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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."
It was only going to be a matter of time before the only place you could buy a film camera was at a dedicated photography store.
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.
Dixons is seen as a dealer in electronics. If you wanted film technology, you would probably go somewhere else - perhaps where the staff know what "ASA" means?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
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.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
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.
The ways of gods are mysteriously indistinguishable from chance.
When I see people everywhere shooting digital point and shoot cameras I really wonder what they are doing with all the files. Are they burning them to CD? buying hard drives? I know this has been said a million times before, but what will be the equivalent of an old shoebox filled with family snapshots look like 50 years from now? I have a feeling when a lot of people want to take a look back at that trip to disneyland when they were a kid the images will either be gone or stored on a medium which is obsolete. I doubt most people shooting with digital cameras realize how fragile their images are without care over the long term. With today's emulsions you can put your slides in a sleeve, throw them in a dark drawer, and they will still look pretty good in a couple decades. Can you say the same for a memory stick or even a cd? Is their a business opportunity for digital banks which will provide longevity of digital information so people don't need to worry about it?
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?
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
I once bought something from Dixons. It was a pile of junk, so I returned it. My conversation with the chavette at the checkout went something like this:
Me: "I'd like to return this item, please."
Her: "Why?"
Me: "It's of substandard quality."
Her: "You didn't need it. Have you opened it?"
Me: "Yes."
Her: "You said no."
The girl was clearly too lazy to process the return properly, so she just filed it as an unwanted, unopened item. Fantastic.
-Stephen
Although it seems that Dixon pulling out of the 35 mm market doesn't seem that significant but if other retailers start to follow suit then I can see that 35 mm camera (esp. SLR) will rise in price. Ok Digital prices will drop but for pro photographers and amateurs who still like use 35mm format they will be the losers as they have to pay the extra price. Ok a lot of pro photograpers (magazine and newspapers) use use digital because its easiar and quicker to get into print. However for the more artistically minded 35 mm is better. Have you ever tried to use a wide angle lens on digital the focal length multiplier really screws things up. For example on cannon I think the multiplier is 1.6 great for zoom but tribble for wide angle unless you buy a 10 mm lens!! As a some one that records music its now becoming more expensive to record analogue tracks its really hard to get hold of tapes for my 8track. I know that digital eventually can cope with the requirements but why take samples of the real thing! Have you tried to do distortion in digital its horrible!
Its a British thing. If someone is talking to you we can't walk away. We just smile politely whilst plotting to kill (or hoping a that someone/thing will do it for us) them in our heads. Same with telephone calls. My girlfriend thought I was mad when I just hung up on someone trying to sell me double glazing. Its so bad, that we have radio shows (Radio 1) with bits dedicated to seeing how long people will put up with people talking to them on the phone. Try it! Phone a Brit and, provided you stay polite, see how long they will stay on the phone even if you don't say anything at all.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
The automobile replaces the horseless carriage.
Pocket calculators replace adding machines.
Electronic spreadsheets replace accountant's ledger.
Pointless drivel replaces meaningful articles on Slashdot.
I must be partially British. I hate hanging up on Sales People too. So I just put them on hold.
..."
"Can you hold half a minute?"
"Sure
Natch, I just set the phone down and walk away.
"Teachers leave us kids alone
Its a British thing. If someone is talking to you we can't walk away.
It's not just a british thing, lol.
I just got that crap at CompUSA... problem is it's hard to walk way when you are trying to buy something and they have not taken your money yet.
Note this is for a power supply with a 5 year warranty marked clearly on the box.
Cashier: "how about the 3 year extended warranty... bla bla bla bla will cover mishandeling bla bla bla".
Me: "No i'm pretty happy with the 5 year warranty offered on the box."
Cashier: "Oh but that doesn't cover mishandling or bent pins".
[akward pause as I try to think to my self if there are really any pins on a power supply that can bend easily]
Me: [Glairing, leaning forward] "Well then I just won't mishandle it." [still thinking to my self how can one mishandle something that is a very tough metal box].
What's worse is buying ram in those places.
