(As an aside, I just watched an old--maybe 5 year old--episode of Futurama in which Bender, the loud mouth, booze swilling robot, was film photography aficionado. He had a full darkroom inside himself, and the climax of the episode was that even though the Professor had destroyed the photo, since it was shot on film, Bender could reprint it from the negative. So maybe film has a future...)
Futurama also did a scene where they had an image up and Zapp Brannigan said, "Maginfy that Death Sphere". Kif replied "That's all the resolution we have. Making it bigger doesn't make it clearer.". Brannigan says, "It does on CSI Miami!"".
A lot of the points brought up here were very good. To clarify the demographic I had in mind, it was the younger folks for whom d!&!+@l is not "new", it's all they've ever known. The generation that put away their real cameras because d!$!+!l was "better" are a lost cause and will never go back. I recently gifted a 26 year old friend a Nikon auto-everything SLR from the mid nineties. This had originally been given to me by a family member who was insistent that he would never use it again because he loved the fact that now "he never runs out of pictures" (watching his vacation shots is physically painful, and the stills are just a lead up to the videos). The camera went with two rolls of Provia, and the deal that he could bring the film back and I'd develop it, and he'd get two more rolls of film. Anyway, I developed the first roll for the guy and he obviously had a lot of fun trying different settings and other things. I showed him some shots from my recent vacation with the Bessa I and he was blown away. His comment, like we've heard so many times, was "It looks like you could step into the picture.".
As was pointed out above, there is a whole generation yearning for something physically real. Cell phones will continue to take the vast majority of pictures, but there are those who want to be actually engaged and in control of the process. There are young people who want to create, produce art, and engage with a physical object. The Lomo folks have built their whole business around these people. The Impossible Project certainly tapped into an unmet need. There is a documentary about Polaroid where one person makes the point that the last years in the mid naughties, when they sold out the final batch of film, was the highest demand for their films that the company had ever experienced. I just saw an article that Timex has introduced a 21 jewel, mechanical watch.
The You Tube channel from Ilford is a good idea (although the first video I tried wouldn't play). I'm constantly getting ads from B&H, Adorama, and the evil auction site (which rarely now does auctions) based on my browsing history. It doesn't take much of an algorithm to show you ads for film because you just bought film. What I was thinking of was a concerted effort by Kodak or Fuji, perhaps in conjunction with Lomography, to identify potential film users and show them ads touting the art and creativity inherent with using film. This would be both cheap and easy to do. If they are not doing it, and instead rely on "word of mouth", then the really have no commitment to the future of the product.
BTW, here is the image the elicited an audible gasp from a 26 year old. Of course, this poor copy pales in comparison to the 6X9 Provia original. Everyone's invited to my house for pizza and pictures. You have to bring your own beer.
The Bessa did get comments from some friendly Canadians (which are just plain, ordinary Canadians). One said he had his father's which still had a roll of film in it and wanted to know if it was still possible to get it developed.
....with regards
