As I said point and shoot on automatic and chose from hundreds of images. Wildlife photography once was highly specialized, now it is merely snap shooting.The only thing that I view as being demanding is lugging the equipment.
As I said point and shoot on automatic and chose from hundreds of images. Wildlife photography once was highly specialized, now it is merely snap shooting.The only thing that I view as being demanding is lugging the equipment.Clearly you haven't met some of the very fine photographers I know who take excellent wildlife photographs using digital equipment.
Yes they tend to take more photographs then film photographers, but wildlife photography is still a demanding genre, and still takes skill and judgment to consistently obtain high quality results.
There are some technical advantages of digital that make it advantageous to use for wildlife photography - primarily high ISO performance and high resolution from smaller sensors - but it is just as capable of yielding lousy results as film is.
outsourcing, one would lose control.
Wow, an old topic from the past. Volume versus quality, hmmm....If I get a digital and take 400 photos in 10 minutes, am I accomplishing anything compared to running a 135 and only taking 10 photos in an hour?
Yeah, I ordered that book.Wow, an old topic from the past. Volume versus quality, hmmm....
Also, take a look at the book, The Revenge of Analogue. It is very interesting. A review at the NY Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/books/revenge-of-analog-david-sax.html
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Yes they tend to make THOUSANDS more per shoot.As I said point and shoot on automatic and chose from hundreds of images. Wildlife photography once was highly specialized, now it is merely snap shooting.The only thing that I view as being demanding is lugging the equipment.
I completely understand that sentiment but I’ve been feeling quite liberated by the good quality of mobile phone cameras. Makes snapshots a breeze! But like you... I still love film photography.Film is back and here to stay for quite some time. I never strayed having shot film since 1965.
Yep. My 20 year old daughter inherited my first SLR, a Nikon fg-20. I keep her supplied with HP5 and she did her first print last week and is keen to do more. All the people I see with film cameras are under 30.Look at the demographics of film users. The median age seems to have dropped to less than half the early 2000s level. The crowd at our local film camera show (one of the largest in the country) is now more than 50% millennials. (It was 75% Medicare a few short years ago)
Like many other things artisanal and hand crafted, film photography is on an upswing based on demographics. I don’t see this changing on my lifetime. Brands are still the most important factor, and there will still be bargains for those seeking them. But just look at what’s happening, and continuing to happen, with Hasselblad, Leica M, Mamiya 7, Pentax 6x7, and others. They aren’t making any more of them, and the demand is growing.
If you want to cash in, that’s fine. But I’m glad that I have gear I love to shoot with while I can still afford it.
If you’re new to film, Nikon manual, Rolleiflex, Kowa, Mamiya C series TLRs, and the Eastern Bloc brands are still affordable entry points. But I don’t foresee a reduction in the pricing for premium Japanese and European brands anytime soon.
Andy
I wouldn't rush out and sell anything, if film producers feel they can raise the prices and expand their film production, it's most likely their market research is telling them the market is buoyant.
All of THAT, just to get to THIS.?I seem to be playing the devil's advocate this week. By way of explaining this, I'm at home, five days before I depart for Southeast Asia on one of my extended photo shoots, with no household chores to be done before I go (ours is an entirely Sagittarian environment, two humans and three cats shari the same astrological sign, admittedly in the latter case as far as we know as our felines don't have birth certificates so we go by the personalities and traits, most definitely December fur babies they are) and little to do but read, write, plan my next two months' travel adventures and daydream.
Now to return to the point...
A dear friend long involved in photography has in the past year moved fully into digital (Nikons) and mostly given up shooting film. He isn't especially pro or con one or the other but says he did so for convenience and ease of creating his images. According to him, while he "sort of" misses his black-and-white film work, his digi results are as good as anything he did before, shooting is easier, he enjoys what little post-processing he does, and he rejoices at having escaped the tyranny of the darkroom with its fixer smells, endlessly long print washing and time dedicated to fine-spotting his enlargements. In fact he says he misses absolutely none of that, except the frisson of not knowing what his results will be on the spot when he shoots an image. also the fun of shooting with is Leica iiig (which he still does, in a limited way).
He believes that the entire photo industry is now firmly poised on a great abyss - the time for mass (and massive) changes when the masses of once-dedicated film shooters give up on analog and defect to the big D. Firmly convinced that this is about to happen, he insists that NOW is the time for us to offload our film cameras while we can still get quite decent prices for them.
I tend to both agree and disagree (another hybrid Sagittarian trait). Certainly film prices here in Australia are so ridiculously high as to put off most older photographers who traditionally keep to a sensible budget but now find the costs of film and darkroom supplies so inflated as to be off-putting. Many of my friends (who are in their 60s and 70s and on reduced incomes but still share my love of older cameras and traditional darkrooms) agree with this sad summing up. If anything destroys the future of film shooting here in the Antipodes, it will be the price of film.
I got around this to some extent by hoarding in the late 2009 but am now almost out of chemistry and 35mm films (my remaining stocks of refrigerated 120 films would put your average camera shop circa 2005 to shame). Having recently relocated from Tasmania to Melbourne, last week I ventured into my favorite retail photo center to buy fresh developer and fixer and other odd bits of darkroom chemistry, and all but lost bowel control in shock when I realized the high prices for anything.
Fortunately I do my own D&P, as the same retailer wants the price of a kidney for processing one roll of slide film and two fingers from one's hand for color negative. And New Zealand prices it seems are up to 50% higher. Ooch!
So my query. Do you believe that NOW is the time to sell our stores of unused cameras? Will prices for secondhand gear crash to rock-bottom in the near future? With environmental destruction, climate change and all the other awfuls the media tells us are waiting at the end of the street, will film become as rare (and as expensive as) dinosaurs' teeth in the not-too-distant distance?
in 2012 I had >50-60 cameras but I'm now down to a more sensible but still oversupply of <20.
My Nikkormats and Nikkor lenses are worth only cents on the dollar and prices have not improved since 2010. My Contax G equipment would sell at the same prices or a little better as in 2012. Rolleiflex (oddly, not Rolleicords, which I consider as as good as the 'flexes) prices in Oz have skyrocketed and some Ebay sellers want megabucks for well-worn 1950s Automats with dents and missing bits. German 6x6 folders still command reasonable prices on the same auction site.
I've noted that, as for most overpriced things on Ebay, not much seems to sell. Now and then a pigeon bits the poison hook but on the auction saes are stagnant.
Bearing in mind what I said about Satan's Advocacy, what are your thoughts about all this?
Thats what I tell my wife, better investment than the stock market, unlike shoes and handbags which do nothing but depreciateYes.
Big companies don’t restart multi-million dollar production lines without hard data on demand and demographics. If Kodak and Fuji aren’t in “sell now” mode, neither am I.
Andy
That really is not a bad strategy.Thats what I tell my wife, better investment than the stock market, unlike shoes and handbags which do nothing but depreciate.
Thats what I tell my wife, better investment than the stock market, unlike shoes and handbags which do nothing but depreciate.
they are >> nikon, ebony, leica &cThat really is not a bad strategy.
although, it would help if there were cameras stamped with logos like.... Coach and LV.
I’ve got a freezer full of film, a closet full of cameras (plus the ones in climate controlled storage), and a cabinet full of chemicals. For now I’m good.
Yes.
Big companies don’t restart multi-million dollar production lines without hard data on demand and demographics. If Kodak and Fuji aren’t in “sell now” mode, neither am I.
Andy
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