Nikon Suicide or Not?

Years ago when Nikon came out with the F6, a question was poised to Chuck Westfall of Canon asking if they would reply with a new high end film camera. His response not unless there was demand, and he went on to say you could count the number of high end Canon film Camera sales on two hands. This was around 9 years ago. Since that time the market has even moved more dramatically to digital.

If Nikon was seeing a lot of demand for film products they would still be in the film scanner market. If there was a big market for film cameras Nikon would still be developing new cameras. I have zero doubt the only reason Nikon still lists the F6 as a current product is the level of inventory they posses. I doubt they have manufactured a new F6 in many years.

Companies don't abandon profitable product lines just for fun. If there was a market for film cameras you would see companies creating new cameras. You would see a thriving pro lab sector. The darkroom chemical business would be thriving.

As for abuse from digital guys I guess turn about is fair play. I have been into photography for over 40 years. I have many thousands of negatives and slides in my archive. I am very familiar with film.  In early '97 I started experimenting with digital photography. More for fun than anything else, by '99 I had some nice digital gear and was having fun, but I was still very much a film photographer and buying very nice pro film gear.

I was using two very good film labs, but they would be beyond abusive if you mentioned digital. I switched to a third pro lab in town and they were fun to work with on ALL aspects of photography. In 2001 the owner had all of his staff trained on digital photography and started offering digital services. They were fun to work with, more of a joy because of their knowledge. Helpful in all areas of photography. By 2004 the owner remolded all 3 of his stores. Gone was the big wall display baskets of every type of film you could imagine, replaced by lists and examples of all of their digital services.

As for myself, after years of shooting film I shot my last rolls at the 2002 Winter Olympics. Since the winter of '02 I have been a 100% digital shooter. Personally I have found a great new passion for photography since switching fully to digital. I have also, moved my whole film archive to digital using my Nikon scanner.

As for the local labs, the two labs that laughed at digital for years have long since closed. The other chain of three stores is doing great, while I hear about photo stores closing around the country the owner of has expanded his stores twice in the last 8 years. I greatly admire him, he saw the future, fully embraced it and has done great. During this whole transition he has always been a slide film user, but he does not cloud his personally passion with business. If he did his stores would have closed years ago.

BTW - if you don't like abuse, don't hang out in a digital forum. Photo.net has great forums for film photographers.