"Summer Wind" wrote:

I was shooting at the art museum with my Yashica-Mat 124G Sunday and it
caught the eye of a professional photographer. She shoots mostly digital
professionally but still loves film and uses it for personal projects, using
her TLRs and 4x5 view cameras. We both agreed that having a negative,
rather than a digital file, gives one a feeling of security.

I just saw this article from 03-02-06 today. Are any of you doing the
"panic buying" of film cameras that's going on in Japan, as mentioned in the
article? I'm considering picking up a couple of P&S models from Adorama
while I can still get them, including a Olympus Stylus Epic. The photo mags
have almost no ads for film Point & Shoot cameras. I'm worried about the
availibility of film in a few years, but I hope it's a needless worry.


It is a needless worry, as long as you are prepared to make the small
extra effort needed to buy film from a smaller number of stockists.

For example, you might find that your local supermarket no longer
sells film and that you need to buy it from a photo store or by mail
order. Prices will rise. But there will be a market for film for the
foreseeable future.

Personally, I hope there will continue to be enough of a market for
the film manufacturers to invest in developing new emulsions. Some of
the more recent new introductions have been particularly good.

I especially like Elite Color (color neg) and BW400CN (b/w neg) from
Kodak and Natura 1600 (high speed color neg) and Fortia 50 (slide)
from FujiFilm, and would like to see more.