Have We Seen The Last Release of a Serious Film Camera?

Have We Seen The Last Release of a Serious Film Camera?

  • Yes

    Votes: 271 46.2%

  • No

    Votes: 316 53.8%
  • Total voters
    587
What film cameras can be bought brand new today?
- Holgas and various lomo-type and disposable cameras
- Some cheap manual SLRs from minor brands aimed at the student market
- the odd remaining compact 35mm for those without computers
- Voigtlander 35mm rangefinders
- Zeiss Ikon 35mm rangefinders
- Leica 35mm rangefinders
- Nikon F6
- Voigtlander 667
- Mamiya 7

Is that about it? Not sure if they're still producing Rolleiflexes or Hasselblad film cameras.

There's not really much of a market gap there - apart from modular medium format, ala Mamiya 645 - apart from on price.

I suspect that as the current stock of second-hand film cameras dwindle as they break or become unrepairable that enterprising manufacturers will see an opportunity in the market and product a model to fit. My guess is something such as a new version of manual mechanical cameras rather than electronic ones - eg Nikon FM equivalents, though the new age of digital camera users may expect more options.

Plus ca change, plus ce meme chose.
 
You can still buy a Nikon F100 new from B&H Photo for $750 dollars. But the salient point for this thread is, why would you? You can find almost new F100's all over the web for $250 and under...excellent condition ones for as low as $160. Same situation with the F6 and the EOS 1V. They may still be for sale, but who would actually buy a new one?
 
Pickett Wilson said:
You can still buy a Nikon F100 new from B&H Photo for $750 dollars. But the salient point for this thread is, why would you? You can find almost new F100's all over the web for $250 and under...excellent condition ones for as low as $160. Same situation with the F6 and the EOS 1V. They may still be for sale, but who would actually buy a new one?
Click to expand...

Those who Worship and Polish rather than shoot.
And there are lots of them.
 
I think almost everything exists but not in one package. There is the small autofocus Contax but just a few lenses and few possibilities for manual focussing, the precise Leica rangefinder but with low sync low top speed and meaningless features like old style rewind cranck, the Olympus reflex with multispot meter out of production with low sync, the huge Nikon F6 with everything and more but really huge, I would like to see all the good in one camera without the "buts". A small rangefinder, with center weighted, matrix and spot meter, 1/4000 top speed, 1/250 sync, maybe all time sync with certain flashes, maybe some electronic focus confirmation, AE lock and brightlines from 25mm to some 90mm, but I think it is unlikely it will come out if not for a limited eidtion series or something like that. As for SLRs, I don't think there is any possibility anything will evercome out, not even in a small series...

GLF
 
Probably, who knows.

What is important though is that my 51 year old M2 and 30 year old OM2n, I'm not stuck with the film stock of the era when those cameras were released; whereas digital cameras whilst improving leaps and bounds, can't have that 'upgrade' so readily because the sensor is fixed on pretty much all 35mm or smaller sensors.

So if no new serious 35mm cameras were released from this point forward, it's not necessarily that bad a thing; assuming incremental improvements to film emulsions continue to be made.

Nb: Of course, high ISO performance like a D300 or D700 won't be coming our way to 35mm. Unless some miracle happens, but there again, that doesn't bother me too much, if it did, I'd shoot digital. Simples.

After all, if some of the most highly regarded photos taken have been with a more primitive camera say like M2 which is merely a light tight box, a slow max shutter speed of 1/1000th second and a pretty accurate shutter curtain -- then good photos will continue to be made.

So really, I'm not sure it matters one way or another.

It won't bother me as I have no real interest in things like auto-focus and super duper metering systems. But if you use telephotos with the need for high speed autofocus and fool-proof metering, maybe that does matter? And if you're doing the latter, maybe digital is more suited to that anyway?
 
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I suspect probably not, though Stephen may know something we don't🙂

My bigger ocncern is the continued viability of film with there being no more scanners from Nikon and no market for anyone else to enter.

Mike
 
Well, that ought to make all those folks waiting for months for their M9 to arrive really happy. Slow down production to produce a new film camera nobody wants.

A new film M is very unlikely.
 
peter_n said:
From Leica Rumors.
Click to expand...

I can see Leica moving to a single film M-mount camera while concentrating on digitals. Touting their glorious legacy and all that. Based, perhaps, on the MP with the addition of AE. Or, two MP models, one with and one without AE. M7 production would cease. With the M9 selling at $7000, they have room to boost the price of any such new film camera.
 
JSU said:
No doubt another boutique ala carte offering.

After the M7 and the MP, what else should Solms offer in the way of film M body?
Click to expand...

Traditional watchmakers keep releasing new and very expensive models of non-digtial watches, a technology that's been mature for a century or more. Leica is in much the same position with film cameras. Do you not think that the "Ultimate MP" with an AE version and a manual version, and priced at $5000 would find sufficient buyers to make it profitable?
 
I bought a lifetime supply of Meica M and R 25 years ago.. Have a few that have had 6 rolls thru, two M 6 that have maybe 25/50 each.

