[LRFlex] Was MF gear - now films lament.

Art (and others):

I agree. The loss of Kodachrome is, indeed, a disaster of monumental 
proportions... yet, I fear the pruning of films is not yet over.

Like it or not, digital is slowly, but surely, taking over.  With each new 
generation, it improves.  My own experience shows that it is not yet as good as 
film, in the slower ISOs, but beats film handily at high ISOs.

Over the next few years, low speed performance will improve. At the same time, 
most film makers continue to make film, but only those emulsions with a large 
sales base. As sales drop, more and more films will be deleted from their 
maker's catalogues.

Moreover, little or no development money is being spent on film. I once hoped 
that Agfa's announcement, in 2002, that they were working on "formate" films, 
with 10x the sensitivity of silver emulsions; would breathe new life into 
conventional photography. But it seems that all research in this vein has 
stopped.

There was a hope that medical film (X-ray, etc.) would keep film production 
alive, but even medical imaging is going digital, these days.

Even "conventional" digital photography is under attack.  Camera phones are 
rapidly taking over the point&push market.  Indeed, Kyocera's stated reason for 
dropping Contax/Yashica/Leica production was to concentrate on camera phone 
components!

During CeBit (Hannover, Germany), in March, Samsung (Korea) demonstrated a 
phone with a 7 mega-pixel camera built-in.  The SCH-V770 features 3x optical 
zoom, flash, manual focus and 32mb of memory!  For reasons unknown to me, it 
seems likely that the North American market will get only the 5MP version of 
this phone. However, it should be on the market by the end of this year!

How long before we see versions with 1 or 2 gb of memory and RAW mode?

As Mr. Dylan said: "These times, they are-changin'".

David.

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On 21/07/2005 at 6:17 PM NATSTEK@xxxxxxx wrote:
This is an UNGOOD SITUATION!!!!

David Young,
Logan Lake, BC
CANADA.

Personal Web-site at: http://www3.telus.net/~telyt
Leica Reflex Forum web-page: http://www3.telus.net/~telyt/lrflex.htm

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