Here's an article about how photographers view the film vs. digital debate, based on the results of a survey of professional photographers by Kodak. Could it possibly be a little biased? For me the piece was a sort of unconvincing pro-film fluff piece, but I've never really shot film, so I don't have any built-in sympathies for the medium. It's too bad, because I would love to know more about what the technical differences are, beyond the obvious stuff, and beyond the various rants around the internet. Comments like "digital pictures look very flat" don't really add to my knowledge.
Probably what I should do is get out my grandfather's Leica, which has been sitting in a drawer for several months, and which I have never used. It has a small mechanical problem that will cost $300 to fix, and I keep opting to buy bigger and better equipment for my digital setup instead of getting it serviced.
Paul, I'm curious what you think of arguments like Ken Rockwell's. He essentially sees a place for both digital and film but does have great arguments as to why film "wins".
If anything, Kodak's results would actually probably be biased towards digital; that article mentions Kodak's recent efforts to go digital, but that move started about a decade ago under George Fisher, and they've been pretty explicit that their only hope for survival is to dominate some portions of the digital market the way they did the film market. I notice that in the article, they don't actually quote anyone at Kodak about how Kodak is supposedly depending on the film business to keep them afloat; in fact, I believe that since 2005, the majority of Kodak's revenue has come from the digital side of things.
Sure Kodak is mostly a digital company now; they all are. But Kodak was a major player before the digital revolution and up until the Nikon D1 appeared, and has been a bit player ever since, at least on the professional scene. Their latest sally, the sensor for the Leica M8, is as best I can tell considered a disappointment. Compared with other companies (Canon, Sony, Nikon) they have adapted poorly. Whether that biases them, I don't know, but if their survival is dependent on dominating portions of the digital market, then they won't survive. Given that their comparative advantage is in film, it would make sense for them to do anything possible to stress that portion of their business, even if it's not where the volume is now. I be there's a lot more margin there than in consumer digicams.
Incidentally, the same is true for the other big film player, Fuji, although they still have a bit of a niche in the professional market for wedding shooters.
Paul -- thanks for sending me to Ken Rockwell; that's actually not a bad resource, although it seems to be three or four years old. I'm still not sure I know a lot about it, but I really do think shooting some film is the only thing that will help me there...
Ken's got some articles that are newer, although the site is simple sprawling - I still think it's a solid place. (His recent piece about a 'free' full-frame DSLR was intriguing.)
Kodak is indeed a bit player on the pro market but you know, based solely on anecdotal evidence they're not doing badly amongst people who are Brand New to digital cameras. I don't think that's necessarily a bad idea for them; building on the old-school Brownie reputation can't be all that bad.
I don't disagree with the Kodak PR though; digital will indeed keep getting better and better and film will become a niche or specialty item. But you know, we still read books and newspapers, too. It's a long and slow sunset.
Not making the best high-end sensor is a far cry from not being able to dominate a market; in fact, they've already done so once: for a large part of 2004 and all of 2005, they were #1 in market share for digital cameras. They lost that spot last year when Nikon & Canon came out with cheaper digital SLRs before Kodak, but there's no reason to assume that they would never be able to move back into the top spot.
And unlike the other companies, they are still a lot more than a camera company; as their latest earnings report (which came out this morning) points out, some of their most profitable endeavors are in the digital analogs of their film processing business (e.g. their print kiosks and the KodakGallery/Ofoto site).
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