjets, but digital sensors won't be able to replace film where you'd like to print high-quality enlargements.
I recall reading somewhere that 35mm film has the equivalent of 24 megapixels. Right now consumer SLRs such as the Nikon D100 and the Canon 10D produce only 6MP images. Moreover they produce these images using software interpolation; sensors nowadays commonly contain patterns of red blue and green photodiodes whose image must be demosaiced in order to create a full color image. For an example of a RAW image have a look halfway down this page.
Digital cameras won't full replace film until (1) sensor resolutions become high enough to approximate both 35mm and format cameras and until (2) full-color sensors (such as Foveon's X3 Sensor) become ubiquitous.
Consumers may have spoken, but what they said was that they prefer to buy their film cameras from Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Minolta, Konica, Bronica, Hasseblad, Mamiya, Toyo, Linhoff, leica, Contax, Horseman, Sinar, Rollei, even Fuji....in fact anybody so long as they aren't called Kodak.
Kodak never had any good film cameras! No wonder they are dropping them in favor of digital. In other words, Kodak is not really dropping much, is it? It's not like Canon or Nikon are dropping their film cameras. When both of these do, call me.
There are some fine art photographers that use film.
For instance, there is nothing to compare to a platinum or paladium contact print from an 8x10 or 11x14 film sheet. I know, it's a nitch area...but this can also be a selling point for a photographer.
For instance, purchasing a print that was made the old fashion way can make it worth more. Also, a platinum print will last forever as long as you take care of the paper it's printed on.
I know that digital is here to stay, but I've yet to see a camera that can last as long as a film camera. For example, a digital camera bought just 2 years ago is almost unsupported and is very outclassed by newer and cheaper cameras. Yet, I could pick up a Leica made 50 years ago and still run film through it! I know several photographers that have cameras passed down to them from their parents/grandparents. Who's going to pass down their Canon G5 20 years from now?
Also, with film, you can pick up an Ansel Adams negative made 80 years ago and make a print from it. How will archiving last that long for digital? CDROM? Isn't the lifespan of a CD only like 20 years at best? You'll have to keep updating your pictures to newer and newer media. They still haven't gotten around that yet.
Just things to think about...
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Blackmailing someone with a digital camera doesn't have the same effect as when you do it with a film-developed picture with "GivE mE $10o00, sCUm!!" scrawled across it in red pen.
I guess it isn't practical to put a chip in a roll of film and therefore use the DMCA to get consumable product lock-in.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
There are places where digital simply can not go. For instance, high radiation places, such as on military planes (think nuke-proof) or even parts of spacecraft.....film is a crucial medium for photography.
I think Kodak sees the consumer going the way of digital, and that makes sense.
Colossians 2:8
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: Film is dying
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Film's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Film faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Film because Film is dying. Things are looking very bad for Film. As many of us are already aware, Film continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
All major surveys show that Film has steadily declined in market share. Film is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Film is to survive at all it will be among photography dilettante dabblers. Film continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Film is dead.
Fact: Film is dying
Bravo, Kodak, for shifting more jobs offshore and to Mexico, where you can pay employees $2 a day.
I wonder what this will do to the "as American as baseball and apple pie" corp image Kodak has fostered for the past 100 years. Will consumers turn their back on Kodak like Kodak has on it's American workforce?
When they drop the disposables that will be news.
"Except for disposables" is a pretty big except. They sell a lot of those things.
There's a hell of a long way to go before film is obsolete. I strongly doubt it ever will be. For casual snaps and most photo journalism it has little use these days - but I doubt digital cameras will ever be able to provide the artistic range achievable with decent films.
After all, film is a medium more than it's a technology. It's not the same as DVD superseding VHS.
Remember that joe consumer doesn't care about that. Joe consumer just wants to take pictures of his kids birthday party.
You are right that it will be a long, long time before real photographers use digital. But I believe that we are only a few years before the bulk of consumer photography is digital.
The cake is a pie
Not a very interesting thread IMHO; I'm sure our readers in upstate NY will agree that Kodak booms and busts more than Boeing.
/.'ers but Photofinishing businesses are still doing quite well.
:))
Better managed and more conservative companies like Fuji (a WalMart partner) will gladly take on their market share.
Interestingly; digital film may play well for technologists like
On a side note if you can handle the smell take a tour of a photofinishing lab! They are a geeks dream! Very Cool! Chemistry, Mechanics and Computing all rolled into one Mad Scientist's Dream Lab!
They're a film company, they make money off film!
Seriously, some of their pro film for movie cameras costs an absolute bomb, think 400+ ($700?) for 30 minutes or so. This is where their experience lies. Putting together bits of plastic and marketing it is best left to the traditional camera box-shifters.
Kodak will go the way of 3M. I still for the life of me can't figure out what 3M make, I used to think they made floppy disks, but it appears their market niche is 'coating things with stuff'. The same will happen to Kodak eventually; by slimming down their market, they'll be able to concentrate on what they're really good at (and believe me, they make bloody good film!)
These same photographers have had several discussions concerning film vs digital, and it always ends in film still being far superior.
I personally an not photographic expert, but isn't this comparable to shooting your own foot off?
I could understand eliminating low-end typical consumer type camera, but why eliminate the film based line completely? Continue producing the high-end cameras for the serious photographer - the same photographers that help Kodak become the Kodak they are today!
Never try to beat a professional at his own game!
2) Even if big guys like Nikon, Canon and Minolta announced that they would no longer manufacture film cameras, there would still be a huge quantity of cameras left to sell, *AND* you can bet that film manufacturers and developers would still be in business for a loooong time.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
To keep ahead of the digital game, they are going to get the Borg to assimiliate Bill Cosby and bring him (them?) back as a spokesman.
This has got to be coming from someone who thinks cameras in celphones is the end-all be-all of photography.
Although digital has arguably caught up to 35mm, I suggest you go talk to someone that shoots medium format or large format. Digital backs for those cameras cost about 15K USD, last I checked. Film is hardly dead.
Of course, you're ignoring the costs of batteries, film storage, time and software/ability to archive the photos... and of course, twenty years from now, you won't be able to open any of the digital pictures on your computer. Well, you get what you pay for.
I understand your point but your explanation is just sloppy.
According to some, to get the quality of 35mm analog film you'll need at least 10 megapixels on your digital camera.
You can buy such a camera, but be prepared to spend over 1,000 USD. I'm not so sure film is going to be disappearing any time soon.
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
Kodak is a film copany, almost any camera they make is disposible. The ONLY professional cameras Kodak make at the momment are digital anyway, and even those are Nikon camera bodies, that have had a Kodak CCD/CMOS chip slaped into them.
This is not really news unless Nikon, Pentax, Canon or Olympus decided that they were going to stop film camera production.
One reason for this I can think of: A digital camera is useless with-out a computer. Try useing a digital camera with-out a way to re-charge the batteries!
*for the record I am not Anti-Digital, I am the proud owner of a Canon G5.
The end of film had definately not come, nor will it for a very long time. I know several photographers who take pictures and develop them in their own dark rooms, as a hobby and art form. Artistic photographers will always like developing their own pics, and tweaking the chem, mix to produce that unique look. You could do this with a program/digicam, and there is also a place for that in the art world, but I think there are enough film buffs to keep the film industry alive for just a bit longer. -Kimpak
Such as GPS or EXIF data, which, if it had been available back then, would allow to you place your ancestor within a meter of wherever the photo was taken. Yep, studying those old negatives for hours really has us beat, today.
I don't think this has anything to do with the demise of film. It's about no longer producing products that aren't as profitable as they'd like. If they stopped making 35mm film, then we'd have something notable.
There is something interesting in the press release; Kodak indicates that they will
This looks like an indirect reference to plans for phasing out the production of APS films, which have never caught on to the degree that the industry had hoped.
Although it wil never disappear, film will become less and less used as time goes on. This trend will accelerate as camera makers transistion to professional grade digital cameras that are not compatible with 35 mm systems. After some time, only the large-format professional photographers, advanced hobbyists, and a fraction of Hollywood cinematographers will stick with film.
When consumers stop using film, expect the price to climb steadily for both film, film processing, and film cameras. The price will rise as the industry loses its economies of scale and the remaining customers become less price-sensitive (professionals don't look for the cheapest film, lenses, and cameras). This will create a bit of a downward spiral as fewer budding photographers choose to jump from high-quality digital to expensive film.
Film won't die, but it become more and more expensive and the mass market shifts to digital.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Yet another ill-considered Slashdot article that shows why we should be able to moderate the articles on Slashdot and not just the comments.
