The hopeful future of film photography

[cjbroadbent]

Wedding protographers. I had the impression that the only 'professional' sector of the market that Kodak andf Fuji cared about were wedding photographers. Since they seem to have gone over, maybe we can get some attention now. Is there a recent marketing survey for film published anywhere? At least so that we can know what we actually count for?

[Steve M Hostetter]

I don't think making your own acetate-back film is an option, and that is the main threat to our survival as analog artists.

For the time being it seems as if companies are making "enough" money on us, and the education programs that still teach traditional photography, but there may come a time where, regardless of the demand level, which is bound to decrease, the companies, rightly or wrongly, risk deciding that that "enough" is, well, not enough, and there we go down the tubes.

I for one plan on shooting film as long as I can because I like the quality it yields, as well as the different shapes that various formats offer me, and so far digital has yet to produce either to a sufficient degree. But I harbor no illusions that I will be able to shoot the stuff as long as I want to.

the only illusion is to think that the motion picture industry will at some point stop using film,,, I would imagine they like film for all the reasons you just mentioned and they won't stop using film in our lifetime

[claudiocambon]

Van Camper,

Everything you say is logical from a working photographer's perspective, but what you are describing relates more to our own convenience than the market's, two things which are not essentially aligned. What if the digital marketplace decides that 35mm is affordable enough for most, and MF backs do come down in price, and reach about 100MP? If consumers are happy, and commercial people can do everything that is asked of them, sadly, I don't expect anyone making production decisions to give a sh#%@t about why film is better or more affordable, and easier to use for artists, and we will be SOL in terms of the range of equipment that we now happily use.

Using your logic, Kodak should still be making Studio Proof POP (what a gorgeous paper!) because of its inherent, unique and irreplaceable qualities. But they're not because they decided to dedicate their resources to making more money elsewhere. Photographers kicked and screamed, but in the end Kodak did it anyway. Just reflect on its main commercial use in the 20th century: things like school pictures which could be sent as advance proofs to parents, which were easy to develop without chemistry, held a positive image for some time, and then faded so that people couldn't hold onto the proof instead of buying something. I'm sure it was produced for wider reasons than that, but basically, when school photographers are all shooting in color, and the only people using it a few thousand sheets a year are Linda Connor and some other artists, Kodak pulls the plug, regardless of its artistic merit. They are a big industrial company, and Studio Proof is a speck on their horizon.

Steve's argument about motion picture film is a more compelling case for the preservation of acetate-back technology, because there the users (people filming) are the only market, although there too I see commercial expedience and technological shift slowly winning out.

We are all just buying time with film, unfortunately, and we have to hope that digital will one day reach if not exceed film's capacity before they take it away from us.

[Steve M Hostetter]

excellent post Van

[Gordon Moat]

Yikes! That Wikipedia article needs lots of help. I am surprised by the lack of mention of tests done by Zeiss, Erwin Puts, or Chris Perez . . . yet the article quotes Ken Rockwell.


A little side on this. Some fellow professional photographer friends of mine have sold their 1Ds Mark II cameras to go with either a Mark III or switch to Nikon. Taken the difference between purchase price and sales (potential or actual) price, and the number of actuations (shutter trips), the cost per shot worked out to around 0.75¢ each, averaged over those individuals. Obviously not scientific, since the sample of photographers is small, but I think this is a better example of expense. Obviously any service, repairs, or necessary peripherals were not factored into this.

I here you on archival, but the issue is far different than marketing claims of inkjet manufacturers. While attending college, we did learn how to use our oil paints and canvas preparation to ensure that our painting would last hundreds of year. Unfortunately not everyone followed that, and the materials could be used inappropriately. I can consider the cave painting, early pottery, and some frescos to be long lived, but even oil paintings need some conservation in order to last over a thousand years. Maybe that shows a direction for a possible answer: rather than finding a medium that doesn't degrade as quickly, we need to find a medium that is simpler to be effected by later conservation efforts.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography

[claudiocambon]

Van Camper,

For the sake of simplicity, I return to my original point, which is that quality and commercial viability are unfortunately not intrinsically linked. I am not arguing against the intrinsic merit of quality, merely its viability, which, again, is desired, but in no way guaranteed.

The point is not whether film is still better than digital, the relative level of film sales and camera manufacturing, whether there aren't serious archiving issues with digital (as there are with color film, by the way), and so on. My point is that if consumers, whether it's mom and pop or commercial photographers, are fully digital, I wonder whether we artists are a significant enough constituency to warrant continued production of our favorite materials; actually I doubt it. We seem to be for the time being, but films sales are at best stable, and they probably are not growing. I think it's stable at the edge of a cliff.

