Personally I have no doubt that 35mm B&W will be available for duration of my lifetime and probably much longer.
I suspect and hope for Ilford to do well indefinately.
That said, worst case scenario there will always be at least a large "super cottage industry" sized market to fuel all those vintage Leica's floating around in let's say another 50 years.
And maybe even it turns out someday that large format shooters do fuel the film industry and allow for "limited coating runs" of 35mm, provided enough advance orders.
Well, if that's true, then what's the problem? As soon as digital "equals" film, I'm not going back into the stinking darkroom. Why would I? This is not a religion. (Or is it?) :rolleyes:
Stop the presses! The Medium is NOT The Message (anymore!)
McCluhan must be spinning in his grave, kicking himself for his abysmal stupdity, feeling eternally humiliated, comforted only by the fact that it took this long for someone to come along and set him straight on the matter.
And today I got a new mail from my reseller which basically says that Tmax 100 in the 13x18 size is slashed, gone, kaput, finito from the distributors (swedish Kodak office) and their availability lists ... The list of available items is getting smaller by the day, it seems.
But it could be the reseller who is not really up to speed about what products really exist. Fewer and fewer of them really know anything about analog stuff.
Jerevan, You might want to check on this thread, there's still a little bit of life in the Tmax hopes.
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)