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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 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 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...
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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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!
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
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.
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.
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!
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.)
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
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.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
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".