These are complex industrial processes that involve a lot of infrastructure, and someone at the top may just decide at some point that it isn't worth it, and that more money can be made elsewhere. If the majority of consumers, individual and institutional, are satisfied, then that will be good enough for the manufacturers, and we will be SOL, who, as a minority (we artists will always be a minority, however prestigious) will have to adapt. Some of these materials can be manufactured on a small scale, but others may not be transferable to smaller manufacturing runs. Consider the opposite problem. Ford sold its electric car technology to a Swedish company who was simply not big enough to fully realize the car and bring it to market, despite the pressing need for such a vehicle. I believe Ford repurchased the unit recently.

Everything you say about the better quality of film is correct, and I am in full agreement with you, but what percentage of the overall consuming public are we? How many people make over 60" prints to hang in their house, and how many care how long they really look, and how long they last? Sadly, probably not enough to make a market case. Basically, pit the Gursky against the billboard advertisement, and we know who the market winner is.

This is obviously an emotional issue because it is no fun to have materials taken away from you that you may not be able to replace, but it is important to look at the state of things as objectively as possible. Your posts are getting a pinch inimical, and you should understand that I am no happier at the prospect of giving up my current way of working for something more expensive, lower in quality, and harder to use. I am simply less optimistic about the continued availability of our materials than you are, not today and tomorrow, but after tomorrow, let's say 5-10 years down the road. If I am wrong, I will be very pleasantly surprised. In the meantime I'll keep shooting all the film I can, hope A+I stays in business (looks slower every time I go) to run my film, and also hope that digital continues to work out its kinks, and finally become a a suitable replacement if film goes away.

[Stefan Lungu]

The comments of this thread are a nice read indeed. The point is that everybody has a view of the market, and depending on that there are different conclusions to the problem of film being around for a longer time. I think we will have some sort of film for a long time, even if will not have the same films that we have today, and possibly not the same manufacturers that we have today. The market of film, as I see it, is shrinking to a niche market. Commercial photographers are long on the digital track, most of them anyway. Amateurs that shoot birthsdays and vacation are lon overflooded with the thousends of pictures they have taken in the last four years ( and I speak from experience, coming from a digital to film ) and don't even know what they have on their disks right now. So that is a market that will probably not come back. Then there are people who need to print BIG and at high quality, and those that are simply in love with the film and the process. These are far fewer, so the ones that need film will be far less than in the past. The good news is that young people are turning to film - for various reasons, be it lack of finance or simply opposing to the mainstream - and those who are doing it are doing it with passion and I have seen some great work from young photographers on film trough the online galleries. So I think that while the market is shrinking, it will stabilize and then the companies will have to make their maths nad decide if they want to stay in the market or not. I also hope that we will see some better decisions made by the industry that has to learn that the hyper-run for profit and more profit is actually not the way to go ( that does not imply no profit, but if I hear a company is not good because it only makes 6% profit on some billion sales and is sold because of that I can only shake my head ).

[Kirk Gittings]

Gursky (not a favourite of mine), who prints to 10 ft can afford a digital back (maybe a couple dozen), since he sells his images at over $3million each...but instead he shoots 5x7/8x10. Why?

I'm pretty sure, about a year ago, I don't remember where, I read that he was switching over to a P45 back and stitching.

[Rakesh Malik]

Along similar lines to yours, we have a National Parks Conservation Association office here in Seattle (the Northwest chapter HQ, I think). They show a selection of photographs hanging on their walls, and last few months they had up a set of images by a rather good local photographer.

All of the images were pretty big. All of them were also soft, especially the 40x60 one, which was soft even at a moderate distance. They weren't soft because of focus errors, they were soft because the images were too big for their source, which was some Canon digitoy or other, I don't remember which one (a fairly high end model, I think).

By comparison, I'm getting some images ready for a showing shortly... currently, they're being printed at 24x30, all from 4x5 scanned on a Microtek M-1, and all of them are extremely sharp and detailed... far beyond anything a current digitoy could even begin to aspire to.

I can only imagine that as my skills improve and we get our hands on a higher end scanner, that will only get better... and the gap between my work and that of the local digitoy landscape shooters will just grow.

In the meantime, I hope that the trend toward LF photography continues, because in addition to being by far the superior format for my needs, I also happen to enjoy working with it, enough that I'm hoping to set myself up with a darkroom soon(ish).

[icefan13]

More importantly than all that: The Jonas Brother were recently quoted as saying, 'film is cool'. That means millions of teenage girls are going to want to have film cameras and are going to discover film. That's all it takes really.

Even before that, I was told by an Ilford rep that film sales had been increasing.