I'm so tired of the TechCrunch blog spam on this site. They've literally stolen another site's news story and HN mods never replace their links with the original source of the article.
Why is this site always given a pass for content theft?
TechCrunch gives YCombinator a lot of publicity, for example pieces about its demo days. Of course there's a business relationship of sorts at play here.
Breaking a story should be rewarded. Ok, I'll admit it. I hate sites like TechCrunch or The Verge that simply take reports from other news sites, reword them, and then pass them as their own. It disturbs me to learn that HN favors TechCrunch like this.
They clearly attribute it to them (though I find it a tad lame they don't have a specific attribution area), and you could argue that being featured on a popular blog helps people discover them, and with google ranks as well. Curation does add some value and it's not like The Verge for instance doesn't create its own content.
I find sites that just repackage reddit stuff to be much much worse.
> ...you could argue that being featured on a popular blog helps people discover them, and with google ranks as well.
I ran a semi-serious gaming blog for years and we often had our stories repackaged and linked from Kotaku, at the time the biggest gaming blog in the world. The extra traffic and SEO boost was negligible at best.
I'm not surprised; in SLRs at least, Canon was never the dominant film camera company with the biggest customer base. Their SLR business did not catch up to and pass Nikon until the digital era.
Canon's decision to put the AF motor in the lens helped them in verticals that use huge telephotos (sports, mostly). But their film cameras lagged Nikon in the sophistication of their AF, their automated exposure control, and especially their flash exposure control. These were all big deals in the era when every frame was precious and mistakes were hidden until it's too late (after the film was developed).
In digital cameras their AF system is now on par, and auto exposure is just less important in general because of the ease of reviewing and post-processing for exposure. They started moving past Nikon about 15 years ago by creating sensors that were cheaper, larger, and had lower noise. Since then they have filled in gaps in their lens lines, and used their expertise in video, to maintain their lead.
>But their film cameras lagged Nikon in the sophistication of their AF, their automated exposure control, and especially their flash exposure control.
I'm sorry, but you are completely off base here. Nikon always had the lead in flash exposure, yes. But in AF and lenses especially? Canon was the first to completely break compatibility with their older (FD mount) lenses which allowed them to have lightning fast autofocus (Ultrasonic line), which took Nikon more than a decade to catch up to. Same with exposure zones and metering accuracy combined with extremely fast drives - this basically meant that Canon took over sports photography in the mid 90s.
Canon had high-performance lenses thanks to putting the AF motor in the lense (as I said). But their AF sensors lagged Nikon in their low-light sensitivity and their intelligence with moving objects. This is why most nature photographers did not move from Nikon to Canon until the digital era. Art Wolfe was just about the only big-name nature photographer on Canon for years.
EDIT to add about auto exposure: the EOS-1N, released in 1995, had a monochrome 16-segment evaluative meter. The Nikon F5, released in 1996, had a 1,005 segment color-sensitive evaluative meter, which also incorporated focus distance from the lens. Essentially it took a 1 kilopixel digital photo in order to set the film exposure.
I've had one for fifteen years plus. To this day, the only camera I've owned which is actually a physical experience to shoot; the AF and film drive motors are actually strong enough for you to feel the torque they develop as you shoot.
(The F5 could officially shoot 8fps; on a fresh set of batteries you would often get nine; this thing could focus, evaluate the exposure, advance the film, stop down the aperture and trigger the shutter _nine_ times a second.)
The metering system can only be described as exquisite; after a few dozen rolls on the F5 I actually got into the (bad!) habit of not bracketing most of my color positive shots - the metering was spot on just about all the time, regardless of tricky conditions.
I think I'll take it out for a shooting session tomorrow, it's been a few months since it last saw any use. Thanks for the reminder!
True and his transgression was an easy one to make because most people will say "Mi..who?" They merged with Konica sometime in the early 2000s and exited the camera market. Minolta was never considered more than a prosumer camera maker, it's cameras lacked many essential features that professional photographers demanded in their SLRs.
