Kodak To Stop Selling Film Cameras In U.S.

demise of film... not... yet by fireteller2 · 2004-01-13 12:09 · Score: 5, Insightful

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

Re:demise of film... not... yet by real+gumby · 2004-01-13 12:22 · Score: 3, Insightful

A film company announcing that it will stop selling cameras is like a shipping company saying it's going to stop selling ships.
Actually, if you read the article again you'll see that Kodak made 50% of all the world's APS cameras. And while APS was never as big as 35MM, this is significant.
Re:demise of film... not... yet by wideBlueSkies · 2004-01-13 12:47 · Score: 2, Insightful

I had one as a kid. In like 1975 or something. I remember it breaking and I was pretty upset for a while.

Anyway, who cares it they stop selling cameras? Just as long as they keep selling film. If, in the future, they stop producing 35mm film, they're only going to hurt themselves. I'm sure that someone like the guys at Fuji will be smart enough to continue to make it, and in turn will suck up all Kodak's old business.

I really like digital photography, but I don't think that it's a suitable replacement for traditional 35mm. And forget about full format, digital can't touch this yet.

wbs.

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Huh?
Re:demise of film... not... yet by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-13 12:49 · Score: 1, Insightful

Actually- you're just being wrong.

He makes somewhere in the $50,000s does not mean in the $50,000-$50,010 range- it means in the $50,000-$59,999 range.

As you become more vague (1800's as opposed to 1820's) the range gets larger...we don't assume the lowest range, just because it is not identified- the larger range is assumed.
Re:demise of film... not... yet by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-13 12:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

The film camera market has changed significantly since the introduction of digital photography. At the low end, there are very cheap generic non-disposible camera and a range of disposibles of different qualities. I don't think either is going away soon. But the cheap junk is just that. And the disposibles serve a different niche that digital isn't ready to take away yet.

Then there is the high-end film market. Just as there are still high-end turntables for vinyl LPs (for those of you under 30 and not into musical styles performed by people with "DJ" in their stage names, look it up). Digital photography has not taken over everything that film can do. It may some day.
Re:demise of film... not... yet by Reality+Master+101 · 2004-01-13 16:32 · Score: 2, Insightful

Many hi and mid-end microphones, amps, compressors, etc use tubes for that so called 'warmth' they give. (And, I believe, they do)
By the way, the technical term for that so-called warmth is "distortion". You may like the effect of how the distortion modifies the sound, and that's OK, but it's still distortion.
If you want pure reproduction, then digital and solid state electronics is the way to go.

--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Re:demise of film... not... yet by R.Caley · 2004-01-13 23:56 · Score: 2, Insightful

I personally have never owned, and I have never known anyone who owned, a non-disposable Kodak camera.
That says more about your age and perhaps social background than photography. For a long time Kodac was cheap snapshot photography.
I have never owned, nor knew anyone who owned a Triumph motorcycle, but that doesn't mean that the end of the British motorcycle industry in the 70s didn't indicate the end point of a profound shift (in that case the rise of Japan).
What this announcement indicates is that film is dead (in the west) as a medium for day to day photography. Disposables have a niche, and people who have an interest in photography per-se (as opposed to just wanting pictures) will still use 35mm SLRs, but digital has more or less swallowed the `pictures of little Jonny's birthday party' market.
And I bet that market was also a major segment of their film market, and they are essentially confirming that those sales are dead. I'd bet they made lots of money on the weird cartridge format film to go into those cheap cameras. Same business model as used by printer manufacturers making their living from expensive ink cartriges.
Basicly this isn't an anouncement of something that is bout to happen, it is an acknowledgement of what has happened and a reassurance to the market that they have a future.

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_O_ .|< The named which can be named is not the true named

Fim is not gone yet.... by endus · 2004-01-13 12:10 · Score: 5, Insightful

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...

Re:Fim is not gone yet.... by lythotype · 2004-01-13 15:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

"Furthermore, digital is only really good for short term storage. Film is good for long term. There are still original negatives available with good quality from the 1800s..."

Isn't there a group of people trying to save old movie films because the film's material is degrading? How does that make film "good for long term"? Doesn't Disney have a department of people who all they do is restore old, decaying films? Seems to me that if I want my material safe, film is not the way to go.

"...Can anyone even find the bits from digital documents 15 years old?)"

