How long does film have?

How long does film have?

  • Film? Film is already dead! Long live digital.

    Votes: 5 1.4%

  • A few more years.

    Votes: 38 10.8%

  • A few more decades.

    Votes: 123 35.0%

  • Film will be around forever!

    Votes: 185 52.7%
  • Total voters
    351
I was on the phone with Bill Maxwell today and he said he hasn't been this busy in years especially for medium format and large format screens. While screens for small cameras have dropped off and replaced by demand for dslr screens as expected he is getting more orders for LF screens this year than the last 20 years combined. I guess sheet and roll film are the survivors like vinyl and tubes.
 
i think it will be about forever, even if there are only a couple of manufacturers worldwide. It is a different medium to digital and as a result it will retain its fans. The amateur/art market will be big enough to sustain film production I am sure. I am not worried, but am now confident shooting a fair number of films in case the odd one drops away.
 
Film will stay as long as we keep buying it steadily.

The foto shops close to me keep to have them on counter, so why worry about?

Bringing in films and taking back pictures is still part of their business.

We will even pay for it when it's costs more, if the quality is sufficient.

Maybe once all the film stuff will come from China, if Kodak and Fuji will have sold their factories. I don't care even iif the big labs will close and send the stuff to China.

Of course it's sad that we will not see any small-grain 100 ASA color neg film ever, because the market is too small to justify R&D costs.

For B&W, I worry last. I don't even see a sensor or scanner coming with the high density even the worst B&W film achieves easily!
 
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Currently my biggest fear regarding the continued availability of 100 ISO colour slide film is that people will talk it to death.
If they stop making the films we like to use, then we'll all go Digital or stop photographing. And if they continue to make them, we'll continue shooting with those films.
Simple.
And as to when it'll happen or not? First we'll see. And then we'll know.
 
Keep shooting. That's the most important thing. As long as there is demand for film, some one will make it

Keep the good repair shops in business. No functional cameras = no film sales.

We need affordable, high quality negative scanners (are you listening Nikon?). Without access to the web and printers we are dead in the water. Not everyone has room for a darkroom or the skills to make wet prints.
 
Harry Lime said:
Keep shooting. That's the most important thing. As long as there is demand for film, some one will make it
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That is a logical fallacy. Wishful thinking, at best.

Keep the good repair shops in business. No functional cameras = no film sales.
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There are probably more cameras than rolls of film laying about at this point.

We need affordable, high quality negative scanners (are you listening Nikon?). Without access to the web and printers we are dead in the water. Not everyone has room for a darkroom or the skills to make wet prints.
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I suspect that Nikon got out of the dedicated film scanning business for a reason. Sure, they're listening - to the sales figures. It's now a second-tier game - Plustek and the like, along with used pro drum scanners and second-hand Nikons and Konica-Minoltas.
 
Harry Lime said:
We need affordable, high quality negative scanners (are you listening Nikon?). Without access to the web and printers we are dead in the water. Not everyone has room for a darkroom or the skills to make wet prints.
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This is the biggest issue for me. I will never go back to a wet darkroom. I can do so much more, so much more easily with a light room. But to do that with film you need good, fast, relatively inexpensive scanners. I don't see those on the market. And the ones already there seem to be on life support.

/T
 
Tuolumne said:
This is the biggest issue for me. I will never go back to a wet darkroom. I can do so much more, so much more easily with a light room. But to do that with film you need good, fast, relatively inexpensive scanners. I don't see those on the market. And the ones already there seem to be on life support.

/T
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Is there any consensus on good scanner? Nikon Coolscan 9000? What really is there........that a poor guy like me can buy??
 
literiter said:
Is there any consensus on good scanner? Nikon Coolscan 9000? What really is there........that a poor guy like me can buy??
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Depends very much on your budget. Still lots of used high-quality scanners about, such as the Nikon you mentioned. The Plustek has gotten good reviews, and they still seem to be improving them. For medium format, I still get good results from an inexpensive Epson 4490 flatbed.
 
I have that answer on good authority...

I have that answer on good authority...

God revealed himself to me last night as I was kneeling beside my bed. He said, and I quote, "Buy all the film you can lay your hands on by next Thursday, at 2:33 PM. That's the cutoff for both color and B/W".
 
A high shaman told me that if I bought a brick of film once a week, and burned it in the fireplace, then film would last a long, long time.

It makes sense... it's a sacrifice to appease the Film Gods... 🙂
 
Black and White film will outlast us all. It is primitive enough that emulsions, papers and development chemicals are easy enough to make. It may become expensive in the future but somebody somewhere will be making it. I don't imagine the demand will die completely.
 
literiter said:
Is there any consensus on good scanner? Nikon Coolscan 9000? What really is there........that a poor guy like me can buy??
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The word seems to be (from another thread) that the Nikon scanners are end-of-life products. Only made on demand now as orders come it, and there are no new models planned. Between you and me, flat bed scanners are alot better than people here make out, but a real nice new, dedicated 35/120 film scanner would be a big lift to film users. I honestly don't see why Fuji doesn't make one. They really seem to be able to straddle the film/digital divide better than any of the companies.

/T
 
Tuolumne said:
The word seems to be (from another thread) that the Nikon scanners are end-of-life products. Only made on demand now as orders come it, and there are no new models planned. Between you and me, flat bed scanners are alot better than people here make out, but a real nice new, dedicated 35/120 film scanner would be a big lift to film users. I honestly don't see why Fuji doesn't make one. They really seem to be able to straddle the film/digital divide better than any of the companies.

/T
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Take a look at this:

http://www.designtaxi.com/news.jsp?id=26783&monthview=0&month=5&year=2009

The cut, flat film was scanned using a Nikon film scanner, while the uncut rolled negatives were digitally photographed with a Canon digital camera using the Planar Film Duplicating Devise 2 (PFD2), designed by a team led by Grant Romer at the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY.

The PFD2 gently holds small sections of the film for digital capture, allowing researchers to view and preserve the images contained in the delicate nitrate-based film, a combination of Agfa, Agfa Isopan, Kodak Super X, Kodak Pancro, Kodak Panchromatic, and Gevaert film stock.
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Here it is:

http://museum.icp.org/mexican_suitcase/PFD2.pdf
 
Film is dead. Absolutely. Everyone knows that. It's only used by amateurs and small, slow farm animals. I'll be surprised if I can find it tomorrow. They quit making the 1961 Chevy Impala after just one lousy year! Came out w/ something called the 1962 Impala and said it was the same, but it wasn't! Jeez Marie, they'll quit making anything if you don't watch them like a hawk. Why, digital is soooo much better. I buy the extra large Digital Jpeg Delight in 48oz boxes and man we go thru them inside of a week. That old, yellowed box of Tri-X at the back is going bad because no one will touch it. Whenever I'm asked, I smile and look right into people's eyes and shout "Make Mine Digital, If You Please"!!! Straightens them right out.
 
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I've said this for a long time: even if everybody on the planet stopped shooting film altogether by next Thursday, there would still be a need for good optical scanning of film. The company that makes my favorite film scanner left the building a few years back, but my scanner keeps cranking just fine. If it ever fails, I'll see to getting it fixed; failing that, I'll take a look at a top-end Epson (whatever equivalent to the V700/750 is around by then).

If you want gloom-and-doom stuff, try this: as both a profession and widely-practiced activity in general, still photography [film and digital], including cameras, on-paper printing, and many of the remaining manufacturers of same, most likely will not see out the 21st Century. Then again, neither will most of us.

So: load up, snap, develop, scan, print, show. Create in the moment. Hand-wringing is for the washroom.


- Barrett
 
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