future of 4x5 and 8x10 film

[Leonard Metcalf]

I agree with Dean, the more digital becomes comon place and continues to grow, film will become a special interest market, much like the fine art market mentioned. People are still producing art with lithographic stones for example. The growth of digital can only make the fine art of hand printing or the use of film more and more nostaligic and eliet. Film will be seen as a dying art, and we will be the ones who maintain it. Yes it will become harder and harder to get the products we want, we will be subject to loosing some (or even many) of our favorites as economic rationalism kicks in.

On the positive side, traditional analogue photography will only benifit from the on slaught of digital, as it is eleveated to some form of fine and historic art form.

[Paul Fitzgerald]

I do hate to say it BUT unless Kodak sells their R&D to China, it's all over but the crying. The U.S. govt. does not do aero-recon anymore, they do satellite surveillance. Kodak can no longer 'make it by the mile and sell it by the inch' and have announced they will no longer make film after 2005 thanks to market pressure and EPA regs. Ilford, Agfa, Forte, ect. are all having major problems. Unless film and paper will be made in China or India we will all be going back to wet plates, too bad they don't make glass in the U.S. anymore.

This sounds like a perfect opportunity for a boutique business BUT I'm sure EPA, OSHA, local building codes, insurance rates and the Internet sales tax will end that before it starts.

Happy holidays.

[Peter Galea]

Paul,
Kodak has announced that they will no longer manufacture film after 2005?
Where can I read about that?

[Isaac Crawford]

Absolutely, digital will completely replace film. Exactly like film completely replaced painting... After all, we all know that it's impossible to buy paint and canvas anymore, right?

I'm sorry, but I am sick of this comparison. Painting and photography are different enough that they have very little overlap. A better comparison would be between dry plates and wet plates. The people that switched (all of them eventually) changed technology, but continued to make photographs. How about film vs. plates? Carbro vs color printing? You get the idea. Film will be completely replaced, and it really won't be that big a deal. How many people actually wish they were using wet plates? Technology is a good thing, it is what invented photography...

Isaac

[Graeme Hird]

G'day Bill,

It's great to have you back too! I'll send you an email off forum later in the day.

Kodak may well go under (they seem to have lost the plot a few years ago) but I think Fuji will keep going strong for some time yet. I only ever use Fuji film in any case - they don't chop and change their products anywhere near as often as Kodak do, probably because they got it right the first time .....

If there is no more colour film in the format I want to shoot, I'll get some colour separation filters, shoot B&W through them and combine the three channels in PS later (I'm considering doing this anyway, even before film gets hard to find.)

But I have a lot of confidence that the little guys will keep making film. Hell, I'll fill the niche myself if it comes down to it!

Cheers,
Graeme

[Dean Cookson]

I'm sorry too, Issac, but you're wrong. Technology is a good thing, but new tech rarely completely replaces old.

Cars killed the horse and buggy as transportation, but people still ride horses.

The telegraph gave us a faster method of communcation than letters, then the telephone gave us real time, then the Internet have us email and the web but people still buy stationery.

Microwaves pop some great popcorn and make reheating leftovers a snap, but I still own a stove and oven and a grill.

To take your examples:

There are still people out there doing dry plate photography, there are people still out there doing wet plate photography and there are still people out there making cabro prints.

Like I said, you're right about technology being good thing. It gives us an endlessly increasing number of outlets for our creative expression.

Film may not be available in every corner drug store in 15 varieties before too much longer and Kodak may get out of the film business eventually but someone will still be making photographic film for a long time to come. Basically as long as there are some of us crazy enough to lug big heavy cameras around to use it...

[bglick]

Herb, I used to feel the same way, till I went digital, as they say, the proof is in the pudding. Digital sensors record the image direct from the camera lens, and suffer little MTF effects. Whereas film suffers MTF effects from the lens, then further is subjected to scanning inefficiencies. What does this all mean in the end? A good clean digital file shot properly and treated properly within the digital workflow will produce equal to better quality image than its scanned cousin, also treated properly - with one amazing caveat....the digital file will be approx 1/3 the size of the scanned file. I too am an engineer, and this baffled me for years...but then through testing and reading up on the subject, I finaly came to grips with this issue. The biggest reason scanned files are so much bigger than an equaly well resolved digital file is the scanning process itself. I owned a new drum scanner for a few years and have seen this first hand. The dpi issue is very subjective.... a scanner, whether CCD or PMT does not record perfect dots in a grid pattern, the recorded dots, or points, overlap each other a lot, which increases file size, but does not proportional increase resolution. Also, if you scan test targets, you will find there is little relationship between the dpi set on the scanner and the ability to resolve transparency test targets. Most scanners, specially CCD's will not acheive half their advertised DPI. Epson is notorious for this. When you have to scan at 4000 dpi to acheive 2000 dpi, you get overbloated files that offer no more image quality.