I have plenty of Word Perfect documents from 15 years ago. I also have plenty of .PCX images I created around the same time that I have archived through the years. No problem finding "... the bits from digital documents 15 years old".

What I do have a problem with is my film from many years ago starting to degrade. The color is fading and they are becoming more and more brittle, making them very hard to handle. I could make a copy, but then the new copy suffers from generational degradation due to the nature of copying via analog devices (much like making a copy of a copy of a copy of music on a cassette tape). Making a new, perfect, copy of my digital pictures is as easy as putting paper in my printer and printing it.

Not quite film yet.... by BWJones · 2004-01-13 12:10 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

--
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.

Re:Not quite film yet.... by BWJones · 2004-01-13 12:24 · Score: 4, Insightful

It might not be all bad. Digital photographs have the potential to last in pristine condition forever (as long as you keep copying them to new media). Also since they're so cheap to take and store we might have many more photographs for our historical record. With some advanced image processing image searching and sorting could be great tools to historians as well.

You are right about this to some extent. The problem with media and digital storage is that history is proving that digital media has a much shorter lifespan than other forms of record keeping such as paper and photographic records. CDs are not good for 75-100 years as advertised in many cases. This is why standards are so important and open source of those standards so that there are as many possible copies of data in open formats that do not disappear over time.

--
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Re:Not quite film yet.... by tempest303 · 2004-01-13 12:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

(Note: I'm just in a snarky mood - my sarcasm should be taken as playful, not mean.)

While you're right about the storage medium problem to a degree, you've forgotten about... printers. You know, those magical devices that produce pieces of paper with a replica of what we see on screen? Also, I would expect that businesses will build over the years specically for regaining data from old, unused formats of media, etc, for those who don't migrate/backup their data to more modern mediums as time progresses. That said, I would like a more permenant medium - magnetic media slowly fails, and so do all current forms of optical media ...

As for your first paragraph, you are strictly talking about a level of detail, of resolution - that's it. There's nothing magical about film that gives it the qualities you're implying it has, it's just that the film and photo paper used for the photo you refer to had really fine grain, and the picture was (we assume) taken with good focus and exposure. There is nothing magic about the chemicals of photography - it's all a matter of resoulution (or Megapixels, for the unwashed masses).

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.

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The Free desktop that Just Works
Re:Not quite film yet.... by jrstewart · 2004-01-13 12:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

The media has a short lifespan, but the data doesn't. The nice thing about digital is infinite perfect copies (as I mentioned in my original reply).

As long as storage density keeps increasing most people will do what I do. Every time I get a new computer I copy all of my old data off the old one. I do make some backups on CD but all the data I really care about is on my hard drive.

We are going to lose some data to bad digital media, yes.

As an aside I remember reading somewhere about a recently discovered ancient babylonian text (on parchment) decrying the decline in the use of clay for accounting purposes since parchment doesn't archive well enough.

It may actually have been papyrus, not parchment. I don't recall.
Re:Not quite film yet.... by evilWurst · 2004-01-13 12:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

I can easily see the same things happening with digital information, too, though. The photos you restored were taken care of, unlike the many that weren't taken care of and have thus been lost over time. It's not much different with digital. Throw a hard drive, flash card, and cd-rs in a box and store them somewhere dry for 50 years. They may or may not work perfectly by then, but there'll be data recovery techniques that work well on them, just as there are photo recovery techniques that work today.

There are already imaging algorithms that'll zoom things today, and with resolutions going up and costs going down, our grandchildren will probably be getting a much larger volume of data from us than we're getting today from our own grandparents.
Re:Not quite film yet.... by shubert1966 · 2004-01-13 13:47 · Score: 2, Insightful

I work for an archiving company that has microfilming and scanning departments. We use Kodak i260 scanners, and we scan mostly B&W 8.5"x11"s. The cameras in these scanners are really good, but the Kodak hardware and software is beyond kludge. Also note that Kodak has closed service bureaus for their scanners and relies on on-site techs now. Thoe whole ship is under scrutiny, and the price is dropping in the market. In fact, cameras are so cheap they're almost 'required' accessories on cell phones today.

The issue our company's clients face is preservation. Most of these entities are hospitals, or law firms or municipalities - they are goverened by guidelines that suggest microfilm is the better media for the long haul. It all depends on how you look at it.

