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The future of digital cameras
- Thread starter jwolf6589
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No I haven’t. I chose Amazon over Tidal be abuse it was cheaper and had a larger selection. Amazon’s seem to be the most practical option if you have Amazon Prime.
because "they have the time now" instead of "it may be considered in the future"
Some photographers may want to have more options, using digital at times and using film at times; each has a different approach in many ways, and for those who want to print fine art photos, often film is still the method of choice. Both offer opportunities for exploration and creativity and that is much of the value of photography as an art as well as a science.
Especially true for B&W. Bayer color sensors are notoriously poor and collecting true luminous values for monochrome images.
Absolutely! I also still fondly look back on the days and hours spent in the darkroom working with B&W film and standing at the enlarger and later the trays filled with chemicals in order to produce prints.....that, too, was magical and rather romantic as well.
Color processing, on the other hand, was never quite as interesting or interactive since it involved using drums and such to process the images. More reliant on processes we couldn't see while they were happening. I just loved standing in the darkroom, having left the enlarger with my freshly-exposed paper to go over to the "wet" side of the room and having the magical experience of watching my B&W images that I had shot gradually coming to life in the chemical baths, even as I gently rocked the tray to get just the right amount of agitation......
Sure, it's significantly faster these days to go out and shoot and come into the house, put the memory card into the memory card reader and load all the images into the computer and then browse through them and decide which are worth further attention and so on..... And, yeah, it's great to look at a particular image and immediately realize that indeed, when out shooting it my instinct that it would make a great B&W image was right and with a click of a key or two suddenly the color image has become a B&W and I tinker with it a little more to really make it shine..... That's still not the same as standing in the darkroom gently rocking a tray with chemicals and a piece of what had started out to be plain white paper and watching it magically transform......
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The Walgreens just down the street from me still develops film. Not sure if they still sell it.
I was at my local CVS today but didn't notice whether or not they offer film developing (sending it out, mostly likely) or still offer film for sale. I also didn't notice if they still have some sort of machine available where people can stick in their own digital memory card and get (selected) prints automatically made from what is on it.
I have tried ordering with Google Photos and picking up at Walmart that afternoon. Even did a 30-page photo book through Google Photos - came out well.
The film discussion reminds me that I need to send a few rolls of slides in, including a couple from a recent vacation. I promised my in-laws(we went with them) a good old fashioned slide show of the vacation.
My Pentax 67 and my Hasselblad are feeling very neglected now. I really should get both out and shoot them.
BTW, I can think of a couple of "you can't do that on digital" use cases for film. One is the overall look and character that's inherent in larger formats. There's a reason why many pros and amateurs alike moved to full frame digital when it became practical and affordable(that's not to say that crop sensors don't have their place-both in terms of size/weight and also great action/wildife cameras like the D500). We're still not there on 6x7 sized sensors, and forget 4x5.
The other thing is that I've yet to see a digital camera, short of a slow and bulk scanning back, that you can twist into a pretzel like you can a monorail or field camera. Yes, there are tilt-shift lenses, but they're at best about as good as a press camera(which is low on the totem pole of camera movements). You can also straighten out perspective in Photoshop, but that has its downsides too and If I get deep into something that needs a lot of correction I realize how I really, really didn't shoot it wide enough since I end up having to crop pretty severely.
To that also, tilt-shifts don't give you the range of tilts and swings that you get out of even a field camera. You really can't independently do tilt and swing, and also don't have both front and rear movements. Monorails give you movements in every axis including both front and rear tilts and swings. Using the Scheimpflug principle gives you effects that CAN NOT be duplicated in post.
My Pentax 67 and my Hasselblad are feeling very neglected now. I really should get both out and shoot them.
BTW, I can think of a couple of "you can't do that on digital" use cases for film. One is the overall look and character that's inherent in larger formats. There's a reason why many pros and amateurs alike moved to full frame digital when it became practical and affordable(that's not to say that crop sensors don't have their place-both in terms of size/weight and also great action/wildife cameras like the D500). We're still not there on 6x7 sized sensors, and forget 4x5.
