Is Film Going Away? by Ken Rockwell

Film is not going away. When radio became popular in the 1920s people
knew that newspapers would evaporate, when FM radio became common in
the 1960s everyone knew AM was doomed, and when TV became practical in
the 1950s everyone knew movie theatres were history, too. The Internet
was supposed to kill TV in the late 1990s, and will soon be killing
your telephone in the 2000s with Skype that lets you phone people for
free with your computer. Skype's been around for years, but I still
use my phone.

In every one of these cases the new media was a zillion times better
and faster and more convenient than the old, yet today we still have
movie theaters, TV, telephones, AM radio and newspapers. I know people
who still master new vinyl records. Why is that?

Experience shows us that every time a new, better, cheaper medium,
like digital cameras, is invented that the older media survive
continuing to do whatever they did best and get better at it, even if
they sucked all along. Did you know AM radio went stereo in 1985?
Probably not, but the radio in my 1988 Mercedes picks it up just fine,
even on news stations on which only the jingles play in stereo.

Although older media may no longer be as popular as before they remain
commercially viable. Digital and film are completely different media,
just as oils differ from watercolor, macrame, Prismacolor or bead art.
Non-artists misguidedly waste their time comparing meaningless specs
like resolution and bit depth when they really should just stand back
and look at the images.

Even awful media like LP vinyl records still have their followers. I
know; I still get hate mail from these folks all the time for my
previous sentence. Hello people: LPs sucked then, they still suck
today, but people still use them and love them. I personally know
people who still master vinyl LPs, and other people still buy them. My
point isn't that vinyl records suck, it's that almost no one buys them
anymore yet you can still get them brand new if you want and people
still cut them.

You still think I'm kidding? Pick up the May 31st, 2005 edition of the
New York Times. I was amazed that they report that Kodak still makes
Kodachrome - in SUPER 8mm MOVIE CARTRIDGES! You may be able to read
the article here. Not only that, they still run a plant in Switzerland
which will be processing it until at least 2007! That's December,
2007.

The NY Times article was about people whining because Kodak may stop
making Kodachrome in Super-8, in which case people will have to
content themselves with Ektachrome and black-and-white which Kodak is
still making with no end in sight in Super-8. Kodachrome is in no
danger in 16mm and 35mm sizes. Yes, you can still buy Tri-X, which was
introduced in 1955, in Super-8, right here at Amazon.

For those of you too young to remember Super-8, they were film
cartridges that held 50 feet of film. Super-8 cameras and film were
not sensitive to light: you needed to use 500 Watt movie lights
indoors to get anything. The cartridges cost $10 to $15 each and cost
as much to process. They only ran for five minutes, and you can't
erase them. Compare this to a camcorder that shoots better images in
any (or no) light and runs for at least two hours on a $3 tape, which
you can erase and use again.

Personally I know of no one who shoots 8mm, yet you or I easily can
order it up from Amazon. With this being the case I wouldn't worry
about 35mm or other formats of still photography going away any time
in my lifetime, and I have a lot of decades left.

My point isn't that 8mm sucks. My point is that even though almost no
one uses 8mm compared to the 1960s that you can still buy all you
want. Because of this, don't ever worry that 35mm, 120 or 4 x 5" film
will become unavailable in our lifetime.

I get so many readers that professionals who shoot Super-8 on purpose
for a deliberate look take offence to me poking fun of it as a limited-
use medium. You can read more about Super-8 and the people who use it
at onsuper8.org and filmshooting.com. As you can see there will always
be a vibrant core who shoots probably any format you can imagine, so
if Super-8 still thrives, 35 mm always will. Do know that most of what
comes out of Hollywood, even if shot just for TV, is shot on the 35 mm
film from which 35 mm still film evolved. Even if 35 mm still film
evaporated, 35 mm cine film could be spooled into your still camera
just as it was 100 years ago.

Unlike many of the bad formats and media I've mentioned which still
survive in spite of themselves, film images, especially in larger
formats, have some real technical advantages over digital cameras.
That's why Hollywood movies and commercials are still shot on film,
even though for decades we could have been using video for a lot less
money. Thus if the three people left on the planet who shoot super-8
in Kodachrome can still get film I doubt we'll ever have a problem in
still formats. Remember that still films have always been discontinued
as the market moves on; just no one in 1958 thought film was going
away when Kodak discontinued Super-XX Pan, for instance.