Digital archiving is a fine solution, if you can manage a repository to maintain multiple backups and upgrade them as new platforms arise. Throughput and storage parameters are still increasing as computer continue to evolve, and the 'lifespan' of the new media will in effect be lengthened because it'll be so simple to make multiple copies - cost effectively.

As for "warmth" in analog . . . I got two compliments the other day from the photos I took with a $4.95 disposable. I can hear the difference in music (CD vs Vinyl), but I don't think the average picture is being looked at for Detail as much as for Subject, this is diiferent from music.

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Stuff that matters.
Re:Not quite film yet.... by dpilot · 2004-01-13 13:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

There's an old adage, "Anyone can build a bridge what won't fall down. It takes an engineer to build a bridge that -just barely- won't fall down."

In other words, it's easy to build a grossly overdesigned bridge. A well designed bridge can have an adequate safety margin and use fewer materials. Because strength is not always an obvious thing, then engineer may well know the -best- place to put that extra strength. The simple bridge may be stronger, but lack the needed strength in some non-obvious place.

Likewise photography.

Film has always had molecular-scale resolution - kind of an innate property of film, itself. That aspect is over-engineered. Far more often photos come out poorly because of poor exposure or focus. The weak spot isn't the capability of the film, it's behind the camera. Or for that matter, the overage film that after exposure sits in the camera or on a shelf for another year before getting processed.

I haven't seen a digital camera without at least automatic exposure (which can itself be fooled) and many/most have autofocus, as well. (which can also be fooled)

Still, in the hands of a novice, I suspect a digital camera is more likely to take good pictures than a film camera. The film/CCD isn't the determining factor.

That says nothing at all of what a professional can do in either form factor. (Other than that I'd say that a professional can do better - in either form factor.)

--
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Re:Not quite film yet.... by drinkypoo · 2004-01-13 15:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

Still, in the hands of a novice, I suspect a digital camera is more likely to take good pictures than a film camera. The film/CCD isn't the determining factor.

In the hands of a novice, a good automatic camera (say, a Canon Rebel in automatic mode) with good film of a decent speed (400 is nice general-purpose stuff for all but the brightest scenes) will always take better pictures than all but the most expensive digital cameras, which is to say, those costing upwards of two grand. Or at least, the way CCD technology is today.

Film simply captures more information than a CCD of the same size. Either way the actions of all of the rest of the camera besides the exposed element (IE, CCD or film) is basically the same, especially in the high-end digital cameras.

Truly, the only advantage of a digital camera is not having to deal with film, and the mechanisms for advancing and winding film.

Also, some film has a higher resolution than other film. Faster film (with a higher ISO or ASA rating) tends to capture less detail, it usually has a coarser grain. This is known as the resolving power of the film, and it is measured using a test chart. It is not molecular-scale resolution at all. As my photo textbook puts it: "When you are choosing a film, speed and grain are two of the major considerations you need to balance." Actually, you focus on the grain (with a grain focuser) when you are printing. The enlarger projects the image, and you focus it until you can see the grain, then you turn it off and place your paper by the light of the safelights.

Schaefer, John P. The Ansel Adams Guide Book 1, Basic Techniques of Photography, Revised Edition. 2001, Quebecor Printing. ISBN 0--8212-2575-8

Note that if what you want is information on film grain/resolution, this is not the book you want. This is an introductory textbook that tells you everything you need to know to shoot, develop, and print black and white film. Incidentally, the most expensive items here are the camera and the enlarger. The enlarger is not that pricy, either, if you get it used. Amusingly enough, assuming you're just shooting 35mm and printing 8x10s or so, the most expensive thing you will need to buy is the sink. A good stainless steel sink will run you much more than a perfectly servicable camera and a used enlarger.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Not quite film yet.... by Kaa · 2004-01-13 16:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

Film has always had molecular-scale resolution - kind of an innate property of film, itself.

May I suggest you refrain from making authoritative pronouncements when you don't have a clue?

Film does NOT have a molecular-scale resolution, and it's obvious to anybody who has ever looked at a negative (or a print or a slide) carefully.

Black-and-white film has resolution limited by the size of the silver clumps, and these clumps (the size of which mostly depends on how sensitive film is) are several orders of magnitude larger than molecules. Color film has dye clouds instead of silver clumps, and again, their size is much, much larger than molecules.

What in hell do you think film grain is? Molecules??

--

Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.

I'm not suprised by teutonic_leech · 2004-01-13 12:11 · Score: 3, Insightful

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...