;)
C'mon, guys! Mod me up! You know you feel the same way!
This isnt "film going the way of the dinosaur", this is "Kodak, a film company which has never made popular or good non-disposable cameras, is giving up and focusing on what it's known for- FILM. (which it is also very good at making)"
Article is -1 troll. FUCK THIS ARTICLE.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
What you may not realize is that Kodak makes a great deal of royalties off of most CCDs manufactured. The have the patents on color filter gels that are placed down with photolithography over the CCDs (and CMOS?) that go into most digital cameras.
I suspect they make tons more on this than any profits from cameras they would make.
Then he goes on to say "or Europe.", why wasn't it in the headline?
Go on, mod me down, make my day.
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
I have both film and digital cameras. Both have their advantages/disadvantages.
My Olympus is over 30 years old, and has yet to fail me. It also runs on 0V, 0mA. I can also shoot at temperatures that would kill the efficiency of most battery-driven cameras.
But my digital is great for point and shoot stuff. Its also small enough to fit unnoticably in a shirt pocket.
The market is there for both film and digital.
In terms of quality for the dollar, particularly with respect to up-front investment, nothing beats good quality color film slides. Then again, most of Kodak's consumer-grade market is for print film and PHD (push here dummy) cameras. They made some decent ones, no doubt, but I understand their move. The value proposition is not quite there yet for most folks to switch to digital. But it's coming fast.
:)
The legendary "Brownie" box camera comes to mind. I don't know how many millions of them Kodak sold over the years, but they were many people's first introduction to photography. The great Ansel Adams used a Brownie as his first camera, and no doubt, its ease of use (for the time) and low price helped get him enthused with the art of photography.
I'm not sure what the parity point is for film versus digital in terms of megapixels. I've heard that 35mm color negative film has an approximate resolution of between 10 and 20 megapixels. There are a couple cameras out (including Canon and Nikon, I think) who have pricey professional SLR's in this range.
But, for Joe Consumer, who has maybe $300 to spend on a new digital camera, he's lucky to get 4MP, if that. Granted, you can make some nice blowups froma 4MP image (if you took it in the highest-quality mode the camera has), but it still ain't the same as a good old ISO 100 negative.
Speaking of old... I worry about the longevity (sp?) of digital images. Most digital storage devices (disk, CDR, flash) have a finite lifespan. My librarian friends tell me that, if stored properly, a good color negative or slide will last 100 years or more. Magnetic media last, at best, 10 years. It's not clear how long CDR or DVDR's last, but I doubt it's 100 years. And most people don't archive their photos on flash, so that's kind of irrelavant.
OTOH, if you keep making copies of your digial images, they don't degrade in quality and could, in principle, last forever.
I think one of the biggest plusses of digital photography is the instant gratification factor -- you can see your pictures instantly, versus having to wait hours or days for processing. And you have control of your images -- you don't have to worry about the photo guy sneering at the boudoir photos you took of your wife >:-)
I think film will be around for a long time -- there's a huge installed base of 35mm and larger format cameras out there, into many of which people have invested thousands of dollars; also, there are still die-hard film guys who will never give up their precious silver nitrate until you pry it out of their cold dead hands.
I hope people, particularly kids, still have the opportunity to learn black and white photography, including processing and developing their own pictures. Despite the computer brains in new cameras, it's still valuable to have an understanding of exposure, lighting, depth of field, and so forth. And there's something neat about the thrill of watching an image appear out of a white piece of paper as the developer does its work.
I kind of miss that feeling... watching the progress bar in Photoshop doesn't quite do it for me
That's a bad comparison. You're comparing a $9.27 camera to a digital that costs probably 50 times as much, and the difference in quality and consistancy is to be expected. A fairer comparison would be to buy a $200 digital and a $100 Olympus Stylus Epic fixed lens point and shoot. I assure you, the quality of the Epic will be at least as high as the digital, and when your electronic wonder is thrown away in three years (now really, how long do you keep a computer these days as your primary machine?), your 35mm will keep chugging along for ten years or more, with no degredation in quality. And when comparing the costs of use, keep in mind that an 8x10 sheet of photo paper runs over a dollar a sheet, much more than silver based paper (my archival double weight fiber based black and white paper is around $0.50 a sheet), and people somehow forget the high cost of all those ink cartridges. I'm not saying that digital is worse than film (indeed, for extremely high volume work with relatively low printing resolution such as photojournalism digital is ideal), just that most people don't fully realize the hidden costs of "forced" upgrades and consumables when switching to digital. As a final note, film negatives (well, glass plates) from 150 years ago are still printable. How easy is it to print from 5 1/4 inch floppys? Those old magnetic tapes? Punch card machines? Preserving your pictures for future generations will become exponentially more difficult if digital ever completely replaces film.
Bah I say! You should go to a mini lab with a QSS-3001.
Im not hugely clued up on the whole camera thing. But i know for a fact that a 200 dollar SLR camera is going to give far superior pictures than a similarly priced digital camera. The only inconveinience is getting the film developed.
.!
Until high quality digital cameras come down in price i think it will be a while before film dies....
and then there is the whole hollywood movies thing going on too
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Jesus, who would have thought that a nine-dollar camera with no focus mechanism or adjustable aperture would take worse pictures than a $200+ digital camera? Man, you get the sophistic fallacy award for today.
I've been taking great pictures for years with cheap, old, manual film SLRs. Don't blame your poor equipment and technique on film as a technolgy.
Most people who are into this type of photography won't miss Kodak (or Fuji or whatever) fading away from the segment, but I have to question Kodak's wisdom on this. Do they also think they're going to get Dell to sell a PC with every digital camera? Are thy going to retrofit all their developing centers and parters with developing/printing equipment that reads digital media? I think it's going to be a bit painful for them at the start, though I do wish them well. Digital makes more sense in most cases and for most people. And it's more environment-friendly.
Those of us who are into SLR-type cameras and won't think about dropping $2K on a Carl Zeiss 120mm zoom lens or good optical filters to use with Canon, Olyumpus or Nikon rigs... well, Kodak won't be missed =)
I think what everyone is overlooking is that Kodak makes very LOW end snapshot cameras. If Nikon or Cannon were to make this anouncement then there would be something to think about. Kodak has simply decided that it's more profitable to make digital and disposable snapshot cameras than film snapshot cameras.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
To put this in perspective, digital camera sales are not expected to out-sell cameras that use film until 2006 when you look at the worldwide camera market.
It's inevitable that this is going to happen in the consumer marketplace. Of course, there are always going to be niche applications for film - its just doesn't have much time left in the family photo album, especially in developed countries.
Film is better than digital. It's got more warmth.
Film will not die for at least another 50 years. there are serval facts that play into this. Here they are in no paticular order:
Quality: The best digital camera pictures still have lose when you get into fine detail. And, I don't see gigapixel cameras for at least 15 or 20 years that most people can buy.
Price: Yes, film does have extra cost when it comes to developing, especially black and white film if you don't have a darkroom at home. But, you get a picture that your grandchildren can show their grandchildren. Unless you store a printed picture from a digital camera in a very dark, vaccum container of some sort, the colors will fade faster over time than film (just look at some of the movie posters in some dirt-mall video store).
Different Formats: In the film world, you have a choice of sizes for cameras. You have small (15mm to 35mm) Medium (36mm to 4") and Large(4" plus). Tell me where I can find a large format digital camera right now. A digital that can take a picture with no loss at 11"x17" in size. This is where film will domminate for years to come, the medium and large format cameras. And for you who don't know what a meduim or large format camera is, A Hasselbald is a medium format camera (those are the cameras used for the moon landings.) and large format is what Ansel Adams used for his stunning photos of landscapes.
eh, this sucks, I am going back to bed....
...that isn't offered?
KODAK: We're not selling SmellyVision film anymore.
Slashtog: We'll then I'm not gonna buy it! I'm boycotting use of SmellyVision film!
KODAK: Ummm, you can't, we don't sell it.
Slashtog: DOH!
Does anyone remember back in the 80s when Kodak tried to get in on the "Instant" film thing? They were quickly sued by Polaroid and everyone who had bought a Kodak Instant camera was supposed to return it to get a Kodak Disk camera in return. Euggghh...disk film was so brutal. Sorry for the OT, just reminiscing.
IIRC Kodak made Bronica brand cameras besides the majority of APS format camera bodies. Yes, their 35MM cameras are not know for quality, but there is a lot more to Kodak then meets the eye.
