Is Film Doomed?

Indeed, I can see your dilemma...

Someone around these parts (or maybe some mag article?) wrote a very nice piece on why there is sometimes vehement rejection of digital and wildly inaccurate standards against which it is being compared.

The person is scared. They see the handwriting on the wall and they're scared of the unfamiliar, of having to learn a new technology and having to leave what they are used to for the "unknown" world of digital.

Of course sometimes the person is just a b-tthead.

Leonard Leffand said:

Agreed. But in this case my insides were screaming to correct this
guy. He was the lighting director for a dance recital I was
shooting at an exclusive private school. I didn't want to rock the
boat.

His attitude about digital was unreal. But he did approve of the
use of 6MP for "this" application, meaning the recital.

I was hired by the artistic director.

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Click to expand...

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Any DSLR beats unexposed film.

Dave,

Excellent points. And thank you all for your iinput. Please keep the comments coming, I find this subject very interesting and I am sure others find this topic interesting too.

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I'd have to do some digging to find my souces! These are old numbers that are floating around my head!

Yes, 250lpmm is for contrast and for the centre of high-quality primes. Standard MTF test have quite a low contrast critereon, if I remember correctly.

Fine-grained B&W is about 100lp/mm, I believe.

Actually, the randomised nature of film grains is good from an aliasing (or lack there-of) stand-point.

and there are still a few buggies to be had. In fact there's a pretty thriving business in parts of Pennsylvania. I bet in Pennsyvania you can even buy a hand made buggywhip to rival anything made in the past.

I prefer my turbo-charged Cummins Deisel 4x4 with leather seats however. Buggywhip not required.
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http://www.pbase.com/sfleming

Too many cameras ... not nearly enough photography.

but none completely die any more.

Technical merits don't matter. Film could offer 1/100th the quality of digital; someone will still be using it in 50 years, and claiming its superiority. There are still people claiming that 45s sound better than CDs.

My own prediction:

Given the huge cost and "incidental" benefits of digital, everything (99%) currently using or able to use a sub-35mm film plane will go to digital. That means movies, P&S cameras, most film cameras, etc.

35mm film cameras tend to be durable and valued, so those already in use will hang around. I know people still actively using 20 year old 35mm cameras, and I see no reason to believe a current-day camera won't be in use 20 years from now. Manufacturing will asymptotically approach to zero without ever reaching it. Existing cameras will die off slowly. What will happen is that 35mm processing will become more specialized. Grocery stores will no longer dedicate valuable shelf space to film drops, wal-marts and costcos will no longer invest in film processors, and eventually the die-hard 35mm-heads will die off.

Film excells with larger formats. It is easy to create a 20"x20" film plane; it is simply not possible with any current digital technology. The medium format market will twist around a bit as some people shift to digital and others stay film or switch to larger formats, but medium/large formats will, for a while at least, see an increase as more people get into photography and the price of digital cameras makes thousand+dollar medium format film cameras seem "cheap". (I say that after having to quash the stray thought that a view camera might be fun to play with). That doesn't mean much since it is such a marginal part of the market already, but since 35mm will end up being a "pro" process again, those die-hards will have gone through the learning curve and having to use a pro lab won't seem like the burden it is today.

Eventually (taking beyond 25 year view) film will be impossible to get from standard retailers, impossible to develop without going to special labs, but still exist... just as Beta VCRs still technically do exist.

--
So you run and you run
to catch up with the sun
but it's sinking; Racing around
to come up behind you again.

I can buy a good used EOS 3 that will probably last for many years for $600 and is a better camera. But then the other thou I saved in not buying a 10D will be eaten up in film and processing in short order.
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http://www.pbase.com/sfleming

Too many cameras ... not nearly enough photography.

Jon Stern said:

I'd have to do some digging to find my souces! These are old
numbers that are floating around my head!

Yes, 250lpmm is for contrast and for the centre of high-quality
primes. Standard MTF test have quite a low contrast critereon, if I
remember correctly.

Fine-grained B&W is about 100lp/mm, I believe.

Click to expand...

Actually, some B&W films do much better than that. Kodak Technical Pan, when developed for continuous tone, is supposed to do around 200 lp/mm or even higher.

Also, Ektar (I presume you meant the ISO 25 version) was replaced by Royal Gold 25 awhile back.