They actually had a pretty extensive range of lenses and accessories (bulk film backs, drives and grips, etc.), and had those cool white f/2.8 zooms and teles before Canon did. Some of those lenses, like the 24mm VFC (variable field curvature), were unique to the line and allowed a photographer to pull off shots that wouldn't be practical again until digital composition (focus stacking, etc.) came along. They also had a decent TTL flash system way ahead of the game - you could pull a full-on Joe McNally job, but you needed to do it cabled.
Their real problem was dropping into and out of the pro market at irregular intervals. Every time the put together a killer, truly professional-level body system, the market reaction was, "yeah, I don't want to invest in a system that's going to be orphaned next week," which led to it being orphaned the next week. I'd already moved on to medium and large format when the Maxxum/Dynax/Alpha hit, but it was still maddening to see my old favourite shooting themselves in the foot over and over again.
its a really interesting lens and the reason why I may yet fall back into my Kodak habit of yore.
Flash, on the Maxxum/Dynax AF cameras, from the get go, was incredible. Focus distance is critical for flash exposure. Minolta pioneered AF. Thry also played sloppy with a Honeywell patent, when we feared trade deficit to Japan, remember 4GL, 5GL... Originally Japanese manufacturers claimed solidarity. Then Minolta was left standing alone, stood up, and stupidly didn't settle. This was widely attributed to Minoru Tashima, he of Machinery and Industrial OpticAL Tashima. Reality, bad legal gamble lost to international politics. The punitive $100MM fine, hurt MINOLTA horribly, hence erratic pro equipment development.
On the contrary to the above comments assertion, Minolta had mire fast glass than anyone.
Edit, I used professionally almost every single MINOLTA camera and certainly every serious lens, from the SRT102b, to the last pre Sony, all home grown Dynax 7D...
if you're curious, just find a good store with a Sony A99II on display. This is the model that'sgoing to demonstrate the ability of a camera to be a genuinely delightful experience, above even the A9. If you can afford it, my experience of the A9, I challenge anyone to take a technically bad photo with it. The A99II is a serious machine too, but it caters to a old school crowd and the new models, the reason why they have a all new lens mount, again, is the lenses are designed for use with in camera software correction of distortion and vignetting etc. I personally dislike that change, not that i can criticize the results, but, strikingly demarked by the A9, we have entered the software supremacy era. Its incredible.
Right you are :). Actually at some point in the 90s I did drool over Minolta Maxxum, mostly because of crazy 1/12000 shutter speed, and flash sync speed of 1/300. Completely forgot about them. I guess I also forgot about Yashica which had a dubious advantage of AF and being able to mount manual Contax lenses.
What lead are you talking about? Canon's sensors were a running joke in the past 5 years comparing to Nikon (that used modified Sony sensors), manufactured in 3 generation-older process than their competition. Seeing e.g. D750 vs 5D MkIII in low-light was an eye opener. The only selling point of Canon remained their unique "pleasant" color mapping (and photographers getting stuck with older Canon-only lenses/strobes etc.).
Canon's sensors are decent, not a running joke as you say. But yeah they are known more for their colors (which is actually very important). Sony has destroyed the competition with their sensors though, and has really pushed the boundaries, at least until recently with that 50 mpix sensor that Canon released. Haven't researched that much though, I'm a few years behind myself.
That said, Canon has historically been the winner with their lens selection, and IMO UX. Sony is quickly catching up, or even surpassing them though with e-mount, especially now that more 3rd party lens manufacturers are killing it (Sigma). I also like EVFs more than OVFs since you get a better exposure preview and focus peeking for manual focus. I really, really, really wanted to buy a Sony a7, but I ended up buying a Canon 6d due to lens selection a few years ago (and the Canon beat them on price). I'm a huge fan of mirrorless tech and I'm actually surprised that SLRs are still around.
The camera body is being commoditized. I'm a canon fan and hope they catch up with a full frame mirrorless, my buddy who follows the tech more said he's heard rumors that they are releasing one next year?
There are plenty of Canon and Nikon rumors regarding a mirrorless option; the proof will be in the pudding. The A7 III is Sony's shot at Canon's full-frame jugular.
