Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2014/07/31
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]The demise of film is an unfortunate but natural consequence of the evolution of photography. Remember all the photographic processes that have fallen by the wayside. The Daguerrotype, the Calotype, albumen prints, Tintypes, the wet collodion process, the gum bichromate process, and dozens of color processes. All were replaced by gelatin silver on acetate film. And even film has a victim of evolution. Try to buy a roll of film for your grandmother's antique folding camera. I have a collection of old cameras that use 116, 127, 828, 126 and 620 film. Even a couple of old disc cameras in a desk drawer. The fodder for these paperweights is either impossible to find or is available at absurd prices from specialty firms. Kodak still makes Super 8 mm film but you have to order massive quantities. B&H sells the stuff for $30 for a 50 ft. roll. At four minutes of filming per roll, that's about $8 a minute for a video of the kids playing with a new puppy. No wonder VCRs took over the market. The VCRs in turn lost out to video modes on P&S cameras and even upscale DSLRs. Even digital photography is not immune to obsolescence. Remember the 2" Sony video disc and the Smart Media memory card? My old Leica Digilux camera used that card, all 128 MB of it. Now even the Compact Flash cards are feeling the heat. And all those pictures you burned into CDs and DVDs. Forgeddaboutit. Few new computers read them any more. As far as the archival quality of film that Brian writes about, at the rate that studios are converting to digital in a few years it is going to be hard to find a functioning 35 mm optical projector. Remember NASA can hardly read the instrumentation tapes from the Apollo program. Few tape drives have been preserved. So live with it. Revere your old cameras as beautifully constructed paperweights. Antique sextants in an age of GPS. if you want to take your film Leicas out for old timers week, film will be available at increasingly high prices. There will be exceptions, of course. Most of us are digitized these days but Jim Schulman and Lluis will probably still shoot film as long as it is available. Still, as a money losing proposition Kodak's stockholders will probably demand that the firm that pioneered the medium abandon the market within a few years. In any event it will make only the film stocks demanded by the Hollywood studios. No Kodakchrome. The best strategy for film fans is to follow the advice of a Kodak engineer. Buy yourself a large freezer and stock it with all the film stock you are likely to want for the remainder of your life. Then hope that the power doesn't go out. Larry Z