Even when film makers no longer make film in decades old sizes, others
step in to make it, like Film for Classics, for ancient cameras.

"." wrote in message
...
Film is not going away. When radio became popular in the 1920s people
knew that newspapers would evaporate, when FM radio became common in
the 1960s everyone knew AM was doomed, and when TV became practical in
the 1950s everyone knew movie theatres were history, too. The Internet
was supposed to kill TV in the late 1990s, and will soon be killing
your telephone in the 2000s with Skype that lets you phone people for
free with your computer. Skype's been around for years, but I still
use my phone.

In every one of these cases the new media was a zillion times better
and faster and more convenient than the old, yet today we still have
movie theaters, TV, telephones, AM radio and newspapers. I know people
who still master new vinyl records. Why is that?

Experience shows us that every time a new, better, cheaper medium,
like digital cameras, is invented that the older media survive
continuing to do whatever they did best and get better at it, even if
they sucked all along. Did you know AM radio went stereo in 1985?
Probably not, but the radio in my 1988 Mercedes picks it up just fine,
even on news stations on which only the jingles play in stereo.

Although older media may no longer be as popular as before they remain
commercially viable. Digital and film are completely different media,
just as oils differ from watercolor, macrame, Prismacolor or bead art.
Non-artists misguidedly waste their time comparing meaningless specs
like resolution and bit depth when they really should just stand back
and look at the images.

Even awful media like LP vinyl records still have their followers. I
know; I still get hate mail from these folks all the time for my
previous sentence. Hello people: LPs sucked then, they still suck
today, but people still use them and love them. I personally know
people who still master vinyl LPs, and other people still buy them. My
point isn't that vinyl records suck, it's that almost no one buys them
anymore yet you can still get them brand new if you want and people
still cut them.

You still think I'm kidding? Pick up the May 31st, 2005 edition of the
New York Times. I was amazed that they report that Kodak still makes
Kodachrome - in SUPER 8mm MOVIE CARTRIDGES! You may be able to read
the article here. Not only that, they still run a plant in Switzerland
which will be processing it until at least 2007! That's December,
2007.

The NY Times article was about people whining because Kodak may stop
making Kodachrome in Super-8, in which case people will have to
content themselves with Ektachrome and black-and-white which Kodak is
still making with no end in sight in Super-8. Kodachrome is in no
danger in 16mm and 35mm sizes. Yes, you can still buy Tri-X, which was
introduced in 1955, in Super-8, right here at Amazon.

For those of you too young to remember Super-8, they were film
cartridges that held 50 feet of film. Super-8 cameras and film were
not sensitive to light: you needed to use 500 Watt movie lights
indoors to get anything. The cartridges cost $10 to $15 each and cost
as much to process. They only ran for five minutes, and you can't
erase them. Compare this to a camcorder that shoots better images in
any (or no) light and runs for at least two hours on a $3 tape, which
you can erase and use again.

Personally I know of no one who shoots 8mm, yet you or I easily can
order it up from Amazon. With this being the case I wouldn't worry
about 35mm or other formats of still photography going away any time
in my lifetime, and I have a lot of decades left.

My point isn't that 8mm sucks. My point is that even though almost no
one uses 8mm compared to the 1960s that you can still buy all you
want. Because of this, don't ever worry that 35mm, 120 or 4 x 5" film
will become unavailable in our lifetime.

I get so many readers that professionals who shoot Super-8 on purpose
for a deliberate look take offence to me poking fun of it as a limited-
use medium. You can read more about Super-8 and the people who use it
at onsuper8.org and filmshooting.com. As you can see there will always
be a vibrant core who shoots probably any format you can imagine, so
if Super-8 still thrives, 35 mm always will. Do know that most of what
comes out of Hollywood, even if shot just for TV, is shot on the 35 mm
film from which 35 mm still film evolved. Even if 35 mm still film
evaporated, 35 mm cine film could be spooled into your still camera
just as it was 100 years ago.

