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Digital Cameras Force Film Off Dixons' Shelves
ngibbons writes "BBC News story regarding digital camera sales: 'High Street retailer Dixons, which started by selling 35mm cameras, is to stop stocking the items because of the popularity of digital cameras.' Digital cameras will out-sell 35mm cameras in the UK by a ratio of 15:1 this year."
They are not really forcing them off the shelves - its simple economics - Dixons are totally mainstream and 35mm film has become non-mainstream. Therefore they aren't going to sell film cameras anymore.
Not really news - we all know digital camera's are mainstream now.
Dixon's cater for the "must buy now" category, not the well thought out purchase. People won't buy an SLR in Dixons, but they might buy a compact digital on the spur of th moment.
It is worth noting, for our foreign readers, that Dixons are a terrible chain of stores selling overpriced electronic goods. The staff are all salesmen they don't have any one who actually knows anything (eg difference between RAM and HD, or Mac and PC). Prices are usually between 50% and 100% more than online (eg Amazon).
So basically, no one would really mind if the whole chain just upped and died.
Take a look at the various kinds of camera.
There is the SLR and the P&S, not counting the medium format monsters which aren't flying off the shelf with digital backs.
Before digital came along, most people owned either a 35mm or an APS point and shoot pocket camera. SLRs were generally thought of (undeservedly in many cases) as "professional" cameras, so most people weren't interested.
Now digital offers the same convenience as the old film point and shoots but with virtually unlimited shot counts. Whereas you could only get 36 shots in your old pocket camera, now you can get upwards of a 100 on a single battery charge. And the loss in quality is pretty minimal because you are using a pretty small, substandard lens to begin with. It is no surprise that digital has essentially eliminated the film P&S market.
The SLR side of the coin is much more interesting. What we are seeing is a resurgence in popularity of the SLR in the form of cheap dSLRs like the Canon Rebel 350D and the Nikon D70. These are cheap, offer superior lens choices than the digital P&S class, and you don't need to swap out film every 24-36 shots. Add to this that digital sensors are quickly gaining ground on film technologies such that the quality of data from a digital sensor is equal to or better than the data off of a scanned negative.
There are many reasons why digital is gaining popularity, the first is simply that it is so much less hassle to plug the camera into the computer than it is to take roll after roll to the photo shop. Also, the boom in blogging has got everyone becoming a photographer with little to no effort. And the cost is coming into the range that mere mortals can afford it.
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It should be noted that Dixon principally sell compact cameras, and I think in respect to compacts they're right. Nobody is going to put something like Fuji Velvia into a compact camera, they're going to put the ISO 400 print film made by Boots. There is no advantage to using film on a compact camera over using a modern CCD, and the total running cost for digital - in that market - is significantly smaller.
Of course, the argument over whether this is true for SLR's is a different matter. I recently traded my old Minolta SLR film kit for a Canon 300D (thanks to Canon bringing out the 350D, the 300D dramatically dropped in price). It's great - but not when using a non-digital lens (chromatic aberation and all that jazz) - and until that problem is solved there will always be a huge market for file SLRs.
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How are the people that are buying digital cameras from Dixons using a digital camera? The software that comes with Windows XP is bad, the software that comes with the camera is worse and Googles excellent offering is hidden away, and involves a knowledge of web searching and software installation.
My Dad, who though far from computer illiterate, uses the software that came with his FujiFilm SLR. The camera is excellent, but the software is so bad, that it takes him 20 minutes to find the picture he wants, and he keeps a paper index to give him an idea of when he took the photo so he can find it by date. He doesn't do any photo editing, because its too complicated (the guy runs a primary school, and uses computers on a daily basis... he's not stupid) and getting the pictures to print well is an effort.
My completely computer illiterate girlfriends mother really struggles to use iPhoto. And why wouldn't she? In order to get the pictures off the camera she has to find the right wire, make sure its connected in the right socket, makes sure the camera is on (this always confuses her) and then has to eject the camera before she can disconnect it. She has mastered albums, but can't do keywords. She can't burn a CD of her favourites to take down Boots to get it printed without my help.
I'm no expert, in fact I would shudder to call myself a novice when it comes to digital photography, but they are fascinated that I can put together a DVD of the trip we've just taken in iDVD and iPhoto even though most of the work is done for me by the Mac, or that I can type 'Zoes birthday' in Spotlight an be provided with every picture from Zoes birthday instantly.
I always thought the advantages of digital photography were having a searchable library of of all my pictures, and being able to email them to friends, and take out the odd bit of red eye. It turns out the reason people by digital cameras is that they can take over hundred photos without changing the film (great for holidays), can see those photo immediately and delete them if they're bad (perceived reduction of cost), and continue to just hand the camera over to the guy at Boots and get the pictures back an hour later. For this they are willing to pay over £100 for a camera that has a lower picture quality, artifacts and dead pixels, than a £20 35mm film. Norms are funny arn't they?
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As for chomatic aberration, it is a lens property and nothing at all to do with interaction between lens and media. It is harder to control as focal length gets shorter, that is all. Cheap short focus long range over compressed lenses will have aberration. Fact of life. Good quality lenses with limited zoom range and sufficient physical volume to give the designer freedom can have good correction. The highest quality Leitz 35mm lenses were all fixed focal length, but when Leitz started producing varifocal lenses it was an admission that lens design had moved on and new options were possible.
It's sad, because like many people I enjoyed the physical process of developing and printing, watching the 20 by 16s come up under the safelight. And for certain art purposes film may be around for a long time, though I guess almost entirely B&W. But let us not pretend that 35mm had huge reserves of quality that digital cannot match. It was, after all, invented as a cheap way of doing photography under difficult conditions. The little waterproof Pentax I now use for snapshots is the heir of the Leitz tradition, not the SLR.
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