Two23 wrote:
If I remember right, that one was shot with 8x10. He had mounted a piece of plywood on top of his old station wagon/car and used that as a platform to shoot from. I saw a photo of that once. It inspired me to attach some 2x4 boards to the roof rack of my Toyota RAV4 and take shots that got me above the crowd.
Yep. We went to see his exhibit in Toronto a few years ago. We walked up to a very large original print. A worker walked up to us and I asked if they take a cheque. She replied "It is priceless".
The sad part is we had no idea where it was so we stopped for lunch at an old mom and pop restaurant on the main drag. I noticed a print on the wall and said there it is. The owner said it was just down the road beside the old abandoned gas station. It was kind of a shame. One of the most famous shots and it was overgrown and not even sign anyway to let people know. The church is still there.
There is plenty of evidence of the decline of film and film chemicals and equipment, and there has been for years. In the last year, for example, a Fujifilm spokesperson was asked about the size of their film business relative to what it had been. His response was that it was about 1%, but that they felt some obligation to keep it going. One could also count the number of companies that were stalwarts in the film photography business that either went out of business, left the business, or transformed themselves into companies working with digital photography media.
I keep hearing that film is growing in a substantial way. I'd love for those who feel/hope that this is true to give us some evidence other than anecdotes about the film market as a whole. ...Show more →
Easy: Fujifilm. They sold 5.7 million instax cameras last year alone and have been averaging over 4 million cameras sold per year for almost 5 years now. That translates into tens of millions of packs of instax film sold per year. A cursory look at Fuji's quarterly data shows that photo film and processing out earns, by far, their sales in digital cameras.
gdanmitchell wrote:
Film is and was a wonderful medium. Beautiful work has been done with it for years and beautiful work is still done that way. But none of that changes the obvious trajectory of its usage and market. To insist on the opposite without evidence is to engage in gaslighting.
Dan
From Kodak's most recent financial report: Consumer and Film Division (CFD) revenues for the third quarter were $54 million, down from $64 million in the same period last year. Performance for the division was driven primarily by an expected $9 million decline in revenues from sales of consumer inkjet printer cartridges.
Sounds like to me Kodak's film sales are relatively flat; certainly not in a steep decline. Kodak has reported that their film sales are now a profitable business. Hardly in free fall the way that they have been in the recent past. I guess the trajectory of film sales is not so "obvious" to those ready to bury film.
That ought to make many, if not most, in this thread very unhappy. Despite the transparent posturing, there is quite a lot of contempt for film in this thread.
AbramG wrote:
I don't care personally about the quality difference but I still shoot a lot of 35mm film because I enjoy the process and the cameras I have to work with. I shoot medium format on occasion as well.
Exactly. I shoot film because it's more fun for me. I expect my hobby to be fun. And challenging. Film is a lot harder so that's another benefit. I want to be challenged during my free time and film offers me that challenge. It's far harder a challenge for me to shoot at night using ISO400 speed film than my digital camera which shoots at ISO6400.
My film camera doesnt autofocus, nor have a meter, or shoot above ISO1600. Nor can I chimp with it. Yet with all these "disadvantages", I have a keeper rate that pleases me very much.
Further, I tremendously enjoy darkroom work and digital offers nothing equivalent for me there.
Film is and was a wonderful medium. Beautiful work has been done with it for years and beautiful work is still done that way. But none of that changes the obvious trajectory of its usage and market. To insist on the opposite without evidence is to engage in gaslighting.
Dan
Speaking of trends, the collapse in the digital camera sales has been profound and the end is still nowhere in sight.
Compact cameras have been made virtually extinct and yet camera sales are still in steep decline.
I would not point to traditional digital cameras as some reference of a healthy, growing medium.
gdanmitchell wrote:
... many photographers prefer to share their photographs much more widely than they ever could have in the era of print, by taking advantage of new ways to distribute their work digitally. This includes many of us who are also printers.
I like to make prints. A lot. I'm spending the week making them. On a large format inkjet printer. From digital originals.
... if you are the sort of person who still doesn't own a computer.
In 2016.
Who somehow still manages to post messages in online photography forums.
On the internet.
In threads devoted to digital cameras. ;-)
Dan
Sorry dan, you are misinterpreting what was written.