I'd be screaming
... nevermind....
"Does this mean they're NOT GOING TO SUPPORT my Brownie anymore???"
Fortunately, there haven't been too many security upgrades for my older cameras. Flashing the ROM is pretty gnarly on those pre-1990 models. Well, actually, if they have sync connectors, flashing's easy, but
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
The consumers may have spoken, but all they said was "Keep making film. Your cameras suck and we'll buy Oly, Nikon, Canon, etc." Absolutely nothing to do with film declining, just a company dumping a fractional revenue stream.
As for 'finally', I think that speaks for its (uneducated) self.
You know what?
While digital may be convenient, and a lot of people aren't perceptive enough to tell the difference, there really IS a difference. Digital cannot yet meet the quality of film, and I really doubt it ever will.
Nor would I trust long term digital storage, CDr's wont last 40 years.. nor will tape. I still have properly stored negatives that are as pristine as the day they were developed.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Important to note that they will still make and sell film, even though they wont be selling film-based cameras. Film is not going anywhere. Kodak wasn't really one of the major producers of film based cameras anyway-- Nikon, Canon, Minolta, Pentax, Olympus, Pentax, Hasselblad, Mamiya, Contax, Konica, Leica, Fuji, Bronica all still make film cameras and are doing very well with them.
Most professionals still prefer film over digital. I myself wouldn't dream of not taking my SLR with me to do a wedding. I pack my digital too, but I will never leave my film at home, even 20 years from now. Maybe I'm just old fashioned?
Besides, darkroom skills impress girls much more than photoshop skills. No joke. Girls really are impressed when you show them your darkroom.
we here in rochester, NY, have been hearing about this fFor quite some while. Rochester practically thrives on the eastman/kodak juggernaut. lay offs have been ensuing heavily fFor quite some while. i think the local announcement happened around september: they would not be producing and processing fFilm locally anymore, and would be shifting to digital systems. many of the plants located around the city have been systematically closing fFor the past 3 years.
If this city had a chance of doing anything before, it's now blown entirely. anyone wanna hire a couple hundred thousand skilled laborers?
I hate doing this, but it's a "niche" area, pronounced "neesh". Don't feel bad, even Steve Jobs got it wrong.
Don't feel bad. While your spelling is correct, you got the pronounciation facts wrong yourself. The primary pronounciation, verified by the link you supplied, is "nitch". The secondary pronounciation is, of course, "neesh".
Even Paul Simon, when he wrote a whole damn song about Kodak film, admitted to using a Nikon camera.
Obviously he loved the film, didn't like the camera.
No big loss.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Its nice to have someone lead the way, digital is afterall where its at.Though id be really disappointed if polaroid went the same way. I love those polaroid Instant film cameras and those guys in local pubs clicking pics of you drunk n givin them for a lil money.truly would be sad to go to him with your own memory flash card or something.
Lord of the Binges.
Good point. A point many people don't realise. Also, digital cameras often get an unnatural tint to their pictures, some yellow, some blueish, etc. The yellow tint on my digital camera does not add warmth but instead just makes the picture appear dirty.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
The reason behind it all is that The Industry has told them DRM enabled stuff is The Future.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
The last Kodak camera I owned was a Disc camera - the one where the film was arranged like a daisy-wheel instead of on a roll. Bastards stopped selling film for it about a year later.
Girlfriend is better than film. It's got more warmth.
(Is this what the Talking Heads were talking about all those years ago?)
when we can cheaply (less than $1000US) buy digital cameras with medium format sized CCDs. Zooming in photoshop only takes you so far. I can develop and print in a pinch without electricity. Never underestimate the power of a totally mechanical system.
:)
That being said, I love my digital Nikon D100
I think using film in photography as an artistic medium will not go away though. At least for a while. The film cameras and film itself however will soon start to get rare and more expensive.
I just spent last weekend learning how to develop and print black and white photos at the local university. It is a lot of fun and I learned to really appreciate that side of photography. The actual act of taking the picture is only a small fraction of the entire process. Developing and printing your own photos, and doing it right, is a lot of work. I feel that I learned the most about how all the concepts and ideas of light, shadow and contrast fit together when I actually finally learned how to do it all myself. When all we have to do is plug in the camera and upload the pictures, and then edit them in Photoshop, that whole part of the process sort of gets pushed to the back.
But on the other hand I also like just being able to take 250 pictures, delete the shitty ones, and email the rest across the world to friends and such.
Technology! So cool! So evil! So cool!
--Residential Interior Design
Its not suprising for this move. I get PTN at work around once a month and there has been talk about Kodak completly dropping film in general. Right now their goal is to promote digital film in a dry process enviorment. Many PTN analysts think Kodak is rather jumping the gun. Then again, at my store dont even have kodak cameras to sell. And we dont have their digitals and cant say we like them. It would be interesting to see especialy since Kodak recently reorganized 70% of their company around in late Nov/Dec. (I am not sure, I dont have the article in front of me)
That yellow tint is when your camera "guesses wrong" about the source of light. Sunlight != Florescent != Incandescant != Flash. The camera knows the "color" of each of those sources of light and tries to correct for it.
Set the white balance manually if you can. Other than that, the most common problem seems to occur when you use a flash indoors with a lot of incandescant light. The camera "corrects" for flash but since a lot of the light is incandescant you get a yellow tint.
I will be worried, however, when Kodak announces that they'll be stopping their film production and development services.
Digital has its uses, but compared to film, it really stinks. The requirement of a monitor or television to view pictures is inconvenient and esthetically cruddy. I remember sitting on a couch with a friend of mine while she went through her holiday photos with me. It was wonderful and relaxing and the pictures were of high quality. Doing the same thing in front of a buzzing moniter. . ? Yuck. There's nowhere to put your glass of wine down. You can't cuddle in front of a damned computer. Not even a laptop. Even the new ones somehow manage to be unweildy and annoying.
How much does it cost to get a stack of digital prints made? Probably enough to prevent people from bothering when they can instead view their digital snaps and share them via email. Oooh. What fun. How antisceptic! How lonely.
I sometimes think that the ulterior motive behind the digital renaisance is to turn the soul into a bunch of ones and zeros and thereby disintegrate that which makes us human.
Oh, but the cool point of perspective murder games. . . That makes it all worthwhile. I despise digital.
-FL
It's cited advantages where:
1) the film stays in the the cartrigde
2) you can rewind a film that is not fully exposed and use it later again
3) there is some information stored on the magnetic strip (date, exposure, etc.)
4) smaller cameras
Note that the only advantage to consumers is that they don't have to store the film strips but the cartridge. Big deal. Oh yeah, and the film remembers the date.
Which are not really advantages if you consider:
1a) no slides
1b) it's harder to process the film or make prints yourself
2) you can do that easily with normal film right now
3) is totally unnecesary, because it only matters that the film is exposed correctly [1]
4) digital cameras anyone?
Now consider the major disadvantage: A smaller film size (meaning inferior pictures) with a bigger price tag.
[1] I know, the exposure settings do have an impact on the development process, but only if the film is pushed. Photographers who do that certainly don't use APS.
Having said that I wasted $299 on a Nikon APS camera in 1997. I think I shot about a dozen APS films with it, after which it broke.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
B) no mention that Kodak was NEVER a major player in the Pro and semi pro camera market like Nikon, Minolta, and Cannon. They where a big player in the amature market but they havent made a good AND cheap point and click in years, at least in comparison to how good their brownie was.
Honestly it doesnt bother me in that Kodak is getting out of the film camera buisness. where it DOES bother me is that people not in the know about the photography world might take this as a sign that EVERYONE should get out of the film camera buisness which is bullshit.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Title: "Kodak To Stop Selling Film Cameras In U.S."
Article: "they are no longer going to sell or manufacture film based cameras in the USA or Europe"
Why isn't Europe in the title too?
Girlfriend on film is just about the right combination.
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
Price to start film photography: >$100 (film & camera)
Price to start digital photography: $200 (camera, possible extra card)
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Though it is highly symbolic that the company that invented the Brownie will no longer produce cameras, i think the dinosaur comment is a bit premature, and overly dramatic.
1) Kodak is stopping production of film based cameras, not film. They never were heavy into point and shoot 35mm. A lot of competition there. I don't believe they ever manufactured a 35mm SLR. They created and defined Advantix, and I think the most dramatic change will be here, and saying that they're stopping their Advantix camera production spells the end of film is, well, exaggerating. Advantix will go away, not the way of the donosaur, but more the way of the Kodak Disc - a format designed for ease of use, but with image quality and film availability issues. I gave away my Advantix because getting decent low light film is impossible. At one time, the best you could get was 400 speed. Significantly, this was a Fuji emulsion, not Kodak.