Me: "No i'm pretty happy with a lifetime warranty".
Cashier: "but that doesn't cover mishandeling"
Me: "I'm a dangerious man... i live on the edge.. i'll take the risk that I will not mishandle this stick of memory, ha ha ha ha".
Ording online is your friend.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
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.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Its a British thing. If someone is talking to you we can't walk away. We just smile politely
A bit offtopic, but does this apply to British women? Just.. um.. a purely theoretical interest in psychology.
"Whoa, this chick is so cool! I've been talking about Linux distros for an hour now and she's still smiling!"
smile politely whilst plotting to kill (or hoping a that someone/thing will do it for us) them in our heads.
Oh. Nevermind.
It's worth bearing in mind that "photographers" are not a homogeneous mass.
For example, someone producing portraits to be blown up to large size on high-quality media might be unhappy with the fact that digital still isn't as good as (e.g.) medium/large format film.
On the other hand, photographers at a football (soccer) match- in the UK at least- have favoured digital (to the best of my knowledge) for quite a few years now; even though until recently, it was far more expensive and lower in quality than the equivalent film cameras. Why?
Simple; newspaper publishers want the paper (containing photos and reports of the match) to be on sale outside the stadia by the time the match is finished and the fans are hitting the streets again. A football match is 90 minutes long with 15 minutes at half time. You can see that this is going to be logistically difficult if you're using film.
In fact, I doubt it's trivial even if you're using digital, but that at least gives you some much-needed flexibility; as much in the transmission of pictures as in their production. I would assume that doing it this way allows pictures to be taken some way into the second half of the match, transmitted, and dropped into the layout digitally, still leaving time for the printing and delivery.
Nowadays, most photographs taken on a professional Digital SLR will look as good as ones taken on a film camera when printed at normal size on low-quality newsprint; so frankly, cost and minor quality issues are far less important than the convenience of digital.
As I said, two quite different photographic styles; or rather, businesses.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
It's going to be everywhere except in your hands. Vinyls aren't dead, at all, skratch artists almost can't do without them, I own Final Skratch from Stanton and despite all the phoney claims it doesn't hold its own against a real vinyl, even if it comes really really close, and until some technology comes along that truly make the vinyl obsolete we'll see tons of them under dj's hands.
;) ) probably until digital has more resolution than 35mm films (around 22megapixels it seems).
35mm pictures will be everywhere, in magazine, large displays and so on but all the while consummers won't be able to procure the films and material to themselves easily.
Lets face it, for consummers digital is way more convenient, not better, convenient. If digital was better marketing wouldn't compare it to analog they would simply show it. Digital technologies have never been strong because they were good, they always caught up because they were convenient but professionnal will drop convenience really fast if it can produce better results. Think high end studio recording, we stuck to analog reels for very long until digital finally became so good that we could embrace its convenience but not at the expense of quality, not even 5 years ago spliccing was still common in studio. Therefore I don't think 35mm is dying, as much as vinyls aren't dead, they're just hidden from "normal people"(
Thats terrible, have some fun with it at least. A salesmen once called me while i was putting some new towel bars up in my bathroom, so i had a cordless drill out. I was in a strange mood, and instead of hanging up the phone, i just let the drill whirr at her...it took her almost 2 minutes of this before she hung up. She was terribly, terribly confused.
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
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.
If she finds those tasks confusing, perhaps you could put together a couple of cheat sheets for her - complete with pictures of the connectors, screen shots, etc. - so she doesn't have to struggle. I imagine both of them (girlfriend, mother) would appreciate it. It sounds like your dad could use something like that, too.
Like many
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
LPs were "killed" by CDs, yet enthusiats and some DJs are still using them for various properties - including superior sound - that the CD don't hold.
Uh, the only people I know that use LPs are the same kinds of folks who buy $70 monster fiber optic cables and $1000 harmonically-aligned speaker stands. For some folks their wallets are just that much bigger than their sales-resistance. And, it always feels nice to be one of only 100 people in the country who knows that all the PhD engineers out there are wrong.