I have a hybrid approach and shoot mostly B&W film,with the majority in swing-lens panorama cameras - a Widelux F8, Noblex 135U, and Noblex 150U, and some in 6x9, 4x5, a tiny bit in 8x10. I'm not pro, nor could I ever afford to be one, so it is for personal enjoyment. I usually bulk load my 35mm and develop myself in hand tanks, trays, or a Phototherm, and scan using a Nikon 9000 and a Epson 750. I personally like B&W film far more than digital B&W, but usually shoot the rare color shots in digital.
So basically, I use film for things that digital really can't duplicate easily or satisfactorily - meaning B&W, handheld, and distortion free panos, and infrared.
gdanmitchell wrote:
I keep hearing that film is growing in a substantial way. I'd love for those who feel/hope that this is true to give us some evidence other than anecdotes about the film market as a whole.
I'm not going to spend hours researching it, but I think the evidence may be there to be found in resale values of certain types of film equipment that don't have a second life in digital kits. I still have a couple of 35mm bodies I didn't sell, and the prices for completed sales of one of those bodies seem to be higher than they were three years ago (the other is collectible and fairly steady). And I'd held back a couple of lenses that I thought had no valid use case adapted to digital due to technological progress, but they're now in a dealer's window listed at two or three times their former value.
Volume of film sold is not a good proxy measure, because professionals always used much more film than amateurs. And these amateurs are almost certainly using their film cameras as secondary systems after their phones.
Interesting that 25% of the polled still shoot film occasionally...considering FM is basically a digital photography forum.
Ta lking with sales folk in a couple photo shops in Vancouver, they claim the interest in b&w film has grown substantially in the last 5 years. One store has once again opened up a darkroom section containing the basic darkroom hardware and chemicals. They also once again have a fridge full of film.
From my perspective, I really don't care if the use of film is rising or falling as long as I can still purchase film and chemicals I'm good. I never was one to follow the herd anyway even though most of my photography is digital...I still shoot film because it very relaxing to me and I achieve a different look to my work with film. Sometimes it's not about the easiest, cheapest, or most in vogue process that gives people joy...sometimes it's just leaving today's digital everything world for an afternoon and going back to the manual ways to escape the bits and bytes.
My all-time favorite camera is still the Contax G2 with the wonderful set of Zeiss G lenses. But what put me off film forever was the tedium of scanning and the time spent doing it. Besides, modern sensors can produce much more detailed and cleaner images than was possible with film.
I shot film many years ago. I have been toying with the idea of shooting again. Enough so that I recently purchased a Nikon AF500 and 2 rolls of Fuji. But I never grab the film camera when I go out. Just continue to forget about it. I need to be more intentional about it!
gdanmitchell wrote:
Good point about Instax. The media is selling, due to the appeal of instant photographs.
The decline already occurred. Compare to a decade or more ago.
You wrote above: "But none of that changes the obvious trajectory of its usage and market. To insist on the opposite without evidence is to engage in gaslighting."
Today's trajectory is not the same as that during film's steep decline. It is rising, every so slightly and has reached the point where those of us who shoot it no longer worry about when and if film will stop being made.
gdanmitchell wrote:
We've had this discussion here from time to time. The "collapse" of digital camera sales is a very different thing than what happened to film. There are two primary factors at work, and neither indicates that digital cameras are fading away.
1. Smartphones have largely taken over the point and shoot market. (These are not using film, by the way... ;-) )
Never did I imply, nor would any intelligent person do so, that the demise of traditional digital cameras was a positive for film. This is the contempt that I keep noticing. A quick drop of a smilie does nothing to mitigate this insult.
gdanmitchell wrote:
2. As with any game-changing new technology (desktop computers, digital watches, flat-screen televisions, you name it) the initial explosive growth cannot be sustained. At first with digital cameras we saw a wholesale move to the new technology that exploded the camera market and sales increased far beyond the rates that had prevailed before that. People who were "switching" got their first digital camera, folks who had switched moved through a series of cameras as they tried it out (all-in-one, first DSLR, higher quality DSLR, perhaps today a mirrorless camera), many new buyers were attracted by all of the excitement. A decade or so later, the rate of improvement slowed, there were far fewer first time buyers, and the number of "switchers" dropped to almost zero. Rates of sales are dropping into the range (when it comes to high end cameras such as DSLRs and mirrorless0 that are approximately a projection of the pre-DSLR curve of film cameras....Show more →
This is pure conjecture on your part unsupported by valid data and completely ignores the most real fact that the massive decline in traditional digital camera sales is a slow motion financial catastrophe for those companies who make and sell them. Nikon is the only traditional camera maker left that makes the majority of their revenue from cameras. The rest have smartly diversified as far away from traditional cameras as they possibly could. I see a reminder of that every day as I have a Canon calculator on my desk.