All in all, this more spells the death-knell of Advantix, not film in general.
2) Kodak has just released a lot of new film emulsions, in color print, color slide, and B/W variations. Their R&D will probably slow, but it will be a long time before they stop completely. Fuji, Konica, Agfa, and I think Ilford as well have also all released new emulsions in the last year.
3) Many companies are releasing new film SLRs. Canon, part of the vanguard of Digital, just released an updated Rebel Ti (EOS 300), and even a model just under it, the Rebel K2 (not sure of foreign designation) and re-released the Rebel G to get the very low end of SLRs Kodak has released the F55 and F65, and F75 all very recently, while having a very big digital inventory. They're looking to supplement film for now.
4) Though digital cameras have many advantages over film ones and have converts every day, film still has advantages over the current crop of digital cameras, and will continue to do so for some time. These extend from image capture, to processing, to image storage, to print longevity. Film can not be replaced completely until it no longer has advantages in any of these areas.
5) Inertia. People have 35mm cameras, thousands invested in some. Theyr'e not just going away.
As for me, I suspect I will turn digital at some time. I'll buy a Digital SLR to replace one of the 35MM film SLRs that I currently own, and try to sell or give away my old one. Film will slowly change from being the mainstream to being a hobbyist format. It will never become a dinosaur, because there will always be people that feel it gives them something artistically that digital doesn't. The dwindling customer base will affect economies of scale. There will be no new emulsions because you can't justify the R&D, then some unpopular ones will be culled. But there will always be B/W 35mm film, and ther will always people who want to print their own.
Consumers have spoken, and Kodak digital cameras are going the way of the dinosaur. They use proprietary drivers instead of the standard USB Mass Storage protocol most other cameras are using. This means it's extremely difficult to use them under Linux or BSD, even with a current gphoto. And Mac users are too used to *REAL* plug and play to bother with installing drivers, particularly for devices that shouldn't need them.
On the other hand, most UMass based cameras just work. Period. Without installing one damned driver anywhere, I can use it on my FreeBSD machine, my friends PowerBook, and my mom's Wind98SE system.
Having to carry around the Kodak Install CD just so you can grab your photos anywhere other than your own computer, is just silly. It sucks when you're on vacation. It's just another thing you have to remember to pack. "Dear, don't forget the Kodak CD! Remember that Aunt Martha uses a Canon camera instead..."
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
When was Kodak ever a major manufacturer of film cameras? Claiming this signals the end of film is like saying Nokia pulling the plug on the nGage signals the end of the handheld gaming market.
kodak still makes super 8 film.
i don't think anyone still makes super 8 cameras.
i don't think we have anything to worry about
"Oh, I'm a janitor. I used to be a computer geek, but I got wacked in the head". --Dave um... "Smith"
Will the possible demise of film create a possible problem in 'authentic' photography? There are some things on film that can't be faked, apparently (I am NOT a photographer, just from what we've been shown/told). Digital images have the ability to be manipulated in just about any way possible. Would *you* trust a digital image from a crime scene? Will you be able to recover digital images 15, 20, or 100 years from now? Will they be verifiable?
Remember the flap when the Coke can was digitally removed from the summit picture w/ Mikhail Gorbachev in the 80's? How about the premise of Crichton's Rising Sun? Real film still has many advantages, I think.
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."
Kodak is ran by idiots. This is the same company that is moving all film production offshore so they can compete with Fuji Film. The fscked thing is that Fuji file sold in the USA is MADE IN THE USA.
Look at their recent history, they could not sell the cure for cancer for 1.00.
Because they're so unsafe. What if my harddrive crashes and my CD backup gets lost? Then all my photos from years of my life have vanished without a trace. It scares me just thinking about it.
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
I took classes at a now defunct place called the Center for Creative Imaging in the early 90s. They were sponsored by Kodak. The instructors, who worked for Kodak IIRC, were speculating on how long until film cameras were replaced by digital ones. We were editing and printing our photos digitally, but still developing them chemically, and scanning them in. I'm suprised it took Kodak this long. JP
You say self-important egomaniac like it's a bad thing. - Peter Dragon
Historians are a waste of biomass anyway, if we learn one thing from history is that we learn nothing from history ... which goes to proove, there is nothing to learn from history.
"The real point here is that while one can argue that current digital tech isn't as fine-grained as high quality film tech, that's not an inherant property, it's just the way it is for now. Since the industry is obviously leaning in the digital direction (with good reason!), it can only be a matter of time before film will be completely surpassed in quality by digital."
Unfortunately these "just wait, it'll get better" are based on the assumption that the competition will be standing still. What's more likely is that while digitial may not surpass film in the "highest resolution" metric*. It will get "good enough" (now were have we seen this before?) for the majority and push film to the fringes. Note that even with the advent of photography people still paint paintings.
*Note there are other qualities that are importent like color fidelity.
Since in the US decent digital cameras for personal use are accessible (price-wise) to Joe User, it seems reasonable.
In most places of the World, though, digital cameras are very expensive (let's remember they're priced in dollars).
Even an El Cheapo is not really "cheapo", and let's remember that such lowest-price devices produce pictures with much lower quality than a simple analog film camera.
The day digital cameras will turn omnipresent will come, but neither Kodak or any company will commit suicide in the other markets around the World.
My mom used to have a Kodak instant camera before they got sued the hell out of my Polaroid. I also owned several Kodak 110 film cameras because they were so cheap and easy to operate when I was a kid. I then bought a Kodak Andvantax camera which was prone to jamming and I used it about 2 times.
Smeghead every day of the week.
I went to school for three and a half years on Longview, and the Kodak plant is not that bad. I actually never noticed a smell the whole time I was there, although I never went right up to it and breathed deeply. Some friends told me it smells pretty bad if you go right up to it, though. But if you don't go up to it, no problem.
He is correct, nobody was using ANY sort of photographic camera in the "late 1800s."
BTW, a friend of mine has an ancient Kodak 8x10 view camera, it dates to around 1920. Now THAT is a camera! There's more glass in that camera than in a dozen modern cameras.
Next thing you know they'll stop selling flash cubes.
Ask me about my vow of silence!
I have a 4 mp digital camera and I can get prints out of it that look as good as any film camera.
There are a few keys to making good prints from digital:
Good software. To make a print from digital to printer requires scaling and interpolation of the digital data from the camera's resolution to the printer's native resolution (ie 720 dpi) and the paper dimensions. There are half a dozen interpolation algorithms I can think off the top of my head (ie, bicubic, lanczos etc) and the quality of your print *depends* on these. My personal favorite printing software is QImage which uses Lanczos, and feeds the data to a printer driver in managable chunks rather than a quick dump, among other things. Its way, way better than choosing the simple "print" from photoshop.
You also need a properly calibrated printer and print profiles for the specific paper and ink you're using. Any decent commercial service should have this done already, but sometimes the button-pushers at your one-hour photomat don't really know what they're doing.
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I don't think you have to be much of a tree hugger to be appalled by this. Even if you don't think there's health risks or environmental consequences, it's gotta be enough just that it's plain gross. Yet people live there, somehow or another.
No one will buy their house, so they can't afford to move?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
It's niche, not "nitch," and it's pronounced "neesh."
In the immortal words of Steven Colbert, it's French, bitch.
film will always be there for the hobbyist, just like there are people who still do daguerrotypes, but...
Quality: The best digital camera pictures still have lose when you get into fine detail.
So does film. You zoom in on a film scan enough and you'll see the grains - and I don't mean microscope. If you're using high ISO film your grains are visible to the naked eye.
Unless you store a printed picture from a digital camera in a very dark, vaccum container of some sort, the colors will fade faster over time than film (just look at some of the movie posters in some dirt-mall video store).
Not true. Print it on archive paper (readily available at any photo store) with pigment inks (latest epson printers have these) and put it behind glass and it will last you over 100 years in normal display situations with no fading. 200 years if you put it in the dark. A movie poster isn't meant to be kept that long so they don't have the same quality of inks or paper.
Different Formats: In the film world, you have a choice of sizes for cameras. You have small (15mm to 35mm) Medium (36mm to 4") and Large(4" plus). Tell me where I can find a large format digital camera right now. A digital that can take a picture with no loss at 11"x17" in size. This is where film will domminate for years to come, the medium and large format cameras. And for you who don't know what a meduim or large format camera is, A Hasselbald is a medium format camera (those are the cameras used for the moon landings.) and large format is what Ansel Adams used for his stunning photos of landscapes.
