The end of film cameras

[thegman]

For 35mm cameras, you've got Leica, Cosina, Fujifilm, Lomography, and some other "toy" camera makers. There are probably some others I'm forgetting, but it seems hard to believe that if film is still available, film cameras won't be.

[jnanian]

when you can't get the 35mm camera anymore,
and you can't find them in the used market,
it might be time to dabble in a different format
which is more plentiful ... or make a box camera
or have fun with paper, instead of film ... or coat glass plates
or ....

there is still lots of fun to have without a 35mm camera ...
its gonna be 1890 all over again

[CGW]

ZZZzzz. This truly is old news. I see used mass-market film cameras sold out of bins in Toronto camera stores. At the current rate of decline in film use/production, I'd recommend enjoying it while you can.

[2F/2F]

Looking into the future, I am more worried about the availability of repair people who really know what they are doing with older cameras. They are already scarce, and most of the "experts" are already elderly, or will be before long. I am not worried about whether or not brand new film cameras are made. I wouldn't want 99 percent of the new film cameras made anyhow, nor would I pay what they cost – not with the used market the way it is.

[RPippin]

Who cares if nobody makes any new film based cameras anymore? I can already hear the teeth nashing, clothes tearing, hand wringing and all the wailing and moaning and I haven't even posted this yet. There is a huge surplus of used 35mm, medium format and large format stuff floating around, a lot of which can't even be given away, for Gods sake. The stuff last forever, can still be repaired, and let's not even go down the "green" road here. I refuse to live in fear of a future that's not even here yet. "I feared a fear and it came upon me" makes life a bit to dreary for me. Photography for me is about creative expression. I have no idea where this might take me in 10 or 20 years. For all I know I might be coating glass plates and hand coating paper. What do we do if the whole damn economy just bottom outs? What if manufactures are forced to stop making digital stuff because of enviromental constraints, and people just don't have the money to keep buying constantly depreciating assets? Sorry for the rant, but it fries my shorts when we get to worried about something we fear for the future, and react to it as if it is already the reality today. Live for the moment, I say. My wife doesn't agree with me, but thats her...

[Steve Smith]

Looking into the future, I am more worried about the availability of repair people who really know what they are doing with older cameras.

I am a firm believer in the idea that if something could be done in the past then it can be done now or in the future. So there is no reason why a mechanically minded person in the future could not look at a mechanical camera, work out how it works (or should work) and be able to repair it.

The difficulty might be in finding such a person to work on your camera if you can't do it yourself.

Oh yes, and I second everything that RPippin wrote above.


Steve.

[anm]

I'm actually positive about the future of film photography, here in the UK it is alive and very well, I'm not predicting doom and gloom, and where there's a gap in the market someone will always fill it.

Just a discussion starter and a thought on the fact that used film cameras will become scarcer over time, especially in the consumer, mass produced, plastic bracket that I'm enjoying at the moment, that's all....

[Aristophanes]

It's a pretty basic equation:

In order to reinvest (tool and die) for film production, that capital investment needs to see the same reinvestment on camera production.

If that equation breaks, then all the buckets of free 35mm/120/4x5 cameras in the world will not create a capital reinvestment scenario. Film photography has always been an economic symbiosis; never discrete.

I doubt all the world's garage shop tinkerers combined could even muster enough $ to keep APUG going much less keep a substrate micro-factory going.

[eclarke]

I'm 'only' 37. I know there are tank like indestructable things that will be around forever, and there are cheap plastic things still being made, but the middle ground of affordable, good quality cameras seems to be the weak point, maybe there's an opportunity there for a camera manufacturer to step in.

If you take good care of it, it will last a long time. You don't have to beat it up, good craftsmen use their tools every day but don't abuse them...EC

[John Hermanson]

LCDs have a life span. I wonder if ccd, cmos etc. can just suddenly stop working because of their age, or develop thousands of dead pixels. I read somewhere about a digital SLR with a fixed semi-silvered mirror. Canon did that in 35mm with the Pellix and pretty much all of those are unusable because the mirrors aged and the coatings went bad. Parts for digital cameras are very expensive, available for a narrow time window AND in many cases, replacing some parts requires proprietary software from the manufacturer (which many won't make available) to set the camera up. John