Going Digital: In Good Company

I recently shared with my readers how after clinging to my love of film well after many of my fellow scrappers made the conversion to digital, I finally saw the light and gave myself over to the technology. What I didn’t realize at the time that I wrote of my conversion is that it wouldn’t have been too long before I was dragged kicking and screaming into the world of digital photography if I hadn’t decided to enter it voluntarily. I have good company, it turns out, in my conversion. And when camera companies are abandoning film, its death (or at least antiquity) can’t be too far away.

Nikon, long a prestigious player in the film camera market, issued a press release last week announcing that they are discontinuing production of all film cameras with the exception of two professional SLR model cameras and nine lenses. Instead they are going to focus on the growing digital market, especially that for high-end digital SLR cameras.

Nikon’s withdrawal from the market leaves only Canon and Pentax to battle it out in the 35mm interchangeable lens SLR market and gives consumers only ten remaining models of cameras to choose from (including the two Nikon will continue to produce).

The 35mm point-and-shoot market still has a little more competition in it, but not much. Kodak has completely stopped making film cameras. The other major film manufacturer, Fuji, only offers seven cameras that utilize 35mm film. Canon’s nine models, Pentax’s seven options, and Olympus’s ten cameras bring the total from the major manufacturers in that segment of the market to 33 models. That may sound like a lot, but compared to just a few years ago, that is not very many options.

A neighbor of mine recently was told at our custom photo lab that the nearest lab that could develop his roll of slide film was forty miles away. I wonder how long it will be before processing 35mm print film is just as difficult? When film companies are stopping making cameras that use their product, I think it may be sooner than any of us have imagined.

Kodak’s financial reports may be the best evidence of that. After they stopped making film cameras, in the fourth quarter of 2005 their digital products out-earned their traditional (film) products for the first time in company history.

The future is digital. And the future is now.

[Author's note: Within hours of my posting this, although I forgot to include them in my initial market survey, Konica-Minolta announced that they are discontinuing production of cameras completely, both film and digital.]