Maybe if they stopped making film... by John+Harrison · 2004-01-13 12:15 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

--
Lasers Controlled Games!

of course by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-13 12:16 · Score: 1, Insightful

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.

Processing by ucblockhead · 2004-01-13 12:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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The cake is a pie

Kodak CAMERAS?!? by Mrs.+Grundy · 2004-01-13 12:17 · Score: 4, Insightful

It looks like consumers have spoken and film is finally going to go the way of the dinosaur."

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.

Remember by ucblockhead · 2004-01-13 12:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

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

Kodak: Traditionally Mismanaged by pauly_thumbs · 2004-01-13 12:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

Not a very interesting thread IMHO; I'm sure our readers in upstate NY will agree that Kodak booms and busts more than Boeing.

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 /.'ers but Photofinishing businesses are still doing quite well.

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! :))

Kodak stops making cameras? Big deal... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-13 12:20 · Score: 1, Insightful

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!)

Two comments: by Txiasaeia · 2004-01-13 12:22 · Score: 5, Insightful

1) This is *KODAK*. Kodak film cameras are pretty rare as it is (35mm at least, dunno about medium format); this announcement does't change very much. Now, if this announcement were from Nikon or Canon, we might have a bit of a problem (but see #2), but as it is, this is not a big deal. It's like Interplay announcing that they're getting out of the PC gaming business :)

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.

eh, hum.... by djupedal · 2004-01-13 12:26 · Score: 2, Insightful

Film still has the ability to store information that digital formats will take years to catch up to

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.

Kodak makes non-disposable cameras? by Lord+Bitman · 2004-01-13 12:31 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

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-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All

Bad comparison by skizrule · 2004-01-13 12:33 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

Re:Ahaha by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-13 12:36 · Score: 1, Insightful

Remember to metamoderate!

Re:Number 1 subject will be... by jcr · 2004-01-13 13:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

And what'll happen in another year?

Umm, the same thing that happened every year since CCD image sensors were introduced: accelerating improvements in the technology, and exponential growth in its market.

Film will still be around and people like you will be saying "Give it another year".

Sure, film will still be around, just like vinyl records. The electronic sensors will exceed its resolution and color gamut, and we'll still have people on /. talking about how much they like the "warmth", (and many other imprecise, emotional adjectives) of film.

When you can buy a camera with tunable spectral response from ULF radio to X-rays, with spatial resolution sufficient for holography and a dynamic range exceeding the human eye, there's still going to be someone insisting that monochrome silver emulsion is better.

-jcr

--
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."

Re:Number 1 subject will be... by the_Bionic_lemming · 2004-01-13 13:34 · Score: 4, Insightful

And what'll happen in another year? Film will still be around and people like you will be saying "Give it another year".

Don't be so sure about that.

Kodak isn't dumping the film line because the digitals are better - they are dumping them because the digital's are more profitable.

They start out by not letting you charge the camera's unless you have a base that you purchase seperately, or buy a wall charger.

It continues on to only 15.00 kodak batteries will charge in the base station.

Then, if you decide to upgrade from a 4000 series to a 6000 series camera, your 70 dollar base station is useless, and you have to buy another.

If you want to print your pictures on a kodak printstation - you'll have to buy for the 4000, then when you upgrade, you'll have to buy for the 6000.

With a film based camera - they don't get dick uunless you buy from Kodak.

Add to that kodak is another company that hires India to do its tech support, and you'll see how much they are saving.

Me? I purchased one o their 4000 series at best buy, then puchased their base for rapid recharge.

6 months into owning the camera - it stopped charging on the base. I called Kodak and they told me to get a new base for it - Best Buy swapped it, and it still wouldn't charge.

I brought the camera in (thank god I god the extended warrenty) and since best buy doesn't carry that 4220 anymore swapped it with a 6340.

I brought it home to set it up and found the base design differnt - after 4 hours yelling at the India girl and telling her "No, I'm not going to buy another f$@king base to charge my camera - since you were the one that told me to get my camera replaced."

After trips to best buy and an entangled battle with India - I finally got the base station swapped out and am currently charging my camera now.

Had I known that they were doing "series based" peripherals for the digital camera - I would NOT have gone with Kodak.

so to make a long rant short - Kodak knows where the money is to be made - that's why they are killing the film line.

--
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!

