gdanmitchell
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 p.2 #14 · Pre-order: Fujifilm GFX 50S Medium Format body ($6,499) | |
I'm trying to think of a perspective to address this.
There are things that many of us got used to in the film era, and we acquired instincts for working with that technology. Loving photography, we loved those techniques and tools — for the most part. And for many of us who came to photography in that era there are some of the same deep, personal associations that we have with other experiences we had in our youth — our first car, traveling by train, drive-in movies, etc.
I'm serious. None of that is meant to be a put down or to be argumentative.
Things worked the ways they worked mostly for practical reasons. TLR and SLR and rangefinder cameras were designed as they were because they provided workable ways to integrate viewfinders and focusing with film that had to be held in a particular position behind the lens system. Logically, for example, a system that displays images "backwards" isn't the ideal one, but it was a necessity and we learned to work with it and even like it. A system that uses a separate lens mounted above the image lens for viewing the scene and focusing (by means of a big knob!) isn't necessarily the ideal viewing and focusing system, but it was the best option with that technology.
Of course, that exact technology remains available for those who prefer it, either because it remains more comfortable and familiar for them or because they happen to prefer it. You can still buy and use the cameras, lenses, film, papers, chemicals, and all the rest. But, as with cars and airplanes and televisions and cookware and clothing and audio recording and almost everything else, as a species we continue to refine and improve and increase the capabilities of things.
While not everyone will agree, the trajectory of these changes is pretty clear. When I look at all the folks I know who mastered film-based photography, I note that they responded to the change in a range of ways — but eventually every one of them responded. Some were early adopters, playing with early digital cameras in the 1990s (when I used my first digital camera), while others of their colleagues continued to believe that digital would never be truly useful. But over the past two decades, virtually every one of them saw the writing on the wall. That writing doesn't say, "You may not use film." The writing says, "Digital technologies are increasingly powerful and can produce photographs of great beauty and high quality."
And manufacturers would mostly be unwise to try to resist this. They could, of course, put a digital sensor in a Rollei or, as has been done, a 4 x 5 LF camera. But by and large, with some number of exceptions, photographers are not interested, and a manufacturer who would "go there" is either committing corporate suicide or else has made a decision to operate in a niche market.
I'm not saying what any individual should do in their own photography, and I have good friends (and excellent photographers) who continue to work almost entirely with film technologies. (Though even they are not averse to scanning their film, or producing digital negatives so that they can make big contact prints, or to using small digital cameras for some of their work.)
Take care,
Dan
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