35mm - One Step Closer to the End

Anonymous Coward writes "A colleague of mine just pointed out that Nikon UK has posted a press release here indicating that they are all but ending production of their 35mm film cameras, medium- and large-format lenses and enlarging equipment. The F6 35mm SLR will remain in production and be available in Europe and America, and the all-mechanical FM10 will be available outside of Europe. A handful of manual lenses will remain in production as well. Film in general isn't going away any time soon as digital cameras cannot replace medium and large format cameras, but this is clear evidence that the resolution and popularity of the digital medium have surpassed that of the 35mm format. 35mm took another step into the grave."

Comments

I went back to film

[Deep Fried Geekboy]

I recently sold my (mind buggeringly expensive) Canon 1Ds and went back to all-manual film cameras. Not 35mm, though. In larger formats film still has huge advantages over digital in terms of quality and enlargability. The lack of battery dependence is also incredibly liberating. It is horribly expensive though. With the exception of my Panasonic LX1 digi, I now don't own a camera which isn't completely manual... a Linhof 4x5, a pair of Fuji 6x9 rangefinders, a Rollei SL66, a Noblex 6x12 and a Leica M4-P. The Leica is the only one that doesn't get used on a weekly basis... but the last time we had a huge power outage I was enormously grateful for it.

Pix here, here and here if anyone's interested.

I'm surprised

[AFCArchvile]

Nikon's the company that held onto its lens mount for all these years, and Canon seemed to be the more prominent one in the digital field (or at least more prominently marketing in the northeast US, with all the Digital Rebel commercials, and all the press/sports photogs with a Canon EOS 1D and some kind of big L-Glass lens). I would've expected Canon to throw in the towel on film camera production, but Nikon? The company that was (perhaps up to this point) still manufacturing the FM3A manual camera as new?

Yes, digital is faster, and the wave of the future, etc., etc., but there are some areas where film cameras still have an edge. In particular, range of sensitivity: you can load ISO 50 slide film, or ISO 1600 negative film (but of course it's a bit grainier as you go up in ISO). Battery life is much better, especially if it's a manual-drive camera; IMO there's nothing more annoying than your camera dying after its eighth picture of the day. And each frame uses a brand new area of film, instead of the same CCD sensor over and over again. Once a pixel goes out, it's either time to live with that dead pixel, or an expensive shipment to get it serviced.

This is a bit of a disappointment, since one of the big two players is deciding to bow out. There's still Canon, Pentax, Leica (at their price, you're better off getting a medium format kit), among others. Olympus backed out of film a while ago. There's still plenty of film being manufactured (though there seems to be rumors of Kodak stopping production soon; I use Fuji, so I don't mind that much), and there's still decent 35mm film scanners that cost less than a digital SLR body alone. And of course there's the search for a decent and inexpensive E-6 film lab in the US (E-6 is the slide film process; the drugstores and chain camera stores almost always handle only C-41, which is negative film).

My favorite has to be shooting with Velvia slide film. My friends all say "Slides? Didn't those go out in the 70's?" Then I show them the 4000 dpi scan that I took of the slide, and the 20 x 30 print made from the slide. Yes, digital could do it too, but the body alone would've been above $1300; I'd rather spend that on a lens.