• Igor

    Film is not dead “yet”? What makes you think that film is going to die?

    I’m 37 and I don’t expect to see film disappear in my lifetime. As long as there are people who will buy it, there will be companies to make it.

    There’s obviously been a decline over the last 12 years, but a decline is hardly death. I’d hate for someone to get scared away from buying a film camera because of fatalistic pronouncements like this.

  • Igor

    It just occurred to me that the title of your post was probably sarcastic. I sometimes have trouble recognizing sarcasm online.

    I guess I’m touchy because I’ve been looking at a lot of photography-related websites lately and I’m tired of this subject always being talked about in terms of film being “dead.” Why would anyone frame the discussion that way, unless they wanted film to die?

    It’s a bogus debate. Wire recorders and 8-track tape may effectively be dead, but I can still buy film and get it developed at the corner drugstore. B&W and medium format film haven’t been popular with the masses and most professional photographers in ages, yet they’re still widely available. Even Polaroids are still around, despite the glut of dirt-cheap digital cameras that yield technically better instant images more affordably. What basis is there to say that film is going to disappear? It’s just becoming a niche format, that’s all.

    I expect that digital cameras, too, will become a niche product within the next 12 years, as people replace their bulky, inconvenient, overly-compliacted digital cameras with cell phones and palm computers that can shoot HD video. Ironically, film cameras may very well outlast digital ones.

  • Igor

    It just occurred to me that the title of your post was probably sarcastic. I sometimes have trouble recognizing sarcasm online.

    I guess I’m touchy because I’ve been looking at a lot of photography-related websites lately and I’m tired of this subject always being talked about in terms of film being “dead.” Why would anyone frame the discussion that way, unless they wanted film to die?

    It’s a bogus debate. Wire recorders and 8-track tape may effectively be dead, but I can still buy film and get it developed at the corner drugstore. B&W and medium format film haven’t been popular with the masses and most professional photographers in ages, yet they’re still widely available. Even Polaroids are still around, despite the glut of dirt-cheap digital cameras that yield technically better instant images more affordably. What basis is there to say that film is going to disappear? It’s just becoming a niche format, that’s all.

    I expect that digital cameras, too, will become a niche product within the next 12 years, as people replace their bulky, inconvenient, overly-compliacted digital cameras with cell phones and palm computers that can shoot HD video. Ironically, film cameras may very well outlast digital ones.