Unlike many of the bad formats and media I've mentioned which still
survive in spite of themselves, film images, especially in larger
formats, have some real technical advantages over digital cameras.
That's why Hollywood movies and commercials are still shot on film,
even though for decades we could have been using video for a lot less
money. Thus if the three people left on the planet who shoot super-8
in Kodachrome can still get film I doubt we'll ever have a problem in
still formats. Remember that still films have always been discontinued
as the market moves on; just no one in 1958 thought film was going
away when Kodak discontinued Super-XX Pan, for instance.

Even when film makers no longer make film in decades old sizes, others
step in to make it, like Film for Classics, for ancient cameras.

And may I add that I have a digital recorder that I can't use, and even my
teenage grandchildren can't use it. If I want to record my community band's
practice session, I still have to use an "old fashioned" tape
recorder....The digital thingie is impossible to use......You can't know if
you recorded anything by playing it back.....It records in some format or
other that is unintelligible to ordinary human beings ears, and needs a
computer and special software in order to "interpret" it and convert it into
ordinary sound, and in general, it is so complicated that even a teenager
can't do it. So it just sits on my studio's countertop and stares at me
while I use analog equipment to do my thing. I leave it there just to remind
myself not to spend any more money on such devices.....

On Jan 21, 8:25*pm, "William Graham" wrote:
"." wrote in message

...





Film is not going away. When radio became popular in the 1920s people
knew that newspapers would evaporate, when FM radio became common in
the 1960s everyone knew AM was doomed, and when TV became practical in
the 1950s everyone knew movie theatres were history, too. The Internet
was supposed to kill TV in the late 1990s, and will soon be killing
your telephone in the 2000s with Skype that lets you phone people for
free with your computer. Skype's been around for years, but I still
use my phone.

In every one of these cases the new media was a zillion times better
and faster and more convenient than the old, yet today we still have
movie theaters, TV, telephones, AM radio and newspapers. I know people
who still master new vinyl records. Why is that?

Experience shows us that every time a new, better, cheaper medium,
like digital cameras, is invented that the older media survive
continuing to do whatever they did best and get better at it, even if
they sucked all along. Did you know AM radio went stereo in 1985?
Probably not, but the radio in my 1988 Mercedes picks it up just fine,
even on news stations on which only the jingles play in stereo.

Although older media may no longer be as popular as before they remain
commercially viable. Digital and film are completely different media,
just as oils differ from watercolor, macrame, Prismacolor or bead art.
Non-artists misguidedly waste their time comparing meaningless specs
like resolution and bit depth when they really should just stand back
and look at the images.

Even awful media like LP vinyl records still have their followers. I
know; I still get hate mail from these folks all the time for my
previous sentence. Hello people: LPs sucked then, they still suck
today, but people still use them and love them. I personally know
people who still master vinyl LPs, and other people still buy them. My
point isn't that vinyl records suck, it's that almost no one buys them
anymore yet you can still get them brand new if you want and people
still cut them.

You still think I'm kidding? Pick up the May 31st, 2005 edition of the
New York Times. I was amazed that they report that Kodak still makes
Kodachrome - in SUPER 8mm MOVIE CARTRIDGES! You may be able to read
the article here. Not only that, they still run a plant in Switzerland
which will be processing it until at least 2007! That's December,
2007.

The NY Times article was about people whining because Kodak may stop
making Kodachrome in Super-8, in which case people will have to
content themselves with Ektachrome and black-and-white which Kodak is
still making with no end in sight in Super-8. Kodachrome is in no
danger in 16mm and 35mm sizes. Yes, you can still buy Tri-X, which was
introduced in 1955, in Super-8, right here at Amazon.

For those of you too young to remember Super-8, they were film
cartridges that held 50 feet of film. Super-8 cameras and film were
not sensitive to light: you needed to use 500 Watt movie lights
indoors to get anything. The cartridges cost $10 to $15 each and cost
as much to process. They only ran for five minutes, and you can't
erase them. Compare this to a camcorder that shoots better images in
any (or no) light and runs for at least two hours on a $3 tape, which
you can erase and use again.

