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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."
Quite obvious. Digital SLR's are great for everybody. Versus 35mm film SLRs, the digital varients offer comperable performance, quality, backwards compatiblity with VERY EXPENSIVE lenses, and save the purchaser a fortune in film development costs. 35mm isn't dead, it just isn't as profitable as it once was.
Though it still blows me away. I mean you can get a fantastic 35mm film camera for less than 1/2 that of a digital. I don't know, maybe Nikon has a cheap D30 in the works or something, but barring that, the barrier to entry into the realm of SLR's is about to get a good deal more expensive.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
1) Film STILL offers better resolution, although this won't last for long. I believe its close to 22 megapixels, although this is not for sure.
2) Some photographers just love the grain of B&W developed on Tri-X or T-Max film, which doesn't use the C-41 process used for Walmart shit.
There are more, but it's been a long day...
Anyway, I've been using my Canon EOS 10s film camera for years and will continue doing so, mainly because it inculcates a whole new ethic -- you can just snap away and hit the delete button when you find something ugly. Film forces you to think in artistic terms BEFORE you click, and there's a definite cost associated with clicking the shutter release. I believe it makes better photographers.
Why do people still use vinyl? Don't kid yourself -- 35mm film is not the floppy disk. It's not going to die anytime soon.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
It's a tough choice: bring along extra batteries, or bring along extra rolls of film.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
The resolution ... of the digital medium have surpassed that of the 35mm format
This just isn't true. I've switched to digital as well, but the resolution of 35mm film is roughly 24 megapixels. This is still 3x the resolution of the best consumer digicams.
Moreover, Moore's Law does not apply to the sensors used in digital cameras because they are essentially A/D converters. It will be very difficult to increase their resolution much further without introducing unacceptably high levels of noise.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
We lament the loss of the camera that captures our memories to film, for these memories define our past, our sense of self and sense of friends and memories, and of better times. And as such feel like we are losing our past, these emotions captured into simple mylar strips. But surely it's more memories being recorded, distributed, shared with friends and family in remote locale, that should make us not rue the evolution of film to digital, but rather see that it's not the technique in which we store our faces, it's the breadth to which we may share them...
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
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 not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
Yes, 35mm is dying. But no digital camera can outperform my 4x5 large-format camera for the money. I get over 125 megapixels with a 2400dpi scan of a 4x5" peice of film. And this is with a cheap 2400dpi scanner. A 4000dpi drum scan blows everything away.
Do the math. 6-10 megapixel cameras can't make very large prints at 300dpi output. And some say that 300dpi isn't even good enough.
Moore's law doesn't apply to Bayer CMOS sensors either. And small sensors found in cheap digicams are diffraction-limited. You can't cheaply make a 4x5" sensor!
This leads me to believe that there will not be a decent, low-cost replacement for large format film in a LOONNG time.
While digital cameras may (and mostly are) replacing film in the consumer market, they still have a long ways to go before replacing film in all markets. Like it or not, digital still is a ways from matching the resolution of film, and there are still things that only film works well for.
Even beyond the "nostalgia" market, the other side is that film holds up better as a medium than digital. This isn't news. Remember that vinyl records are still around, and in many ways are still preferred as a medium by audiophiles and for long-term storage. I can still play an album from the 1950's, but will a disk with my photos on it still be readable in a decade? As I recall, we just had a nice long post about how long a CD-R or CD-R/W lasts.
Film isn't dead, it'll still have it's place.
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 $1300; I'd rather spend that on a lens.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I became a better photographer with a DSLR, since I can try out all the manual modes, and other fun stuff that SLRs offer, but without the expense of burning several rolls of film learning exactly what aperture and exposure do!
Don't pick up the pho*(@)$*@&@!@ NO CARRIER
While film isn't dead yet, 35 mm film most certainly is. While nothing can touch the resolution of medium format, or large format, in the 35 mm area, some new cameras really push the edge of 35 mm film resolution.
Specifically I'm talking about the Canon 5D - which I own. It is such a cool camera, and the pictures BLOW my mind. The camera is a full sized sensor - no more lens multiplication factor - and is 12 mega pixels. The native size is 4368x2912. By up-sampling it in the RAW conversion you can extract even more resolution and detail.
The big deal about this camera is that most DSLR cameras have a focal length multiplication factor. This means that beautiful "normal" lens becomes a short portrait lens. Good news if you shoot portraits, but bad news if you do scenes or landscape.
The best thing about the 5D is it has the resolution and sensor size of a Canon 1Ds Mk-II (what a name!), but the camera is much smaller and lighter. The price is also more reasonable for the 5D, while not "cheap", its accessible, and the price will only come down.
As a business decision, going digital can't be beat. The cameras cost a bit more, but you cna make that up in processing a few hundred rolls of film. Enlargements up to 8x10 are nearly indistiguishable. To a working pro, it is an easy move, assuming you get naything close to reasonable pixel count.
For a manufacturer, it is mor complicated, but much the same. The basic camera costs the same to make, but film camera sales are dropping. Digital is on the rise. Get out while the getting is good and save yourself running a production line at a loss.
The problem, as any good computer person should know, is Moore's Law as applied to camera sensors. Every 2 years or so they get a lot better. For a pro, it is a business move. Just buy a better camera every 2-3 years. For an amateur, its like buying a Pentium Pro and watching the P4s roll out. Yours works, but you lust after the best. 3MP - 6MP - 12MP+ But upgrading is $1000 ! Not an easy move to make, but doing it will dramatcally effect your picture quality (assuming you care about quality).
