----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael S. Keller" Subject: Should I care about film?
> I've been out of serious camera shopping for so long that only now did I > notice the absence of Pentax film cameras in the product lineup. Should > I care? I was thinking of getting another, but is it worth it? Or if I > ever shoot film again, should I just use the Nikon P&S I inherited from > my father? My primary love with film was black & white, where I started > with my grandfather when he showed me the fun of darkroom work. My > fondest shooting memories from those days was of dipping into Ilford > HP-5 and carrying it all the way to prints, with the necessary frugality > of using the same developer for everything in the chain (D-76, no stop > bath, whatever fixer I had). > > Do I want to go to that expense again for equipment that is already > aging and for which there may never be new parts again? If you want to shoot B&W, you will probably be OK until the environmentaloids decide you can't have photochemistry any more. It has been a marginalized product for so long, that it is unlikely that digital will kill it off entirely. If your interest runs towards colour prints, there is no point in shooting 35mm film, as digital is now the better way to go, and I suspect that colour print film's days are now numbered in years rather than decades. I'm dounbting that slide film has much longer to live either. While it has been nearly as marginalized as B&W over the past couple of decades, it at least had a strong professional user base. That user base is switching over to digital, and when it ceases to be profitable for the film makers, slide film will go away as well. William Robb -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
