Film maybe here longer then you think....

[Stephen Willard]

So Kodak’s CEO said that film is dead. Hmmm! I suspect in a few years he will have to eat his foolish words.

My wife has traveled all over the world. I on the other get to stay home a mow the lawn, Go figure. She tells me the rest of the world shoots film and only American’s buy digital cameras. Lets face it guys, only in America do we find foolish people who are willing to pay $1000, $1500, $3000, $5000, or even $8000 for a dinky DSLR knowing the camera will be out dated and unsupported in two to three years. The rest of the world knows better. It is these foolish Americans that are Kodak’s CEO groupies!

Fuiji on the other hand knows this and is just sitting quietly on the side line. Fuiji is well established in the remainder of the world and has a respectable market share in the US. When Kodak goes all digital, Fuji will pick up the slack. Fuij also knows that unlike film which is consumable, digital is not. Eventually, those foolish people will run out of money and will be unable to buy any more foolish expensive cameras. At that point we have market saturation and poor Kodak will start to decline just like most of the computing industry has done today (except for Apple).

I am a LF C41 color negative guy who currently shoots Portra 160 VC. I suspect within four years I will be shooting Fuiji film and laughing at Kodak’s decline. To bad Kodak has such a foolish CEO. Oh well. What to do.

PS I suspect that there will be lots of flames with this string. Hmmm...

[dan nguyen]

I agree with you Stephen....

Digital requires more than a camera and the time to take pictures....it requires a computer, softwares and the time to learn and use them...there are a lot of countries with a lot of people without the resources (yet) to go digtal...

an example.. I was invited to a community in a country in the world. I took pictues in LF, sure.. I took pictures of the people who hosted me and feed me.. they want to see their pictures...if I took DLSR, they can't have the next day. I took their pictures with a 35mm camera, went to the nearest town with 1 hour photo booth... and they are happy.... none of them has digital camera, they only have 35mm film camera...

sad..very sad...

[ronald moravec]

I love to buy the latest and greatest cars. More expensive each year. Can`t repair it myself so I give it to a pro who usually can`t. Resale value is nil.

Must be why the average age of autos is creaping ever higher every year.

Toyota is poised to takeover Ford and GM. Kodak is dead. Maybe the problem is we just aren`t paying enough for really good executive talent! The execs here make 500x the average salery of a worker. Not so anywhere else.

Long live Fuji.

[Armin Seeholzer]

Hi Stephen

"She tells me the rest of the world shoots film and only American’s buy digital cameras."

Sorry it is not true! In the EU is it very similar to USA and also in Japan. I can not speak for the rest of the world maybe in China it is so!

Here in Switzerland are not many Labs which still develop sheet films. And almost all sheet films are now special order items more and more!
But we have more and more amateurs wich go LF so it will survive for some time!

So use much film and it survives at least Fuji!

[Ron Marshall]

I was in China two years ago. The friends I was staying with had a digital point and shoot, and said that among the middle class (the poor can't afford cameras or film) digitals are rapidly replacing film. Their motivation to switch is strictly economic: they love the freedom to snap away madly without having to consider cost. It doesn't take many rolls to recoup the cost of a cheap 3MP camera.

With entry level digicams at $99 most people in third world countries who can afford a film camera and film will switch for the saving in film and processing. This is the bulk of the market for 35mm.

My view is that there will always be some film available. It may be somewhat more expensive due to reduced economies of scale in production.

I am certainly not going to worry about it though.

I am currently in the market for a 5x7. When I told a friend and fellow LF shooter he cautioned me about the reduced selection of emulsions in 5x7 versus 4x5. This has been the case for years. No problem, as I only intend to do b/w in 5x7 and all I want is t-max 100 or HP5+.

[Terence Spross]

Kodak has found that a lot more people are buying the preloaded disposable 35mm cameras than projected. A lot of film is sold that way now. For better or worse.....

[paulr]

What he's actually said is that kodak's old business model is dead, and that he needs 4 years to reinvent the company. The questions are, what does his new vision include, and will he be able to pull it off?

[CXC]

Stephen, I don't know where your wife has travelled, but I have recently been to Burma, China, and Scandinavia. All those places are like here in California: at least 99% of photographers on the street are shooting digital.

[Stephen Willard]

All of your points are noted, but I still stand by my prediction. There will come a time in the near future the digital market will run out of steam and collapse. All the digital cameras for those who have one will be sufficient independent of any galactic digital advances made by mankind.

This is what happened to the computer industry. I have an old G4 MAC workstation that is plenty sufficient for my needs. I have no intentions of upgrading to the newest G5 Quad systems.

It happened with the wood stove boom in the 80s. It happen with the computing industry. It happened with the dot coms. It happened with the telecom industry. And it will happen with digital imaging as sure as bears shit in the woods. Unfortunately, Kodak's CEO is just to stupid to see this.

Things are starting to heat up now. Digital imaging has now become the great divide. It is infinit they claim. There will be those that have digital cameras and those who do not. Those that do not will be left behind with useless film cameras. Hmm.. Where have I heard this before.

I give the digital boom about three more years at most, and then the big throbbing digital erection will go limp and shrivel away, and Kodak's CEO will the be forced to take early retirement. Oh well. What to do.

[Bee Flowers]

> I have an old G4 MAC workstation that is plenty sufficient for my needs.
> I have no intentions of upgrading to the newest G5 Quad systems.

Yeah so you stopped upgrading your comp. But you didn't revert to punch cards, did you?