Small specialist companies catering to a community of devotees willing to pay a higher but (hopefully) still manageable price for our materials may well be where things eventually end up going. It seems a natural enough course for the evolution of things. When the generalist has lost the proper motivation to continue with something, the specialist steps in.Originally Posted by paulr
I doubt it. Judging from the "what's your age" thread here, I'd guess that the average age of film users (not counting users of disposable cameras) is something around 50 - 60. As they/we die off or switch entirely to digital or stop buying film for any other reason they/we aren't being replaced in the same numbers by new film users. I say that because if they were then film sales shouldn't be dropping at the rate they've dropped over the last decade. And I have to think that there are certain fixed costs in the manufacture of film, regardless of volume, that make it impossible to profitably cater to a small cadre of film users at any practical price.
Some people express the view that large format film sales are doing fine and so we shouldn't be concerned. I don't know how large format film sales are doing. I've never seen a breakdown of film sales by format from any reliable source. But whether it's true or not doesn't matter IMHO. I can't imagine that large format film sales alone could possibly sustain a company devoted solely to that. If there's no 35mm or medium format there won't be any large format either IMHO.
Brian Ellis
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you do criticize them you'll be
a mile away and you'll have their shoes.
It's my understanding from a source who has viewed the facilities that the new coating facility that Kodak built a few years ago, which necessitated the discontinuation of infra red film and that subtle processing change to T-max100 ( as well as a change in it's name) was so that emulsion types could be changed out without a major requirement for re-tooling or re-calibrating. This new coating facility used infra red film inspection, hence the discontinuation of infra red film.
This new machine could allow Kodak to do smaller film runs and switch from one film to another readily, so instead of having whole buildings dedicated to one film type, they could have just one, state of the art building which could handle them all on one coating line and produce them all more efficiently and cost effectively.
John,
I understand your point, but your example radically undermines it, in this case. In fact, film is following the horses example, but contrary to your intention.
How so?
Perhaps a better example would be rolled oats? If we're talking film, film is one of the nutrients traditional film photography feeds on.
You can do pretty much anything you can do on a horse by using a dirt bike. Some prefer digital dirtbikes, some prefer traditional horses. Dirt bikes use gas, horses use oats. As long as there is a demand, there is going to be dirtbikes & gas, and horses & oats.
To ask the question "How long can film hold on?" stirkes me as ridiculous as those irksome questions on the msn home page,perhpas like : "How long will steam irons hold on?" The insinuation is that we should just get film's demise over with---film is obviously obsolete & digital is whats high tech, it's whats in fashion.
Why sculpt marble when moulding or vacume forming carbon fiber is what's high tech, it's whats in fashion?
Fish farms are high tech and farmed salmon & tilapia is whats in fashion. That has no effect on guys with fly rods going after trout.
While the same end product--a fish dinner---is similar, in another sense it isn't, because how it came to be dinner carries it's own story. Like each print.
"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White
That's some good horse sense, John. Maybe you did spend some time at the Clovis
Rodeo in the good ole days. And maybe that's why rich people collect horses rather
than dirt bikes, and why British royalty play polo riding horses rather than riding Vespas. Style, authenicity, living it! The hunt is just as important as the kill. Danged gadget geeks anyway - what do they know about picking stickers out of a crumpled Stetson and the smell or real manure on yer boots!
How so?
Because when horses were necessities/tools they were more than 10X as available as they are now. Significantly, the types of horses available are different, as well. As similar as the trends might be, horses and film are different things, and subject to different selection pressures, and we don't yet know where film will land on the continuum of extinct-endangered-scarce.
To question how long film can hold on strikes me as a natural question to be asked by those who use it. I think you're making a lot of assumptions about the attitudes of those asking the question.
Sculpted marble and vacuum-formed carbon fiber never shared a common application.
Film is not a natural resource, like fish are, and a fish dinner is almost never the end product, or motivation for fly fishing, as most fly fishers catch and release. It's the experience of fishing that gets them into their waders, not the promise of a meal.
I was both a commercial Salmon fisher (briefly), and a fly fisher. In the case of Salmon, it was the resource that became scarce, not the consumer of the resource. It's simply not the case that there are millions of film users standing by with their empty film cameras, hoping the film comes back, like Salmon fishers hoping for fish, and then turning to digital (or farm raised fish) because it is the best alternative. Consumers prefer, by the millions, the alternative to film.
Recognizing the trend is not the same as welcoming, or enjoying it. I wish there were enough film users to maintain a competitive and diverse film industry alongside the incredible and admirable advances in digital technology, but film users from every market niche- commercial, motion picture, newspaper, portrait studios, wedding photographers, students, consumers, hobbyists, and even artists have found advantages in digital that have won them away from film. Given this reality, it's natural to wonder how long film can continue to hold on to it's shrinking market share, whether one agonizes over the current conditions of the market, or enjoys them.
The horse/ dirt bike comparison was not very convincing, since the shared application is trivial, at best. A more compelling comparison would be horse-tractor, or horse-automobile. Not many people, rich or poor, use horses for transportation or for farming. Rich people do, however, collect automobiles, and millions of other people use them every day.
I wonder what kind of cameras the royals use?
Wild salmon still sells for twice as much as farmed and tastes a lot better too. No quality restaurant would serve that greasy farmed type. Nothin scarce about horses,
in just about every flavor one could think of - mini horse ranches are everywhere you
look on the outskirts of town, and people ride em. Some of those critters cost quite a
bit more than the average car too, some quite a bit more than the average luxury car.
Nothin backwards about it. And there ain't nothin particularly progressive about going
digital - it's just another options, sometimes appropriate, sometimes not. I find this
whole line of discussion jaded like some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Film is obsolete
because it isn't sold on the Sharper Image website ... oh, let's see ... aren't THEY the
ones who already went extinct?
Jay, I do know something about the Royals' extended family official portraits, and have
seen the shots and some of the prints prior to being sent to Britain. Classic Hassie MF color neg film - no digital prints allowed (though digital files were used for archival backup just in case something ever happened to the original negs), mandatory hand-printing using classic dye transfer technique. Portrait sessions specifically of the Queen
have been well published; but the instance I'm referring to was the much more ambitious official project for a permanent collection about the entire royal clan, as well
as major related figures (sometimes portly figures) in British society.
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