Film Lover's Lament

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.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...065452,00.html

The Times March 02, 2006


Film camera is killed off by millions of pixels
By Ben Hoyle and Leo Lewis



FROM Henri Cartier-Bresson's reportage to Mario Testino's
portraits, the camera and film captured the images that defined the 20th
century.
But they may soon be available only as expensive collectors'
items, driven out of production by the digital revolution. Within the past
few weeks two giants of the industry, Konica Minolta and Fuji Photo Film,
have announced their withdrawal from the traditional film and camera
business, triggering a frenzy of last-minute buying in Japan.



In Britain, Dixons stopped selling 35mm cameras last August.
Jessops, the leading specialist retailer of photographic equipment, has
committed itself to stocking 35mm cameras for the foreseeable future but
digital cameras outsell them nine to one.

Digital cameras now cost from less than £100, are cheaper to run
because they don't require film, and offer flexibility of shooting styles
and effects that traditional photography cannot match. Sales in Britain are
expected to reach £963 million in 2009, according to Mintel, up from £215
million in 2001.

The traditional leading camera brands are having to evolve or
die. Struggling with losses of nearly half a billion pounds, Konica, the
company that made Japan's first colour film, will close its camera and film
operations by March, and is laying off nearly 4,000 workers.

Fuji Photo Film is cutting 5,000 jobs and has begun a gradual
retreat from the business that made its name. Nikon has reduced its film
camera output to a single model while Canon, the world's largest maker of
digital cameras, is believed to have prepared its withdrawal strategy from
the 35mm market. Kodak is trying to reinvent itself as a digital company.

As a result photography stores in Japan have reported "panic
buying" of film cameras by enthusiasts worried that the machines will
disappear altogether. Cameras which, four weeks ago, were being sold for
around £800, have now soared in value to £1,500. A similar boom may be about
to hit the British camera market.

Alex Falk, the owner of Mr Cad, the largest independent camera
store, has been stockpiling 35mm cameras. "In the past few months there has
been a huge increase in the number of people coming back to film. Digital
cameras are made from glue and plastic so when they break you can't fix
them. A three-year-old digital camera is worth about three and six but you
can sell a Nikon Rangefinder from the 1950s for £3,000."

For many photographers the feel of a film camera is more
important than its resale value. Chris Gatcum, of Amateur Photographer
magazine, said: "There's a real romanticism to film that digital doesn't
have and a lot of our readers are up in arms because they think this is the
end of film. It's not - it's just the end of film camera production." Among
the professionals, news and sport photographers have used digital cameras
for years, but others remain wedded to film. Brian Aris, a photographer who
took the Beckhams' wedding photographs and the Queen's 70th birthday
portrait, said that portraiture was likely to prove the last refuge of film
photography. He uses film for 90 per cent of his work but is preparing to
move more into digital: "We've all got to embrace it."

David Bailey, arguably Britain's best-known photographer since
the 1960s, agreed: "Digital is great for photography as a whole and for the
amateur the advantages are enormous because you can stick your photos
straight on to your computer and you don't have to mess around with
chemicals to get your images. But there's still a place for film and I use
it 80 per cent of the time."


Visit our pictures galleries online

LIGHT FANTASTIC

1826 Nicéphore Niépce creates the first photograph using a
pewter plate and a substance called bitumen of Judea. It is a view of his
outhouses in Chalons sur Soane

1855 The physicist James Clerk Maxwell exhibits an early colour
photograph of a tartan ribbon to the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

1888 First Kodak camera goes on sale. An improved model with
film instead of paper is introduced in 1889. The cameras had to be sent back
to the factory for processing, but they could take 100 pictures.

1900 The Brownie camera goes on sale, an inexpensive box camera
that made snapshots possible, and remained popular until the 1960s.

1963 Instant colour film; Polaroid is introduced

1981 Sony markets the Mavica as a filmless camera - the first
incarnation of the digital camera