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Thread: enough doom & gloom, okay? :)

  1. #1
    grumpy & miserable Joseph O'Neil's Avatar
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    enough doom & gloom, okay? :)

    I s anyone else prowing tired of all the "death of film" comments and threads anymore. At this point, I don't care what Nikon or Kodak are doing. I am not at all upset about the way things are going, I am more angry at just how obtuse the entrie general public seems to be about these things. A few facts off the top of my head;

    - used LF gear is virutally non-existant around here - it gets snapped up too quick. 4x5 enlargers get sold within a couple of weeks, and two the main large format stores in Toronto have - between the two of them , well ONE used LF lens and ONE used 4x5 camera - and that's it. If film is "dead" who's buying all this stuff?

    - AZO may be "dead", but you know, I've been shooting B&W for almsot 25 years, and to the best of my recollection, even when every local camera sotre stocked wet darkroom supplies, AZO was still a special order item. The only time I ever saw AZo on the shelf is when a local camera store ordered a box extra too much on a special order;

    - LF photography is between pro and artist use, IMO, and that's a good thing. Give you an example - there's a company called Lee Valley Tools here in Canada, specializes in expensive woodworking tools. In short, if you wan tto spend $100 on a single Chisel, this is the place to do it. about 6 stores in the whole country, plus mail order. The one here locally is about 5 minutes drive due north of a Wal-Mart, and yet, when you go intot hat small, speciality sotre, you always have ot take a number to get service, they are that busy, year round.

    - the part that really drives me nuts is how transparent the motivation to "make film dead" is for large companies. Put it this way - i have film cameras - 35mm, 120 and 4x5, some as old as 50 years, that are completely useable, and in some cases, litterally as good as the day they were bought brand new. By compaison, my 4 year old digital camera is junk.
    Think about it people, think about it, yes digital si great, I use it too, but the number one, primary reaosn digital is pushed so ahrd is because unliek film cameras, there is no way in hell that 50years from now *anybody* is going to say "this digital cmaera is a good as today as it was brand new 50 years ago." They are not going to say it 25 years from now, 10 years fomr now, maybe nto even 5 years from now. I have a 6 year old laser printer that is "no longer supported" even though there is not a single thing wrong it it. That's exactly why the large companies are pushing digital.

    Wake up people and smell the coffee - it's not conspiracy, it's basic, common sense marketing 101 - build a product that is oboslete, even if it still works, inside 5 years, and you will make a lot more money than a product that is still useable after 50 years.

    My apologies for flying off the handle and ranting so, but after the past week fo film is gone, Nikon is gone, etc, etc, I've just about had it. The whole internet if full of these stories, but it's like the old story of the Emporer's New Clothes, everybody knows what's going one, but is afraid to say it out loud. Why?

    One last thought - my daughter missed her school pricutres due to illness, so my wife trook her this past wekend to a local superstore, and had some portriats doen there. One 8x10, 2 5x7 and a sheet of wallet sized prints - all very good - less than $10 cdn, including taxes for everything. Pretty cheap, eh?
    This same weekend, through word of mouth only, some people who know i have a 4x5, and want a me to shoot and engagement picture for them with it, because it will be "something special", something different than the "other places do." The fact that I will be a lot more money that the department supertore isn't the issue - it's the percieved value of work done with a LF camera as opposed to the digital "everyone else is doing."

    I really, really think the future looks superb for all LF work. Right now, we are in the middle of changing times and changing markets, and change always hurts, for better or worse. If we hang tight. ride the storm out, it's gonna be good, very good. So please, no more doom and gloom, okay? Let's try and find a way to make things work, make the future brighter, instead of waiting for the apocalypse to come?

    As for Kodak and "film is gone", fine, go ahead, think that way, becasue that's exactly the reason I was in my darkroom last night loading up 25 film holders with Forte Pan 400 instead of Tri-X.

    joe

    (again apologies for the full ranting mode, haven't had my 6 cups of moring coffee yet.
    eta gosha maaba, aaniish gaa zhiwebiziyin ?

  2. #2

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    enough doom & gloom, okay? :)

    Couldn't agree more: Sure, as the supply of materials diminishes, the cost will go up, but the same thing will happen to the product of the effort - fewer large format photographs = more valuable LF photographs. Nope, I don't think scarcity is a bad thing at all.

  3. #3

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    enough doom & gloom, okay? :)

    Bravo Joseph! Let the film is dead peddlers start their own forum instead of trying to shove it down everybody elses throat.

  4. #4

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    enough doom & gloom, okay? :)

    I agree. Legitimate news on the issue is helpful, but trolls and rants full of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) are something else.

  5. #5

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    enough doom & gloom, okay? :)

    Actually Lee Valley is at best mid market. If you want expensive hand tools then start with somebody like

    http://www.lie-nielsen.com/

    LV tried to sell thier products for one year but they were too expensive for most LV customers.