Fuji recently introduced a medium format CCD that goes straight into their medium format bodies. For others you can combine several small CCD's if you so choose into acting like one very large one. This is how astronomical CCD arrays work...
I don't know of any large format digital cameras offhand (aside from astronomical specialty ones), but there is no technical reason it can't be done.
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I am an advanced photo student who has not gone digital yet for the following reasons: 1. Cost - I've invested close to 2K in Nikon SLR hardware in the last four years and to duplicate such a setup in dSLR gear is EXTREMELY expensive (if I'm talking 35mm quality or better) 2. Quality - film is simply more deailed... i'll just use my negative scanner... 3. Archival: Good film negatives will last 5-10 decades... digital files are good only as long as you can read them. I would love to see a permenent 'negative'-like object for digital (platform independant & exceedingy durable. 4. B&W - to my knowledge, there is no dSLR that captures the 'metallic' aspect of good B&W negatives - and yes, I know that this is an effect of the silver emulsion... I just love it ...however, Kodak's PhD cameras were worthless anyway... just so long as they don't kill TMX-100 or Portra-200
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Why film beats digital
Regular 35mm film has an optical resolution and information depth similar to about a 25 MegaPixel digital camera [1].
A more important measure of film or CCD quality are light collecting power. In photogrpahs light == information. More light collecting power leads to higher resolutions, greater depth of focus, and increased shutter speeds.
Light collecting power allows photographs to be taken at a faster speed through the same lens. To collect the most light possible into a camera, and thus the most information, we usually set the shutter speed to the slowest speed we can without blurring the scene - this is usually 1/90th of a second (Some photoraphers can hold a camera still for 1/45th of a second, normally tripods can do about 1/10th of a second). Then we adjust the other parameters of the camera to match this maximum-information shutter speed. To use up extra light and convert it into information we can increase the depth of focus of the camera (making the hole the light goes through smaller). The more light collecting power the film has, the greater depth of focus the camera can have.
Light collecting power also affects the maximum resolution of film or CCDs. For examle a slide film at ISO25 can capture about 4 times the information of a film at ISO100. The ISO25 film trades light collecting power for more pixels, which can function because there is enough light to expose them. ISO100 film can take pictures faster, because there are fewer picture elements that need the light collecting power, so more of it can be used to increase depth of focus and increase shutter speed for less blurred photographs. ISO800 or 1600 films expose very easily, but are greatly lacking in the resolution of the final image.
So, more light collecting power leads to more ability to collect information, depth of focus, and shutter speed.
How digital can beat film:
Digital cameras have some unique potential which will allow them to beat 35mm film in the near future. Medium and large-ormat digital cameras could potentially rival medium and large format film eventually. One of the potential ways to greatly increase the power of digital cameras is to increase their light collecting ability. Many scenes are relitivly motionless down to about 1/10th of a second, however our hands are not steady enough to photograph them easily. It would be a relatively simple task (simpler than correlating stereoscopic views) for a digital camera to repeatedly sample a CCD durring a long 1/10th sec. shot and remove the blurring and add the sampled frames together. This would greatly increase the light collecting power of the digital camera over film cameras in many regular types of shots, greatly increasing its information collecting ability. This increase in information collecting ability could be traded for increased resolution (if we are near the limit of having enough light to expose CCD elements), increased depth of focus, or increased shutter rates (limited by the fastest possible sampling rate of the CCD).
"Warmth" has nothing to do with being emotional. If you assume so you are indicating a total lack of knowledge of photography.
"Warmth" can be done with both digital and film.
The light you get as the sun sets is known as "warm".
Finally, since when was photography, or indeed any art form, NOT about emotion?
For my money? Film is still far more cost effective, better quality (by a long way), more flexible, more convenient and easier to use than digital. I do use both.
Here's a good review of kodak's medium format digital offerings along with example photos: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/ mfd-field.shtml
0 0_scan_back/PhaseOne_BetterLight_CCD.html
And there are digital large format inserts for large format cameras, like Better Light... http://www.digital-photography.org/BetterLight_60
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My father had a large format Kodak Medalist. He took it to a Rose Bowl game one year and photographed the crowd on the other side of the field. When he developed the picture he enlarged the image until he could pick out individuals on the other side of the field. He told me that there was enough detail in the people's faces that you could recognize them if you knew them.
Granted if the cost is the same I'll go for better quality. However when the cost isn't the same I'll examine if quality is worth it. Todays $200 digital cameras are good enough. Not as good as a $200 35mm, but still good enough. They are likely better than the 110 camera I had as a kid (though 110 was a lot cheaper than $200) Now factor in the convience of digital: I can see the photo right away, and choose which ones to print. That makes the prints cheaper on a per picture taken basis, and likely on a per printed picture basis too.
No the quality isn't the same, but it turns out that digital has now reached the point where most people don't need more.
Watch for the next step, which is trying to get those digital pictures into the Kodak camp --
repositories to hold all those pix taken,
software to manipulate photos,
cameras that build on the Kodak brand,
and other camera features that appeal to picture takers
This is a step to entrench Kodak ahead of digital's time, since the day of the 35mm is still not over.
It looks like consumers have spoken and film is finally going to go the way of the dinosaur.
Ug. Why does everyone who submits stories to Slashdot have to make some silly, ridiculous statement at the end of their little blurb? It's like saying that because a new high quality, low cost LCD monitor came out that CRTs are "going the way of the dinosaur". Just give us a little summary of the article, please, and spare us your uninformed and extravagant opinions.
My other SIG is a 9mm.
A film company announcing that it will stop selling cameras is like a shipping company saying it's going to stop selling ships. Much more note worthy is that they were trying to sell them in the first place.
Even if they DO start to phase out film for personal and even professional photography, it (like vacuum tubes) will live on for a long time in many special-purpose applications.
Think about your microwave oven, for example: The magnetron is a vacuum tube. Semiconductors STILL aren't up to that level of efficiency and low cost for THAT application. Ditto X-ray generation. And there are hundreds of others.
The same is true with film. Medical and dental imaging is starting to incorporate other technologies, but film is still prime-time for much of it. Ditto astronomy. Ditto high-res pro photography. Ditto spectrometry. Ditto long-term radiation exposure measurement. I could go on for hours. Film - even truly fancy low-volume film - is just so darned CHEAP.
And that's not even hitting the applications where nothing else will do the job.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
slashdot inserted a space between the / and mfd-field on the first link
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Phase 1: Stop selling film cameras.
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit!!!
- Voxel
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
Just reading this article brought the smell of stop and developer and all that beautiful stuff back to my nose...
Jason Faulkner
Old Os Administrator
jason@oldos.org
oldos.
So sakusha sez:
"He is correct, nobody was using ANY sort of photographic camera in the "late 1800s."
So, what, Matthew Brady was using an Etch-a-Sketch to make all those images during the Civil War?
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
This is news? Ok, I suppose it is, but it was only a matter of time. Kodak's been laying people off left and right, they already stopped making slide projectors, are loosing contracts for mini-labs to Fuji everywhere, given the kiss-off to their valued dealers, and announced they will not be improving any of their film emulsions anymore. That's right: the Kodak film that's out now is the best it will ever be! Why on earth would they make film cameras anymore?
you can always just print out the RGB byte values onto paper with a laser printer...and then you have a *forever* copy of your digital print... just manually type it back in 100 years...
The photography professionals I've talked to regarding this move think it's an absurd idea, especially for a giant such as Kodak.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
But me thinks the whole song really wasn't about the film...
But alas, Kodachrome is no longer the same formula/look/saturation that he wrote about, and 25 isn't even made anymore. Now we only have 64.
Velvia (50) is my 35mm slide of choice. I think it was written that it would take an 18 megapixel camera to duplicate the small grain size (resolution) of velvia 35mm slides. MF was around a ~30 megapixel equivalent and LF was ~80 megpixels iirc. Not to mention that there are other things besides resolution to consider. It would require much more advanced CCD's in terms of color precision/accuracy
Professional photographers and serious hobbyists alike will use film until digital images can be shot, printed flawlessly, rescanned, reprinted, ad nauseum.
It may no longer be of practical use, but for art it's still got a long career ahead of it.
