lundi 8 août 2005

Dixons Winds up Sales of 35mm Camera Sales But the Death of Traditional Film Photography? I glanced at the news item on "The Daily Telegraph" web-site this morning and would not have bothered clicking to read it were it not for the name "Dixons" in the heading. Although the name is synonymous with High Street retailing of photo, electrical and "white" goods (cookers, fridges and washing machines), for me there is only one connection... Dixons was where I bought my first professional camera - a Nikon F. Actually my first Nikon manufactured camera was a Nikkormat FS - a fairly uncommon camera then and now eagerly sought by collectors but not users. I chose to buy and use a Nikkormat FS because it was the cheapest entry into the Nikon system... cheap by only a few pounds because it was the non-metered version of the popular Nikkormat FT. Not having an exposure meter built into a camera wasn't a problem... I read the simple pictorial recommendations for exposure enclosed with every roll of film. Based on the "Sunny 16 Rule" - on a bright, sunny, cloudless day set the lens aperture to f/16 and the camera shutter speed to the setting nearest the sensitivity rating of the film... so by using Ilford FP3 rated at ASA / Weston 125 the recommended shutter speed was 1/125th of a second. With Ilford Pan-F at 50 ASA the nearest shutter speed was 1/60th of a second, and with Ilford HP3 1/250th of a second. Ilford HPS, the high speed film for action, interiors, and Winter, was rated at ASA 800 and 1/500th of a second on a good day... simple really! If there was any doubt in my mind as to whether I was going to get a printable negative I would grossly overexpose by a stop at least (wrong!) and seriously overdevelop the film by a couple of minutes (also wrong!). In doing so I was actually compounding both errors and making darkroom printing sessions more difficult, wasteful, frustrating... and emerging into the light with prints more contrasty and grainy. But, at least I was getting an image every time... hey, who needed an exposure meter? Not the cool dude with the FS. So after I read the opening paragraph of Richard Alleyne's report I heard, in my head, the dulcet voice of Brooks Jensen when he spoke in a recent podcast about the decision by Kodak to stop all black-and-white photographic paper manufacture. He said... "But you know what, somehow I can't get too excited by this because I know that we will adapt." And he's right. Photographers have always adapted... and their creative visions have and will always find new ways of making stunning images. There are several threads for discussion here but I'll stay with the theme of the title, "Dixons decision to pull from selling 35mm film cameras," and more specifically the opening paragraph which stated, "The death of traditional film photography moved a step closer yesterday when a big high street retailer announced that it was phasing out 35mm cameras, citing a lack of demand." Phooey! My initial thought which counters this is not the "lack of demand" but the existing millions of units already made. There are probably ten million plus Nikon SLR cameras from the first model F (850,000 units made) through F2, F3, F4, F5 mostly very much in working condition. Are they going to end up in display cabinets or in the loft? You've got to be kidding! The latest Nikon F6 "battleship" cameras sailing out of dealer's doors have hardly lost their original patina they're so new... are they doomed to be dinosaurs in their first year of production? I hardly think so. And then from Nikon there are the countless Nikkormats and mid-range Nikons including the FM, FE and FA varieties... not to mention all the 100-series. All 35mm film cameras, mostly in perfect working order, being used, and with many years reliable service ahead of them. Actually the venerable Nikon F wasn't produced in great numbers... the Canon AE-1 of 1976 holds the record as the world's best-selling 35mm SLR camera to date with more than five million units sold world-wide... and I recall that more recently one the Olympus "Mju" compact 35mm film cameras reached well over 10 million units in a shorter time. And from a site on Russian camera production... "The pre-war Soviet camera industry reached its peak in 1939. A total of 478,600 cameras of all types were produced in that year, a figure which would not be reached again until 1953. The 1941 State Economic Plan called for the NKVD production of 40,000 FEDs, an increase of 24% over the 1940 production of 32 300. However, the plan was cut short by the war. Total pre-war FED camera production reached approximately 175,000 cameras." Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the tens of millions of SLR cameras from Agfa, Alpa, Asahi-Pentax, Bessa, Canon, Contax, Cosina / Voigtländer, Exakta, Fuji, Kiev, Kodak Instamatic to Retina, Leica S, M and R, Minolta, Miranda, Olympus, Praktica, Topcon, Voigtländer, Yashica, Zenit... and those are just the well-known makes. Add to the numbers of those cameras the many more dedicated and independent marque lenses and you have an idea of the huge interest in both the hobby and profession for traditional photography. I'd like to pull a quote from the June 2005 Consumer Search Report... "Despite the growing popularity of digital photography, shutterbugs are still using film SLRs built 30 years ago. While digital cameras can be obsolete within a few months of purchase, replaced by newer models, film cameras can hold much of their value for decades. They're less delicate than digitals; some pro models are built to withstand harsh environments and all kinds of weather. There's no memory card storage limit, and film is available world-wide. Most film-based SLR cameras are vastly less expensive than even basic digital SLR cameras; these models start in the $800 price range, while film SLRs cost as little as $150." Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm not denying that digital cameras are selling in huge numbers, nor doubting Dixons claim that they are selling digital to film in a 15:1 ratio... but to say that "the death of traditional film photography moved a step closer" on Dixons decision is just attention grabbing copy. Dixons' Marketing Director says that, "Millions of consumers have turned their backs on rolls of film in favour of the ease of use and instant results of digital cameras," is a negative loaded argument spun to make their decision look positive. Of course it's a correct statement... but it doesn't mention the obvious that there are many more millions using film and likely to stay that way. His next quote was, "35mm cameras were the first products we [Dixons] ever sold and film processing has been a part of our lives for several decades. Time and technology move on, though, and digital cameras are now the rule rather than the exception." Humm... Dixons have not been serious players in camera sales for a couple of decades having closed their specialised city-centre "photo-pro" departments in the 1980s and expanded rapidly on the High Street to concentrate on selling "white" goods. From 30 years of working in photography in the UK my lasting impression of Dixons is of a tenuous connection with the photo trade being mainly with the Cosina brand... one of the cheapest SLRs made and which, before the Cosina connection with the recent revival of the Voigtländer name (and improved quality), was regarded as a bad joke amongst most photographers. The article then says, "A recent survey by Dixons indicated that 93 per cent of its customers could not tell the difference between 35mm prints and those taken on modern digital cameras." Of course they couldn't... more than 95% of all film sold during the past few decades has been colour negative stock which, when printed to the regular postcard size, is bound to look similar to ink-jet output which can hardly be printed larger than 5 x 7 without looking artificial. Lord Lichfield is then quoted as saying, "I think that digital cameras are now better than their film equivalent... It is certainly a cheaper system. I save as much as £100,000 in film and processing costs every year..." Cheaper for you m'lud with 16 or more megapixels to your eye and with your commissioned throughput... but for 99.9% of the market - amateur photographers - the extra costs of storage cards, computer, printer, ink cartridges (recently someone on the net worked out that ink is about 500 times more costly than petrol - which is in the news today at an all time high of £4.19 a gallon in the UK)... and that's without the upgrades digital users are sucked into every couple of years. I think for an interesting take on the state of traditional film photography you only have to try bidding for one of those so-called "35mm SLR dinosaurs" on eBay... and just see how much you have to up-the-ante against a number of aggressive bidders to get one! And I don't notice any waning of enthusiasm for film on a growing number of photo forums. And remember... 35mm film stock is more or less stable for a century, but digital retrieval technology, editing software and storage media changes every decade. If you're serious about photo images... you have to think long term... period! 10:30:40 PM    comment []