Personally I know of no one who shoots 8mm, yet you or I easily can
order it up from Amazon. With this being the case I wouldn't worry
about 35mm or other formats of still photography going away any time
in my lifetime, and I have a lot of decades left.

My point isn't that 8mm sucks. My point is that even though almost no
one uses 8mm compared to the 1960s that you can still buy all you
want. Because of this, don't ever worry that 35mm, 120 or 4 x 5" film
will become unavailable in our lifetime.

I get so many readers that professionals who shoot Super-8 on purpose
for a deliberate look take offence to me poking fun of it as a limited-
use medium. You can read more about Super-8 and the people who use it
at onsuper8.org and filmshooting.com. As you can see there will always
be a vibrant core who shoots probably any format you can imagine, so
if Super-8 still thrives, 35 mm always will. Do know that most of what
comes out of Hollywood, even if shot just for TV, is shot on the 35 mm
film from which 35 mm still film evolved. Even if 35 mm still film
evaporated, 35 mm cine film could be spooled into your still camera
just as it was 100 years ago.

Unlike many of the bad formats and media I've mentioned which still
survive in spite of themselves, film images, especially in larger
formats, have some real technical advantages over digital cameras.
That's why Hollywood movies and commercials are still shot on film,
even though for decades we could have been using video for a lot less
money. Thus if the three people left on the planet who shoot super-8
in Kodachrome can still get film I doubt we'll ever have a problem in
still formats. Remember that still films have always been discontinued
as the market moves on; just no one in 1958 thought film was going
away when Kodak discontinued Super-XX Pan, for instance.

Even when film makers no longer make film in decades old sizes, others
step in to make it, like Film for Classics, for ancient cameras.

And may I add that I have a digital recorder that I can't use, and even my
teenage grandchildren can't use it. If I want to record my community band's
practice session, I still have to use an "old fashioned" tape
recorder....The digital thingie is impossible to use......You can't know if
you recorded anything by playing it back.....It records in some format or
other that is unintelligible to ordinary human beings ears, and needs a
computer and special software in order to "interpret" it and convert it into
ordinary sound, and in general, it is so complicated that even a teenager
can't do it. So it just sits on my studio's countertop and stares at me
while I use analog equipment to do my thing. I leave it there just to remind
myself not to spend any more money on such devices.....- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Wax cylinders? Clay tablets?
:-)

wrote:
You still think I'm kidding? Pick up the May 31st, 2005 edition of the
New York Times. I was amazed that they report that Kodak still makes
Kodachrome - in SUPER 8mm MOVIE CARTRIDGES! You may be able to read
the article here. Not only that, they still run a plant in Switzerland
which will be processing it until at least 2007! That's December,
2007.

Long before December 2007, the Swiss plant was closed. It may have been
closed before the article was published. Kodak accepted mail at the
old plants and forwarded them to wherever they actually processed
the film.

Now there are NO Kodak plants processing Kodachrome, the ONLY place
that does it is Duane's, which is privately owned. Duane's has
been the only plant for a relatively long time. As long as Kodak
sells Kodachrome in a country, they will still accept mail in
that country and forward the film.

Even when film makers no longer make film in decades old sizes, others
step in to make it, like Film for Classics, for ancient cameras.

They don't actually make it. They take film, cut it down to size and
insert it into paper backing and spools. I don't know if they make
spools or only use existing ones.

Kodak has been eliminating the production of products that do not
sell enough to justify their making them. They have also consolidated
production of products to manufacturing facilties that did not make
them before, but so far have continued to make similar products.

However Agfa and Konica, two other large film manufacturers have gone
out of business.

I'm not saying that you won't be able to buy film next week, or
possibly even in 100 years, but it won't be the same film you
buy now and it won't be made by the big companies, you know now.

All sorts of "long dead" products are still made and sold, for example
morse code keys, leaded gasoline (or add-ons to make unleaded
gasoline leaded), home canning supplies, and so on.

So if you are worried about your camera, especially a 35mm camera
permanently running out of film, I would not. If you are worried
about running out of a specifc film, I would stock up.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/

On 2008-01-21 19:26:20 -0500, "." said:

...snip....