~To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. -Yann Martel
Girlfriend on film, audio, digital whatever. Generally speaking, a girl on anything is usually good enough for me.....jeez, does that sound desperate or what?
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
Yes.
First of all, I think the film industry will stick around, even without Kodak producing 35mm camera. They're not the only vendors in town, and I'd guess that they don't have the best high-end film cameras around.
Second, why assume that Kodak is making the right decision? Because there's a lot of money involved? Everybody's trying to say that this might be a smart decision, and it's a business decision, etc. but I wouldn't be surprised if this just turned out to be a bad decision. Break it down: companies are run by people, and people have been know to be idiots. So it's possible that this is just a stupid move, and another company is going to jump on that market share and make Mr. Kodak himself rise from the grave and beat the crap out of the fools running his company into the ground. So, I guess if the company has been run into the ground, then Mr. Kodak wouldn't really rise from the grave, he'd just make a sort of lateral move... but that's not important. Focus. Look for new competitors, and buy their stock.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
getting them printed. I much prefer viewing photos as prints anyway...
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tomAYto
tomAAto
I personally use both.
It really depends on what you're using it for/with and what the final medium will be.
Here are my photos
Get paid to code OSS
This isn't the first time Kodak has made this announcement. Last time around, they spent a few years out of this market, and then jumped back in with things like the APS film cameras. Before that was the disc camera. Kodak doesn't know how to build quality cameras, so keeps trying to enter the market and then exitting it again.
And last time the announcement also included that they were not stopping building disposables, because that is profit center then, and still is now.
Basically, this isn't news.
The funny thing is, I visually compared sample pictures taken with Kodak digital cameras against those of other cameras at many camera review sites. HP and Kodak had terrible pictures, not just the worst, but terrible, compared to photos from Olympus, Sony, and Cannon cameras. Thus, Kodak's deal to stop selling film cameras is misleading. I think it is a publicity stunt, to get people to look at their digital cameras. (And to make people think if Kodak is dropping film cameras, then digital must be the way! And whos cameras will they think of first? Of course, Kodak's crappy cameras.) This will help Kodak boost sales in those two ways. If it's not a PR stunt, then whos ever even heard of Kodak film non-disposable cameras? Exactly. They are basically shutting down production of the 2 cameras they sold for free 'exposure' to THEIR digital cameras.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
obviously if you're going to compare medium or large format, you should compare to the digital offerings available for those, which there are plenty of. Large format digital inserts use a type of light scanning, but theres a bunch of ways being experimented with.
Film doesn't necessarily have a higher "resolution" - you can't really talk about it in terms like that. Film has different grain size, certainly which limits how far you can blow an image up without the grain becoming too visible. Which is why there are large and medium format film cameras, and why there are now digital backs available for those too.
In the end it depends on what you want to do with your pictures. If you want to blow a 35 mm up to 8 x 10 and also blow a 5 mp up to 8 x 10, with the correct software you'll notice little difference on the final print between the two.
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Kodak is only good at making film. Their cameras were never a threat to the mid-range or better. My 26 year old Nikon F2 can still take better pictures than 90% of the 35mm cameras built since and far outclasses ANY digital made yet.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
I for one welcome our new Digital Camera overlords!
Rochester, NY may become a ghost-town if Kodak cuts because of this.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
i meant "consumer level 35 mm camera". I should've been more specific.
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but thats more of "current state of the art" in the products available at the consumer level than a fundamental limitation. Certainly there are digital cameras out there which will achieve excellent DoF results.
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It's a Kodak moment!
Except that the *vast* majority of "consumer" photos are taken with a flash of another person or group of people a few meters away.
Hence they are flat and boring anyway. And a digital camera print will look just as good as a 35mm film print.
Plus more importantly, you can preview your photo in the LCD display and take it again if someone blinked. Or you can just take ten of them and hope that one will look fine.
My digital camera has taken 1350 photos since my baby boy was born a little over three months ago. This has cost me essentially $0 (I already had the camera, batteries, memory card, and hard drive, and backup space). The good photos get printed at a local photo place for AU$0.35 each (AU$0.45 each in smaller quantities). How much do you think it would have cost to do this if I was using film? over AU$500 by my back of the envelope calculation. Film was put in the film camera for the baby's birth, but it hasn't even been developed yet...
For most people the bulk of their pictures are of the family at Christmas (the famous Christmas tree at the start and end of the roll being from different years) where the flash washes out any of the benefits of film - and they aren't going to bounce the flash, Grandma's ceiling is probably not white anyway... Digital is simply brilliant for these pictures
That's pretty funny, that's exactly the term people use to justify using tube guitar amps instead of transistor amps. Hell, I should know, I've got a tube amp!
Also, Kodak sells film, first and foremost. They also do a wonderful job researching digital components, make the consumer line of EasyShare digital cameras, and hold a line of digital backs for medium format cameras. They haven't produced a film camera in years that sold well in any pro market.
If I were some head of Kodak, I would have stopped film camera production years ago, and wouldn't have wasted any time on a product nobody was buying!
This all just comes down to Kodak trying to hop into the hot digital photography market while it can, instead of being left in the dust as Fuji, Canon, Nikon, Olympus, etc take the lead. If Kodak were to be left doing what they do best (producing film and darkroom chemicals) when the majority of the consumer market switched to digital, they would be stuck with financial problems even greater than the ones they're in right now.
It's all money, not the future of photography.
That would work. One might even call it almost feasible, but is really practical, especially if you're talking about a pro's library? Or even the avg. amateur who is going to put the disc away and forget about it until some point long after the data is retrievable. Time progesses and the data degrades, becoming irretrievable in much less than a generation. No need to worry about ever seeing pictures of grampa when he was young!
But that aside...a photographic print is a physical thing. It's a creation, especially BW art prints. Carbon transfer color prints last over a hundred years without dye degredation. It only takes one act, the original printing, to give that image to generations to come. Continually recopying bits is not an answer.
The potato it is uninformed.
We have a 4 megapixel camera. A minolta s404. We can make 4x6 and 5x7 which are quite sharp a detailed and colorfull. We've also made some 8x10s and that really pushing it with 4 or 5 megapiexels, and you can't crop much.
I sugest investing in a photo printer. They're cheap (except the ink) and the output is good. (I have an epson 1270).
I'm not a super digital fan boy, in fact 90% of what I do is film. But digital cameras can be fun fun and has its place.
A good rule of thumb is you want at least 200 dpi for you prints (300 is ideal) Note this has nothing to do with printer resolution. so a 4 megapixel image 2270 X 1700 at 300 dpi is 7 inches by almost 6. At 200 dpi 11 inch by 8.5.
.. is its network of stores. Go to any country and they have stores that develop film and sell products. They are migrating them to 'digital processing labs' where they will create prints and service cameras etc. My feeling is that that's too small an advantage to ride on. Kodak's trying to move to digital but it's floundering. My guess is that it will be a dead brand in five years, and it store network will be one its few saleable assets.
Ken rockwells site is really really good..
Two thoughts here:
1. Kodak still made cameras?
2. Film is no more likely to disappear in the face of digital cameras than oil paint disappeared in the face of film. What's happening is that its primary use is changing. When film came along, painters were no longer in high demand for portraits, so they started exploring different possibilities, and we ended up with modern art. There are certainly more painters in the world today than there were in the 18th century. As digital replaces film as the primary medium for casual snapshots, something similar is likely to happen to film. Art photographers will still use it, and will probably use it in more creative ways.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
This announcement is quite misleading. Non-disposable cameras constitute only a tiny fraction of Kodak's business, so it makes sense for them to drop that product line and focus on revenue generators. Film use really hasn't dropped noticably despite digital's incursion, especially overseas, but Kodak has been struggling to compete with Fuji.
The real reason for this announcement, and its timing, is to put downward pressure on the current rally in silver prices. Every time silver prices jump up, Kodak puts out a press release talking about how film photography is dying and they are transitioning their focus to digital photography (which, by the way, causes consumption of silver as well, via electronics manufacture, CD manufacture, and silver-based paper for photo prints that won't fade after a few years).
For a decade and a half, demand for silver has exceded supply, causing a steady drawdown of above-ground stockpiles (there is currently more gold bullion above ground than silver bullion), yet the silver price remains well below where it should be (as viewed in terms of the silver/gold price ratio).
How can such a seeming violation of the law of supply and demand take place? Simple. The market is rigged via massive naked short positions (short contracts not backed by actual physical silver) on the COMEX, while the CFTC looks the other way (the same regulatory body that failed to catch Enron's shenanigans in time), plus leasing of silver stockpiles at giveaway rates from central banks (Uncle Sam's stockpiles are gone, such that silver used to make Silver Eagles is purchased on the open market -- most leased silver comes from China now.)