The other thing is that I've yet to see a digital camera, short of a slow and bulk scanning back, that you can twist into a pretzel like you can a monorail or field camera. Yes, there are tilt-shift lenses, but they're at best about as good as a press camera(which is low on the totem pole of camera movements). You can also straighten out perspective in Photoshop, but that has its downsides too and If I get deep into something that needs a lot of correction I realize how I really, really didn't shoot it wide enough since I end up having to crop pretty severely.
To that also, tilt-shifts don't give you the range of tilts and swings that you get out of even a field camera. You really can't independently do tilt and swing, and also don't have both front and rear movements. Monorails give you movements in every axis including both front and rear tilts and swings. Using the Scheimpflug principle gives you effects that CAN NOT be duplicated in post.
That doesn't exactly work for me either, and I think the dozen or so F2s starting at me agree.
If it's worth having one of...it's worth having a couple of. I could stand to expand some of my other kits out more. I do have a 500 EL/M to complement my 500C, but really would like a 500 C/M or even another 500C. Something new like a 503CX with the mirror that doesn't vignet with telephotos would be nice, but they also cost a fortune.
I also only have the one Pentax 67 body, but the 67 bodies are pricey and I don't know if I want to get into the ills that can afflict the 6x7 MLU or the 67 II.
Kodak has introduced new emulsions and re-introduced discontinued ones in the last few years(if you're reading, I'd like my Plus-X back, thanks). They wouldn't go to the trouble of basically recreating this stuff from scratch if it weren't financially viable.
BTW, if I'm not mistaken, Kodak has also added a new coating machine in the last couple of years. Kodak sort of put themselves in a bad position in that back in the early 90s, they dropped a bunch of money into their massive coating facility and put 6 HUGE coating machines in that could spit out several mile-long, 5-foot wide master rolls in basically no time. That facility ran round the clock making not just still film, but motion picture film and motion picture print film. MP Print film fell into forced obsolescence I think in 2012, and it went from hundreds of prints(and some back of the envelope math tells me that a print of a 2 hour film would be about 1.95 miles) for every feature film to basically only being a specialty thing. I think that was the single biggest blow.
That big plant became an albatross and it going from 6 running 24/7 to just one running at best a few times a week.
I'd heard that a smaller coating machine that was a lot more flexible and able to coat smaller sizes was in the works. Ilford has continued trucking along because they never really were set up to coat in that quantity.
The camera you bought may be "relatively inexpensive" now, but bear in mind that in 1999, stores had waiting lists on them. I think they were around $1K at the time. I'd argue that your camera was the last major "hot product" film camera release before digital took over. The EOS 3 was released around the same time and positioned to compete directly. It had some interesting tech in it like eye-controlled focus(which some claimed worked fine and some said was buggy), but largely didn't sell in the same numbers as the F100. The F6 was basically everything Nikon new about how to make a film camera rolled up into one slick package, but it was always a low volume product. Serial numbers I've seen in the wild of cameras ordered around the end of production last year indicate that production was probably in the mid to high 30,000 range. Even though it's a single digit camera, and built like you'd expect one to be(including build quality equal to the D2 series cameras and some shared design features like the AF module), I doubt many full-time working pros bought it to beat on day in and day out. F5s are a different story and you can find ones now that look like they were run over by a truck(and still work perfectly) but I think I've shot 3 rolls of film through mine in several years of ownership just because it's too dang heavy.
Another growing customer base for film cameras are students. Many photography courses start to teach the basics of photography by instructing them to go buy a cheap film camera and learn the complete process from exposure triangle to developing B&W.
To expand on the OPs original question
Film cameras will always have a following as long as they are available and film is available.
Point and shoot cameras are probably the one that will mostly go away.
DSLR's will always remain even though they are less popular than they once were.
Mirrorless will remain as that is where the camera companies are developing and trying to convince the DSLR brigade to upgrade (well how else will they get your cash
)
And yes smart phones are the choice of camera for the masses. However they will never replace proper cameras for me or millions of others.
