Goodbye 35mm

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Goodbye 35mm

Postby Fossil » Mon Aug 08, 2005 11:20 am

Bum tit tit bum tit tit play yer hairy banjo
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Postby Apollo » Mon Aug 08, 2005 12:10 pm

Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the shops stop stocking 35 mm, then it will die because you can't go buy it.

The closing line echoes my own sentiment that digital cameras are (largely, not completely) leading to the end of photography. The world is going 'point and click' (there isn't even really a click!) and the art of photography will become a minority interest.

On the upside, time to start looking around the 35 mm second hand market for some real bargains.
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Postby mrlipring » Mon Aug 08, 2005 12:49 pm

*cough*vinyl*cough*

Manufacturers with agendas forcing the marketplace to go where it wants it to.

Sure, cds are "better" than vinyl, and digital is "better" than film, but it's subjective to a degree.

Either way, you can still buy vinyl, and you'll still be able to buy film and have it developed (or do it yourself), so it just means that the few places who stay faithful to the old ways will make a lot more money.

There were always point+shoot film cameras, so your last point is nonsense, i'm afraid. All digital cameras have done is make photography more accessible to people. They sell digital cameras EVERYWHERE these days, so people don't need to feel intimidated by going into specialist shops. The developing is cheaper, actually getting good and learning is cheaper (costs you batteries - take all the crap shots you like), they're just generally better. If you get a camera that allows a sensible level of control over shutter speed, exposure time and aperture, you're laughing.

Once you go onto dSLRs, the difference between them and film cameras is even less.

If digital cameras get more people into photography, how can that be bad? Those who enjoy it will progress onto bigger and better things (they might even go on a nostalgia trip and get themselves a nice film camera), when 10 years ago they might not have been able to shell out money on something they might not have been good at.
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Postby Apollo » Mon Aug 08, 2005 4:17 pm

Ah, think you picked up the wrong intent of my 'point and click' reference.

Although my digital compact is a fully manual multimode, it lives in auto because the functions are all reached through on-screen menus (mode/select/shuffle/select, oh don't bother!). I own what was probably the first proper multi-mode SLR (Canon A1), and can switch modes from auto to any priority or fully manual in a fraction of a second because the selector is poperly designed.

I don't think most of the folk are learning photography now, they're to busy with the megapixel race to get one up on their mates, and with all the tech-in -the-box are coming to believe it's the camera that takes the picture, and the more bells and whistles, the better the picture will be, and they're being disapponted.

I was makng a difference between shooting a large number of desired shots around the ideal you're after, and selecting the pick of crop, and just blindly firing of shot after shot randomly, without any aim, in the hope that one will be right and maybe capture the subject.

I stood beside a chap taking pictures of ferries on the Clyde a few weeks ago, he was using a top-end bridge camera with 8 MP, and was moaining about the pictures not going to be very good, because he'd learned that Minolta had just brought out a revised and upgraded model.

As you say though, it's really down to the manaufacturers trying to force things, and get people to keep upgrading their cameras, and win back the 'lost' 35 mm business.
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Postby Vladimir » Mon Aug 08, 2005 4:37 pm

I don't think most of the folk are learning photography now, they're to busy with the megapixel race to get one up on their mates
#

This applies to everything sadly :(
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Postby mrlipring » Mon Aug 08, 2005 8:17 pm

Fair enough apollo, i thought you were coming across as one of the anti-anything-new brigade. Sure, i'm a gadget freak, but when i got into photography earlier this year, it was all experimentation, learning from my mistakes, teaching myself...

I'm a natural tinkerer, so i've got a habit of fucking around with settings. My camera's rarely on auto these days. I like to do a lot of macro stuff, so that requires a level of control. There's not all that much that i've wanted to do that my camera's limited functionality has hindered. Perhaps i'd like a massive zoom lens, but that's about it. My camera's not all that flashy, and yeah it'd be nice to upgrade to a dSLR, but the only difference i'd find would be the ability to chop and change lenses, and bigger prints. And i've never had a print yet. I keep meaning to check out a few high street printers, but i've been skint.
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Postby Apollo » Mon Aug 08, 2005 8:32 pm

Anything but anti-new really, and I did get upset when someone classed me as an 'early-adopter' one day, 'cos I don't (because early-adopters pay through the nose ::): ).

I think one of the reviewers on the news hit the the nail on the head tonight, when he passed an opinion to the effect that digital photography was going to lead to the death of one item that has been an unwitting cornerstone of our society's heritage and history: the shoebox full of old photos that almost everyone has stashed away somewhere.

Like you, I've not seen a print for soemthing like 2 years now.

I've even got a diary note to scan and post a set of pics in here, that are still in an SLR that I've still to finsih the film in (sorry to anyone that remembers it and is waiting :oops: ).
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Postby La Fenn » Thu Aug 11, 2005 9:57 am

mrlipring wrote:You can still buy vinyl, and you'll still be able to buy film and have it developed (or do it yourself), so it just means that the few places who stay faithful to the old ways will make a lot more money.


Digital is different. It can do certain things film can't, like being instantly accessable. But film can still can do certain things digital can't, like being man-handled (scratched, burned, washed etc) and i don't know of many plug-in that can do it as well as a hand or a washing machine. With myself being an experimentalist, i'll be sticking with film for the time being, i love my F-301 too much.

I think it's inevitable that for family snaps, commerical and magazine work all but the most hardened luddite will be using digital. Yet I think artists, hobbyists and the like will still use film, as long as there are places to process and print the film.
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Postby PlasticDel » Thu Aug 11, 2005 4:54 pm

Discussed this a while back with an ol' chap one day. He's got loadsa pictures of old stuff and can get them reprinted almost any time cause he's kept all his negatives.

I know I back up all my photos, but how many people are just gonna discard loadsa them, even by accident. NEgative are a bit easier to keep a hold of don'tcha think?

So a lot of photos may be lost if that is the case.

That was his point anyway. I agree with it mostly. 'Cept -like I said- I keep all my photos anyway.

Film is cool.
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Postby La Fenn » Thu Aug 11, 2005 7:03 pm

PlasticDel wrote:I know I back up all my photos, but how many people are just gonna discard loadsa them, even by accident. NEgative are a bit easier to keep a hold of don'tcha think?


So very true. I still have my own negatives from 3-4 years ago, not to mention the 100s if not thousands of family ones. They're a lot more permenant than digital back-ups.

An awful lot of CD-R\W and DVD-R\W especially the brands an awful lot of amateurs use don't last very long, some only have a self-life of 10 or so years before they start becoming corrupted.
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