I think it is more alive today than it has been in some time. I tend to see the digital dive people take as cyclical. In many cases I see people coming back after a few years chasing pixels. At one time I was ready to give-up my darkroom, now I am more likely to give up my carbon pigments. I hardly use them anymore.
Bill
Hear, hear... that one was a rip-snorter!Originally Posted by Don Wallace
Reminds me of all those guys running around espousing that the world is coming to an end!
Cheers
Life in the fast lane!
If the world was coming to an end, maybe we would see the economy booming from people doing all the things they always wanted but never did, wars ending - peace everywhere...
...but then again, there would always be some pessimistic people who would claim it wasn't! ;-)
I read in a Japanese photo magazine (current Asahi Camera has a special on b/w film) today that sales of b/w film in Japan in 2005 were 20% of what they used to be in 1995 (then 100 million rolls p.a.). The year by year graphs did not show any trend that would suggest a change in this, or anything 'cyclical' for that matter.
So I would not say there is an end, just an 'adjustment' as the economists would call it. Selling 20 million units of film per year in just one single country still seems a viable business proposition to me...
Last edited by Dirk Rösler; 17-Oct-2006 at 01:34.
Hi Patrik,
It's either a booming economy or perhaps it's all those people who want to "take it with them!"
Cheers
Life in the fast lane!
Hey Bill- just seen the feature on your work in the latest (UK) Black and white photography. Absagoddamloutely beautiful. What an outstanding understanding of light. And to find such drama in such subtle images and compositions? Stunning. Thanks.
Photography didn't kill off painting, nor did CNC machines kill off handmade furniture. B&W photography will survive.
Personally I think this type of statement is much like the bogus intelligence that was used to scare everybody into thinking Iraq had WMD. True kodak and Agfa may be getting out of the market but Efke,Foma, Kentmere,Adox,Forte.Maco,Bergger and Oriental are readily available to me. It would seem that there are plenty willing to supply a niche market.
The problem is with statements and the belief that digital is "the way things are going" is just a sell out. The problem with digital is you have every other person who now things they are a photographer because with their fancy new digtal camera they get some - to them - good shots. And these are the folks that are showing up to the workshops. I was one out of 13 at a workshop who had film and the majority of them had no idea what a F stop was, let alone how that worked with the shutter speed. But the bigger problem is that they didn't even know how to make their camers capable of setting these.
Digital has it's place - but to have a truly fine art print - is a silver print. For those of use, and there are more than you think, want to remain true to our art, the products will be around. And in, say 100 years, how does that digital print still look?
True to Silver!
That's an old saw ... you're basically saying that photography is supposed to belong to an elite, and so tools that make it accessible to the rabble are bad.
Same argument was made against film, the brownie, the leica, transparency film, and polaroid.
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