To expand on the OPs original question
Film cameras will always have a following as long as they are available and film is available.
Point and shoot cameras are probably the one that will mostly go away.
DSLR's will always remain even though they are less popular than they once were.
Mirrorless will remain as that is where the camera companies are developing and trying to convince the DSLR brigade to upgrade (well how else will they get your cash
)And yes smart phones are the choice of camera for the masses. However they will never replace proper cameras for me or millions of others.
Maybe he doesn’t have access to Google
OP - I think you should join a Point and Shoot photography discord such as this one - https://discord.com/invite/GJZTp9s
that way you can ask all the questions you want and whatever pops in your mind, random thoughts, etc instead of posting and creating new threads here.
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Another growing customer base for film cameras are students. Many photography courses start to teach the basics of photography by instructing them to go buy a cheap film camera and learn the complete process from exposure triangle to developing B&W.
To expand on the OPs original question
Film cameras will always have a following as long as they are available and film is available.
Point and shoot cameras are probably the one that will mostly go away.
DSLR's will always remain even though they are less popular than they once were.
Mirrorless will remain as that is where the camera companies are developing and trying to convince the DSLR brigade to upgrade (well how else will they get your cash
And yes smart phones are the choice of camera for the masses. However they will never replace proper cameras for me or millions of others.
I remember years ago that the Pentax K100 was considered "the" student camera for those enrolled in photography classes. It was a very basic camera without all the bells and whistles and really was useful for getting the job done: the student learned from it because he or she HAD to do so, the thing was all-manual, no fancy shortcuts. No idea of what is recommended for beginning photography classes these days, but definitely it has to be something which will get the student moving in the right direction of learning what is needed.
I daresay that as of now, P&S cameras pretty much HAVE gone away, except for some few more sophisticated "compact" models which include appropriate controls for the photographer to be able to steer his or her own path rather than depending upon "scene modes" and such. I think even those are gently fading away now, too, though. For instance, Sony has not offered an updated version of its wonderful compact RX100 series, and I suspect that there may never be any more. Hanging on to mine for dear life!
Sure, there are still some cheap P&S cameras out there without a VF and offering/promoting supposed shooting benefits with long zooms while in actuality the camera has a tiny, tiny sensor and depends mostly on digital zoom as opposed to optical zoom and the photographer has little, if any control, over how his images are handled in-camera.
Smartphone photography has definitely been taking the lead over the past several years when it comes to offering the masses something with which they can quickly fire off snapshots and immediately send them in email to family and really closest, most intimate friends or post online on Instagram or some other place for their hundreds of (supposedly) close friends to see.....
I still remember how back in 2007 when I had the first iPhone and was happily using it for all kinds of things, including shooting snapshots, how many of my friends laughed. How could an iPhone surpass the value of their wonderful Blackberry for everyday needed communications? Snapshots with that thing couldn't be as good as with a real camera! In the meantime their P&S camera lingered in a drawer, pulled out on for special occasions or vacations now and then. At parties and gatherings I was still the one who arrived with a genuinely "real" [i.e., non-P&S) camera in hand to take photos of the occasion.
It was not all that many years later when I attended one of our group's gatherings -- a birthday party -- and because I was upset about some news I had just learned about the serious illness of another friend in the hospital I went off to the gathering without my regular camera. I did have my current iPhone, though, and figured that, well, that would do..... I really was genuinely amused and bemused when I looked around at the action at the party and watched as various friends had the best time shooting photos of each other and themselves with selfies, etc., and promptly sent off their newly-shot images to family or other friends who couldn't be there.... People fired off emails and texts to each other or absent friends while at the party, reveling in their ability to do so. I watched and realized that I was witnessing the death of the P&S cameras still sitting in these people's drawers and seeing the recent adopters of smartphones delight in the instant communication possibilities with an iPhone or other smartphone. The revolution was well underway......
