Nikon to stop production of film cameras...

Benster

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4605418.stm


Well, I suppose this is the start of the consignment of film cameras to the "specialist" niche market...

B.

Oriel

Big mistake if you ask me. Although, in fairness, it does say "most" of it's film cameras. There are loads of people out there who have no intention of going digital.

S.

randombassist

I presume they'll still be making parts etc for years to come. Can't be that profitable any more I guess, pretty much anyone who's buying a new camera is going digital at this stage. Particularly at the pro end suchn as photojournalism where the ability to edit, and the higher picture quality are real winners. Still, there will be a market for film from landscape photographers as long as digital backs remain so expensive.

FX Meister

Can you explain what you mean by higher picture quality that digital has over film?

DotOrg

read this:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/shootout.shtml

the digital shot takes seconds to print, e-mail whatever after shooting, the film takes hours to process and scan to achieve virtually the same quality

with digital you can shoot 100 shots of this quality, to drum scan 100 shots would cos €100's and would take hours if not days

in one year, digital sensors will out-perform even MF film

randombassist

hehehe, that was actually the article that I was going to link to! Digital can out resolve film from about 6mp onwards. Film has other advantages: It can print larger, that kind of thing. However in terms of the actual quality of the resolved image digital is ahead.

DotOrg

get one of these and you can print A0 sized prints 2 and a half minutes after taking the shot on a dSLR

http://www.canon.co.uk/for_work/products/office_print_copy_solutions/colour_printing_series/w8400/index.asp

Carrigman

Benster wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4605418.stm


Well, I suppose this is the start of the consignment of film cameras to the "specialist" niche market...

B.

As a veteran of three Nikon film cameras over the years - two Nikkormats and my current Nikon FM2n - I'm sorry, for sentimental reasons, to see the end of an era. Film has served me very well and has given me some very precious images. However, I don't shoot with it anymore. The FM2 and it's brace of lenses lie languishing in its camera bag. The sheer convenience and quality of digital has rendered the very idea of my shooting film again highly unlikely. I have, for example, several 12x16 Ilfrochrome prints hand printed from slides. Same size enlargements from my Canon 20D are superior. I regularly get digital snapshot prints run off in Fuji Digital Imaging outlets like O'Learys Camera World in Cork or Irwins in Midleton. They are far superior to the machine prints I used to get from film. Why would I want to go back? This is the experience of millions of photographers worldwide and that is why film, in the developed world at least, is fast becoming a niche market.

Benster

Being a film user myself, I too am sad to hear this news. However, you cannot stop the march of progress nor halt the consumer uptake of such a convenient medium. I know that someday I will have to make the decision.

I don't think it's the absolute death of film though. As I said at the start, it is becoming a more niche medium with every day that passes, with each professional that makes the changeover etc, etc. But it will not go away overnight, the traditionalists and die-hards will not abandon it for a long time, imo, and therefore it will dwindle to a much smaller market that it is even now with equipment ever more hard to find and processing costs becoming higher.

We still have the Leica's and Hasselblads (sp?) for those that want them, so film will become more like that market. Well, actually, thinking about that again, those brands stand for the highest quality in cameras. For film to be regarded as the highest quality (over digital), companies have to keep up the R&D to maintain it. With less film cameras around, they will ask what is the point of that when digital is starting to adhere to Moore's Law and doubling in capacity every year or so, thus out-performing film on most fronts?

So perhaps the quality issue will not be the reason film hangs around in the background for the foreseable future, it may be up to those who just plain like it to keep it going.

And the 5-year-old kid market too, don't forget. It's been the start of many an obsession/career when a parent hands a loaded film camera to their 5-year-old and shows them how to take pictures. A Canon Ixus or something is probably more in line with the times, but it's not the same, is it?


[Sentimental, nostalgic but also pragmatic] Ben.

MrAbc

The development of digital cameras seems to have come far enough that film cameras are just obsolete - much as I like them.

It's like the switch from record players to CD players - inescapable for most, though some will resist for specific uses. And naturally, the availability of usable media(vinyl,film,as the case may be) will be the problem eventually.

The digital system cuts out so many variable factors [given all the chemical reactions involved in film photography] that, given an equal playing field[eg sensitivity to light], it intrinsically produces better results - highly predictable and reproducible.


Of course, if someone comes up with a high enough quality 35mm film which requires no processing and is easily digitised - perhaps that type of product might prolong the usefulness of film cameras. I recall attempts (abandoned?) to create a digital sensor cartridge to place into traditional 35mm cameras.

alb

Yeh I'd consider it similar to the record to CD conversion - analogue to digital, with only benifits.

Photography isn't about the medium used to record the photos in my opinion, it's about the end results on paper or screen.

the photographic medium is dead, long live the photographic medium!

rabbitinlights

alb wrote:

it's about the end results on paper

So true, a good photograph is a good photograph no matter what its taken on.
I like the Vinyl analogy, although I have not bought a CD in nearly 2 years and I buy about 3-4 vinyl a month, but thats a different thread.......

S.

Flipflip

Ah still though

i have a soft spot for film.

and my first SLR was a Nikon F65 so im disappointed to hear the news!

SOL

I would say that the black and white hand print medium will out live many current digital technologies, there is something about being able to hand print in paper that will be hard to replace, as for C41, its long overdue a death... :>

jiffy

SOL wrote:

I would say that the black and white hand print medium will out live many current digital technologies, there is something about being able to hand print in paper that will be hard to replace.

I've been using various Canon SLR's for 15 ish years and about 5 years ago started to print my own B&W images and yes there is something about producing the image yourself.

Having recently switched to a Canon DSLR I can't say that I miss it though, having 10 rolls stacked up waiting to be processed and printed. Much easier and just as creative to use the DSLR and Photoshop IMO and I was one of the people who thought I'd never go digital.

So much so that all my optical camera's have been Ebayed

Matt