In the film camera world, it was easy to bypass most camera improvements. As long as the basic box was light tight, kept the film flat and the lens in focus, you were OK. Upgrades were at the lens or the film. Both of which were modular upgrades. It is common to see photographers with lenses stretching across decades. And of course film is as good as research can make it today. Not so with digital cameras. You are locked into the tech of the day you bought the camera. Some ROMs are upgradeable, but you won't be changing pixel count or fixing sensitivity issues that way. It is like buying a lifetime supply of film when you buy the camera. Cheaper, but you better love it.
Overall, the digital wave is a financial hit on the amateur and prosumer. A better medium exists, but it is economically unfeasable for a market that small. Going digital will lock these folks into something that is *almost* good enough, but will never be quite right. They have to ride the planned obsolescense train until Moor's Law takes them back to where they already are, at real film resolution, color, and contrast.
And This doesn't even address the problems of proprietary formats, memory, processing, etc.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
It seems to me that the lenses should be portable to DSLRs. Why are they dropping the lenses?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I think that digital cameras make better photographers.
Recently, I wanted to try out taking some different shots of a particularly beautiful sky at night. Not being a camera buff, I tried out a few settings on my Kodak DX490 on the spot and got the right results.
Another time I was at a Thai boxing show and I wanted to take some pictures of a friend while he was fighting. Because it was a digital camera, I could adjust the settings until I found something that worked in the situation.
In both situations, with a film camera, I wouldn't have got the desired results because I don't know enough about photography and I would never have been able to have those pictures. Isn't photography about pictures?
How many times have people left their family snaps in the camera, only to never process the film? How many time has someone thought, no I won't waste that frame of film because it costs $0.30 - I'll save it for something special? With digital cameras you can share the photos without losing the original, you can pass copies to your friends and family without incurring personal cost, or losing the negatives. You can photograph and record the mundane, which might turn out to be the most interesting shot to show your grandkids in 50 years time.
Have you noticed how some people throw away photographs anyway? Why print them out first?
Except Moore's law does not apply here in its original form. You still have to maintain pixel surface area to capture light. Barring something revolutionarry, I don't think we'll see much of an improvement over what's currently available on the high end.
Nikon is a lens manufacturer. They make bodies so that you'll have something to attach their lenses to. If no one wants to buy film bodies then there's no reason for Nikon to offer them.
See, that is bull shite. FYI there are digital camera backs out there for large format cameras that are just as good as large formate film. I'm not talking about any of the dSLR's we are talking about say for example "The Hasselblad H2D Digital Camera uses an advanced 22 Megapixel sensor that is more than twice the size of typical 35mm sensors. It provides higher resolution, less noise, seamless integration, and uses the same high performance HC lenses as the rest of the H System. It's $26,000. Or there is the Better Light Super 8K-HS Digital Scanning Back For 4x5 cameras. It cost $18,000 and creates 550 MB files.
San Francisco Photographers
Whoever moderated parent upward seems to be oblivious to the fact that pixels are not interpolated from discrete sets of four, and that the separate pixels
(a) do suffice to reproduce real color scenes damn well,
and
(b) are spatially distinct so they provide spatial resolution.
Parent is parroting Foveon propaganda.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Who needs film? I have in my possession a copy of the British Photographic Society Yearbook and Almanac from 1877. It contains details instructions on how to make dry glass plates. So even when film vanishes from the world, I'll still be making black-and-white images with my home-made, large-format camera.
Damn Nikon. Damn Kodak. Damn them all. They can't stop me having fun.
National Geographic photographers have shot with 35mm film almost exclusively until very recently, and their prints are regularly shown at up to 6 x 4 feet in the Natl. Geo. display galleries on their first floor. Maybe not quite "wall size" but that is pretty good.
Properly exposed, low-speed 35mm slide film holds resolution surprisingly well. The tough part is usually printing it, actually, because pretty much every printing process (analog or digital) enhances grain. But as it's possible to tell from a slide show (which de-emphasizes grain), there is a ton of resolving power in the good films.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
How many of the morons currently buying digicams will manage to keep their valuable once-in-a-lifetime snaps intact for more than a couple of years?
[Reformat, reformat...]
No sig today...
Ever seen how fast lab-processed snaps fade and colour shift in albums?
I'll take a good pigment-based, inkjet print on archival paper any day. Sure it's a bit more trouble....but then I can do it in the comfort of my own home office, without having to drive to a lab and without any delay. should I so choose.
As for keeping their "valuable once-in-a-lifetime" snaps intact for more than a few years, given the abysmal lack of photographic sensibility that most "morons" (to use our term) have, maybe this is a feature and not a bug?
On the plus side, the digital explosion has prompted the unwashed masses to take many more photos, and in many case, one can hope that more practice will lead to better photos, at least for some.
Chaeron Corporation
Lot of good stuff here but as a fine art and commercial photographer using both I'll let you know its all about the final product. I shoot all formats up to 4x5 and for me it comes down to what's convenient and what is going to work. The digital lets me work faster in the field and usually lets me get proofs to the client faster; it's also great in the studio to set up a shot I'll want to commit to 4x5. Some work simply lends itself to digital - weddings, sports, product stuff some portrait work. For the majority of the fine art work it's simply a choice - what do I feel like shooting today. I've made fine digital prints of 30 x 40 off a 4 megapixel G2 and a 6 megapixel 10D. I often go to 16x20 with 35mm - yeah it gets grainy but sometimes I like it like that. With digital I've shot a lot less 35mm film - but I also do all my own processing either way - film or digital. I love 4x5 prints - I love the tonal range and resolution. By the same I also have shown plenty of digital shots in galleries and seriously most of my buyers can't tell the difference between most film and digital the way I work it. That's the real point here - just a tool - I would be a far worse digital photographer if I didn't have an extensive background in the darkroom. It's the whole "what camera are you shooting" issue - great tools in the hands of an idiot still produce poor work ...