Mike

Leonard Leffand said:

The other day I was speaking with someone about digital
photography. I casually mentioned that in a few years film will
probably be close to extinct. Well, I was read the riot act by
someone who said "You are shooting with a measly six megapixel
camera, when I shoot ISO200 film I am getting effectively 30
megapixels!"

I didn't bother to get into a debate with this guy becuase it
really wasn't worth my time. I did get me to thinking that with how
quickly sensor resolution is increasing as well as the general pace
of technology at what point will film become obsolete?

Will it be 14MP, 20MP, 30MP? I would assume that to some extent
film will always be around for special purpose applications. I was
wondering what other people think about this subject?

Cheers,

Lenny

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--
Mike Morbach
I'm still learning
http://www.pbase.com/kathy777
http://www.pbase.com/spike777

Yeah, but how MUCH would a custom buggy cost you? Don't forget maintenance of the horses.

Scott Fleming said:

and there are still a few buggies to be had. In fact there's a
pretty thriving business in parts of Pennsylvania. I bet in
Pennsyvania you can even buy a hand made buggywhip to rival
anything made in the past.

I prefer my turbo-charged Cummins Deisel 4x4 with leather seats
however. Buggywhip not required.

Click to expand...

--
http://www.outboundmusic.com
Your link to independent music!

Like many here I can't see film disappearing completely, not for many moons yet. But the fact is Western society (and it's an important distinction here, by "Western" I mean those who can afford the transition to digital devices - but I really don't want to turn this into a political thread) is crossing the chasm from the analog age to the digital.

It's not limited to cameras either. I've just bought a (relatively) inexpensive DVD burner for my home PC. I've been using a digital DV video camera for over two years. My camera (Canon 10D) I've had since March - before that I was still firmly in the film camp. By next year the signals to my TV screen will more than likely be digital. Heck, I've even seen digital refrigerators in the stores (although why anyone would want to surf the Net from their fridge is beyond me).

Suddenly my collection of dozens of VHS video tapes are not useless, but very cumbersome and impractical. They don't fit in my assimilated digital PC-video-camera topology. They don't speak the same language. It's going to take many weeks to convert them to digital, and the quality will be substandard to my directly-captured digital video, but once that's done, the VHS tapes will be of little more use than doorstops.

The same happened with my photography. I have thousands of slides taken over the years that have won photo club awards, but are now quietly sitting idle in a storage cupboard. The process to convert them to digital files has begun, but like the video conversion, it's slow and painful. Without spending alot of money on expensive equipment, the quality won't be on par with my 10D files either.

The point of all this is that as my working habits have changed from using analog devices to digital, so has my need for analog formats (video, film, etc.). The process of creating and storing my media (film and video) has shifted from the lab to my study, completely in my control. I am in charge of every creative decision made with my files, for good or bad. And the quality is far, far better (for both video and photos) than was possible with my analog devices (more so for video, but also for the photos).

The benefits for me are more than just quality. Getting into a film vs digital debate, IMHO, is pointless, because while the quality differences are miniscule, the advantages of digital files - immediacy, control, portability - make it a moot point for many of us. This last point is very important, because not everyone is as keen as myself or others on this forum to embrace the digital world, and many more as yet can't afford to do so. There is also a massive generation gap (pre-personal computer) that are simply set in their ways, and for them the digital shift is frightening in and of itself.

Whatever the reasons, for those of us who have made the leap, digital is nirvana. It scares me to think of going back to using non-digital devices (other than for special-purpose creative uses). But it's not the same for everyone.

Eventually though, it will be. My two year old son will one day be asking me: "dad, did you ever use a film camera?" and when I reply in the positive, he'll have himself a good chuckle at my expense.

gL

no text

DavidP said:

Scott Fleming said:

and there are still a few buggies to be had. In fact there's a
pretty thriving business in parts of Pennsylvania. I bet in
Pennsyvania you can even buy a hand made buggywhip to rival
anything made in the past.

I prefer my turbo-charged Cummins Deisel 4x4 with leather seats
however. Buggywhip not required.

Click to expand...

--
http://www.outboundmusic.com
Your link to independent music!

Click to expand...

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http://www.pbase.com/sfleming

Too many cameras ... not nearly enough photography.

Excellent points. I literally fought with myself to avoid digital. Actually the war is not over yet ( as I look over at my thousands of $ worth of beloved film equipment).

