Maybe…there seem to be people still shooting film, and developing prints.
On the other hand, as the film market shrinks, costs will rise-which will drive more people to digital photography.
Will Kodak survive? I wonder if it sheds enough unprofitable businesses…can it make a niche for itself?
It would be sad to see it go…but look what happened to Polaroid!
Film photography as we know it is gone. There will probably always be a niche market for film, and a few specialty fields where there still is an advantage, but consumer film photography is dying and will pass away soon. Kodak is already in Chapter 11 and whatever they look like coming out, film photography isn’t going to be a major part of it.
To no one’s great dismay, I might point out. There really are no benefits left to film photography.
My father, 86, took a lot of slides during his archeology work. Occasionally he asks me to get a slide printed for him. Previously Walgreen’s did this. Recently I took a slide to several Walgreen’s and not one of the photoshop employees had ever seen one or knew what it was.
I’m not all that sorry to see it go. The amount of resources saved, and the amount of pollution avoided, must be enormous.
Film photography will certainly survive as an art medium. Also, there might be some use for it in field work…e.g. working under such conditions that electronic media would be damaged. (The military continued to train people on old-fashioned transits and other antiquated surveying gear long after others had switched to GPS and other technology for just that reason. Old-style stuff will continue to function even after some catastrophic event has rendered electronic devices useless).
I believe the cheap drugstore disposable cameras still use film; probably because the purely mechanical shutter aparatus can be built cheaplybenough to be used in a throwaway unit wheras electronic circuitry can not.
SS
Survive in what sense? They’ve already filed for Chapter 11, and they’ve announced that they will sell off the film business and “shift its focus to commercial printing as it works to emerge from bankruptcy”.
Still being used heavily for XRays. But I assume that’s on the way out also. Newer imaging technology forgoes the film.
I think film photography will continue to exist, but only as a hobby or art form. Getting a roll developed will involve going to a photography shop, not your local drug store. Given the number of analogue enthusiasts and some of the cool things you can do with film, I don’t think it will ever completely go away, in the same way that you can still buy records and turntables, etc.
My surgeon was using digital X-rays back in 2004.
I know a number of professional photographers, and not one of them has shot film in years. It had a good run, but except for a handful of art uses, it’s toast.
My wife and daughter belong to a photo club. Most of the members shoot digital now, but there are plenty of diehsard classic photographers still doing it the old fashioned way, and there are photography stores in the area that cater to them. Significantly, the chain photography stores have folded, since the huge consumer market in film photography has disappeared.
Film photography survives because of the unique qualities of the film process and printing, because there are darkroom techniques you can approximate with software, but not precisely duplicate, and for other assorted reasons (conceptual art done with a camera in mind).
there are also technical things that you need classic film for. Taking holograms and Lippmann photographs (bioth of which require extremely high-grain emulsion), taking various kinds of shadowgraphs, pinhole photography, the use of curved media, and other such random applications.
Any of these alone isn’t enough to support a small industry, but all of them together could be. If not, people will go back to preparing their own materialsd, like they did in the 19th century.
Every year more of those reasons drop off in favor of digital photography. Soon there will be none remaining.
That’s being phased out. A lot of hospitals have been doing digital for years now. There are too many good reasons to go digital, including less radiation exposure, and of course less materials cost.
You can’t get a film developed in my hometown anymore. The photography shops closed down, the pharmacies that did processing removed their photography departments and installed digital photo booths, ditto KMart. The dozen or so locations in town that developed film in 2002 are gone.
The nearest photo lab I could find was an hour’s drive away, but I looked that up over two years ago and have no idea if it still exists. I had a sense that film was becoming something you mailed off to one of a handful of labs in the country to have developed, and would shortly cease to exist as a service you could have done in a store in under an hour. Maybe I’m wrong… Maybe those mail order photo labs don’t even exist.
My kid just went on an extended field trip on which he was allowed to bring a film camera, but not a digital one. He took a roll of pictures with a disposable film camera but now we can’t find a place that’ll develop the deuced thing.
I’ll be third to mention that while I do see film X-rays sometimes, mostly I see digital now.
When I was flush I went to buy a decent replacement film camera in the local camera shop. They only had one model left and it was caked in dust. They still process colour film but they stopped processing b&w which they only ever sent to some central processor in Dublin city, it was very expensive but man I love black and white prints. I know you can do b&w setting on a digital camera but it’s just not the same. I think too, maybe I’m wrong here, that modern digital cameras, especially high megapixel rates or whatnot are really unforgiving of human imperfections in a way film wasn’t. Could just be my perception and there probably are ways of making digital photos less harsh.
Are digital cameras better than film in every way now? I know they’re convenient, and they have high resolution, but mine (which is a few years old) seems to have a slow shutter speed. I have to be careful to hold it steady so the image isn’t blurred. This wasn’t a big problem when I took pictures with cheap film cameras as a kid. Have current cameras, particularly cheaper ones, solved this problem?
I think maybe, although I could be wrong, when you take photos with a film camera you don’t use them the same way as digital. You have to be more careful to frame the shot etc. so as not to waste any film. Even the whole looking through the viewfinder will put you in a steady position, which isn’t required with most digital cameras.
Yes, digital cameras really are better than film in pretty much every way now. You may have to spend a bit more for a digital camera with a faster lens and better high ISO performance, but there are consumer level cameras that will outperform anything in film. You have to learn a few slightly different techniques, but you capture more scenes with the average digital camera than you can with a film camera.
A modern DSLR has far better low light capability than any film camera, and that is moving its way down into pocket cameras. Newer models just introduced this year probably push things past the final tipping point.