Of course, all this must be kept in context, lets not compare a 3 MP camera with 8x10 film. Also, the lenses used in digital are much sharper to begin with than LF lenses, this also favors digital. But as I mentioned earlier, once digital licks the RGB per pixel issue and expands its exposure lattitude, the images will be even more stunning than now, but at the same file size as today, as currently a min. of 2/3 rds of a digital file size is interpolated data. This excludes up rezzing in PS. That will soon change and digital will take a quantam leap over what we see today, even with only modest gains in Pixel count.

Of course, when all this comes to fruition, i.e. 40 MP backs with all the improvements mentioned above, and lower prices, say $10k for a digital back, I too will struggle with the change, but with better image quality, easier shooting, easier processing, great payback vs. film, processing & scanning cost, it would be hard to turn down. Even at this size, the digital will not match 8x10 film, but will surely equal 4x5 film, which only leaves a small % of the market to film.

As for the comparison of photography vs. oil on canvas art, I agree with the posters above. I don't see a the relationship here. A painters objective is rarely set out to duplicate or compete with the photographic process.

Graeme, leave it up to you for that brilliant take on replacing film! That would be an amazing task to accomplish, but in theory its all possible! Let me know how your gallery is doin!

[Isaac Crawford]

I'm sorry too, Issac, but you're wrong. Technology is a good thing, but new tech rarely completely replaces old.

Am I? How many people on these forums use wet plate technology? How many people in the world? When was the last time you talked to carbro printer?. How many businesses make carbro materials? How many make wet plate materials? You're right in that some people still do those things, but they are an insignificant percentage of the people doing photography and they have to make everything themselves. Those things have been, by any reasonable account, completely replaced. As have horses as a mode of transporation. My point isn't that these things can't still be done, it's just that there is very little point to it any more. If your aim is to make photographs, what exactly is gained by using wet plate technology? If you want to go to the store, why ride a horse? In the not so distant future the same will be asked about film. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy using my Leica and my view cameras, but I'm not going to cry when there isn't any point in using them any more. On the contrary, I'm looking forward to the day when something better is availible. You're right that technology expands our outlets for expression, so why are people so afraid of it? This is what I'm addressing, people should be excited about digital, not afraid.

Isaac

[Dean Cookson]

"I enjoy using my Leica and my view cameras, but I'm not going to cry when there isn't any point in using them any more."

That's why we're never going to understand each other. The point (to me) of using my 8x10, developing my film and contact printing the negatives on Azo or in pt/pd is to use my 8x10, develop my film and contact print my negatives. I do it because I enjoy the act of doing it every bit as much as the end product.

Don't get me wrong either. I'm not afraid of digital or advancing technology. My day job is managing the operations team at an Internet search engine. I only play a luddite on the net...

There are plenty of things in my life that are about the destination (driving to the store, for example). For me, my photography is about the journey. The good news (for me anyway) is that there are plenty of other people out there who feel the same way. As long as we're willing to keep buying film and paper and chemistry, someone out there will keep making it and selling it to us.

[Paul Fitzgerald]

Hi Peter,

Kodak has announced this several times over the last 2 years , the last time was about 3 months ago and Wall Street took them off the Dow Jones 100 (S&P 100?) after being there for 100 years. I guess you could check the financial pages.

Kodak announcing they are going 100% digital makes as much sense as GM announcing they will stop making cars and get into tele-commuting. Actually, it does make sense, they have lost all of their largest consumers. The military went digital, consumers went digital and a little movie "28 Days Later" has Hollywood going digital or out of bussiness. Thank you, Princess Di.

Actually all of this does have a bright side, at least the whole Zone System joke will finally be dead and buried, with a stake thru it's heart. Free at last, Free at last, Thanks God Almighty, Free at Last.

Happy holidays.