Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/06/18
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]The major photo retailers are working their a------ off to make getting pictures from digital cameras easy. Why? Roll counts are dropping by double digit percentages and if they can not replace lost business in developing film with making pictures from digital files then they are dead meat. It is no secret in the industry that the profits were in film(and paper and chemistry) for the manufacturers and in processing film and making prints for the shops. Sometime in July you will be able to e-mail your digital files to major retailers and pick up your pictures within four hours at literally your choice of hundreds of locations. Polaroid has a neat little kiosk that can make 24 prints from your digital file in a couple of minutes. You can find someone's kiosk just about everywhere to make prints from your digital files. Don't delude yourself that film will be around for a long time. Right now more than 90% of all cameras sold in the US are digital, excluding disposables. I suspect that next year sometime you will start to notice that film is not at the check out line of your local grocery, and that the giant warehouse stores have moved a smaller selection of film to the back corner somewhere. I think that sometime next year you will see the one hour labs start to disappear from drug stores as the roll counts drop so far that they can not afford the square footage to a loss leader. We have in fact reached the critical trifecta of good enough quality, availability of output options, and marketing buzz where film is a walking dead product. Yes, we all will still be able to buy film, but just like buggy whips, way out of the way or mail order. To keep this on topic, Leica as a niche player with a fairly loyal customer base, will survive in some shape or another just as you can still buy a buggy for your horse to pull. However, if they can not develop or rebadge a digital highish end product then we will all seem to be collectors of Colt revolvers: still potent devices but largely irrelevant to anyone outside the club. This time 0.05 Don dorysrus@mindspring.com - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html