You still think I'm kidding? Pick up the May 31st, 2005 edition of the
New York Times. I was amazed that they report that Kodak still makes
Kodachrome - in SUPER 8mm MOVIE CARTRIDGES! You may be able to read
the article here. Not only that, they still run a plant in Switzerland
which will be processing it until at least 2007! That's December,
2007.

....snip...

Well yes, But why on January 21, 2008 post something about the May 31,
2005 edition of the NYT? He tells us to pick it up. OK, I'll go to my
library and dig it out, then pick it up. And Switzerland will be
processing Super 8 Kodachrome all the way into the future of.... last
month???

An interesting post but a liitle bit late, don't you think?

Michael

"JimKramer" wrote in message ...
On Jan 21, 8:25 pm, "William Graham" wrote:
"." wrote in message

...





Film is not going away. When radio became popular in the 1920s people
knew that newspapers would evaporate, when FM radio became common in
the 1960s everyone knew AM was doomed, and when TV became practical in
the 1950s everyone knew movie theatres were history, too. The Internet
was supposed to kill TV in the late 1990s, and will soon be killing
your telephone in the 2000s with Skype that lets you phone people for
free with your computer. Skype's been around for years, but I still
use my phone.

In every one of these cases the new media was a zillion times better
and faster and more convenient than the old, yet today we still have
movie theaters, TV, telephones, AM radio and newspapers. I know people
who still master new vinyl records. Why is that?

Experience shows us that every time a new, better, cheaper medium,
like digital cameras, is invented that the older media survive
continuing to do whatever they did best and get better at it, even if
they sucked all along. Did you know AM radio went stereo in 1985?
Probably not, but the radio in my 1988 Mercedes picks it up just fine,
even on news stations on which only the jingles play in stereo.

Although older media may no longer be as popular as before they remain
commercially viable. Digital and film are completely different media,
just as oils differ from watercolor, macrame, Prismacolor or bead art.
Non-artists misguidedly waste their time comparing meaningless specs
like resolution and bit depth when they really should just stand back
and look at the images.

Even awful media like LP vinyl records still have their followers. I
know; I still get hate mail from these folks all the time for my
previous sentence. Hello people: LPs sucked then, they still suck
today, but people still use them and love them. I personally know
people who still master vinyl LPs, and other people still buy them. My
point isn't that vinyl records suck, it's that almost no one buys them
anymore yet you can still get them brand new if you want and people
still cut them.

You still think I'm kidding? Pick up the May 31st, 2005 edition of the
New York Times. I was amazed that they report that Kodak still makes
Kodachrome - in SUPER 8mm MOVIE CARTRIDGES! You may be able to read
the article here. Not only that, they still run a plant in Switzerland
which will be processing it until at least 2007! That's December,
2007.

The NY Times article was about people whining because Kodak may stop
making Kodachrome in Super-8, in which case people will have to
content themselves with Ektachrome and black-and-white which Kodak is
still making with no end in sight in Super-8. Kodachrome is in no
danger in 16mm and 35mm sizes. Yes, you can still buy Tri-X, which was
introduced in 1955, in Super-8, right here at Amazon.

For those of you too young to remember Super-8, they were film
cartridges that held 50 feet of film. Super-8 cameras and film were
not sensitive to light: you needed to use 500 Watt movie lights
indoors to get anything. The cartridges cost $10 to $15 each and cost
as much to process. They only ran for five minutes, and you can't
erase them. Compare this to a camcorder that shoots better images in
any (or no) light and runs for at least two hours on a $3 tape, which
you can erase and use again.

Personally I know of no one who shoots 8mm, yet you or I easily can
order it up from Amazon. With this being the case I wouldn't worry
about 35mm or other formats of still photography going away any time
in my lifetime, and I have a lot of decades left.

My point isn't that 8mm sucks. My point is that even though almost no
one uses 8mm compared to the 1960s that you can still buy all you
want. Because of this, don't ever worry that 35mm, 120 or 4 x 5" film
will become unavailable in our lifetime.