Film will just be the new LP for a while, and pretty soon the big market will be for $1000 archival-quality, radiation-proof, chromatically-aligned, and otherwise buzzward-compliant film-canisters to carry it around in.
Sure, film is cheaper to scale up (but how many people are shooting medium format outside of the professional photo community?). However, my understanding is that even medium-format is starting to get competition from ultra-high-res sensors that are themselves getting much larger.
It is just simple physics. If you capture more dpi in a CCD than you have grain-per-inch on film (or whatever the stat is called), then you can reproduce the image onto any media you want digitally, no matter what the guy wearing crystals and magnets says. In almost every area of science CCDs have replaced film for precisely this reason. It is just recent news that they've gotten cheap enough for consumers to afford. When was the last time somebody used film in a telescope, autoradiograph, or X-Ray crystallography experiment? (Granted, the latter two are tending to use image-plate technology which have many of the benefits of CCDs but are cheaper. They are still digitally scanned.)
Nothing wrong with film, and I'm sure it will always have some uses. However, except for a few niche areas most of those uses will be by the same sort who currently use LPs...
They basically rely on morons walking into their catchy shops and buying something. The reason they're successful is because morons vastly outnumber informed consumers.
...and it's rarely more plentiful than in the Dixons customer demographics. Sad, but true.
Or, as my dearly missed Uncle Frank of Zappa fame once said:
"The most plentiful element in the universe is stupidity"
John
See the Telephone Preference Service for great justice.
The technology was flawed. The main problem is getting the CCD in the right position, all cameras are created different with slightly positions of the frame. Film can handle this by its very nature, however it proved too difficult to create a generic digital system for every type of camera. The second problem is coupling the device to the film winder and getting the camera to recognise it, especially when there are cases like my camera where the film is wound on first and then wound into the canister as each shot is taken.
Unfortunately, this is a great idea but is largely impossible due to the amount of variables.. I think a lot of camera companies would have decided that the cost is just not worth it, better to build a DSLR from scratch than to try and shoehorn it into an 'old' body.
35mm film cameras outsold Wet Plate Photography kits by a ratio of over 1,000,000:1
The moral: If you don't feel digital cameras are as high a quality as film cameras, you really have to admit they come pretty close and will only get better. Even if they are not-quite-as-good-yet the extra flexibility and convenience more than makes up for it.
Progress marches on. Quit bitchin'.
=Smidge=
I recently purchased a very nice film SLR for 150 bucks new, because I wanted an SLR but was unwilling to pony up the equivelant of my monthly mortgage for one.
:-)
I own a decent digital, as well, so I have come to know both breeds.
I hate the digital. I hate its crappy, battery-sucking LCD viewfinder that is useless in bright sunlight. I hate its shutter lag that assures I always miss the shot. I hate its habit of saving power by shutting off every two minutes , assuring that I am still rebooting my camera whenever the next photo op occurs. I hate the fact that I need to carry twice my weight in batteries to every major event. I hate burrowing through menus using only two tiny buttons whose functions change at the whim of the camera's software developer in order to change simple camera settings.
I LIKE my film camera. I like that it only cost me 150 bucks, so if I lose or break it, I won't be suicidal. I like that it has a clearly marked button or dial for everything I want to do, so that I can change settings with ease. I like that I can change film stocks when I want different results. I like that when I depress the shutter, it takes a picture RIGHT NOW, instead of later. I like that I can forget and leave it on, and my battery will still be good for weeks.
I even kind've like waiting for my film to be developed (even if it's as long as a whole hour). Until that moment, EVERY picture I take is a potential pulizter prize winner
To bring them into the digital realm, I just have them dropped on Kodak CD's, which are high-res, cheaper than prints and look much better
than scans of prints. I figure it is a small price to pay for actually getting the shots I want, and it's handy to have the stuff already archived on CD.
Above all, I like being secure in the knowledge that ten years from now, my camera will still be working. I don't feel that secure with my digital, which will probably be a doorstop in a few years.