The world os fill of film stuff and nobody can make a profit unless Nikon does a botique rF
reissue at some obscene price. They they will end up on a shelf somwhere.

So nope, we done. Digital is here to stay. I have three Nikon DSLRs. Thats the wave of the future.
 
Hm - I voted yes because I was thinking of true innovations - and I really can't see that coming.

Granted, there may be new releases for niche markets, but I suspect all of these will just contain incremental, evolutionary changes, but nothing really new. Do you think an improved film advance lever is revolutionary and would open up new markets that previously had not been covered? I don't think so.

My guess is that film will linger on for another decade until the digital camera industry has solved the three major challenges that are still troubling them today:
  1. Develop a sensor technology that is less directional, lending itself to applications much more like film. There are first indications that a new sensor generation will use an inverse chip layer stack-up. Such a design would have the actual light-sensitive photosites closest to the chip surface as compared to today's technologies that have the photosites buried deep inside the chip with all supporting circuitry and wiring sitting on top of it. In today's technology, the photosites look at the lens through some kind of cavity whose walls impose severe limitations to the photosites' angle of view, requiring thousands of microlenses on top of every photosite. A reversed layer stack-up would solve this problem - at the cost of an extremely complex manufacturing process.
    Future imaging sensors could also do away with Bayer filter patterns that require complicated demosaicing software algorithms and cripple sensor resolution. The Foveon sensor deployed in Sigma digital cameras uses this principle and has the RGB photosites stacked vertically, thus eliminating the need for Bayer-type filter patterns.
  2. Offer better exposure latitude: Current negative film can record a range of luminance values which corresponds to approx. 10 EV - digital sensors achieve around 8 EV today. New sensor technologies (see above) might have a larger effective photosite area that produces less noise, thus providing a better signal-to-noise (aka "grain") ratio. This would also translate into a wider range of luminance values that can be recorded.
    Evolving sensor technologies might also be able to do hardware-supported bracketing sequences in very rapid succesion which would be next to unnoticeable for the user. He would think of taking a photo at say 1/15s, while that in practice would only be the slowest exposure in a series of maybe 5 sub-shots using exposure times in which each one would be half as long as its predecessor for every sub-shot. This bracketing sequence would then be combined in the camera in real time, effectively producing something similar to an HDR exposure.
  3. Long-time archiving technology: This is digital's Achilles heel IMHO. Film will have its raison d'etre until there will be a new, digital storage technology that can beat film in longevity - and I have serious doubts if ever there will be such a technology. Digital media quite simply are subject to such short product lifecycles that there is no business model that would make any "eternal storage" technology economically viable.
So there you have it - I'm convinced that imaging sensors at some forseeable time in the future will actually be able to outperform film in all relevant performance aspects. But archiving will remain a problem.

And since archiving is a high priority for any conservative user, there will be a market for film (and thus for analog cameras) for a long time to come. The market will shrink because more and more, it will be restricted to pure archiving.

Film lovers beware - you will become museum guardians one day (just joking - I guess that's a look into quite a distant future).
 
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I don't see new innovation in film cameras happening, technology-wise; but there's interesting things happening waaay down at the bottom end of the technology spectrum, film-camera-wise.

I recently purchased a new "Golden Half", half-frame 35mm plastic toy camera, manufactured in Japan by Superheadz, sold at places like the fourcornersdark online store. It's nowhere near the cutting edge of film cameras, since it only has one shutter speed and two f-stops. But I don't care; if this is the only kind of "new" film camera being introduced, I'll continue to use film. At least these toy cameras are helping to keep film sales and minilabs in business. And this one, although being a plastic toy camera, is pretty good quality; much better than a Diana or Holga.

And I gotta say, after shooting primarily digital for the last year, it was very refreshing to shoot this little camera (APS-C - sized "sensor") that weighs almost nothing, getting 48 prints at 4x6 size from a 24-exposure roll of color film, with no computer, no cables, no uploading, no fussing in post-production, no inkjet cartridges to unclog, no photopaper to buy, etc; finished prints in a coupla hours. And the quality ain't too shabby, either. There's no "shutter lag" like in many P/S and digital cameras, and the optical viewfinder is nice and clear (fixed focus, no rangefinder patch); it's a pretty good street shooter, quicker to use, quieter and much smaller and lighter than a "real" camera.

Yes, there's still a place for this type of photography, if you're after 4x6 color prints quick and cheap, no hassle.
 
I voted no.
I think that new developements can take place as long as the market exists.
It seems obvious that camera prices will be higher in the future as well as less choices for more expensive film.
Meanwhile there are lots of excellent old cameras, now affordable thanks to the digital invasion.

Ernesto
 
Agfa is being rerelased in North America. Ilford sales are on the rise there. Fomapan is doing fine in the EU.

Sometime soon somebody's gonna think these shooters should have new cameras to put that film into.

I'm still hoping Cosina will build a 6x9 RF like the Fujica 690, basically a Leica M3 DS and M5 cross-bred on steroids.
 
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