I get so many readers that professionals who shoot Super-8 on purpose
for a deliberate look take offence to me poking fun of it as a limited-
use medium. You can read more about Super-8 and the people who use it
at onsuper8.org and filmshooting.com. As you can see there will always
be a vibrant core who shoots probably any format you can imagine, so
if Super-8 still thrives, 35 mm always will. Do know that most of what
comes out of Hollywood, even if shot just for TV, is shot on the 35 mm
film from which 35 mm still film evolved. Even if 35 mm still film
evaporated, 35 mm cine film could be spooled into your still camera
just as it was 100 years ago.

Unlike many of the bad formats and media I've mentioned which still
survive in spite of themselves, film images, especially in larger
formats, have some real technical advantages over digital cameras.
That's why Hollywood movies and commercials are still shot on film,
even though for decades we could have been using video for a lot less
money. Thus if the three people left on the planet who shoot super-8
in Kodachrome can still get film I doubt we'll ever have a problem in
still formats. Remember that still films have always been discontinued
as the market moves on; just no one in 1958 thought film was going
away when Kodak discontinued Super-XX Pan, for instance.

Even when film makers no longer make film in decades old sizes, others
step in to make it, like Film for Classics, for ancient cameras.

And may I add that I have a digital recorder that I can't use, and even my
teenage grandchildren can't use it. If I want to record my community band's
practice session, I still have to use an "old fashioned" tape
recorder....The digital thingie is impossible to use......You can't know if
you recorded anything by playing it back.....It records in some format or
other that is unintelligible to ordinary human beings ears, and needs a
computer and special software in order to "interpret" it and convert it into
ordinary sound, and in general, it is so complicated that even a teenager
can't do it. So it just sits on my studio's countertop and stares at me
while I use analog equipment to do my thing. I leave it there just to remind
myself not to spend any more money on such devices.....- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Wax cylinders? Clay tablets?
:-)

Wax Cylinders are cool I've seen one close up, Sounds just like the old News reel clips. The Tech TV clip is funny and sad,
in that one was destroyed.

Cheers

Look, if you're going to post articles by imbeciles, post something more
recent. This is amazingly stupid, even by Rockwell's extremely low
standards.

I still have a working 8-track player so the 8-track industry is alive
and well, according to my buddy Ken.

"." wrote:

I'm responding to this only because I just discovered that my local
Wal-Mart discontinued on-site film processing.

In every one of these cases the new media was a zillion times better
and faster and more convenient than the old, yet today we still have
movie theaters, TV, telephones, AM radio and newspapers. I know people
who still master new vinyl records. Why is that?

Movie Theaters -- The social experience of seeing a movie, the lack
of distractions present in a typical home setting, and those yummy
movie snacks :-).
TV -- Cost effectiveness and picture quality.
Telephones -- Reliability and sound quality.
AM Radio -- Geographic Reach and scarcity of FM bandwidth.
Newspapers -- Page counts and circulation steadily decreasing.
Vinyl Records -- Two words. "Analog snobbery." The RIAA shows that
vinyl records have retained a market share of about 0.7% for the last
decade. In 2006, audio cassettes fell below 1% as well:

http://76.74.24.142/E795D602-FA50-3F...8A40B98C46.pdf

Experience shows us that every time a new, better, cheaper medium,
like digital cameras, is invented that the older media survive
continuing to do whatever they did best and get better at it, even if
they sucked all along.

Disproved by counterexample -- 8 track tapes, Kodak Disc Film. A
number of other media are moribund, such as open-reel audio tape,
LaserDisc, and BetaMax.

You still think I'm kidding? Pick up the May 31st, 2005 edition of the
New York Times. I was amazed that they report that Kodak still makes
Kodachrome - in SUPER 8mm MOVIE CARTRIDGES!

Now discontinued. Kodachrome survives, barely, in 35mm format only.

For those of you too young to remember Super-8, they were film
cartridges that held 50 feet of film. Super-8 cameras and film were
not sensitive to light:

Super-8 film was not sensitive to light?

Personally I know of no one who shoots 8mm.

Q.E.D.

Even if 35 mm still film evaporated, 35 mm cine film could be
spooled into your still camera just as it was 100 years ago.

But could you get it processed? ECN-II processing is not something
easily done at home.

