The Future of Film Photography

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viridari said:
My totally baseless predictions:

* E-6 will die of attrition.
* C-41 emulsions will drop off one by one
* The motion picture industry will experience a radical shift in favor of digital. After a few years of rapidly shrinking revenue in that market, the existing still photo market won't be able to pick up the slack.
* Kodak & Fuji then get out of film entirely. Color first, then B&W.
* Ilford/Harman becomes the big dog on the block. Other than introducing Delta 25, don't expect anything more than incremental improvements in existing emulsions, or existing emulsions being offered in formats not currently available.
* Other boutique film manufacturers thrive in a niche market no longer dominated by Kodak & Fuji. There will be a huge bump in their figures once Tri-X is gone.
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Perfectly said! :)
This is the more important point, ususally overlooked:

* The motion picture industry will experience a radical shift in favor of digital. After a few years of rapidly shrinking revenue in that market, the existing still photo market won't be able to pick up the slack.
 
Utter Rubbish

Utter Rubbish

"If we set aside the question of the medium that actually records the image, the market has clearly told us that people want highly automated cameras. For several reasons, film cameras that provide that level of automation are rather scarce, even on the used market."

You can't just set it aside. It's the point of the whole debate. And when you say "people" I presume you mean some people, or even most people. But to say just "people" you include me and many others and you would be just plain wrong.

"If someone is motivated to buy a non-P&S film camera, they are almost certainly also buying into manual focus, manual aperture setting, manual ISO adjustment, etc., etc. Contrary to preferences around here, most folks will be put off by that prospect. The "mains power" angle is a non-issue. If the power goes off, we all have other things to worry about."

The mains power requirement may be a "non-issue" for you, and many people like you, but for someone who spends most of their working life in places that have never had mains power it's a fairly important issue.

"Issues of dynamic range, tone curve, etc., are invisible to the people who drive the camera market. Even if a given brand of film, in a given film camera, might be shown to deliver better dynamic range or better tone, that's a comparison that the overwhelming number of people who buy cameras have no reason to make, much less understand."

The people who drive the camera market are hardly my concern. They want things like face detection and one-touch posting to facebook. Dynamic range and a proper tone curve are important to me because my process allows me to exploit these properties to the full.

"People like digital camera because they are automated and because you do not have to wait and/or pay someone to develop the film."

There's that word "people" again. I take it you mean some people, or most people, but please don't include me in your argument.

"Convenience, speed, and ease of use trumps everything else."

To you, and many people like you, maybe. But there are actually some people who can see through the marketing hype and make decisions for themselves.

Convenient: my MPs are always ready to go. Their batteries weigh effectively nothing and I never have to wonder if I charged them enough.

Speed and ease of use: I can use my MPs faster than I can use any digital camera. Once I set a suitable shutter speed I have two other controls; aperture and focus. That's it. No white balance, etc, etc, etc.

Did you notice I used the pronoun "I"? That's because I only speak for myself, not all people. I am getting sick of the fundamentalist digital lies. I really don't care what camera or medium you chose to photograph your cats, brick walls or facebook "friends", but when you actively try to destroy an industry that I use for my work, you can expect to be challenged.
 
Oh, the drama.

Now, let's talk about how I'm going to be without my M2 for god knows how long. I'll have to use the M8 to shoot my cats, brick walls and Facebook friends.
 
No one outside of photogroups gives a sh1t about how an image was made. Good frames will win out over time. How they're made is immaterial. The same gnashing of teeth happened when art photography went from the gum print to the silver print ("Oh, without the hand of the artist involved in each print, the photograph will become a soulless bit of repromedia, utterly devoid of art!!!").

All this has happened before, all this will happen again. Talent, hard work and dedication will win the day in the end. Resting on your laurels only gets you fired.
 
maggieo said:
I just want to know where I can buy the enlarger that doesn't need "mains power."
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I heard of a darkroom in some obscure corner of Texas that used a solar collector and piped the light down into the enlarger head. I also understand proved to be rather hot in there in the summer.
 
Finder said:
I heard of a darkroom in some obscure corner of Texas that used a solar collector and piped the light down into the enlarger head. I also understand proved to be rather hot in there in the summer.
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That's right next to that there solar-powered perpetual motion machine, I reckon. There's one hell of a waiting list for that...;)
 
maggieo said:
No one outside of photogroups gives a sh1t about how an image was made. Good frames will win out over time. How they're made is immaterial. The same gnashing of teeth happened when art photography went from the gum print to the silver print ("Oh, without the hand of the artist involved in each print, the photograph will become a soulless bit of repromedia, utterly devoid of art!!!").

All this has happened before, all this will happen again. Talent, hard work and dedication will win the day in the end. Resting on your laurels only gets you fired.
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It is just a pity artists get paid next to nothing already.
 
maggieo said:
No one outside of photogroups gives a sh1t about how an image was made.
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Not what I am finding, I did two surveys of people at events with an average age group of 15-28 and most cared if it was "photoshopped" or not before they would consider buying a print of it. Many young people thought the the faked out, HDR photoshop oozing garbage was worse than a cliche and when they see a photograph, they still want to believe it is what the photographer saw in front of him, not something invented on a computer.

In short, people who are not photo enthusiasts care and spend well on actual photographs, not garbage in, garbage out computer prints. I just did a 3 day ad campaign with a young ad agency, one of the creatives said that three of their regular shooters who do work for them have gone to traditional printing to set them selves apart and are doing very, very well with it.

That is what I am doing and it is working great for me too. But honestly, the more I hear about sickening stuff like this, the more I realize that if I can not shoot and print film in my career, then after 35 years, I will stop taking photos period because every single day, I want less and less to do with the talentless digital sh_t show, it's total garbage at this point.

The hype, the fake, the forums and the computer images, it is really starting to make me F___ing SICK!
 
NickTrop said:
- Film will live on as far as the eye can see in larger formats - medium format, large format. Wet printing, however, is a bigger threat. Paper manufacturers are disappearing.
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Ilford is doing very well with it's product line and many of us who depend on them for the tools for our craft have already told them in person that if prices were double, we would still support them. So they are not going to cut their paper line and keep the film around. If they were to do that, then far less people would buy the film.

So even if it comes down to there only being a few different types of paper left, I and many of us who are actual artists will be fine since we tend to use one or two papers at most anyway, get to know them in our sleep and put out great work.

I have to say, I am pretty much fed up with what has happened to the photography world on the internet, it is mostly garbage at this point and is very depressing for a guy like me who's life depends on making images, using film and doing REAL photography.

I want nothing to do with any of this anymore, I am going more than make it, I am going to be one of the ones who continues to make a living in photography and make better and better REAL images, not this photoshop computer cr@p.

I have absolutely had it with this, I am logging out of these sites and will never be back again.

If you want to see or talk to me, come out to Aspen Colorado and ask for Daniel Bayer, I am very well known and respected out here. If you want to see my work, buy the god dammed books when they come out.

A coffee table book about the 75th and final year of Kodachrome: "Color it Rains".

A coffee table book about the Black Canyon of the Gunnison: "Deep Black Earth".

I bid this and all other forums farewell with these two images, one from each book project, both on film.

Good bye and honestly, GOOD LUCK!
 

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You know KM-25, I remember the same sort of stuff being said about Jerry Uelsmann and his darkroom composites. Again, it's the image, not how it was made.

If it's a bunch of bullsh1t composited together, be it in Photoshop or in a darkroom, people will call BS on it. And if it's a true and genuine image, like this one, for instance, it will move and inspire people.

If you can't roll with the changes, then yes, it's time for you to "stop taking photos period" and put you and your sense of entitlement out to pasture and let those folks who are willing to do the work do it. The " faked out, HDR photoshop oozing garbage" is just that- garbage. People don't want to see garbage. But that doesn't mean that they give a rat's as$ about how that garbage was made. You're confusing bad output with process. The audience doesn't care about process; it cares about results. They sure as hell don't care about your sense of entitlement.

Honestly, sometimes this moronic "film vs. digital" so-called "debate" sounds like a bunch of courtroom sketch artists bitching about that goddamn Leica in the courtroom or a bunch of buggy whipmakers complaining about Herr Benz and Daimler's new product.

Change is always going to come. You can adapt or die. Me, I'm not one for dying. You can go digital or you can work your a$s off and find a new way to make film pay off, but bitching about how unfair the world is will get you nothing but a pat on the head from some poor sap who pities you. Pity don't pay no bills.
 
The first chapter of the 1938 Leica manual (a chapter by Manuel Komroff entitled "The Leica Comes of Age") is a fascinating read.
It talks about the demise of he salon print and that the Leica and the film used within it have made photography a modern medium.

Here is a quote:
"How is one to account for the rapid decline and death of a whole school of photography, a school that held sway for so long and during the most important time in the development of photography? Was it killed from the outside or was it poisoned from the inside? What were the main factors that led to so definite a revolt?"

Does that sound familiar to anyone who reads about the sift to digital photography today?

Eric
 
Journeyman said:
I am getting sick of the fundamentalist digital lies. I really don't care what camera or medium you chose to photograph your cats, brick walls or facebook "friends", but when you actively try to destroy an industry that I use for my work, you can expect to be challenged.
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The only way someone can find "lies" in my comment is by engaging in a bit of sophistry about the meaning of the word "people".

I use film cameras and process film at my kitchen sink. The only digital I own is a little Ricoh I haven't used since last summer. I do not photograph cats, brick walls, or Facebook friends, not that there is anything wrong with that.

The so-called debate about film versus digital is a debate that the market has left behind. The people who drive the camera market, i.e., the vast majority of people who buy cameras, buy digital camera for all the reasons I mentioned. The precise contributions either medium makes to the final image are not important to them. To debate film's future commercial viability without considering the viability of the film camera market is foolish.

I'm not out to destroy an industry, nor am I out to change the way you work. But you must recognize that you are now an anomaly, as am I and everyone else here who chooses film. The market has chosen digital because the market wants the features and capabilities digital cameras deliver. The medium inside the camera that records the image is not what sells cameras.
 
I think digital currently is for

- the photo-professional, for whom time is money, and
- for the private photo consumer, to whom pictures have not much value.

The professional can afford expensive cameras and expensive digital storage solutions that are reasonably safe and all the cost related with that. The private snap-shooter buys an el-cheapo digicam and will eventually lose some or all of his pictures on a broken harddisk.

All others (that means us enthusiastic hobbyists) are better off with film, and I think this will stay so for quite a while.

Unless you belong to the but-I-need-it-NOW type.
 
Why do these questions invariably mutate into the Film versus Digital debate?
And why would person in one camp care about what those in the other camp are doing if it doesn't directly affect them anyway?
I'm a film guy and am the only one of my photobuds still doing so, but it doesn't affect me because the film I use and processing is still available, so for now, it's immaterial what they do.
I'll continue to use film as long as it and its processing are available, and if or when it disappears, then either I'll stop photographing, or go Digital and keep on going.
It's not Rocket Science, and nothing I worry about.
 
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