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back alley

back alley

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just read another thread about a camera store chain closing...more bad news for film users and those using a lab for processing.

the forum is full of posts about new cameras not having what we want in them...

underlying 'issue' of film versus digital still has many miles apart from each other and some who feel they will leave photography altogether should film disappear.

as i get older i wonder about the next new/big thing and how many more product cycles i have left in me.

for me, as much as i love the gear, it really is all about the images and quite frankly i don't care what i use to make them...as long as it's enjoyable for me...after all, this is a hobby for me. so maybe i do care about the gear...i like new and shiny and i like old and well used too.
i just bought an m4-p and if my ltm adapter ever gets here i plan on putting some more miles on my 40 sonnar with it...all on film!

i like change but sometimes it leaves me melancholy...
 
I'll keep shooting film as long as I can buy it. It's not gone. Adox just released a new B&W film and a new oddball color film. Ilford is chugging along. I just bought an MP.

People worry too much. Once film is truly gone, I'll do wet plate or coat my own dry plate. Simple.
 
Ritz wasn't really a film focused chain at all -- and I don't think their closing really has anything much to do with film. Sure, they processed film but that wasn't the bulk of their business by any means.

It would seem to me that they just could not compete with the big name online retailers / marketplaces... amazon, bh, adorama, and ebay. Ritz had all sorts of digital products for sale. Their prices were often higher than their competitors.
 
I think it will be a while still before film completely dies. I was reading an article about film sales picking back up in Japan about a couple months ago.

It is going to get more expensive for sure when get down to less than a handful making film.

If I am still able to get out and shoot when film production ends, I still have my 9x12 plate cameras around.. Guess I can learn wet plate process. Right now I still shoot film @ around 40%.

Gary
 
back alley said:
just read another thread about a camera store chain closing...more bad news for film users and those using a lab for processing. .....................
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Ritz Camera's closing means as much to photography as K-Mart's closing did to big box retailing. Ritz had a business model that just did not work in the current marketplace, nothing to do with film or labs.
 
Haven't bought film (B&W) locally for ages, always order from Freestyle, B&H, etc. so I haven't noticed the loss. Have not been to a "real camera store" for a long time either. B&W film will last as long as it need to for me and I do all my processing at home so no grief there. I use digital for color, it's OK for that, but I just can't like digital cameras with all the buttons and stuff. Are the camera designers too stupid to put the shutter speeds on a dial and have a real aperture ring and a real manual focus on a real camera?

When someone builds a digital that looks and feels and operates like my OM-1 and doesn't cost a months income I might consider it. This of course will be the same time I flap my arms and fly to the moon.
 
back alley said:
i like change but sometimes it leaves me melancholy...
Click to expand...


Nicely put!

I'm dealing with it by currently going backwards away from digital, though I will keep my D700 for work. This constant merry go round of new and better options at the moment is making my head spin.

The stability in old technology makes me feel content and grounded ... maybe it's an age thing?
 
Keith said:
Nicely put!

I'm dealing with it by currently going backwards away from digital, though I will keep my D700 for work. This constant merry go round of new and better options at the moment is making my head spin.

The stability in old technology makes me feel content and grounded ... maybe it's an age thing?
Click to expand...

Keith,
I think you are right about the age thing. At least from my perspective. I have nothing against digital, I use several different bodies (all old, by digi standards) for color. Sometimes tho, it is kind of disheartening to go thru that process and still feel like you contributed nothing to the image. I'm much more comfortable with the old and simple cameras. Technology has definitely left me behind. Then, again, I am a Geezer.
 
I am looking to exit a number of my film cameras and get the M Monochrom. It really intrigues me this camera and I want to simplify my life a bit and reduce my daily choices of what to carry and commit to something. Will still shoot E6 until that dies but might phase out B&W film and go with Monochrom. Maybe I have solved for me the question about what to do after Tri-X is gone.
 
Digital has never been an option for me as I am an analogue shooter through choice. I have a wonderful collection of cameras that I love too much to sacrifice on the altar of consumerism and I am more than happy with the results. Of late I am also supporting Ilford more as a result of the ongoing Kodak uncertainty. I will continue to shoot Tri-X, but as the saying goes, all my eggs are not in one basket. Delta 400 is my latest choice and the only thing in short supply is time to shoot more images. Ilford remain committed to supporting film devotees like me and they deserve support for that.
 
Ritz never had much of what I wanted... I mean if anything my biggest gripe was they didn't carry enough film. Basically they had a lousy selection and their deals weren't that great. People would rather order online, get what they wanted, get it for cheaper... than bother driving to Ritz and maybe or maybe not finding what they wanted. Or so is my personal feeling towards Ritz. The last time I stopped by a Ritz Camera, they didn't even have any B&W film, except for whatever Lomography sells.