Film and film processing is rapidly becoming a boutique business.
While I expect to use film for the rest of my life, even today
I have to make a special trip to get it processed. It will
continue to get less convenient (and likely more expensive) to
do so.

In closing, consider the following utterly boring shot:
http://wemightneedthat.biz/BeforeTheStorm.jpg

My wife asked me to shoot this as a "before and after" shot
prior to a snowstorm. I did so with my trusty D200...

.... and lit it a with an M2 flashbulb in a Nikon BC-7 flashgun.

While I plan on trying to do some 1950's style portraits
with my remaining bulbs, trust me. There are very good reasons
flash bulbs are no longer a mainstream item.

--
Michael Benveniste --
Spam and UCE professionally evaluated for $419. Use this email
address only to submit mail for evaluation.

"Martin Riddle" wrote in message
news:sZllj.4113$Ev6.647@trndny07...

"JimKramer" wrote in message
...
On Jan 21, 8:25 pm, "William Graham" wrote:
"." wrote in message

...





Film is not going away. When radio became popular in the 1920s people
knew that newspapers would evaporate, when FM radio became common in
the 1960s everyone knew AM was doomed, and when TV became practical in
the 1950s everyone knew movie theatres were history, too. The Internet
was supposed to kill TV in the late 1990s, and will soon be killing
your telephone in the 2000s with Skype that lets you phone people for
free with your computer. Skype's been around for years, but I still
use my phone.

In every one of these cases the new media was a zillion times better
and faster and more convenient than the old, yet today we still have
movie theaters, TV, telephones, AM radio and newspapers. I know people
who still master new vinyl records. Why is that?

Experience shows us that every time a new, better, cheaper medium,
like digital cameras, is invented that the older media survive
continuing to do whatever they did best and get better at it, even if
they sucked all along. Did you know AM radio went stereo in 1985?
Probably not, but the radio in my 1988 Mercedes picks it up just fine,
even on news stations on which only the jingles play in stereo.

Although older media may no longer be as popular as before they remain
commercially viable. Digital and film are completely different media,
just as oils differ from watercolor, macrame, Prismacolor or bead art.
Non-artists misguidedly waste their time comparing meaningless specs
like resolution and bit depth when they really should just stand back
and look at the images.

Even awful media like LP vinyl records still have their followers. I
know; I still get hate mail from these folks all the time for my
previous sentence. Hello people: LPs sucked then, they still suck
today, but people still use them and love them. I personally know
people who still master vinyl LPs, and other people still buy them. My
point isn't that vinyl records suck, it's that almost no one buys them
anymore yet you can still get them brand new if you want and people
still cut them.

You still think I'm kidding? Pick up the May 31st, 2005 edition of the
New York Times. I was amazed that they report that Kodak still makes
Kodachrome - in SUPER 8mm MOVIE CARTRIDGES! You may be able to read
the article here. Not only that, they still run a plant in Switzerland
which will be processing it until at least 2007! That's December,
2007.

The NY Times article was about people whining because Kodak may stop
making Kodachrome in Super-8, in which case people will have to
content themselves with Ektachrome and black-and-white which Kodak is
still making with no end in sight in Super-8. Kodachrome is in no
danger in 16mm and 35mm sizes. Yes, you can still buy Tri-X, which was
introduced in 1955, in Super-8, right here at Amazon.

For those of you too young to remember Super-8, they were film
cartridges that held 50 feet of film. Super-8 cameras and film were
not sensitive to light: you needed to use 500 Watt movie lights
indoors to get anything. The cartridges cost $10 to $15 each and cost
as much to process. They only ran for five minutes, and you can't
erase them. Compare this to a camcorder that shoots better images in
any (or no) light and runs for at least two hours on a $3 tape, which
you can erase and use again.

Personally I know of no one who shoots 8mm, yet you or I easily can
order it up from Amazon. With this being the case I wouldn't worry
about 35mm or other formats of still photography going away any time
in my lifetime, and I have a lot of decades left.

My point isn't that 8mm sucks. My point is that even though almost no
one uses 8mm compared to the 1960s that you can still buy all you
want. Because of this, don't ever worry that 35mm, 120 or 4 x 5" film
will become unavailable in our lifetime.

