Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/10/05
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I assume you guys mean to say that these films will disappear altogether one day. Personally, I'm not too concerned. It is perfectly natural that all the major players are scaling back their film efforts. But I wouldn't get too alarmed. -- All this means is that the film market is shrinking to the point where it is no longer significant or interesting for large companies. At my former employer, a large software company in Redmond ;-), ideas that don't have the potential to be a billion dollar business don't merit consideration. -- There are simply so many 35mm film cameras around that there will always be a market for film in some form. -- That market, however diminished, will be interesting to smaller companies. There could be a sizable opportunity (from Ilford's and Efke's perspective) in the form of increased film sales, once Kodak and Fuji leave the market altogether, that could last for some time. -- Kodak, Fuji, et al, have a lot of intellectual property tied up in film technology. Though producing it may no longer be interesting to them, they would rather sell the IP to smaller firms which are interested in smaller markets than let it languish until it is worth nothing at all. -- Traditional black and white films are based on simple technology and can be produced by small firms. -- High tech films, such as Velvia 100, may indeed disappear since the level of investment needed to produce them can not be justified given the smaller market for such products. We may be looking at a day when Kodak sells the IP rights to Efke to produce traditional formulations of Tri-X. Sounds great to me. I have a friend who is a software engineer for that big software company in Redmond. He's a real tech hound, a big digital advocate, and has been shooting digital for many years. A few weeks ago, he loaded some film into his old Nikon and took it on a hiking trip. He was flabbergasted. "I had forgotten", he said, "how beautiful film looks..." --Jim On Oct 5, 2004, at 11:25 AM, Kenneth Frazier wrote: >> XP-2, but don't get attached to it. > > Ditto, and FP-4+, and don't get attched to it, either! > > Ken Frazier > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >