FID: Canon Stops Development of Film Cameras

[bmattock]

I remember an 80's ska tune-

"Enjoy Yourself, It's later than you think." Was it the Specials?

Anyway, I think it expresses how I'm feeling about film. Use it and enjoy it while it's here.

"Hello, I'm Terry, and I'm going to enjoy myself first." Yes, I remember it. I spent a lot of time skanking back in the day. And yes, it is The Specials.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[Jerevan]

Cool! That's a good song. Fits right in. Now I gotta play it, too! 😀

 

[amateriat]

I don't see what the kerfuffle here is about.

Prior to the introduction of the Canon AE-1, the photography industry was one of generally predictable progress, with emphasis on engineering and finish. Also, since the yen was pretty cheap in relation to the dollar, products didn't have to be nickel-and-dimed to mediocrity to make a buck for the companies making them (unrelated example: the Hitachi stereo receiver in our livingroom is a nice example of mid/late 1970s mainstream audio gear: not even top-of-the-line, it actually replaced a much-newer but badly ailing JVC receiver that had far more bells n' whistles – including remote control. The Hitachi sounds better to me, as well). Product life cycles were a lot longer, too, which had direct bearing on the amount of effort out into a particular product.

Then came the AE-1, and with it a new economy of scale for the photo biz: highly automated production, injection-molded plastics, higher production targets and cranked-up mass marketing, not just at the usual suspects (you and me), but to the proverbial Joe/Jane Six-Pack who never felt the need for anything more sophisticated than a Pocket Instamatic. There were now TV commercials (anyone else here remember the shock of seeing a Canon SLR being pitched on the idiot box back then?). A niche product gets kicked into the Big Time.

Naturally, Nikon, Minolta, Olympus, Konica et al couldn't just sit and watch Canon go to town with that kind of market share, so they did a similar change-up in their product offerings as well, and made similar marketing pitches. SLRs got smaller, lighter and cheaper (and, once in a while, better; I fondly remember Minolta's early X-series as offering good bang-for-the-buck). And people were buying the things in droves, which, not coincidentally, was great for Kodak, which was still the 1100-pound gorilla in the film biz. For us more-El Serioso types, we still had some of the best cameras ever made, with the best still to come. For a handful of years, everybody was happy (well, everybody except the guy slouching in the corner of the old Stadtler Hilton with the stogie and the Crown Graphic: "Spoiled lil' brats y'all are, with your shiny lil' automatic-doodad toys...whatever happened to REAL cameras?").

But there's a problem when a business suddenly expands from a relatively-small, focused market to the big, bright lights of mainstream consumerism: that business becomes a high-wire act that has to keep coming up with more and newer stuff, and on a faster time-line, to keep people interested and buying in order to keep those newly-expanded production facilites humming. "Innovation" is a word that got thrown around a hell of a lot over the last 20 years or so, but there were just so many areas that could be truly improved in terms of cameras, and after a while, things got desperate. Easier film loading? Got it (Canon QL system, followed by a few others). Auto-exposure? Got it already. Multi-mode AE? Done. Compact motor-drive? Got it. Built-in motor-drive? Yep, if you must. Dedicated auto flash? Uh-huh. TTL auto flash? Er, sure...wanna buy a filter with that?

It is said that autofocus did for the photography industry what the Compact Disc did for the recording industry (funny how these two occurred at roughly the same time). It certainly did so for Minolta, which was actually in serious financial straits at the time, and decided to take a gamble and develop a full-fledged, system-based autofocus SLR at a time when everyone else was merely dipping their toes in the AF arena with modified versions of manual-focus cameras and one or two (often cumbersome) AF lenses. Minolta also took a chance of a different sort by handing over development of the system to a relatively young designer – something that simply didn't happen in the industry at the time (this designer also came up with the X-700, whcih became something of the Ford Taurus of the industry, giving Minolta a much-need cash injection, and the designer enough cachet to be picked for the Next Big Thing). The Maxxum 7000 was, of course, a wild, crazy success, further broadening the 35mm SLR's appeal, and apparently catching the rest of the industry completely off-guard. You know the rest of the story.

Except that now, there really weren't any technological worlds left to conquer: you've got a camera that practically loads the film for you, adjusts exposure for you, focuses for you, advances and rewinds the film for you, fires the cute little pop-up flash for you. Any more tricks?

Not really. And that's a problem, at least if you make these toys.

When you pick up a Canon EOS 1v, Nikon F5/6, Pentax MZ-S, or Minolta Maxxum 9, can you think of anything sorely lacking from a technological standpoint? (Frankly, I think the problem with these cameras is that they're packing a bit too much, but that's another argument.) I don't mean picking nits here. Focusing speed/accuracy good enough? Metering good enough? Film drive fast enough? (At the agency I worked for, while playing around with one photographer's EOS 1v, I couldn't help but notice that these cameras' motor-drive FPS speeds were approaching double-digits just as the first digital SLRs were coming on-line directly from Canon and Nikon). There's one other good reason why Canon hasn't felt the need to develop anything beyond the 1v (besides a shrinking film-camera market): there's literally no place left to go.

Unless, of course, you stick a sensor in the thing. Then you have a whole new marketing frontier to play with. And since, by necessity, the digital camera is joined at the hip with the personal computer, the product life cycle shortens considerably, leading to rapid product turnover and end-users replacing products based on perceived, if not functional obsolescence (this can backfire too, as anyone who worked for Contax, Konica Minolta or Mamiya would likely tell you).

Of course, I don't shoot with SLRs anymore, except for the old Olympus I pull out once in a while for close-up work. So, to a point, I couldn't give a tinker's cuss about the SLR world.

But I care about film, because that's my image-making lingua franca. The fact that Canon hasn't cut their film-camera line off at the knees yet means someone is still buying them (or, as Bill might chime in and remind me, photography is a relatively small part of Canon's business model these days, unlike Nikon, and thus they can afford to hang in the film-camera biz longer without ill financial effect). People out here are still buying and shooting the stuff, but certainly not in the quantities they did just a few years back. What I'm hoping for is stability at some point, as opposed to continued free-fall in the film market*. That's the only way we'll still have any of the stuff around. I remain the guarded optimist on this one. (But, Bill, don't pull that punch bowl just yet...I need a drink after writing all this drivel.) 😀


- Barrett


(*It can be argued that, like real estate and the dot-com thing, there was something of a "bubble" in film sales between 1990 and 2000 on account of the explosion of really good and afforable auto-everything point-n'-shoot cameras, and the rapid proliferation of one-hour labs that sprouted like kudzu to serve the owners of those nifty new cameras. Like all booms, it had its begiining and end.)

 

[rvaubel]

I agree, there are plenty of film cameras to go around. These are signals, not death knells. Signals are to be interpreted and decisions based upon understanding of things to come. It need not be emotional, it need not be an 'us-verus-them' mentality. There is no war or battle to be fought, this is just an unfolding of events.

The only thing that can be said about classic (and excellent) film cameras is that there will be no more of them than there are right now. With the exception of Rolleis and Leicas, of course.

I liken it to my small collection of vintage watches. There were so many high-end Hamilton wristwatches made that virtually anyone who wants to can enjoy having a truly 'best in category' watch on their wrist if they want to. Enough spare parts to last hundreds of years. But there will be no more of them made, and repairmen who are qualified are becoming rare as hen's teeth. They have reached their high-water mark. That's all. Doesn't stop me from enjoying them.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

I agree with your mechanical watch analogy except for one thing. Mechanical watches, almost dead in the late 80's, came back in a huge way starting in the mid 90's. These were and are high end timepieces for watchnuts, but it rescues the Swiss watch industry.
I believe there will always be a market for film cameras but the buyers will not be the point n' shoot crowd. The film buyers will include the Luddites (no offense) of course, but also a substantial number of us that use digital but enjoy film also.
Ten years from now, the film market may only be 1% of what it is today but so what? Just because film won't have any real commercial significance doesn't mean that there won't be real money to be made by manufactuars catering to the likes of us.
Whining about how film is better, or whining about anything, is a waste of time.
The reason film will survive is because film is FUN. Thats the reason and the only reason.

Rex

 

[bmattock]

Barrett,

I agree with 90% of your analysis, and I won't spoil your punch by dribbling something nasty in it. I've said all there is to say about the future of film - ya'll know my opinion on that.

I would modify your treatise only slightly, adding that unlike AE, AF, and auto-everything else that was stuck onto cameras, the digital sensor changed the landscape in a fundamental way. If you have an AE camera and a manual camera, both still work. With a few MF examples and the Modul-R, there are no cameras that you can 'turn off' the digital sensor on and go back to film, nor vice-versa. This is not incremental change, it is revolutionary change.

The biggest hurdle is that the wholesale switch from film to digital is happening before the digital market is mature. Clearly, early adopters have to buy and buy again, as 1.2 MP become 2.1 MP and then 3.1 MP and 6.2 MP and now 10 MP and higher. And until just recently, each new generation of sensor brought more to the table, made the digital sensor more useful as a photographic recording device. I'm not saying it is a GOOD THING that this wholesale change from film to digital started before it was 'soup yet'. I'm just noting that it has indeed occurred.

At the same time, low consumer prices have kept the bar to entry low enough that consumers are driving change at a massive pace. Consumers demand - manufacturers innovate and supply if they can - or they withdraw, limping, from the field. The production cycles shorten, as you have stated - but rather than being feature-driven as the former SLR wars were, they are capability-driven, as the market demands. Combined with a need to keep costs low enough to make the cameras replaceable comes low build quality. This is to be expected - make a camera enough like a PC and it becomes disposable like a PC. And the consumer demands it.

The end result is what we have. Digital cameras introduced as fast as the camera manufacturers can lifecycle them, and it is a market-share cut-n-shoot survival game for them right now. Once the slow gunfighters are all dead, and those left standing have carved out their niches, they can begin to slow the production cycle and develop the cameras that live in those niches. Cameras with all manual controls? Sure. Rangefinders? No problem. Cameras built to high fit-and-finish requirements? Absolutely. Long-lasting? Why not?

Until they are safe in their niches, though, it is all-out warfare. The weapon fought with money and capacity and marketing. Build factories, create alliances in production, marketing, and allied channels (Samsung/Pentax is a great one, also Leica/Panasonic), ramp up production, cut costs, and tear the entrails of your opponents out if you can.

It's incredibly entertaining. What a time to be alive!

Painful for us - we are caught on the edge of a cliff. Digital is in no way a true competitor for film - but that war will never fought.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[bmattock]

I agree with your mechanical watch analogy except for one thing. Mechanical watches, almost dead in the late 80's, came back in a huge way starting in the mid 90's. These were and are high end timepieces for watchnuts, but it rescues the Swiss watch industry.

I stand by my statement - mechanical watches have reached their high-water mark. They're 'back' in the sense that they have found a new niche market, but they are no longer and never again will be segment dominators.

I believe there will always be a market for film cameras but the buyers will not be the point n' shoot crowd. The film buyers will include the Luddites (no offense) of course, but also a substantial number of us that use digital but enjoy film also.
Ten years from now, the film market may only be 1% of what it is today but so what? Just because film won't have any real commercial significance doesn't mean that there won't be real money to be made by manufactuars catering to the likes of us.

I've made many long-winded arguments about why that can't happen, but in deference to those who are sick of hearing it, I'll leave be - my points are online if you wish to search for them.

Whining about how film is better, or whining about anything, is a waste of time.
The reason film will survive is because film is FUN. Thats the reason and the only reason.

I agree that film is fun, Rex. So is digital, at least for me. I like 'em both.

Just because I report muggings in the park does not mean that I enjoy them. I read the tea leaves, I make predictions. That has nothing to do with my preferences.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[JohnL]

Sad in a way, but I think we will all eventually get used to digital, especially if we can have some more digital RF choices. This is something Canon could also set the bar on if they chose to do so, perhaps with some of the R&D freed up from "developing" new film cameras. An update of the Canon 7Sz with a full-frame sensor in it for the same sort of price as the Canon 5D should spark some interest, I would think. I'd be fascinated to know how RF wide-angle lenses would perform on a full-frame sensor.

 

[rvaubel]

Bill
I agree that film and film cameras will be a very small market. Just like mechanical watches. By "real money" I didn't mean for players like Canon or Nikon. Hopefully companies like Leica can service the high end of the market and the larger companies can make availlable the more basic SLR's and what not. Of course there will continue to be a huge amount of used stuff available.
I'm more worried about film, especially color. And processing.
I process my own B+W and I suppose that technology is simple enough for a botique industry to sustain. But I worry about color, especially paper since I don't know anybody crazy enough to home process color prints. And I don't see any real hope for commercial processing of color ten years down the road.
BTW, I work 90% in digital. But I think the film part of me is sustainable. When it comes down to it, film is just different. Digital can never satisfy that part of me that wants to handle something tangible. No scanner is going to replace dipping film into the "soup" or making a "real" print. But most of the time digital is perfectly fine, in fact, better.
I cannot actually get real excited about my opinions since what will happen, will happen. I just don't see film totally disappearing.

Rex

 

[bmattock]

Sad in a way, but I think we will all eventually get used to digital, especially if we can have some more digital RF choices. This is something Canon could also set the bar on if they chose to do so, perhaps with some of the R&D freed up from "developing" new film cameras. An update of the Canon 7Sz with a full-frame sensor in it for the same sort of price as the Canon 5D should spark some interest, I would think. I'd be fascinated to know how RF wide-angle lenses would perform on a full-frame sensor.

John, I agree - but not yet. Right now, it is all about market share and niches. Canon is the market leader and by a lot - they've even just kicked Kodak out of the #1 spot in the USA for digicams. But they can't waste capital trying things out that are too far out of what they sense they have a strong demand for - and right now the dSLR market is hot, hot, hot. Anti-shake is hot. More megapixels is hot. Faster shot-to-shot and low lag times are hot. They can't waste time or money in things that *might* pan out with a minor ROI. Not now.

Later, when they have driven all but perhaps Nikon from their selected markets or at least established their absolute market dominance, then they can take fliers on such things.

Now, let me tell you something that a lot of people would be shocked to hear. You know who might end up being our friend in this sooner rather than later? Kodak. Yes, Kodak.

Kodak is hurting financially, but they've made a major decision to increase the money they're putting into R&D, and they're going to cut off some limbs to pay for it - they're looking to jettison their medical imaging group, and my guess is they'll sell off more body parts if they have to. They are not market segment giants anymore, and they've faced that. They won't win by outspending and outmarketing Canon - they can't. Canon would eat them alive.

They are in the process - and a smart one it is, in my opinion - of reinventing the concept of the camera, now that they are freed of the design constraints of film-based cameras. Look at the new twin-lens, twin-sensor digicams. Look at the Wi-Fi enabled cameras. They may not make it - but they are doing R&D, they are experimenting, they are exploring and trying to figure out what people might want in a camera - things that you can't do polling and market research for yet, because the devices have yet to be invented. They're looking for an iPod - something that quickly becomes a 'must-have' but which does not now exist - a new demand, not a redirected one. Not a better camera - a new KIND of camera.

If I were going to try to cajole any camera manufacturer into making a digital RF better than the Epson RD-1, it would be Kodak. They've got the horsepower and the smarts - manufacturing and R&D. They've even got the money (for the moment). And they're in a position to gamble because they're losing - hell, they have to roll the dice.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[JohnL]

True, Bill. Kodak could easily be another contender. The only point you made I'm not 100% in agreement with is the one about the megapixel race. I think we are rapidly reaching the point where pixel count will stratify, so as to more-or-less match the different film format capabilities. At most levels, more pixels are already just unnecessary.

 

[Fedzilla_Bob]

A bizzare thought just leaped into my head. (I know- Some of you are thinking "that's not unusual for Bob")

It is based on something said a couple of posts back. Kodak could reopen the "Retina" line as digital rangefinders- do the whole future retro thing.

Is it difficult to manufacture a simple yet decent rangefinder mechanism?

 

[amateriat]

I would modify your treatise only slightly, adding that unlike AE, AF, and auto-everything else that was stuck onto cameras, the digital sensor changed the landscape in a fundamental way. If you have an AE camera and a manual camera, both still work. With a few MF examples and the Modul-R, there are no cameras that you can 'turn off' the digital sensor on and go back to film, nor vice-versa. This is not incremental change, it is revolutionary change.

True. I was a little hasty with that remark.

The biggest hurdle is that the wholesale switch from film to digital is happening before the digital market is mature. Clearly, early adopters have to buy and buy again, as 1.2 MP become 2.1 MP and then 3.1 MP and 6.2 MP and now 10 MP and higher. And until just recently, each new generation of sensor brought more to the table, made the digital sensor more useful as a photographic recording device. I'm not saying it is a GOOD THING that this wholesale change from film to digital started before it was 'soup yet'. I'm just noting that it has indeed occurred.

I guess there's ner really a "right" time for developments like this to occur...but it's made for a pretty wild and wacky situation. Gives me vertigo trying to follow it all. 😉



- Barrett

 

[bmattock]

True, Bill. Kodak could easily be another contender. The only point you made I'm not 100% in agreement with is the one about the megapixel race. I think we are rapidly reaching the point where pixel count will stratify, so as to more-or-less match the different film format capabilities. At most levels, more pixels are already just unnecessary.

Technically speaking, yes - we are reaching a point where more megapixels don't make better photos. In fact, digital noise and speed are bigger bugaboos at the moment. But we're talking about perceptions here - and consumers are still playing the 'more is more' card at the moment. A 10 MP camera will sell better than an 8 MP camera at the same price point. That perception *is* starting to change, but until the market wakes up and realizes it, manufacturers will give us more and more megapixels because that's what *we* demand (we being Joe Sixpack).

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[ywenz]

Look like the news was a bit pre mature..

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0605/06052501canonfilmcameras.asp

 

[amateriat]

Well, as Fats would say, one never knows, do one?


- Barrett

 

[RJBender]

I don't see what the kerfuffle here is about.

Prior to the introduction of the Canon AE-1, the photography industry was one of generally predictable progress, with emphasis on engineering and finish. Also, since the yen was pretty cheap in relation to the dollar, products didn't have to be nickel-and-dimed to mediocrity to make a buck for the companies making them (unrelated example: the Hitachi stereo receiver in our livingroom is a nice example of mid/late 1970s mainstream audio gear: not even top-of-the-line, it actually replaced a much-newer but badly ailing JVC receiver that had far more bells n' whistles – including remote control. The Hitachi sounds better to me, as well). Product life cycles were a lot longer, too, which had direct bearing on the amount of effort out into a particular product.

Then came the AE-1, and with it a new economy of scale for the photo biz: highly automated production, injection-molded plastics, higher production targets and cranked-up mass marketing, not just at the usual suspects (you and me), but to the proverbial Joe/Jane Six-Pack who never felt the need for anything more sophisticated than a Pocket Instamatic. There were now TV commercials (anyone else here remember the shock of seeing a Canon SLR being pitched on the idiot box back then?). A niche product gets kicked into the Big Time.

Naturally, Nikon, Minolta, Olympus, Konica et al couldn't just sit and watch Canon go to town with that kind of market share, so they did a similar change-up in their product offerings as well, and made similar marketing pitches. SLRs got smaller, lighter and cheaper (and, once in a while, better; I fondly remember Minolta's early X-series as offering good bang-for-the-buck). And people were buying the things in droves, which, not coincidentally, was great for Kodak, which was still the 1100-pound gorilla in the film biz. For us more-El Serioso types, we still had some of the best cameras ever made, with the best still to come. For a handful of years, everybody was happy (well, everybody except the guy slouching in the corner of the old Stadtler Hilton with the stogie and the Crown Graphic: "Spoiled lil' brats y'all are, with your shiny lil' automatic-doodad toys...whatever happened to REAL cameras?").

But there's a problem when a business suddenly expands from a relatively-small, focused market to the big, bright lights of mainstream consumerism: that business becomes a high-wire act that has to keep coming up with more and newer stuff, and on a faster time-line, to keep people interested and buying in order to keep those newly-expanded production facilites humming. "Innovation" is a word that got thrown around a hell of a lot over the last 20 years or so, but there were just so many areas that could be truly improved in terms of cameras, and after a while, things got desperate. Easier film loading? Got it (Canon QL system, followed by a few others). Auto-exposure? Got it already. Multi-mode AE? Done. Compact motor-drive? Got it. Built-in motor-drive? Yep, if you must. Dedicated auto flash? Uh-huh. TTL auto flash? Er, sure...wanna buy a filter with that?

It is said that autofocus did for the photography industry what the Compact Disc did for the recording industry (funny how these two occurred at roughly the same time). It certainly did so for Minolta, which was actually in serious financial straits at the time, and decided to take a gamble and develop a full-fledged, system-based autofocus SLR at a time when everyone else was merely dipping their toes in the AF arena with modified versions of manual-focus cameras and one or two (often cumbersome) AF lenses. Minolta also took a chance of a different sort by handing over development of the system to a relatively young designer – something that simply didn't happen in the industry at the time (this designer also came up with the X-700, whcih became something of the Ford Taurus of the industry, giving Minolta a much-need cash injection, and the designer enough cachet to be picked for the Next Big Thing). The Maxxum 7000 was, of course, a wild, crazy success, further broadening the 35mm SLR's appeal, and apparently catching the rest of the industry completely off-guard. You know the rest of the story.

Except that now, there really weren't any technological worlds left to conquer: you've got a camera that practically loads the film for you, adjusts exposure for you, focuses for you, advances and rewinds the film for you, fires the cute little pop-up flash for you. Any more tricks?
Not really. And that's a problem, at least if you make these toys.

When you pick up a Canon EOS 1v, Nikon F5/6, Pentax MZ-S, or Minolta Maxxum 9, can you think of anything sorely lacking from a technological standpoint? (Frankly, I think the problem with these cameras is that they're packing a bit too much, but that's another argument.) I don't mean picking nits here. Focusing speed/accuracy good enough? Metering good enough? Film drive fast enough? (At the agency I worked for, while playing around with one photographer's EOS 1v, I couldn't help but notice that these cameras' motor-drive FPS speeds were approaching double-digits just as the first digital SLRs were coming on-line directly from Canon and Nikon). There's one other good reason why Canon hasn't felt the need to develop anything beyond the 1v (besides a shrinking film-camera market): there's literally no place left to go.

Unless, of course, you stick a sensor in the thing. Then you have a whole new marketing frontier to play with. And since, by necessity, the digital camera is joined at the hip with the personal computer, the product life cycle shortens considerably, leading to rapid product turnover and end-users replacing products based on perceived, if not functional obsolescence (this can backfire too, as anyone who worked for Contax, Konica Minolta or Mamiya would likely tell you).

Of course, I don't shoot with SLRs anymore, except for the old Olympus I pull out once in a while for close-up work. So, to a point, I couldn't give a tinker's cuss about the SLR world.

But I care about film, because that's my image-making lingua franca. The fact that Canon hasn't cut their film-camera line off at the knees yet means someone is still buying them (or, as Bill might chime in and remind me, photography is a relatively small part of Canon's business model these days, unlike Nikon, and thus they can afford to hang in the film-camera biz longer without ill financial effect). People out here are still buying and shooting the stuff, but certainly not in the quantities they did just a few years back. What I'm hoping for is stability at some point, as opposed to continued free-fall in the film market*. That's the only way we'll still have any of the stuff around. I remain the guarded optimist on this one. (But, Bill, don't pull that punch bowl just yet...I need a drink after writing all this drivel.) 😀


- Barrett


(*It can be argued that, like real estate and the dot-com thing, there was something of a "bubble" in film sales between 1990 and 2000 on account of the explosion of really good and afforable auto-everything point-n'-shoot cameras, and the rapid proliferation of one-hour labs that sprouted like kudzu to serve the owners of those nifty new cameras. Like all booms, it had its begiining and end.)

When autofocus first came out, the joke at that time was What's next,
auto-composition? 😛

R.J.