Re:Number 1 subject will be... by roseblood · 2004-01-13 13:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

for my photography I use a simple non-automatic camera with a single lens (200mm Nikkor.) This camera type has changed little sense it's invention. When you can show me a digital camera that can match the resolution of an 8x10 sheet of Illford film (or Kodak, or Fuji, or Agfa, or Konica, etc) then I will say film is dead. If a 35mm camera and it's 1.5 square inch bit of film can be replaced by 6 megapixels then my 800 square inch negatives will require a 3.2 GIGApixel camera. It should be noted that my camera+lens+film holder system cost less than a the 14 Megapixel machines that are top-of-the-line today. As a matter of fact, a year supply of film and darkroom chemistry and other supplies still run me less than a 14 megapixel digital and a 1 year suppluy of batteries. That said, most people outside the world of large format photography will be happy with the results you can get from a $4 disposable camera, so 6 megapixels will suit them fine. Next time you want a sharp 4x6 print you'll cget those results from a film camera..that is 4x6 FEET (Thing large gallery prints and large format advertisments.)

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There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

It doesn't matter much actually by keeboo · 2004-01-13 13:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

Re:Number 1 subject will be... by ScottSpeaks! · 2004-01-13 14:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

Sure, film will still be around, just like vinyl records.

Vinyl is merely a distribution medium, not a creative medium. A better analogy would be to compare chemical photo film to oil paints or other classical illustrative media. Chemical photography rendered illustration and painting "obsolete" decades ago, but I can assure you that artists and hobbyists are still working with oils, pencils, watercolors, etc. We'll continue to use film-based photography as well.

Re:Number 1 subject will be... by khuber · 2004-01-13 15:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

Well some people still do daguerrotypes too...

Most people would find a view camera very impractical except maybe landscape photographers and fine art photographers. Digital is at the 35mm to medium format quality level. I don't see digital taking over 4x5 or 8x10 in the near future.

different format cameras by rebelcool · 2004-01-13 16:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

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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Re:Number 1 subject will be... by Kaa · 2004-01-13 16:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

However, for more "artistic" photography, film is a great way to go. It's not just about the actual taking of the pictures, but also the developing of the film and the enlarging of prints. I for one enjoy the process, and it takes quite a bit more skill than just dumping the pictures into Photoshop and adjusting brightness/contrast, levels and colors and whatnot.

I beg to disagree. If you do enjoy the wet-photography process, more power to you. But you should realize that you would find yourself in the same niche that, say, woodworkers, exist in now. If you find in pleasant to mess around with a wet darkroom -- fine. Your choice. But with Photoshop I'll be able to do much more than you'll be able to do in a darkroom.

I've been there and I don't really miss the smell of the developer or the fixer stains on the fingers. I want to make good images -- not practice some ancient and obsolete craft. For making images, digital is much better than a wet darkroom. It's like using power tools compared to using traditional tools. Yes, maybe you lose some of the feel/magic/romance of the process. But the end result tend to be better...

And, by the way, Photoshop needs much skill to be used properly. I'd say that becoming skilled in Photoshop (or Corel PhotoPaint, or Gimp) is harder than getting a clue about darkroom chemistry.

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Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.

Re:Hmmm by Dominic_Mazzoni · 2004-01-13 17:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

Indeed, I just got back from a trip to London where my parents had bought a 5 megapixel camera. The images looked fine on a computer, but I just had 4x6 prints made, and they look like complete ass.

Something's wrong with your software or your printer.

300 dpi of full-color is quite high resolution. For a 4x6 image at 300 dpi, you only need a 1200x1600 digital image, or about 2 megapixels. Your 5 megapixel camera has more than enough resolution for a high-quality 4x6 print.

Want digital photos to just work? Get a Mac.

Re:Number 1 subject will be... by jcr · 2004-01-13 18:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

you can't argue that your "camera with tunable spectral response from ULF radio to X-rays, with spatial resolution sufficient for holography and a dynamic range exceeding the human eye" is better than a 35 mm camera shooting black and white because it's all opinion.

Sure I can. You want grayscale, just throw away most of the data the camera captures, and pick your favorite frequency response curve, just like I can do with vintage guitar amplifier models on my Mac.

-jcr

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The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."

[cough] too late [cough] by Civil_Disobedient · 2004-01-13 20:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

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".

Good. Should improve average quality. by anothy · 2004-01-13 22:08 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.

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i speak for myself and those who like what i say.

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