Is this the Right time.

[Alan Gales]

If you are into black and white photography I would highly recommend shooting large format. I would get into it cheap and learn all you can. You may like sheet film and you may not. If you don't then you won't get hurt very much if at all if you sell. If you become hooked like the rest of us you can always buy that expensive camera later. At least by then you will have a better idea what you want.

If you are a strictly color guy only, well who knows the future of color film? We are all guessing but it doesn't look good. Reread what Frank Petronio said.

I think black and white film will exist for a long time. You can still paint with oils, buy saddles for horses and shoot black powder muskets even though we now have acrylic paints, automobiles and rifles that use bullets.

[Professional]

Well, i had that question last year even i bought LF in 2010, i wasn't sure if that was a good idea to go with LF when i see more films are dying mostly colors, but since i got my MF and then did shot film first time in 2010 then develop B&W by myself i was impressed by the process, since then i decided to give film more test and shoot, but when i keep reading about LF and seeing many examples about the quality against MF, i didn't stop myself to buy one or even 2, no 3 LFs, i did shoot 5 sheets and one is lost due to multi-exposure by mistake, but when i scan them.....WOW, they came out a lot higher details then MF and even the scan was so easy without adjusting as i do many times with some MF rolls.

Well, i don't care if i came late to LF world, i am happy i did at least, and i bought enough bulks of colors that can last for 2-4 years if i shoot about 15-40 sheets per year, we have a lab that can process any film up to 8x10, but they told me that with 4x5/8x10 if i shoot with color negatives then i should submit minimum 15-20 sheets, they don't do less than 10 at once, that kills my interest for color negs, good i have only one box of Ektar, but all the rest are about say 85% B&W and 15% colors, only 1 box of color neg of Ektar and the other color sheets are slides.

[Brian Ellis]

Clearly some kind of film made by some company and sold at some price to be processed by some labs somewhere will be there next year and for the foreseeable future. But the kinds of film, the companies making it, and the labs to process have been disappearing for the last 20 or so years while the price has been going up and there's no end in sight. Personally I wouldn't get into a dying industry like that if I wasn't already into it. But if you want to do it and can afford it why not? It's not like you'll wake up one morning and see that overnight everything related to film disappeared.

[Pawlowski6132]

Who cares how long it will be around for? It's here now. Use it.

[CP Goerz]

Well the last Kodachrome processing place closed up shop and that was how many years after Kodak stopped making it? Kodachrome was a very tricky film to both make and develop so with a much simpler C-41 process I think we have a far brighter and more colorful future :-) Besides, how many photographers actually shot Kodachrome compared to Kodacolor?