The largest electronics retail group in the UK has announced today that it is scrapping retail sales of film based cameras saying that they are having to virtually give them away and digital cameras now outsell traditional models by a factor of 50-1. I may have to have a trot down to my local branch to see what they are prepared to 'give away' :-)

Wow, that is kinda sad news Phil. I never like to see this happen. Agree with the giving away part...I'm sure others will quickly follow.

I think they're will still be a demand from niche/pro sectors but I'm guessing that they will have to be serviced by specialist retailers.

This is the same group that announced earlier this year that they wouldnt sell VCR's anymore as DVD recorders were now in everybodys price range - that may or may not be true but I hate being dictated to like this - being told what you should and shouldnt be using.

Good grief - they are just interviewing the royal photographer, Lord Lichfield, on the news on whether or not he agrees with this and he's all in favour saying he's been using digital exclusively for the last five years and has saved $160,000 a year on film and materials since then....

That makes good buisness sense...but there will always be the hobbyists in the darkroom. I imagine this equipment will become very affordable as well. Good for those that want to hold onto the art and technique.

Well Kodak anounced last month that they are going to stop making negative print paper. So I guess negative is going the way of the dodo.

Does the print paper have a shelf life? If so, how long under normal conditions?

about a year if stored correctly from what I understand

wonder how many decades until Digital SLRs are replaced? =P

lol it hurts to try to think what will be after DSLR

Has anyone seen the movie final cut. LOL

theoretically Digital Photography has a much longer potential life span in one form or another than film did as the actual end product is just data that can be produced by a variety of hardware solutions. I'd suppose the only possible evolution of that which springs to mind would be three dimensional/holographic image recording but that's a bit Minority Report for this time of a morning.

I saw the Final Cut in a air flight when i was 99% asleep throughout the whole movie, so all I really got out of it was that he was cutting things out of people's lives...

It involved a data chip mounted in the brain before birth. It would record a persons life via the eye.

well that isnt going to help the prices of lens... jeeze i want a 70-200 and im going to have to get a new eye

Well guys I was talking to a friend of mine who is an electrical engineer. He said that Kodak puchased the idea and pattons for a new type of image capturing device that is ten times more sinsitive then the present ccd on the market. So get this. It does not use a charged cupling. The ironic thing is that it will most likely make all of are cameras as out of date as film is to the digital in the next 3 to 5 years It was developed by a guy in Japan.

well thats something to look forward to then

The interesting thing phil is that it will give us 80 to 120 mega pixil capability and higher over the following years.

I imagine though that this will appear in Kodak's Creo brand first and we'll all have to make do with their hand me down 22mp technology for a while first.

exactly you darn well they will introduce the lower rez and then release higher rez as the wish.

its the scale of economics im afraid - there is no major gain to be had for them to show all their cards straight away - and instead just drip feed it through.

Maybe the higher resolutions will make for better digital negatives. Have you ever tried to make a B/W print from a transparency made with an inkjet? The results are very interesting...not great, but interesting. I still have not bought a digital camera yet. I aspire to be the last person using a film camera as my primary. Screw economics. ;) I still use an AE-1 and Canonet QL-17 from the 70's. To each his own.

I’m not sure how it will all pan out really. The PhaseOne 39MP camera produces 500MB RAW scans that are of sufficiently high enough a quality to print a billboard size image at full optical resolution. If you start getting images at 2 or 3 times that resolution you would need a v.fast computer with at least 4GB of RAM just to be able to open an image and do basic editing/manipulation to it. Anything vaguely creative and you can just double that. This plants this technology firmly on the outfields away from anyone other than committed pro users. Another reason really while it will probably be drip fed in slowly, until such a time when computer technology like this becomes cheap enough and accessible to many more people to view it as run of the mill.

With an image of that size we will only need one lens...the widest you can get. If you want a high quality close- up just crop to the detail you want...no more telephoto!

This is not meant to be deragatory in any way, but do you know how rediculous this post will be in a few years? Not because we bother to dream, but because our best all-inclusive guesses are so far from the truth. Sure, I love the movie Minority Report; i, Robot is cool too; and I enjoyed The Final Cut; but has anybody ever read Farenheit 451? 1984? :-)

Before this gets any worse, lets ask a moderator to find a way to transfer this thread to the Offtopic Discussion Board. :-D

best guesses? we are talking about photography equipment on the market now or coming very soon in the photogrsphy forum - why is that an offtopic discussion?

It depends which side of the forum you are more interested in I guess. Seeing as imaging is part of your job, you are more interested in the soon-to-be-here technology. On the other hand, I won't be able to afford any of that kind of stuff unless I pick it up at the pawn shop in 40+ years while I am stopped to refuel my spaceship. Because of this influence, I subconsciously picked up more on the comments such as "wonder how many decades until Digital SLRs are replaced?" and "until such a time when computer technology like this becomes cheap enough and accessible to many more people to view it as run of the mill." and "jeeze i want a 70-200 and im going to have to get a new eye" and "no more telephoto!". It isnt really offtopic, but when they start mentioning those types of movies, it tends to seem that way. No harm meant.

I like taking color developing paper and printing on it woth and ink jet then developing it in an emolsion. the results are quit striking.
And as far as the new tech thats' coming they say it will be not much more then the present as it progresses. The main problem is that guys like me will be with out a job.

Luke - the most interesting aspect of the technology scale down is that with the newly developed japanese chip, Kodak can upgrade the Creo cameras and then use existing Creo technology in their own pro DSLR's - if they price a new model in line with their previous structure that would mean a camera priced the same as a Nikon 2DX but with twice the resolution...

Wow! Maybe we are getting closer to mainstream than I thought! Is Canon going to try to replicate or compete with this MP/$?

I think they'll have to although the 1 series Canon EOS models aren't due to be upgraded until next year if they follow the usual pattern of model lifespans.

I don't plan on turning this into a rumor thread, but chances are the 30D or 5D or 3D (I don't know the name) will come out soon. If Canon decides that it needs to compete against this new technology, the resolution could jump significantly. If they decide to keep it in the same price range (30D), I will probably spring for it seeing as I still haven't purchased the 20D. If they decide to leave the 20D alone and build a bridge (5D or 3D) to the 1D, I wouldn't be able to keep up. What are the odds of them upgrading my need for large CF cards while keeping the body at the same price?

It's looking increasingly likely that the 20D will become the 30D Mark II or 3D and as you said it would have to be moving up the resolution leagues to keep the pressure on Nikon. Various release dates keep getting mentioned with late September looking like the favourite for an announcement from Canon.

3D might be a little misleading;-)

Well here is another blow to 35mm, Kodak has cut 1000 jobs due to the drop in need for 35mm

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050825/ap_on_bi_ge/kodak_consolidation

I don't know if this counts or not, but disposable cameras sales seem as high as normal (without looking at any statistics). If I am correct, Kodak makes a notable percentage of those on the market. Because of this alone, I would think that the company would be sustained, but I am not well informed in ecenomics.

Occasionly when at Target or in a gas station with my dad, I point out a disposable and say, "Hey, look at that! And all this time I have been saving when I could get a camera right here..."

Kodak seam to be moving into high end digital imaging and reprographics and look content to leave the mass consumer market to their rivals. fun cameras definitely have a niche market especially for parties, weddings etc. that is until disposable digital still cameras arrive. you can already get disposable digital video cameras apparently so it seams that still cameras will not be far behind.