Nail in coffin for 35mm film cameras

Dixons don't specialise though. If/when Jessops announce that they're doing the same thing i think that will be big news.

Can't be long now. Have you seen the price of a Canon EOS3, new on ebay now? Frightening.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Canon-EOS-3-EOS3-SLR-Body-Camera-...QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

One of the best 35mm SLRs ever.

Tony

It'll be 2 channel audio next

It's about time Dixons owned up to knowing bugger all about 35mm cameras. A step in the right direction. But not the death of the 35mm I suspect. Just another cheapskate retailer bailing out of an area they shouldn't have been allowed to occupy in the first place

So what is going to keep 35mm in the market?

Tony

see also this
i'm just waiting till prices drop even more and then get into a 35mm body and fill the freezer with film, which i dont think will be a problem for a few years at least (sez he hoping)
martin

There is nothing what so ever keeping film cameras in the market.

My wife up until December worked for Kodak, who in essence were utterly shitting themselves because they KNOW its all over.

Film cameras will in the next few years go the way of record and become specialised for the very very few who give a toss.

Things move on.

Things move, weather that’s "on" or not is open to question. I think 35 mill will be there for ever but only to a specialist market. There's over 40 Mb of info on one frame of 35mm film which makes 99% of digital cameras rubbish, that will change over the next 5 years i guess. I still buy vinyl and CD's maybe that’s the correct analogy.
Martin

Martin, you (and I) are very much the minority. Go onto the street in your town and ask 100 people if they still use vinyl, what do you believe the percentage will be?

I am not for one minute suggesting digital is better than trad (although for most people it has opened up the interest of photography without the expense) but you need to face the facts as they stand, traditional photography is on its way out and quickly.

before you lose too much sleep abut the amount of data on a 35mm frame - think of the amount of data om a 10by 8 inch plate - - I do not know why people went to 120 roll film cameras.<g>

garyi
been reflecting on this for a while and you're right, i live in hope though!

I'll be staying predominately with film until such times as Pentax release a decent quality and reasonably priced digital SLR body that I can use my current lenses on. The only option at the moment is still about £600 and that's too much for me to make the shift yet.

I can name one major drawback to digital. Slow camera response! I could rattle off half a dozen shots manually with my OM1 in the time it takes my Sony digital to reset between exposures on only half a meg. Using 3 megs I need a tripod so I can rest between exposures!

Question is whether to sell all the film kit now or wait for it to become collectable? If ever?

I'm keeping my OM1n with its 50mm f1.4 lens. But only as an ornament really. They fetch not a lot on ebay, and pretty soon all the collectors will have what they want.
On the subject of response times: If I press my finger on the shutter release button on my 20D and then switch the camera on, the delay just is not noticeable. And then even on max resolution, it keeps on firing at 5fps until about, er, when my OM1n would have been out of film.

Tony

Nime, I must confess to being no expert on the collectability of this stuff but on ebay bodies only seem to languish where as ones with lense go for a bit of money. My guess is they want the lenses and not the bodies.

As I say though I am no expert on film photography.

perhaps it's just the company I keep but I've noticed a bit of a resurgence in interest in film over the last few months. Seems uncanily like the rediscovery of vinyl once CD had been around for 10 years or so.

In all cases it was people with reasonable film SLRs who had tried out a mid range digi compact. After the initial thrill of being able to shoot off as many shots as you like we all became a bit disatisfied with the quality of the resultant pics. Also it somehow seems easier to bung the exposed film in an envelope rather than firing up the pc, downloading and tinkering then hitting print 36 times.

Other advantages are that I don't have to worry about having fresh batteries, can bung in some neopan 1600 for low light, and all my film stuff is chunky metal that I don't mind getting the ocasional knock.

I'm resigned to my Oly stuff being worthless so am using the low prices to complete my kit, a mint condition 21mm lens for £150, an OK condition OM1 for £100. Also picked up a Canonet for £90 which is superb. My mate nabbed an F3 with 55mm macro for £150 last week - the camera he'd lusted after for years for the price of a meal out for 4.

Having just returned from my holidays I found that photography duties were split between a 2 mega-pixel digital compact camera, a lightweight 35mm SLR with 18-35mm lens and a digital video-cam. Of those the SLR got the most use, and it would have got even more had I taken more lenses with me as we visited some great nature areas including the Handa Island wildlife reserve and I really could have done with my 80-200 F2.8 and a 2x convertor.

I still find choosing and using film to be fun and have even got some Scala to play with (been meaning to try that for ages) so I think it'll be a while yet before I go completely digital. It is only a matter of time though and when digital SLR bodies get down to perhaps the £300 mark I'll definitely be getting that's compatible with my current lens system.

quote:

reasonable film SLRs who had tried out a mid range digi compact

Phil S

If the users of reasonable film SLRs had tried out a mid range film compact camera they would most likely be as equally disastisfied as they were with a mid range digicam.

quote:

If the users of reasonable film SLRs had tried out a mid range film compact camera they would most likely be as equally disastisfied as they were with a mid range digicam.

You're probably right, but these were people who'd spent say £300 on an SLR and were trying out a digi compact that also cost £300 or so. A film based compact would have been half that price.

I have nothing against digi, I like being able to see if a shot worked immediately, I just find myself picking up a 30 year old £90 Canon rangefinder in preference to a 6 month old £300 Pentax digi thing. And to be honest, particularly for people shots, I prefer the grainy black and white I get out of it. I'm not always sure that I trust what the Pentax is doing with the dots before they get onto my computer. Perhaps I need an Eos20d to convince me, but I'd also need about £2k to afford it and some lenses.

Phil

I upgraded an ancient Olympus Camedia 1400XL last week for a Fuji Finepix S5500.

The reason I upgraded? To get decent autofocus in low light. (There's no way I can afford a true manual/auto digi SLR right now!)

Result - performance in low light which is almost as crap as the Olympus.

Thank god there was still film in my ancient Nikon F301 - with good old manual focus.

I'd rather like a 3-5 Meg Olympus thread digital body to use my collection of Zuikos. It doesn't even have to be an SLR provided it has decent-sized LCD screen on the back. If it has a video-out socket I can even frame and focus static subjects on a small LCD monitor.

I picked up an old OM10 recently (which I didn't even want) just to get the as-new attached 35-70 Zuiko & case and the T32 flash for £40 (with 5 spare flash guns) and a camera bag at a local flea market. The vendor beat his own price down because it was "just old film camera crap".

Ironically I haven't used any of my Olympus kit for ages. But carry my £300 Sony digital compact everywhere I go. It's just so convenient, light, compact, takes over a hundred pictures per card and they can be seen on the monitor within a few minutes of getting home. I can also mess about with the lighting, contrast, colour, cropping etc to my heart's content.

I now take more digital pictures in a week than I took in a year on film. I also feel far less conspicuous with a zoom compact than I ever did with an SLR with a proboscis-like lens up front. People are much less intimdated by a compact than they are with a film SLR. Perhaps we've come full circle from the Leica compact days before the Jap heavyweight SLRs took over?

Nime,

quote:

I can name one major drawback to digital. Slow camera response!

My wife's Canon G3, an otherwise nice P&S, drives me nuts with its lag, so I understand your frustration with pressing the shutter release and waiting for the camera to miss the shot. But even the cheaper point-n-shoots are getting better in this regard.

But if they're still not fast enough, you could get a current entry-level D-SLRs like the Nikon D70s, Canon 350D or Pentax *-istD. All have shutter lags about as short as a decent SLR, and pro cameras, such as the Nikon D2Hs and D2X, are every bit as fast as pro SLRs with shutter lags around 40ms.

Joe

Some numbers for the more financially minded...

In this PDF are Nikon's financial results for fiscal year 2005, which ended on March 31, 2005.

If you can't be bothered to pour through the numbers, here are the highlights --

* Nikon has all but stopped production of P&S cameras (this is what digital has killed)

* SLR sales have dropped from 680k units in 2004 to 240k units in 2005 to an estimated 140k units in 2006 ("units" being all SLR cameras; this is what digital is killing)

* In 2004, Nikon sold 5.4M digital cameras, in 2005 they sold 6.6M, and in 2006 they expect to sell 7.6M digital cameras (the breakdown between D-SLRs and digicams isn't given, but I've read that Nikon sold a million D70 in the first year it was introduced, so I suspect D-SLRs make up a healthy percentage of all digital sales)

Joe

And even the digital point and shoot market will come under increasing pressure from mobile phones with their ever improving sensors. Take a look at the SE K750i images (2meg CMOS sensor). It has a built in flash as well as being auto focus! Camera/phone Phone/Camera?
Watch any event where Joe Public and celebraties meet and what's the 1st thing the public do? Yep. Out come the mobiles, not cameras.

Then they bluetooth/email/mms them to their friends. Wait for the replies, then delete. Very fast turn over, but so like poor mp3 copying. No soul or permanence.

Tony