Will film ever come back?

[skieur]

Yes, film is dead and gone or shortly will be. Digital will improve with better processors, more dynamic colour range and steadily higher resolution. OLEDs will drastically improve camera viewfinders and other screens and printing technology will also get better.

skieur

 

[BAB]

Short answer... no. Long answer, digital is here to stay and will become increasingly more and more prevalent. Having said that film will be around for years, albeit increasingly less available options. Surely at some point, it will go away altogether, or at least, cease to be produced.

 

[mysteryscribe]

I have said this a hundred times.... It's not an artistic decission, it is a purely economic one. As long as it is profitable for some small company to make film somewhere in the world, there will be film.

When the day comes that it is no longer feasible, then film will be gone. I don't expect the day to come for years but then I thought digital was a fad at the very first of it.

By the way there will be something to replace digital one day as well and possibly sooner than you think. Some one is working in the dark somewhere on something new. It is the nature of the beast we ride and always has been.

 

[blackdoglab]

Yes, film is dead and gone or shortly will be. Digital will improve with better processors, more dynamic colour range and steadily higher resolution. OLEDs will drastically improve camera viewfinders and other screens and printing technology will also get better.

skieur

So, if film is dead, then why can I find it at any grocery store and drug store? Why do companies like Adorama, B&H, and Freestyle still carry it in profusion? Why have companies like Kodak, Fuji, Ilford, Foma, Efke, Forte, and Lucky publicly announced that they are committed to film?

Skiuer, are you the kind of person who can only see a nikon dslr as the only possible option? Were you convinced by their silly d40 ad (which was shot on film by the way)? I'm sorry, but your statement shows an ignorance and contempt that boggles my mind. Digital is here to stay, but IT IS ONLY A TOOL! Some of us actually prefer the look of film over digital and we are not as small a group as you would think.

Sorry for that rant. Whenever I hear stuff like that I feel like hitting them with a crown graphic. Digital and film can and do get along when you want them too and when you see them as tools. Folks like Mysteryscribe have a good head on their shoulders and can utilize both worlds. That's the way it ought to be.

 

[Alex_B]

film will be around as long as people want to shoot film and are willing to pay for it ... people still ride horses even though we have cars these days ...

 

[mysteryscribe]

Never never say I have a good head on my shoulders, do you want to be banned...

 

[blackdoglab]

simmer down there buddy. I just needed a chance to rant and one of yer posts had the right idea.

 

[Rusty_Tripod]

Film will probably remain as an artistic medium. It also has some archival qualities to it. Once people recognize that their digital images may have a short lifespan due to ever increasing technologies and changes, some might return to it.

Right now people are clinging to digital because it so darned easy to make wonderful pictures. I consider digital images as fugitive as they can be gone in a heartbeat. (I have heard too many stories of cameras and memory cards that died at an inopportune moment.)

Articles that I have read are already suggesting that materials being used to print digital images are less stable than film. As with the VCR giving way to the DVD player, storage mediums may not be able to recover images stored in earlier formats. Example. At school, previous gradebooks are saved (by law), but they are saved on 3 1/4 floppies. Our new computers have CD and DVD drives but no floppy drives for discs.

Film will likely remain albeit lmited and controlled by cost factors.

A final factor in choosing film over digital is that it can be difficult to view digital images as trustworthy, or without manipulation. I would believe that a solid film negative and its pursuant image would prevail over a digital inage in a court setting.

Rusty Tripod

 

[mysteryscribe]

I just got a back up camera I bought on ebay today. It is a minolta 7000 auto focus since my eyes are not good i needed a second autofocus for low light places.... This camera seems at first test to be absolutely perfect. I was surprised to see that it came with a perfect 35-80 minolta zoom lens. It's perfect for me anyway.


Now please say film is dead a lot louder this gem was 25 bucks shipping included.... Please keep it up and I will toss these minoltas and buy nikon film for ten bucks each. I just love it.

ps my high resolution 189 buck film scanner came in and after I got the software problems resolved it works great. The images with the combination should be better than anything I shot ten years ago when I was in business. Thanks again guys.

 

[motcon]

i wish this thread were dead. the revival of it took the wind from me.

 

[JamesD]

Motion to lock. Second?

 

[mysteryscribe]

Oh come on guys, see the humor in it. Let's not be as bad as the guy who took it personal when I said. "Layers were for cakes."

 

[Hertz van Rental]

I wonder if people had the discussion "will the Daguerrotype ever come back?" after Fox-Talbot published? I doubt it. It was a move forward. And there may well come a time when people ask if Digital will make a comeback.
Film photography will never go away but it will now forever be relegated to 'Alternative Techniques'.

 

[mysteryscribe]

I sorta agree with Hertz here for a change. Film will never be what it was, since it was the only source of photography for a good while.

Digital photography will give way to a newer tecnology in a few years. If it lasts as long as film I will be shocked. Film as we know it isn't as old as photography. I expect 'film' as in the thin film of chemicals on the plate goes back farther than we think when we commonly say film.

Photography is ever changing, but it is also accomodating as well. As long as they make film, and i have my little scanner I can use film. I am fortunate to be in this bridge moment in photography. It will be more usable than say the old glass plate camera, at least for a while. One day if I live, even I would find that film was just too much touble. Fortunately I think film in sufficient amounts will be around longer than I.

As I say over and over, if I was a working professional photographer I would shoot digital without a doubt, but I would also realize it's likely demise as well. There will be a new and better technology on the horizon anyday now. I wonder if digital will ever be an alternative style of photography.

Every technology tends to dummy down the previous version, as the club gets larger. I suppose old time photographers forever say that and it is more and more true with every advance. If I give a chimp a camera and enough memory cards he will eventually produce forty acceptable images out of ten thousand. If the chimp handler can change the cards for him that is.

God I am just asking to be assaulted.

 

[blackdoglab]

With a few dissenting voices, I think we've come to the conclusion that film is here to stay regardless of where digital is headed. The more I get into film, the more I've seen that it has infinite and bottonless possibilities, especially in regard to black and white.

I was on vacation this past weekend, and every convience store, and almost every gift shop had Kodak Gold 200 and 400 iso. So while film sales have been down, there is no need to write an obituary. For the most part, the few people who rally against film and preach it's death prove to be somewhat short sighted. Technology is changing so quickly that your cd files could go the way of Univac in fifty years.

One impression that I've gained is that technology ony surpasses itself in it's own territory. In other words, Univac gave way to transistor based computers which then gave way to microchip based systems. Even in the microchip catagory there have been many innovations that have replaced the old. However, we still have good old paper and pencil. Typewriters and word processors still can't replace such a simple thing because they are in two different catagories. Likewise the car didn't replace the bicycle but did supercede the horse and buggy for the general public. In other words your digital camera may become redundant in a few years because a better technology may come along. Likewise, i don't see too many folks using the deguarrotype process these days. Once again, they are two different technologies that occasionally crossover but have the same blood relationship that I have to Atilla the Hun.

In general, I have found most digital folks to be knowledgable, objective, and general. They recognize that it's just a tool with different (but not inherently better) possibilities or uses. It is only a few folks that have pronounced the death of film (they're the kind that you wanna hit over the head with a Crown Graphic, a scanner, or any other heavy photographic device)