The only benefits I see to digitals are increased picture capacity, the ability to review your photos on the spot and the means to make your own porn (the internet gets all the credit for the porn explosion in this country, but I think that people forget that a lot of porn sites owe their existence to a bunch of horny people who didn't have to sneak into a photo lab at night to build their websites).
My take, anyway. Your mileage may vary. But I see a lot of money being spent these days on stuff that is more promises of a better world than a truly better one. Ten years ago, a 17 inch CRT monitor cost me 500 bucks. However, thanks to the magic of modern technology, I can now purchase a far less durable 17 inch monitor that can only be viewed from one angle for....drumroll...500 bucks! But, hey, they're lighter, right?
Somewhere along the way, people stopped selling BETTER ideas, and just starting selling NEW ones. There is a difference...
Even with shutter lag, even with battery issues, even with the damn thing turning off at just the wrong moment, I switched to digital 5 years ago, and haven't looked back. In a couple of years, I might buy myself a nice digital SLR to resolve some of those problems, but in the mean time, my little Canon will do fine.
Why do I agree with all of your points and disagree with your position? The tipping point is the medium. The cost of good quality film, the cost of developing, the time it takes, and the likelihood that the film is going to sit on a shelf waiting for me to bring it to the developer is just enough for me to have to think about whether or not I really want to take that picture when it comes up.
With digital, I don't even think about it any more. Once you've gotten over the barrier to entry, the marginal cost per picture is essentially zero. I went to Belize with a 1MB card and pretty much filled it up with pretty fish pictures. A lot of them were not so pretty. If I had been using an underwater film camera, I would have had to either be sparing with my pictures or climb onto the boat every few minutes, dry off the camera, open it, change the film, re-oil the seals, close it up, and go back down.
With my digital in its case, I could just keep snapping and snapping. It did not matter that some of the pictures were bad. I could just throw them away.
For me, I guess its that I am sort of a shotgun photographer. I take a lot of pictures and find the good one, rather than waiting for the perfect one and grabbing it right then. It may not be the afficianado's way, but if it takes me 500 shots to get that one picture of a lobster defending its home, or a shark slumbering under a patch of coral, It's worth it to me.
I do miss long hours in the darkroom developing my own b/w pictures, but that, too, was an expensive habit, and while there's no digital replacement for the smell of the fixative, well, I have to admit that the end result I get with photoshop is a lot better than anything I was able to do in the darkroom.
So Ansel Adams I'm not. But us average joes need digital in order to churn out a good number of great pictures.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Oh, film cameras have more advantages than that.
1. Very wide exposure latitude. You can mis-expose a shot and it will almost always be salvageable later. With digital, if the shot is even slightly mis-exposed you lose highlights or shadow detail permanently.
2. Cheap media. If you're going to Tibet for the trip of a lifetime and plan on taking a few hundred shots, it's much cheaper to take 'em on film.
3. Automatic backups. Once you get your prints, you still have the negatives.
4. Cheaper cameras. A 35mm SLR that'll give better quality than any one hour photo lab can make use of, can be had for under $200. For digital, you're looking at $400+ for a comparable quality of image, $800+ if you want an SLR.
That said, I'm almost entirely digital now... Just waiting for an affordable SLR with a full-frame sensor...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I used to work at a camera store while in college. We'd have people come in all the time looking for a digital camera, even though they had no idea what "digital" meant. But they definitely wanted it, whatever it was. Then came the obligatory "so, where does the film go?" followed by "do I have to have a computer?"
The figures that report that digital cameras are dramatically outselling film cameras don't necessarily mean that consumers on the whole prefer digital. It just means that people are purchasing a lot of digital cameras.
See, in the digital market, people are constantly buying new cameras because of the increase in resolution. Buying a new film camera won't really get you that, so there's not much need to constantly replace your trusty 35mm camera.
People with lots of disposable income buy digital cameras like they would buy an ipod or a any other "gadget" - not necessarily for functionality, but more for the "coolness" factor. Normally, these people wouldn't be in the market for a new camera, but digital is "in," so they buy one.