After four and-a-bit years since the last post on this thread, it was interesting to read the predictions - mostly all wrong !
In an age of 24 mp '35mm' cameras and 65 mp digital backs, film still has its place and quite a big place at that. Digital has meant that the lenses used have had to be either redesigned or built to tighter tolerances to keep up with the higher resolution of the chip. That's something the lens manufacturers never bothered to do with film, even though black-and-white film, for example, has ratings upwards of 300 lp/mm! Now that we have some decent lenses out there we are now also seeing what film can really do in terms of resolution. Yes, we have a longer and more complex processing of the image before we can get a print if we wish to digitise the negative but the end result is worth the effort if we use the best means and materials available to us. That effort for me produced a 6x9 rollfilm in Rollei Pan 25 that easily beat a Hasselblad 39 mp back in an informal test I recently carried out (a test I'll be repeating again with more rigorous methodology so don't take my word for it until then). The film image cost me just under £1 to produce and the equpment needed to make it was ten times less than that of the Hasselblad. Both do the job they were designed well of course.
There are also some inherent restrictions that digital places on photography. Unless we get 4x5 digital backs it will never get past the depth of field foreshortening, the lack of movements on medium format cameras (the recent increase in tilt&shift lenses is a poor substitute), for which 65 mp digital backs are designed for, and the huge cost. Indeed, now that the world is well and truly into recession it will be interesting to see if these high end, high megapixel, digital backs, designed for a specialised market (commercial photography) will survive.
As of today, we still have new film technologies being introduced and after talking to my local but well-known film seller, rollfilm and sheetfilm sells have been increasing.
My prediction? Little change with medium format digital sells receeding a little, 35mm digital receeding a lot, and sheetfilm, as well as rollfilm, making a small comeback. ...or is that happening now?
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