I get so many readers that professionals who shoot Super-8 on purpose
for a deliberate look take offence to me poking fun of it as a limited-
use medium. You can read more about Super-8 and the people who use it
at onsuper8.org and filmshooting.com. As you can see there will always
be a vibrant core who shoots probably any format you can imagine, so
if Super-8 still thrives, 35 mm always will. Do know that most of what
comes out of Hollywood, even if shot just for TV, is shot on the 35 mm
film from which 35 mm still film evolved. Even if 35 mm still film
evaporated, 35 mm cine film could be spooled into your still camera
just as it was 100 years ago.

Unlike many of the bad formats and media I've mentioned which still
survive in spite of themselves, film images, especially in larger
formats, have some real technical advantages over digital cameras.
That's why Hollywood movies and commercials are still shot on film,
even though for decades we could have been using video for a lot less
money. Thus if the three people left on the planet who shoot super-8
in Kodachrome can still get film I doubt we'll ever have a problem in
still formats. Remember that still films have always been discontinued
as the market moves on; just no one in 1958 thought film was going
away when Kodak discontinued Super-XX Pan, for instance.

Even when film makers no longer make film in decades old sizes, others
step in to make it, like Film for Classics, for ancient cameras.

And may I add that I have a digital recorder that I can't use, and even
my
teenage grandchildren can't use it. If I want to record my community
band's
practice session, I still have to use an "old fashioned" tape
recorder....The digital thingie is impossible to use......You can't know
if
you recorded anything by playing it back.....It records in some format or
other that is unintelligible to ordinary human beings ears, and needs a
computer and special software in order to "interpret" it and convert it
into
ordinary sound, and in general, it is so complicated that even a teenager
can't do it. So it just sits on my studio's countertop and stares at me
while I use analog equipment to do my thing. I leave it there just to
remind
myself not to spend any more money on such devices.....- Hide quoted
text -

- Show quoted text -

Wax cylinders? Clay tablets?
:-)

Wax Cylinders are cool I've seen one close up, Sounds just like the old
News reel clips. The Tech TV clip is funny and sad, in that one was
destroyed.

Cheers

With any of those, (cylinders, tablets, records or tape) you can see the
media go by as the audio is recorded on it, and back it up to some place
that passed along the way, and then play it back. With the digital device,
the recording takes place (presumably) inside a chip somewhere. You can't
see it, and can't know if anything really happened. You can't physically
back it up, and/or read it out to see if anything happened to it. and, if
something did happen to it, you don't really know what that something was,
and can't describe it to anyone in any kind of real physical terms, like:
"There are little scratches on the side of the grooves", or: "The little
magnets in the coating on the tape align themselves up according to the
strength of the signal..." or anything like that. I am reduced to saying, "
Uh.....I don't know exactly what happens, or how to know if anything really
did happen, and I don't know how the machine goes about reading out
whatever did happen...." I guess you could send it to the FBI labs in
Maryland or wherever, and they could do black box analysis on it, and maybe
a team of electrical engineers and mathematicians could figure out if there
was actually anything recorded in there, but I sure as hell can't figure it
out.
I spent my entire life as an electronics technician fixing
electrical/physical devices, and the first thing I always did was to fully
understand any machine that I was responsible for, and that meant I had to
know exactly how it worked before I could hope to be able to fix it. Today,
I notice that the people who fix these things don't actually know how they
work. They just replace PC cards and/or chips that each house thousands of
individual circuits, and hope that the bad circuit is the one they
replace. - I used to call this process, "Shotgunning" and it was always a
very poor way to fix anything, because, even when it worked, you didn't have
the faintest idea why it worked, or what, exactly, was wrong with the
machine to begin with. IOW, you learned nothing, and learning something was
the path to becoming a better and better tech, and to making more and more
money at doing what you did.
Today we are in a situation where everyone just shotguns everything, and no
one has the faintest idea why it works or not. IOW, it is impossible to
troubleshoot to the component level anymore, and that's a scary thing to me.
It seems that it is the beginning of the end. The end being where the
machines will know more than we do, and perhaps, someday, will take over
control of the world from us.