I would have agreed with this a week ago, but now I think the lack of a new RX100 is just supply chain issues. I broke my G5x in March, and have had an RX100 in my cart at B&H since then. It only just came back in stock this week! Needless to say I jumped on it…
I think the market for high end P&S cameras hit a minimum, but is probably starting to grow again. The people who moved from P&S to smartphone have already done that, and the people buying cameras still will continue to buy cameras. But one major user of this is outdoor recreationalists, hikers, trail runners, etc. And the number of people doing those sports is going up, so I think the number of people wanting to bring a lightweight camera on adventures will be increasing too. Of course I don’t know that’s enough people to justify a company as large as Sony maintaining a product line for it. But magazines like Trail Runner Magazine, Runner’s World, and such have their cover photos often taken on RX100s. I certainly hope they don’t stop making them, because they certainly fill a niche that I need filled! Or at least not before smartphone cameras catch up, I think I could do with just my phone if it also had a 3x, 4x, and 6x lens.
My iPhone 12 has a 10x digital zoom, which degrades the image at the max. I am sitting waiting for my Olympus E-10 SLR to be delivered, been at my son’s house for 7 years waiting for him return it.
Some fantastic comments regarding film.
I do miss film. I miss its smell. I miss the anticipation of waiting for a roll to get processed.....like a kid waiting for Christmas to see how they turned out. Regarding B+W, I used to enroll in one class a semester at the local community college just so I could keep dark room privileges.
What I don't miss?......the last trip I took that I shot film was Kauai in 1998. The post trip processing on that trip costed nearly as much as the airfare. I could've purchased a good used camera for what I spent. That didn't include the film itself, or the 8x10s I ordered later.
Digital has allowed me to experiment more, worry less, and has made me a much better photographer. It's so much nicer not having to count the costs when shooting.
I do miss film. I miss its smell. I miss the anticipation of waiting for a roll to get processed.....like a kid waiting for Christmas to see how they turned out. Regarding B+W, I used to enroll in one class a semester at the local community college just so I could keep dark room privileges.
What I don't miss?......the last trip I took that I shot film was Kauai in 1998. The post trip processing on that trip costed nearly as much as the airfare. I could've purchased a good used camera for what I spent. That didn't include the film itself, or the 8x10s I ordered later.
Digital has allowed me to experiment more, worry less, and has made me a much better photographer. It's so much nicer not having to count the costs when shooting.
I love my RX100 M7 but have to admit that over the past year I really haven't used it all that much, while instead reaching for one of my other cameras. The RX100 M7 (and previously its predecessors) I purchased primarily for travel, and of course in 2020 and so far in 2021 I haven't done any of that. The other day I did pull out that camera and used it for the first time in a long while and again remembered what a stellar little instrument it is and am now resolving not to neglect it for so long again -- it's too good a camera to just let sit idly in a cabinet!
You well may be right that part of the problem right now is that chip issue and supply chain issues.....but I still have the hunch that the RX100 M7 is going to be the last of the line.
I don't miss film. I don't miss cassette tapes. I don't miss VHS. I don't miss camcorder tapes.
Luckily it’s not all about what you do and don’t miss. We are allowed to have our own opinions.
If you don't miss them, why did you start this thread asking about film a few months ago?
35MM and Poloroid
Anyone still using these film based products these days? I have a 35MM camera and a Polaroid somewhere buried in the basement however I left the batteries in the 35MM and have not replaced them in ages so the camera probably has acid in the battery compartment. Back in 1999 everyone used these...
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Wow I really love this group. Missed that thread. And why would @jwolf6589 keep film and Polaroid cameras around if he hates the format?If you don't miss them, why did you start this thread asking about film a few months ago?
35MM and Poloroid
Anyone still using these film based products these days? I have a 35MM camera and a Polaroid somewhere buried in the basement however I left the batteries in the 35MM and have not replaced them in ages so the camera probably has acid in the battery compartment. Back in 1999 everyone used these...
I don't hate the format they are obsolete. And no when I moved left Polaroid behind.