jlw said:
I still think interest in this newfangled film stuff will wane. Film produces inferior flatness (critical to sharp, high-quality images) and it requires a huge, complex industrial infrastructure to produce. Glass plates coated with albumen emulsion are flatter, provide excellent tonal range, and can be produced in your own kitchen.
Film bad, booooo! Glass plates good, yay!
way to make a point :/
Look, you want something that doesn't exist for a reason. Don't get pissy when people point out that the shortcomings of digital are becoming increasingly obvious, along with the strengths of film.
Film isn't going anywhere. "Most people" want Brownies, Imstamatics, and now P&S cameras. Digital P&S cameras are nice, because at first, it seems great - cheap, handy, nothing extra to buy but batteries. But as the medium matures, it becomes obvious to all but the most recalcitrant that digital is hardly the panacea it at first seemed.
There is this myth that digital is cheap. Howver, it doesn't cost any less for digital prints than it costs for film prints. And from what I've seen, people take far more digital snapshots than they ever would with film, totally destroying any perceived savings. Film processing itself is only a couple bucks, but the memory cards for a digital camera easily would cover a year's supply of film for most casual users. Then there is the computer that becomes mandatory if you wish to store, manipulate, and share your pictures. The cost of the computer easily covers years of film processing and prints, even postage for sharing. In addition, almost all people will probably be buying a new camera every few years, regardless of their enthusiasm for photography, simply because they can't take advantage of new imaging technology without doing so. These same people in the past would merely stash their film camera in a drawer until the next family outing or holiday, keeping cameras for ten years or more, and giving them to their children or relatives when/if they upgraded.
Sure, for certain professions, digital photography is great. But unless you are a paid photographer, chances are that you really aren't seeing any cost savings from going digital. And you are losing years of family memories any time a hard drive fails, unless you had the foresight to implement a back-up system.
The popular desire for digital P&S cameras is not because digital really has anything to offer other than convenience. And if you are going to
willfully take the time to manually focus, manually meter, manually set the film speed, manually set the aperture, consider depth of field, development times, paper grades, etc., why the hell would the convenience of digital have any appeal? Once you take away the P&S aspects of a digital camera, there is no benefit at all. None. Nada. Just look at the images in the gallery to see the results of scanning. Having been down-sized for posting on the internet, there is no superiority to digital camera images at all, and most would say there is an inferior aspect to them. The actual scanning process might take a couple minutes per image, but no-one said you needed to scan every roll in entirety just to post a few shots.
The fact is, there is likely NEVER going to come a day when digital images downsized for the web will look superior to scanned film images downsized as well. And since film printing has been under development for far longer than digital printing, it has a head start that will probably never be made up. You are talking about a technology that has been worked, refined, researched, and produced for over a century compared to one still in its infancy. Everybody loves children, but the attraction often fades as they mature.
I'm not falling into the trap of constantly upgrading bodies because they are inherently flawed from the start. There's plenty of room for improvement in film and lenses that don't negate the value of my film camera bodies, but virtually no room for improvement in digital imaging that doesn't negate the value of the equipment. Any improvements in lens technology will benefit film images. Any improvement in film technology is inherently compatible with my current film bodies. Any improvement in digital imaging processing is inherently compatible with my film bodies. Any improvement in digital sensor technology is inherently useless with current digital bodies. Unless companies start upgrading sensor units in existing bodies for a nominal fee, there is no reason to buy an interchangeable lens digital body. It'd be like buying a car because it has replaceable windows. You still have to replace the entire car to benefit from improvements in drivetrain and chassis technology, the two areas that actually drive purchasing choices in vehicles.
If I don't want to spend top dollar on a film camera body, I can still get the same image quality, but give up only features. If I don't want to spend top dollar on a digital body, I give up image quality. What a stinking bargain :/