I think many of you were or still are film camera owners. And you won’t be happy to read the next news:
The first to post this bad news was Thom Hogan (Click here). And ThePhoBlographer (Click here) picked up the news and contacted Kodak to ask them if the news is true. Indeed Kodak discontinued all their slide films (The E100VS, E100G and Elite Chrome Extra Color 100). And things went so fats that you already cannot find them anymore on Kodak’s own store 🙁
The only major slide film producer now is Fuji. And usually when there is no competition prices will increase. Anyway, I dont’ think the time of film cameras is over. The problems of Kodak are from different nature. So we shouldn’t be to worried for the future. Film will survive!
5 Responses
“we shouldn’t be to worried for the future. Film will survive!”
Similar sentiments throughout the years:
“The horse and buggy industry will survive!”
“The typewriter industry will survive!”
Except nobody actually said those things…
Records won’t survive… Oh wait 🙂
Film will probably survive for a while but E6 looks like it will be gone soon. I live in a large metro area in the US and there are only 2 places left to get E6 processed locally, and one of those is in bankruptcy. The life of C41 will come down to the economics of processor services, not manufacturers. Ironically, in this regard, BW perhaps has the best chance of surviving, but at some point our cameras will stop functioning and no longer be reparable.
Yes, sad for E6 shooters. I still shoot film for fun. Mostly BW since I don’t like the sterile look of digital converted to gray scale. And when I do shoot color it is negative film for the better DR because that’s what I’m use to in BW.
I guess with the hard times Kodak is going through we’d have to expect some belt tightening for films that are not making a profit.
I’d hope that Kodak will introduce more new films derived from their motion picture Vision 3 technology. The samples I’ve seen of people using it with stills shows better DR, latitude and high ISO over the current crop of still film we are getting.