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Thread: Ending Film camera sales + print fading challenge

  1. #1

    Ending Film camera sales + print fading challenge

    I thought this was an interesting item on the BBC website today:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4130620.stm
    "I meant what I said, not what you heard"--Jflavell

  2. #2

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    Ending Film camera sales + print fading challenge

    As a child, the wool mittens my Grandmother knit for me were infinitely better than anything store-bought the other kids had. Even expensive fur-lined leather.

    My Mother’s warm-from-the-oven homemade bread was far more tasty than machine-made stuff from the grocer. Even when it didn’t turn out exactly according to the recipe.

    A sweater knit with an abundance of love by my wife is highly treasured over fancy ones from fancy stores, priced at several hundred dollars a copy. Even when her sweater’s arms don’t quite match in length.

    My home-grown tomatoes are much more yummy than those at the local farmers’ market. Even when theirs are bigger and juicier.

    Making photographs yourself every evening in your own basement (humble as they may be) is a magnificent pastime which the younger generation will sadly not enjoy. What is even sadder is that they won’t even know what they have missed.

    What in the world do people do after supper these days, anyway?

  3. #3

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    Ending Film camera sales + print fading challenge

    They watch TV while wearing their walkman and have a conversation about nothing on their cellphone while complaining about being bored. We do an injustice to the potato, they are couch amoebas...EC

  4. #4
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
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    Ending Film camera sales + print fading challenge

    "What in the world do people do after supper these days, anyway?"

    Evidently they sit at their computers, get online, and complain about how the world's gone straight to hell (back in the good old days people made the same compaints after supper, only they did it face to face at the pub).

  5. #5

    Ending Film camera sales + print fading challenge

    As per the article mentioned in this post, the only productive conclusion that should be drawn from this information is that it would very likely be a great time to get a screaming deal on a 35mm camera. Take advantage of the unique opportunity.

    Beyond that all one can say that the industry is being re-calibrated to a new set of demand variables for film. New management and/or players and realistic revenue projections that paint a reasonable target for film going forward. As long as there is money to be made, there will be film. Get over it.

    Cheers!

  6. #6
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
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    Ending Film camera sales + print fading challenge

    I'm actually glad to see the consumer photo market switching to digital. the amount of chemistry used (and silver-laden effluent produced) from all those millions of rolls of snapshots always seemed like an incredible waste.

    As far as large format and 120 and even pro 35mm films, i think they'll be around for a while. Even when the day comes that you can't buy them at the camera superstore, someone's going to be making them and selling them. It's not always a bad thing when something you like leaves the mainstream and gets picked up by a cottage industry.

    No one's taking anyone's darkroom away. And no one's taking yarn away from anyone's grandma, flour and yeast from anyone's kitchen, or tomatoes from anyone's garden (I have some plump ones outside right now, almost ready to be slathered with olive oil and basil).

  7. #7

    Ending Film camera sales + print fading challenge

    Cottage industries can be a good thing. I still can find plenty of vinyl to feed my 1 year old Sota turntable....and this is more than 15 years after the supposed death of the analog LP.

  8. #8

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    Ending Film camera sales + print fading challenge

    After supper, those youth of today who are the equivalent of the camera nerd of yesterday, go into their rooms to work with digital imaging on Photoshop. They might do flash animation. They immerse themselves in the new technology in order to answer their creative urge. I am not interested in digital, but it's just a new medium folks, not the end of the world.

  9. #9
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
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    Ending Film camera sales + print fading challenge

    "and this is more than 15 years after the supposed death of the analog LP."

    The death of vinyl is an interesting example. On the downside, hardly any new music gets released on LP. On the upside, used LPs are plentiful and cheap. And in a stroke of cottage industry fortune that no one predicted, there are now more high end turntables being made than ever in the past.

  10. #10

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    Ending Film camera sales + print fading challenge

    Everything in your pocket at this minute is one of a million (nearly) mass-produced products. The cheap handkerchief from JCPenney, the plastic pocket comb, the metal coins, the wallet, the plastic credit card, the Zippo lighter, the Pilot ballpen, the car keys, the pack of chewing gum and on and on and on.

    You cannot afford to purchase one-off custom-made products. As expensive as an automobile is, try making one yourself. Here is a shovel - go dig some iron ore to start. How about a crystal mouth-blown catsup bottle?

    Like everything else, the great unwashed masses of people out there drive the marketplace. (60% of all Hasselblads are bought by amateurs) When they stop buying anything by the millions, it quickly disappears from the mass marketplace. Like Kodak paper.

    When the vacation happy-snappers stop buying 35mm cameras they will begin to disappear from the mass marketplace. Or the price will be forced into Leica-Land because of the low volume.

    As for the point of my earlier reply (which often gets lost), making something tangible at home with your hands is extremely rewarding. As anyone can attest who, like me, received for his 12th birthday a genuine Kodak print-making kit with plastic acorn safelight and contact printing lightbox.

    Having “images” automatically appear on a cathode ray tube does not qualify as making something tangible with your hands.

    By Saturday evening, I have created a stack of fiber prints in my lab, or perhaps a chair or bench in my wood shop. The neighbor’s kid has only a “score” which he racked up on his computer game to show for the entire day’s efforts.

    I feel sorry for that kid and what he is missing. I also feel sorry for anyone who thinks I’m just a silly old man living in the past.

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