The members of the Silver Users Association are beginning to feel the crunch. One of these months (within the next two years), a major industrial user is going to try to make their quarterly purchase on the COMEX to meet manufacturing demand, and enough physical metal will not be available. This happened with palladium a handful of years ago, driving the price sky high, and forcing auto manufacturers to switch to platinum-nickel catalytic converters. And I'll be laughing all the way to the bank for buying physical silver at less than $5/oz and watching it go to $50...
For more info, see the essays of investment analysts David Morgan and Theodore Butler.
*** Quantum Mechanics: The Dreams of Which Stuff is Made ***
Consumers may have spoken, but that doesn't mean a whole lot to those of us who are in the 'Prosumer' (like me) or full-blown professional category. I still shoot slides (nothing but, actually) using (typically) Kodachrome 200, and am very happy with the results.
I have a number of reasons for feeling this way. First, find me a digital SLR camera that can hold 36 or more exposures per memory card or whatever they're using.
Secondly, find me a digital camera that can equal, 100% and under ALL lighting conditions, the depth of color, resolution, and contrast possible with SLR film-type cameras with good optics (we're talking Nikon first, Canon second), AND that has a full range of interchangeable lenses.
Third (and this will probably be the real challenge), find me all the above in a camera that won't set me back my life's savings. I spent about $1,300 or so for my Canon A-1 outfit back in the late 80's, and it is still going strong to this day.
It is my understanding that, with current technology, replacing my SLR outfit with a digital camera that can equal the SLR's performance and versatility will run between $7-$8,000 or more.
Sorry, gang. Film isn't dead yet. At least not for me.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
All this says is Kodak is not going to develop film based camera's. If the story was "Kodak to stop manufacturing film" then I would agree. Film is still hard to beat for high quality in the largest variety of conditions.
I think they learned their lesson when they discontinued Kodachrome 25 a while back.
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away!
Honestly, the last time I saw a rush of people buying Kodak *film* cameras was many years ago, when the "Kodak disc camera" fad appeared.
The folks interested in the advantages film gives are using more "pro quality" cameras with interchangeable lenses and SLR bodies. Kodak doesn't really cater to that market. They're doing the "point and shoot" consumer grade stuff - and that's where digital makes the most sense.
at current state of the art, affordable CCD's are small. as they grow in size and decrease in price, the issue will be mitigated.
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If you read the article, only their film cameras are going away, not the film!!! Matter of fact new film is being developed.
I'll agree film is dead when I can get the same quality photo for LESS than what it costs me now to use my film cameras.
I'm curious though as to how many photographers are just consumer photographers who never look at their prints. Essentially, only take photos to take photos. They don't DO anything with them. They don't appreciate the beauty of the subject, its not framed. Its point, click, done, and never seen again.
people who blather on and on about the 'resolution required to match film' don't seem to understand the different grain sizes between film ISO's...
And I agree there is fine art exhibits done with digital. Have you seen fotolog? Lots of digital amateur photography artists there. One of my favorites on this log is this guy (Note: fotolog rescales and recompresses severely) My personal log is at here. Some of them are taken with my crude phone cam.
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$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Which camera are you using? My DX6440 is compatible with Win2k, WinXP - no CD necessary. Kodak's are also easier for Auntie to use.
print your pictures on a kodak printstation
Odball parts and formats just don't have value. I looked at cameras in the past and stuck with basic 35mm manual cameras (the ancient ones with the screw on lens. The bayonett mounts were not standard then. (another format war) I still have them and use them. (I have Pentax and Yashika. the lenses fully interchange with no problems) I can use Kodak, Fuji or other film of my choice. I never delt with the pet rock of the month club that locked me into the manufacture for supplies. (Instamatic, Kodak Disk, Instant, Advantix, etc.)
In the digital world I got bit by my first digital that used a propritory battery. (SONY) I gave it away. I didn't do enough big shoots to justify buying 6 batteries at $40 a pop (Li-10 battery) and had enough big shoots (weddings, parties, and parades) that left me dead early in the game. My current camera uses CF (rant all you want, the camera has a large buffer so CF speed is not a issue.) CF is robust. It's the cheapest format and can be found anywhere. The camera uses standard AA batteries I carry 2 sets of Metal Hydride $10/set instead of $40 each and easly found. I take a package of disposables to my big events. I've never run out of batteries or memory. Downloading is no problem even without the camera software. The USB camera connects as a hard drive and the files are JPEG's. They are instantly usable at home or on the road. The memory card can be read at any kiosk or printer I have seen that supports removable media. (excluding of course the SONY memorystick printer)
Lessons learned.. Go with industry standard interfaces. Do not use anything that uses specialty supplies if possible. My last troublesome item is my printer. I can use most any paper, but ink is a problem. Due to this problem, I get my prints at Walgreens or Costco for 19 cents per 4X6 and less than $2.00 for an 8X10. HP does not make home printing a good value. You don't get many 8X10 prints out of the $60 HP78 color cartridge. Go elsewhere for value in printing photos. Don't forget to edit them first to kill red-eye and other problems.
The truth shall set you free!
That was the joke ("warmth" is also the term vinyl junkies like myself use to justify vinyl over CDs) but I guess I forgot to use ":)" the universal symbol for I'M JOKING YOU MORONS! so I get moderated "troll."
- Kodak are getting out of cameras, not film.
- Kodak cameras were Not Very Good and sold in low numbers
- Kodak are expanding film sales in other countries
Digital cameras are fine for 95% of photography, i.e. family snapshots, press work and even society/wedding stuff. Where they fall down is what might be termed "fine art photography", where the end result is big prints to hang on the wall. Digital is nowhere near that level of resolution yet, and even cameras that can knock out a decent 14" x 11" print are beyond the reach of most people.When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Um, need to re-study just what EMP is. Then study electromagnetic shielding. Lots of things will survive EMP. Mostly things in sealed metal containers that don't have external wires to act as antennas would have a chance at survival. Home computers with attached phone lines, external keyboards, mice, network cables, USB stuff etc are sitting ducks for an EMP event. A laptop in a closed anvil aluminum road case is pretty well protected. You want EMP protection for you optical router? Stick it in a sealed metal box with 100% EMI shielding. Filter and surge protect the power at the point of entry. If EMI/RFI can't reach it, neither can EMP which is just an overgrown EMI event. If you keep your digital camera in a metal ammo box for storage, there is a good chance it will survive an EMP attack.
To test your stuff for EMP resistance, simply place it next to an operating high power tesla coil near the primary. If it survives, it should also survive an EMP event.
The truth shall set you free!
Ever put a CD in an ammo box in a microwave? EMI/RFI shielding goes a long way to protecting against EMP.
The truth shall set you free!
I guess you haven't seen this yet, then, have you?
Yes, I realize it's not very practical for sports or photojournalism, but this is only going to get better and cheaper. Everyone who's bought a decent digital camera will tell you the same thing: for 90% of my work, digital does the same thing as film, only it's a shitload cheaper, a shitload easier, and offers some fantastic additional benefits. Think of media storage for instance -- storing slides or negs is a bitch, whether you're a pro dealing with cataloging thousands of images for business, or you're an amateur with a dozen shoe-boxes of holiday and travel shots. Digital makes this so easy it hurts.
Now, you can certainly argue the merits of film technology not requiring as much continued investment, but the fact is, the pro-sumer line of cameras that are out now rival film in all characteristics save one: tonal range. The room for new technological growth is still there, but at this point the 35mm evolution to digital is complete.
People that argue about resolution are missing the bigger picture: if I want to do anything with an image, whether digital or analog, the first thing I'm going to do is get it into my computer. That's easier when the format I'm shooting in is already digital. Also, if I'm scanning a slide, even on a *nice* scanner, you're not going to see any improvement over the 5 meg files I get out of my digital body. What you *will* see is lots of dust, which means a few hours Photoshopping. Most of the time, a sub $20k scanner's extra pixels are just interpolation, anyway. There's plenty of software that can do that with low-res images already.
In terms of maturity -- have you seen the long-exposure capabilities of Canon's digital line? Holy-freakin-shit! Even an EOS D60, which is now outdated, can produce 4-minute exposures with no noise. Nothing. Turn the night into day.