The only reason film cameras appear to have any stability BTW is because they're past their peak. In the 1960s and 1970s (and 1980s) there was a new gizmo or feature every year for film cameras, perhaps even more so than we see in digital cameras today. How silly would you have felt if you bought that Praktica in 1956? Only to see the Pentax in 1957? And how silly would you feel when you bought the Pentax, only to see the Nikon F in 1959? And how outdated did that F seem when the Topcon Super RE came out in 1963? And so on, year after year. Film cameras weren't that different, companies just got to the point where they ran out of ideas to perpetuate planned obsolescence with them. Kind of like how Kodak ran out of ideas for new film formats...
 
tunalegs said:
Ritz never had much of what I wanted... I mean if anything my biggest gripe was they didn't carry enough film. Basically they had a lousy selection and their deals weren't that great. People would rather order online, get what they wanted, get it for cheaper... than bother driving to Ritz and maybe or maybe not finding what they wanted. Or so is my personal feeling towards Ritz. The last time I stopped by a Ritz Camera, they didn't even have any B&W film, except for whatever Lomography sells.

The only reason film cameras appear to have any stability BTW is because they're past their peak. In the 1960s and 1970s (and 1980s) there was a new gizmo or feature every year for film cameras, perhaps even more so than we see in digital cameras today. How silly would you have felt if you bought that Praktica in 1956? Only to see the Pentax in 1957? And how silly would you feel when you bought the Pentax, only to see the Nikon F in 1959? And how outdated did that F seem when the Topcon Super RE came out in 1963? And so on, year after year. Film cameras weren't that different, companies just got to the point where they ran out of ideas to perpetuate planned obsolescence with them. Kind of like how Kodak ran out of ideas for new film formats...
Click to expand...


I agree with this to a point but then have to consider cameras like the F5 and F6 Nikons. Fair enough you can't change the way the medium (film) reacts but you can certainly create a device that maximises every opportunity it offers. The F5 and F6 weren't huge leaps in performance but they were definitely imrovements over what preceded them ... though we're only really talking about auto focus and metering! Camera manufacturers now have control over the one part they didn't with film and that's ISO capability ... and that seems to be one of the major selling points of digital at the moment. I think I quite like being locked into the ISO of the medium when I put a particular roll of film into a camera ... it creates a set parameters you have to work within to get the images you want.
 
Keith said:
Camera manufacturers now have control over the one part they didn't with film and that's ISO capability ... and that seems to be one of the major selling points of digital at the moment. I think I quite like being locked into the ISO of the medium when I put a particular roll of film into a camera ... it creates a set parameters you have to work within to get the images you want.
Click to expand...

Does it? With current film gear prices we can afford even three bodies of same model - for slow, medium and fast films. Variable ISO is a good bonus, but not game changer. Instant response and replacement of film/processing costs/time with digital route costs/time is what attracts people. That's how I see this.
 
IMHO The way to not worry about product cycles etc. is to see them for what they are, and that is a way for companies to sell you things you don't need. Some products you'll genuinely want, but generally people are buying things because they're shiny, their friends have them, or they believe it'll improve their life somehow.

In the camera world it's easy to become a gearaholic, so many nice cameras. And it's not like computers where a 20 year old computer is great, cool, but not useful. A 20 year camera is generally entirely useful.

I would suggest if you want to make it about the images, and not the gear, just do that, stop looking at the next camera, and start looking at the next photograph.
 
Not to simply be argumentative, but . . . the rapid changes in digital photo technology are as exciting to me as they are overwhelming and confusing.

It's a struggle to stay focused on the basics, that's for sure, and I don't think the technology will ever hit steady state in my lifetime. But it is exciting to watch the parade go by, even if it's going by at 88fps !
 
It is an interesting moment, but for the ones of my age (over 60) it's also complicated.
The possibility to choice new technologies, new performances that until yesterday were unbelievable (iso higher than 800 with no grain or good optical peformances in a light small package like the m4/3 or...) is for sure exciting and positive. In these cases I'm not forced to the change if this does not interest me.
Different is when I'm forced to the changes by the market, like when a computer operating system changes and the improved version of the software you are using will only work with the new system. I was using tiger with LR but when I decided to go to LR3 this did not work on tiger and I had to upgrade to SnowLeopard. Now after 6 years my Mac is getting old and I'm planning to buy a new one (i.mac or mac pro? not yet decided). But tyhe new OS (Lion and in future Mountain Lion) will not work with Rosetta which means the software of my Nikon Scanner will not work. And I'll be forced to buy a different software and to learn to use it not because I was not satisfied of the former but just to replace it on the new machine. Or to buy a new hard disk and make a virtual machine working with SL, anyway I'm forced to do something.
This is disturbing me, life is too short not to benefit of updated technologies but also to spend time and money just to keep updating things working.
Conclusion? Honestly sometimes I feel confused 🙄
robert
 
I think that the next big thing in digital photography coming to the consumer market is high quality still captures from video. But for me, that takes away the primary source of challenge and reward from photography. Instead of attempting to capture the decisive moment, one simply selects it.
 
FrankS said:
I think that the next big thing in digital photography coming to the consumer market is high quality still captures from video. But for me, that takes away the primary source of challenge and reward from photography. Instead of attempting to capture the decisive moment, one simply selects it.
Click to expand...

In a way this has been going on for a while. I know people ("consumers", not even "hobbyists" !) are buying the camera with the highest continuous frame rate. Mostly they are shooting their kids at parties, play and sports. They really only want a great still image. They point, hold the button down and when they get home they pick the few nice ones off the computer and delete the other files.

They end up with quite a nice few shots (which, sorry to say, pisses me off 😱 )
 
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