    Some of the products "introduced" by Lie Nielsen had been killed off by the big makers decades ago. Stanley couldn't support the volume on the items. The English companies like Norris went out of business.

    Sounds a lot like the film market. The companies needing to sell massive amounts of volume are having problems. The question is how many new companies will spring up to fill the gaps.

  6. #6

    enough doom & gloom, okay? :)

    Today is a beautiful day to make pictures! Yesterday was too. I hear tomorrow will be even better.

    No gloom and doom here. HA!

  7. #7

    enough doom & gloom, okay? :)

    "By compaison, my 4 year old digital camera is junk. Think about it people, think about it, yes digital si great, I use it too, but the number one, primary reaosn digital is pushed so ahrd is because unliek film cameras, there is no way in hell that 50years from now *anybody* is going to say "this digital cmaera is a good as today as it was brand new 50 years ago." They are not going to say it 25 years from now, 10 years fomr now, maybe nto even 5 years from now. I have a 6 year old laser printer that is "no longer supported" even though there is not a single thing wrong it it. That's exactly why the large companies are pushing digital. "

    Interesting. Did your 4 year digital camera stop working? (of course film cameras never break....) Did the quality of images you produce with it degrade over the last 4 years? Will this degrading you seem to indicate increase over the next 4 yrs, 5 yrs, 10 yrs?

    I think you are generalizing a bit too much. My Canon D30 takes every bit as good a photo as it did the day I bought it. While I agree with you completely on the film issue, to suggest, as many film users do, the their digital camera somehow started taking lower quality or inferior images the second a new model came out....to suggest it is now junk, when the images it takes today are identical to those 4 years ago.....is simply ridiculous!

    My 3MP D30 is perfect for for what I bought it for....snapshots of 4x6 & 5x7....sometimes 8x10. It still accomplishes this today.....and it will tomorrow. As well, the last time I checked, the RAW & JPG formats where still in use today. The JPG format is not a toner cartridge.....it will be with us for decades to come. Film is no more dead than my D30 & JPG are. To suggest otherwise is simply your reversal of the doom and gloom you so detest.

  8. #8

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    enough doom & gloom, okay? :)

    Wow Joseph--I'd love to see the rant that would come out AFTER your morning coffee! =)

  9. #9
    Big Bend
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    enough doom & gloom, okay? :)

    I'll keep buying film as long as I can find it for sale.
    I'll keep shooting it as long as I can develop it / get it developed.

    Now about boycotting Kodak emulsions, as much as I'd like to, I think the best thing for us to do is just to keep shooting whatever it is we like to shoot. If everyone avoids Kodak emulsions because of a perceived slight by the CEO, we may just cause a quicker discontinuation.

    I really don't see it coming though, at least not in the immediate future. IMO this digital revolution has actually bred more MF and LF users. New users seem to be coming out of the woodwork. Possibly we'll see the second coming?!

    Forky

  10. #10

    Join Date
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    enough doom & gloom, okay? :)

    "Did your 4 year digital camera stop working? (of course film cameras never break....) Did the quality of images you produce with it degrade over the last 4 years? Will this degrading you seem to indicate increase over the next 4 yrs, 5 yrs, 10 yrs?"

    My six-year-old digital camera still works as well as it did six years ago. However, in a few years when the nearly-defunct SmartMedia cards it uses are hard to find, I may have to reevaluate that statement. Furthermore, the images I took with it are OK, but can be far surpassed with a much less expensive digital today, adding to my displeasure. As far as degradation goes, who knows? None of this is intended to slag digital cameras, a developing technology that should be beneficial to photography in the long run. But I do personally feel like the camera I bought six years ago is, by current standards, junk, and nothing that happens in the future will change that.

    On the contrary, I always tell my friends that my Crown Graphic is capable of better images now that when it made in 1960 (the same year I was made!) because lots of film emulsions have improved greatly (no Velvia in 1960!). That trend may or may not contunue now, but the idea that a 70-year old Zeiss Ikon can be loaded with modern transparency film and take beautiful images that folks in the 1930s could only dream about is one of the things that makes film attractive to me. I have the benefit of decades of experience in camera and film design and research. Digital SLRs are getting pretty cheap, but as long as I can buy hundreds of sheets of 4x5 Velvia for the cost of the cheapest one out there, my choice is clear.

    And as far as the death of film and film cameras is concerned, anyone who regularly pursues Ebay items knows that the good old cameras are still in very high demand. Film isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and anyone who spends their time worrying about what CEOs at Kodak and Nikon are feeding to the press would probably be better off shooting the beautiful winter weather. Photographs give me pleasure. CEOs give me gas.

    Dan

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