GD it! I WILL still use my LF camera and lenses!! I WILL! ... someday

I'm the odd duck around here however in that I never scanned. I didn't wanna do it unless I went whole hog and 3k for a scanner given that my existing tranny libray was nothing to shout about .... was too much.

So I just jumped right to high level digital capture with the 10D (well there was that little 2 week fiasco with a G5).

So now there is no turning back. The quality is there and the immediacy and control are universes ahead of film. I'll still shoot some film but it will be scanned at the lab.

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http://www.pbase.com/sfleming

Too many cameras ... not nearly enough photography.

I still shoot both film and digital. All my portrait sessions are now done digitally but my landscapes I shoot both. They give different results and it's still a buzz for me waiting for my film to get developed LOL

There will probably always be a place for film but it is a declining market. Its going to be interesting over the next 2-5 years to see where we are digitally

Howie

John Duesterhoeft said:

just give your friend the URL for http://www.luminous-landcape.com

There are some good film vs. digital comparisons there.

Click to expand...

They aren't good. Those comparos are awefull. There is something wrong with the guy, he even claimed that D30 has better resolution than film. Just try it for yourself, as I did. I saw so many contradictionary comparisons, ang to so confused, that I just went ahead and bought a used Elan, 9 rolls of different films (are good quality), bought a good quality Nikon film scanner and decided for myself that ISO100 film (as far as resolution goes) contains somewhere between 6 and 10 megapixels of information.

The type of film, an excellent optics, shooting technique, a quality scanner and a good processing lab are all crucial: frankly it's pretty hard to hit the resolution limit of the medium: you will sooner get limited by either your optics, or lack of good light or grade of the film.

I don't shoot film because $14 per roll of 36 frames is too expensive.

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Eugueny

Leonard,

That's a shocker! In my opinion nothing even comes close to a real slide shows... When I show people some slides I did eariler, the first reaction is always something like "amazing". They look so real... that's understandable since our eye is more used to reflected light, as opposed to induced light.

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Eugueny

I remember reading the Pop Photo test of the 1ds (11MP Full frame). They had a picture of a barn in the distance. In the film shot, you could barely read the writing on the barn. With the digital shot, you could clearly see what was written on the building. That was ISO100 print film, IIRC.

About the only advantage film has in better dynamic range, and I'm sure the sensor manufacturers are working on that as we speak.

Leonard Leffand said:

can't wait to get the right DVD authoring softwre to create quality
DVD slide shows for my television, I have seen them on HDTV screens
and the shows are awesome.

Click to expand...

iDVD/iPhoto and/or Toast 6 are about the best out there. But, you have to use a Mac (one of many million reasons to use one)...

Leonard Leffand said:

The other day I was speaking with someone about digital
photography. I casually mentioned that in a few years film will
probably be close to extinct. Well, I was read the riot act by
someone who said "You are shooting with a measly six megapixel
camera, when I shoot ISO200 film I am getting effectively 30
megapixels!"

I didn't bother to get into a debate with this guy becuase it
really wasn't worth my time. I did get me to thinking that with how
quickly sensor resolution is increasing as well as the general pace
of technology at what point will film become obsolete?

Click to expand...

In many ways, film probably is obsolete already. 5MP P & S's and $1000 6MP DSLR's combined with widespread digital printing kiosks have seen to that.

But that doesn't mean there isn't a demand for film out there. I come in contact with quite a few pro photograohers who still shoot film.There will always be those who just like the stuff as an "imaging device", even if only for special projects.

Its inevitable that digital will overtake film as an imaging technology per se. But, like wood and plastic furniture, sometimes people prefer the old fashioned item even though it has obvious comparitive flaws.

I shoot both film and digital and I like using both for all sorts of different reasons. All I hope is that 120 and 200 pro slide stocks will be available for the long term and that the E6 processing prices won't go through the roof.

I accept though that such processing etc will becomes increasingly harder to find.

I think if the tool feels good to use, use it. Whatever you get results with has got to be the right process.
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Cheers

Andrew McGregor

My site: http://www.englishclubonline.net/melbournegallery.htm

mbryda,

You raise an interesting point. I do use iPhoto and iDVD and really like the slide shows. However, there is a limit of one slide show per DVD and a 100 picutre limit per slide show. I have never used toast.

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