When will sheet film be obsolete?

[GeorgesGiralt]

Hi !
We can't compare sheet film with watercolor or canvas. Film is made using heavy industrial processes depending on a set of very different materials. (bone gelatin, chemistry of silver and coloring agents, plastic... etc... )
So if one of these raw components disappear, film is gone. If the regulations about nasty chemicals evolve, we could loose film (think about the demise of cadmium in the B&W printing paper).
So we will one day, loose film. This will arose gradually. We will loose one manufacturer at a time, and forced to use the small niche maker in the suburbs of nowhere... Then we will have to convert to collodion or other historical processes. Provided the chemicals will not be banned....
As per a digital back in very big size, I do not think it will see light one day. Too few customers, and the possibility to use shift lenses in smaller sized gear will prevent the giant digital back to show.... Look at the medium format digital backs available. Who will pay that much money for a hypothetical gain in printing size ? (and this gain comes at a huge price because you've to get huge computers to process the images with huge RAM and processing power....).
Things change and evolve said the Buddha.... So will we ;-)
P.S. I've seen young people very attracted by my Sinar Norma and very excited to learn that view cameras can still be bought new... Hope, there is hope.

[Armin Seeholzer]

In 40 years 3 months and 6 days it will be gone, but at thad time we can get an electronical film for to put into the Filmholder and we still can use the cameras but no chemical films anymore only electronicle film with 1'000'0000 MP and 16 f stops contrast and......

Cheers Armin

[eddie]

i think a good business model is about doing one thing very very well. as soon as you begin to branch out into new territory your profits will decline, work flow will increase etc etc. this is just my experience and opinion. obviously it is possible to do...and has been done but i think it is especially challenging for some one in your position. if you ran it like a huge business like kodak built cameras in the early 1900s then it would work.

i would say making the best wet plate camera as quick as you can while still maintaining quality would be what i would do. as noted above more and more people are trying wet plate. making back to fit common cameras would be a good thing as well as making more and more cameras.

an assembly line with several QUALITY craftsman doing much of the work you do will allow you to make better cameras faster with less time spent doing it yourself.

the wet plate camera manufactures we have now all have a huge waiting period to get the cameras to the public. before other types of cameras were added to a line i would be sure that the market was buying all they could of the product that i already make. i would want people coming to my shop and buying cameras because the quality was top notch AND the wait time was very very short or non existent.

there are several manufactures of film LF cameras now that are producing awesome cameras for a very reasonable price. some in china and one in vermont.

again, if i could do it.....i would have a factory making wet plate cameras by a gang of top artisan craftsman......but as i noted in my 1st paragraph i am unwilling to branch out into territory that is new to me as the cost to do so may financially break me.

i hope you are able to continue to make WP cameras. i hope they become better and i hope we can get them faster with better hardware and new innovative designs. i have been trying to get a WP camera maker to add certain design improvements to the cameras but this has proved futile at this time. maybe some day we could talk about them together. it would be great for you and the wet plate community to have an "improved" camera.

good luck.

eddie

A few things brought up that did not cross my mind, thanks all for your thoughts. I ask not to stir up a hornet's nest; no secret, I build cameras for wet plate and dags, but for the last couple years I have thought about diving into the field film camera world. Last year, I think, I was asking about film registration, and through that found S & S holders. I was thinking that I could come up with a very nice 8x10 format based around those holders. Why S&S? I like the look and the guys there seem nice and dependable. Right now, I have a Wisner 8x10 that I am doing a little work on and I keep looking at the brass work and movements and telling myself, "I can do that."

But, what I was thinking is that knowing my luck, by the time I got it going, no one would be using them, and guys would be getting rid of them at garage sells for 50 cents. I know, that an extreme analogy, but just thoughts rambling in my head.

[Thalmees]

Hi,
Thanks Ty G for starting this thread.
I do not think that obsolescence is a correct word when applied on photography.
On the other hand, the last decade has proven beyond any doubt that the same word(obsolescence) is the best word describing digital arts/digital imaging(the alternative newer technology by which film may compared).
This is the reason why we have this type of questions repeated for many years. Why this very old Gel/Silver invention is still under use and receives higher demand, while the much newer digital tool did not take much time to obsolete ?
Its not even logic by today terms to have something that does not obsolete only, but even resisting obsolescence, like photographic film.
Film availability today has another valid meaning. At the same cost, digital quality(output and tools) is not justified for MF&LF photographers, as an art medium.
I can trust my 30+ years camera and 10 years outdated film to serve me on 2021 better than my 2 years old digital camera.
Its very possible to have many digital generations obsolete, or even the whole digital technology obsolete, before we can say film has obsolete: Quantum film: http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-n...s?pageNumber=0
http://www.largeformatphotography.in...ad.php?t=60579

[cyrus]

I was talking to a guy to order a stainless steel sink for my darkroom. He said he's never been as busy making and selling these -- and large ones too.

[JON BUTLER]

I quite like the thought of sheet film ceasing production, I would coat my own and it would make my prints more unique.
JON.

[paulr]

The title of the OP is "when will sheet film be obsolete," which isn't actually the same as "when will it be gone forever." Obsolescence is an interesting term, and a little harder to pin down. There are other technologies that are broadly considered obsolete, but still enjoy small cottage industries and pockets of enthusiasts.

The trouble with film, as others have pointed out, lies in economies of scale. For technological reasons, film has (so far) proven impractical to manufacture except on a huge industrial scale, which means that below a relatively high threshold, all production is likely to cease.

This means that without some ingenuity on the parts of small-time manufacturers, obsolescence is likely to equate with it being completely gone. But it's possible to imagine ways in which this wouldn't be the case.

[Sevo]

The trouble with film, as others have pointed out, lies in economies of scale. For technological reasons, film has (so far) proven impractical to manufacture except on a huge industrial scale, which means that below a relatively high threshold, all production is likely to cease.

What technological reasons would that be? Speciality films have always been made in volumes far below a huge industrial scale. That photographic films generally have been made in very large scale throughout the past forty years is due to market demand and the usual economies of scale applicable to every product - which determine the pricing rather than feasibility.

[Drew Wiley]

For big budgets, what could threaten both sheet film and current digital sensor technology might be what is already being done with astronomical and medical imaging mirrors - the ability to instantly electronically conform the image plane shape to special configurations. It would make our view-camera range of movements pale by comparison. This is one reason I believe that affordable sheet film as we know it will
be around a lot longer than digital capture as we now know it. High-tech will be making
roadkill of itself from time to time. And consumer electronics/digitial will always be about rapid self-obsolesence in order to keep the profits flowing. And I figure that if
sheet film does become scarce, I'll probably have already become roadkill myself by
then!

[Bruce Schultz]

As an owner of one of ty's cameras, I can tell you if he decides to dive into making film cameras they would be top notch. Ty is obsessed with quality.