sapearl wrote in post #2275689
So I have heard Claire.... dealing with Imacon. I had to sell my old 500C/M in order to finance some new Canon purchases.
But I still have the 503CW and a set of lenses in case the film urge hits me....
Leica, Hassleblad, Bronica and Agfa all got caught with their pants down by the digital revolution.
Leica's big problem is that they built their reputation on excellence and on making excellent bodies and excellent lenses. Digital is all about short production runs with each subsequent run having minor improvements (digital cameras 1, 1.01, 1.02, 2.00, 2.01, 2.1, 2.2, 3 etc). If Leica were to make their lenses in mounts other than Leica and were to make them AF as well then we could be onto something. Imagine an AF Leica lens on your 1D!
Agfa was primarily a film manufacturer and although they dabbled in VGA digital cameras they underestimated the impact digital would make on film sales and went under which was a shame because they produced the world's best colour slide films.
Hasslenblad and Bronica got caught out by the fact that digital SLR image quality is so good that most pros that used to use medium format to get good quality can now get it from the smaller format which is also more portable, more versatile and a lot lighter to carry. There are no 2000mm lenses for Hassleblads or Bronicas!
I don't like the thought of film being unavailable but... it seems to me that 35mm and medium format is going to die out very slowly. Large format might persist for a while though. I can imagine there will be a market for retro enthusiasts that make their own cameras and films.
The darkroom is where I see the death of silver halide first. Very few people these days - from choice - would sit in a darkroom producing 10 prints a night when they can scan a film in an hour or so and get 36 really nicely balanced prints printed on their printer in another couple of hours. Plus they can do this in daylight while carrying on with their real life. They can eat sandwiches that don't have hypo flavouring and drink tea that hasn't had ID11 dripped into it. They can walk around without smelling of chemicals after a printing session. I can see all the amateurs and enthusiasts dropping darkrooms ASAP and going over to PCs, printers and scanners. Sales of boxes of photo paper are reducing rapidly. Some retailers that started as photography retailers now are selling no film cameras.