George Orwell wrote:
This is pure conjecture on your part unsupported by valid data and completely ignores the most real fact that the massive decline in traditional digital camera sales is a slow motion financial catastrophe for those companies who make and sell them. Nikon is the only traditional camera maker left that makes the majority of their revenue from cameras. The rest have smartly diversified as far away from traditional cameras as they possibly could. I see a reminder of that every day as I have a Canon calculator on my desk.
At risk of sparking an argument here, i'm afraid i think Dan is correct: Sales of digital cameras are declining because the technology has reached maturity, whilst sales of film plummeted because the technology hit obsolescence. Your comment about the financial impact is entirely unrelated to what he said too.
The declining sales is certainly a problem for the remaining camera companies though, but most of them were big companies outwith their camera divisions long before the sales decline. As you point out, Nikon is the exception, but they are trying very hard now to move into new markets in microscopy, lithography and x-ray metrology (CT machines).
15Bit wrote:
At risk of sparking an argument here, i'm afraid i think Dan is correct: Sales of digital cameras are declining because the technology has reached maturity, whilst sales of film plummeted because the technology hit obsolescence. Your comment about the financial impact is entirely unrelated to what he said too.
The declining sales is certainly a problem for the remaining camera companies though, but most of them were big companies outwith their camera divisions long before the sales decline. As you point out, Nikon is the exception, but they are trying very hard now to move into new markets in microscopy, lithography and x-ray metrology (CT machines)....Show more →
This is an "argument"; a friendly one.
Dan may be correct but he provided no data whatsoever to support his claim. Just saying such doesnt make it true. He asked for supporting data when presented claims, but he didnt see fit to supply his own for his own claims.
The financial impact on these companies is entirely relevant. Dan claimed that we were merely returning back to the sales level of the pre-digital era. Back then, all the camera makers were in strong financial health. Today they are far from it. They are doing everything possible to get away from camera sales and boost revenue elsewhere. Even Nikon is searching for alternate revenue through a medical device division.
Back in the '70s and 80's, the camera makers were just that, CAMERA makers. They had not yet divested out of that dying industry.
I used film for nearly 3 decades, starting in the early seventies. I bought my first digital camera, a 30D, in late 2000. Right from jump street, it was clear that a mere 3MP could produce better prints more consistently than a Hasselblad. I had to send my negatives to a lab for printing. To avoid spotting and increase production, labs would use poorly resolving lenses wide open, thereby producing short exposure times and more prints per hour. Once they began using digital rather than optical printers, quality went way up. Not having the Postal System as an unseen partner in my business allowed my hair to whiten at its own instead of an accelerated pace. Sending those rolls out for processing and printing was really hair-raising. Once Epson made archival grade printing possible, I moved all or most production in-house. It was a lot more work, but I had control of the process from beginning to end, just like the very 1st photographers. The industry had gone full circle. I would not care to go back to film. Scanning old negatives, even large format ones, shows up how much more information digital cameras capture. It is an incredible tribute to Ansel Adams that he was able to produce such perfect prints from such an imperfect and inconsistent recording medium.
I think you are stretching it a bit ( a lot ) claiming a 3mp sensor camera can produce better prints than what a Hasselblad could. You must have had a very lousy lab processing your film as I shoot medium and large format occasionally and make beautiful large prints from them.
If you scan your better negatives using a drum scanner and an experienced tech, you would see just how much information there is in those negatives. To say film is imperfect and inconsistent just shows me sloppy processing was used as I've had totally different experiences than you with medium and large format films...especially B&W.
I can understand and accept people's choice to not use film, but I cannot accept false statements and information.
tonyespofoto wrote:
Scanning old negatives, even large format ones, shows up how much more information digital cameras capture.
You are very much mistaken here. What you saw was the limitation on the scanner, not the film.
tonyespofoto wrote:
It is an incredible tribute to Ansel Adams that he was able to produce such perfect prints from such an imperfect and inconsistent recording medium.
This. When you view an Adam's print, you get the full "information" contained in the photographic negative.