Then there's the added benefits for learning photographers. If you want to get good, you shoot your ass off. For the first couple of years, you toss out 35/36 shots. As you get better, you'll slowly lower that, but the fact is, developing that much film is expensive. And as a learning tool, if I'm going to figure out that a blown shot at f/8 would have been perfect at f/11, I need to know right after I've taken the shot. Not a week later when I finally get my film back. And that's only useful when I've recorded the exposure for every shot. Have you ever tried this? After a single roll you'll never want to do it again.
With digital, you get instant feedback as to what you're technically doing right or wrong. Hell, nice pro-sumer digitals offer color histograms of your shots. I can confidently say that with the right teacher, a digital camera will allow an amateur to develop the technical skills of a pro in under a year (now, the artistic skills may never come, but that's another issue entirely).
When you get into bigger boxes (8x10's and the like) you're talking about thousands of dollars of investment for good glass and equipment (and good luck with your processing costs -- you can always buy an enlarger!). Medium format equipment can run you several times more if you want the "35mm experience" like the fancy Mamiya 645's. Frankly, I don't see any advantage to traditional film unless you: 1) Already know what you're doing, and 2) Are currently making a living off of it. And even then I'd recommend it, unless you 3) Have already spent a huge chunk on medium or large-format, and are too unsophisticated to figure out how to "work the eBay".
For many people, discontinuing film-based cameras won't affect them that much. Kids of my generation (20+) are used to the point-and-shoot disposables, and as time progresses more and more are accustomed to purely digital photography. I, however, was raised at an early age to appreciate the finer qualities of german engineering in relation to photography. For many people, there isn't a noticeable difference in aesthetic value between Leica cameras, and, oh, say... Kodak's, for example. But this is only because our generation have sacrificed art for the commercialization of photography. Now, the sole purpose of photography is the almighty dollar, and the proof of that is in this article. I'm agitated that at the peak of traditional photography, the (traditional) camera is going the way of vinyl records and turntables. Yes, they will still have film-based cameras thirty years from now (as we do turntables), but they will be considerably more expensive. Nobody buys film when memory cards are ultimately cheaper. I'm not that upset that Kodak's cameras are being discontinued, per se (as they haven't made any decent cameras in years); but as more and more companies make the same move towards digital, film (the only think Kodak is good at making) will become unnecessarily expensive; and as a result, another creative output will disappear. Yes, you can argue that photoshop and the like are a creative output, but not everyone is born to think electronically. I got my start in 3d modelling simply because I played with clay so much as a child. I'm lucky I took to computers so well or I probably wouldn't have as many career choices as I do now.
Well, before I really start rambling, let me finish with this: Buy a nice SLR now, while they're cheap. As prices of digital cameras get cheaper, traditional photography will only get more expensive.
No worse than living next to the plant that handles animal remains. e.g. roadkill, animal shelter rejects.
Kodak's film cameras suck, and always (more or less) have. they make very good film, paper, and associated supplies, but their actual cameras are plain awful. this is pretty commonly accepted by professionals in most areas (i can't say all; i hear they have some film-based forensic cameras that are good if you need that sort of thing). their digital cameras, while not the best available, are pretty good. this is just kodak realizing that they can make more money by selling something they do well than something they do poorly.
what would be real news is if Kodak were to stop producing film.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
They've stopped producing their slide projectors.
Their Ektapro and Carousel series were some of the best on the market.
I see a lot of planetariums will have problems, because at the moment it's almost impossible to replace them with digital projectors.
Film will not being going the way of the Dinosaur for quite sometime. It still has many practical uses. Besides, though digital has caught up with 35mm... it is a long ways from competeing witht he image quality of medium format and large format.
Digital cameras will kill the cheap film cameras. The middle and higher end ones will still be there.
And no doubt a few other reasons....
(I've recently just gone back to using film as I wasn't happy with my digital but my concession to technology is doing my own developing, scanning the output and printing off just what i need burning the rest onto DVD's for achiving.)
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
People think for some reason that the photo needs to dry. This could be because the earlier instant photos had a chemical strip on them that needed to be peeled off, and shaking it did make it dry faster. But the Polaroid photos used a chemical reaction inside the picture. It isn't about trying to dry the ink in a traditional sense, it is about letting the chemical reaction take place undisturbed. Shaking a Polaroid photo will only mess it up. I am surprised the noted scholar Outkast doesn't know that.
And they are still around today. For my nieces this year for Christmas, I bought them Polaroid iZone cameras. They are small cameras that use instant film. The pictures are about 2"x1.5", so they are pretty small. But you can peel off the backing and the picture is a sticker. Pretty cool for an 11 and 8 year old. The camera was pretty cheap, at around $12, but the film costs about $5 per 18 exposures. I thought it was a cool gadget, and so did they.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
There's just something romantic about your best roll of pictures being ruined because you're little kid had to pee and opened up the door to your darkroom/bathroom.
That's pretty funny, that's exactly the term people use to justify using tube guitar amps instead of transistor amps.
... and the distortion from tubes makes a nice sound.
Indeed. But the purpose of a guitar amp is to distort -- the unprocessed signal from an electric guitar is not all that pleasant to listen to.
What I find strange is hi-fi buffs who insist on tubes in hifi amps. In hi-fi, distortion is bad.
I'm still using 4x5 - though after the film i've got an entirely digital workflow...
Is there a way to make the digital/printer pic have longevity?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
With the shutter latency of affordable digital cameras, they take some time to get used to, and even then I couldn't count how many priceless expressions that changed between when I press the shutter and capture an image.
The digital camera that cracks that nut in the $300-500 range will sell big time!
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
should've checked out the lasermonks article from yesterday - its only $20 from them
should've checked out the lasermonks article from yesterday - its only $20 from them
I did check out Lasermonks. They list the cartridge on the front page. Click on the page for the description and shopping cart. That page comes up blank. There is no description and no add to shopping cart. They may have them, but it looks like they can't be put in the shopping cart. Try it.
Other ink like the 5164a twin pak works, but not the C6578D. I've tried filling the carts myself with ink from AtlasCopy. The pigmented black works great, but the color has been problems from not printing a color to streaking to a cart that starts with a beautiful print only to have the printer halt halfway with the ink light flashing. (yes the counters were reset with the level indicaters showing 100%) Why do filled cartridges die suddenly in the middle of a perfect print to never live again? I gave up as the reliability was terrible. I only use only black now with a dead color cartridge in the printer. My black is on it's 5th refill. Chosing a greyscale print on the HP950 printer does not use black ink. I found this out by getting magenta greyscale prints when a color died in a printhead. I figured color is out, just use black by switching to the greyscale printing option. Wrong. The printer tried to use color and that's how I got another magenta greyscale print. Monocrome printing does NOT switch over to the black cartridge. It uses the EXPENSIVE color ink! I switched to the laser for my primary printer.
The truth shall set you free!
In my experience, a relatively fast 35mm film (say ASA400) is about equivalent to a 4 Mpixel digital camera. This is more than enough for standard size photo prints, but as you imply, not quite enough for a blowup.
Professional and high-end amateur digital cameras are at 10Mpixel, so they should give you 40% better resolution. What that means in terms of film grain equivalency beats me, though. I've never had access to such a camera, and don't have any high-quality scans of slow speed grade film photos to analyze.
...ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
nt
I tried, but it wouldn't fit.
News flash: The sky really is falling! Really! I read it on Slashdot! It must be true!!!!
"No one will buy their house, so they can't afford to move?"
That, bundled with the fact that the Eastman/Kodak corp is pretty much the main employer.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
You might need the small ammo box.
I tried. It fit.
Are you implying yours is bigger than mine?
Maybe you need a full size microwave to fit your big box.
The truth shall set you free!
You're right. Molecular-scale is overstating the size of film grains.
But there was something else I was trying to get across, I just didn't state it well. We have drawn the pixels of the digital sensor. I haven't actually done any CCD work, myself, but I'll wager that it has to be at least 4f^2 (4 features, a line and a space in each direction) and may well be bigger. For comparison, a DRAM cell (something I DO know something about) is usually at least 8f^2, though there are some smaller experimental cells.
By contrast, the grains in the emulsion are done in a chemical step. Nobody sat down at a CAD tube and drew a grain shape that was later photoreduced and fabricated. Grain shape and size is dictated by chemical (and mechanical?) processes. In that respect, it's closer to the realm of molecules than to that of assembled structures.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Epson has some (allegedly) 100-year archival-quality inks available on their inkjets, starting at around $800 retail, and I know that Kodak has some availablle for their pro line of large-format inkjet printers under the Encad name.