On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 7:39 PM, William Robb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > ----- 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 >
Chemistry for B&W isn't an issue and won't be anytime soon, you can make fixer at home fairly easily and buy developer at the local grocery (Washing Soda and Instant Coffee = Developer). -Adam -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- 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.
