There is a current poll on slashdot.org at the moment asking people what their current favourite still image camera type is. Interestingly over 4% have voted for 35mm or smaller film and, I think even more so, over 3% voted for larger than 35mm film. At the time of writing there were 902 votes for film out of 10577, that's over 8.5%. Given that slashdot is targeted at programmers and those interested in the latest in technology, I think this is a healthy vote in favour of film. Even more so since manufacturers such as Kodak do very little in the way of mass marketing of film products now and film camera manufacture is sparse to say the least. Some of the comments on the poll express a 'coolness' and 'quality' which you can't get from digital - something users of this forum know about but it's nice to see it expressed elsewhere. Unfortunately, Kodak hasn't exploited this coolness with clever marketing and instead followed the herd at full pace into the digital photography and printer market which is now maturing (saturating) and causing weaker manufacturers, including Kodak, to fall by the wayside. Kodak has a unique fall-back in their film products and should be using that to survive through actively promoting film as fun and 'cool'. I suspect that small(ish) batch manufacture is the way forward for the remaining film manufacturers as film is unlikely ever to reach the peak volume it attained but it is still heartening that, as the poll indicates, there is still a healthy demand out there.
