Hi! In my personal humble opinion the question of fate of film is more of philosophical than of practical nature. You see, I don't think that any of us, even if there are people here that work for photo companies, such as Pentax itself, can reasonably well predict what will happen in the technological future say in two years. Tell me, could you imagine a full frame 14 MP digital camera being sold for $5,000 two years ago? I doubt you could. Or, could you imagine the Foveon sensor technology two years ago? I doubt you could. No disrespect intended here.
Well, we all know that all electronics suffer from battery power problem. One of the reasons people buy (FG) battery packs is to be able to use cheaper and more available AA batteries. Just few weeks ago I went to TeleCom exhibition here in Israel and saw a company that has a technology that would allow using some kind of fuel cell as a battery. They predict that in few years you would be able to run your laptop for 10 hours straight and all you'd need do to recharge it would be to replace a small container with some fluid that would be sold for few pennies everywhere... Back to photography. IMHO, photography is so much fine art that it suffers much less from technological progress. You see, you can still make amazing photos with your old (film) camera and old 50 mm lens. In few months when newest Canon and Kodak offerings hit the shelves big you would be able to do the same with your bleeding edge (digital) camera and still your old 50 mm lens. Again, no disrespect to Pentax fans here, I am talking in general :). I think that until modern bleeding edge equipment looses a zero or two of its price, such things would remain mostly for professionals and rich amateurs. I see no reason why film should not keep going for decade or two, or may be even more. Take DVD and VHS for example. If you were a video professional, you might want to put your latest and greatest on DVD. For home use (such as recording some repeating program that happens to be broadcast in rather unusual hour) VHS is just fine. Now, eventually perhaps some device that can write DVDs in real time from your TV would be invented. Add to this some amazing DVD-RW and here you go. But again, it keeps coming, but never really comes. Sorry, I am getting wordy again. --- Boris Liberman www.geocities.com/dunno57 www.photosig.com/viewuser.php?id=38625
