I recently got to thinking about how future generations might come to regard film, as a sort of an odd way to store images that faded, got scratched and in the year 2020 became a neigh-on impossible format from which to make prints. Sure, there is an image on that base, but what do you do with the darn things? It’s amazing just how quickly many folks are losing touch with the film world, and indeed never experienced it in the first place. I know that more and more schools are dropping their darkroom and even film-shooting classes, and that the art of printing using anything but an inkjet and digital files will soon be an “alternative process” that gets as much use as the gum bichromate or cyanotype processes (see, you forgot those already.)
While many people in the industry were “raised” on film, we’re seeing more and more companies coming into the fold who have little or no clue about the film realm at all, and who look at you funny if you raise the medium in discussions. Take a look at the roster of companies who exhibit at photo trade shows and you’ll see lots from the computer world, those whose medium is bits and bytes and not silver halide. Look at categories like bags and tripods and flash and you’ll see that most companies are using what they must consider the magic bullet of “digital” in their product branding. What pray tell, might a digital tripod be? And any camera bag without a slot for a laptop is simply not considered viable anymore.
There’s no question why all this is happening—digital cameras have taken off like a shot and the vast majority of new cameras sold are digital. Film sales and processing have fallen off a cliff, at least in terms of year-to-year sales, and there hasn’t been any development money dedicated to film SLRs in many a year. Indeed, the only new film cameras are single-use, and even those are very few and far between.
What might have held digital up in the past, at least in relation to the convenience factor, has been resolved. The infrastructure is now in place for easy printing, what with kiosks, Internet and at-home printing solutions. And even if the image starts out on a piece of film there’s little doubt that somewhere in the chain it will be converted to binary code.
Digital has unlocked a potential for images and their use that film never or rarely achieved. The ability to share and distribute images grows each month, with web based setups that will allow people to share “content” anytime, anywhere and with anyone. An amateur in Australia can as easily show off images to someone in Holland as they can send an e-mail. Internet picture site owners talk of millions upon millions of participants, with the number of images growing exponentially each month. Photographers are routinely buying desktop storage units that can hold 500 gigabytes of image files.
So, where does this leave film? Clearly the number of companies making film has shrunk over the past years. Yet, when you talk to those still in the business of coating by the mile and selling by the yard they don’t see the loss of their competition as increasing their own film sales. Perhaps there might be some uptick, but in general the hemorrhaging of film sales in general has overcome any gains one might expect by the exiting of two major film manufacturers. Indeed, the net loss of film sales overall has continued.
Yet, yet…here’s no question that there are still millions of film users, and hopefully they will always have something to load in their cameras. It was thought that the so-called “developing nations” such as China and India would be film buyers for years to come, but this has not come to pass. The rise of the middle class in both countries and their quick leap into technology makes this market a less viable bastion for film’s survival than anyone predicted. On the other hand, a growing legion of young photographers is beginning to embrace film again. True, some gets loaded into toy cameras for so-called “alternative” looks, but some black and white silver shooters and printers are hanging in there and some schools refuse, rightfully so, to put their darkroom gear in the dumpster.
The debate of film versus digital has continued, despite the all-digital trend. There are many who point out the vapor-like quality of digital, and the fact that their film cameras are still quite viable after even ten or twenty years of use. And of course, there’s the film “quality”, the look and feel of the medium itself, and the beauty of the silver print. No argument there. But in this world it’s not always about people’s tastes or their likes or dislikes—it’s what the industries making the products deem the proper place for their R&D, marketing and distribution dollars. And as far as the photo industry is concerned it would seem that, to any objective observer, film is on the way out.
Yes, there will always be some film offered and made, but the selection will shrink as the years progress. Now that users of digital cameras can dial in any ISO, any contrast and saturation, color or monochrome and indeed almost any level of sharpening and color response (which is after all the attributes of a distinct film emulsion) why have so many brands and types of film on the shelf, or at home in the refrigerator? And how many photographers can ever again take a picture again without looking at the back of the camera to see how it turned out?
Images and text, copyright George Schaub 2009