I, too, surprised myself by recently purchasing a 6D (I, not II -- why increase weight and dark noise?) on both lens-selection/lock-in and quickness concerns. I was surprised to find that I loved being able to leave the camera switched on all day in the mountains and draw/shoot/stow in seconds, with 1000+ images on one battery. Barring substantial advancements in sensor/display power consumption, no mirrorless camera can match that property. Furthermore, it is an instrument I can handle/adjust quickly and reliably with gloves on in harsh conditions. For a week at temperatures between -20 and -30 C, the 6D (and iPhones kept warm) operated normally while friends with mirrorless cameras suffered shutdowns.
The three things, from my perspective, that Canon really lacks are 0.5-1 stops of dynamic range in the sensor (SNRs are competitive across all brands, an underappreciated fact), silent electronic shutter, and Sony's incredible array of on-plane focus sensors and focus algorithms (Canon's DPAF may actually compete, if turned loose/optimized further). Sony's eye-detection AF must be a game-changer for portrait photographers.
Eye-detection AF is huge. It's so difficult to get the perfect portrait. I think most people end up using preview mode and manual focusing, which is a pain and takes a while.
I'm not at all unhappy with my choice to get the 6d. It's a great camera, and Canon's lenses have all been great. Even though I've always wanted a smaller full frame, any size improvement to the body is negated by the glass unless you get a fixed pancake lens. Good point about mirrorless battery life as well, I don't usually consider it that much since its easy to carry a spare, but I had an eos-m a while back and the battery life was frustrating. Unfortunately, it got trashed in reviews which I think set mirrorless back a bit for canon. Sure the autofocus was garbage, but the 22mm f/2 kit lens for it was amazing (one of the best I've used) and it was the smallest inexpensive camera with the best IQ/$ imo, and it had an aps-c sensor. The rest of the competition was doing m4/3. I remember you could pick up the kit for around $250 or so shortly after it came out.
The 22mm f/2 is awesome. Even people who know optics well dismiss it as a toy on sight, but the image quality is great. The M is at its best with the 22 f/2. Small, unobtrusive, and capable.
I really miss keeping my camera on and just tapping the shutter release for the camera to immediately turn on. Mirrorless is better for me in most other ways, but that feature still tempts me to pick up a DSLR again.
> Sony's incredible array of on-plane focus sensors and focus algorithms (Canon's DPAF may actually compete, if turned loose/optimized further)
I'm reasonably convinced that DPAF will probably work out better than Sony's approach in the long run – every photosite essentially doubling as a PDAF sensor seems more future proof than scattering 100+ dedicated PDAF sensors over the chip.
The problem with the latter is that if Canon can develop the software to really exploit DPAF (there's no reason in principle that you couldn't, say, let users chain together an arbitrary number of pixels into selectable AF points placed wherever they want outside of the extreme edges of the sensor), there's no good response with dedicated PDAF, because the more dedicated sensors you place on the chip, the more pixel gaps you create, and the more demosaicing algorithms are forced to infer pixel colours with missing mosaic values. There comes a point where the visual quality will suffer.
> For a week at temperatures between -20 and -30 C, the 6D (and iPhones kept warm) operated normally while friends with mirrorless cameras suffered shutdowns.
This is clearly not due to the nature of mirrorless technology though, so I don't think it's fair to criticize the technology based on that.
Yep, exactly. An SLR only needs a burst of power at the moment a photo is taken (and just before, to power the AF and exposure meter), while a mirrorless camera must keep the sensor and display/EVF powered continuously.
I also think mirrorless is the future; I am now selling my Nikon/Sigma DSLRs and going fully mirrorless (Sony), as focus issues seem to be finally resolved and photos are now beyond good enough level, already in great/pro level.
Yeah, I went mirrorless. Loving it so far. Definitely the future here, I love the ability to modify my settings and it shows on the LCD, instead of having to chimp like I did with my old 1200D.
Picked up a NEX 5N, 18-55, 55-210, and 16mm for $200AU (~$160US).
The current rumor is that Canon (and possibly Nikon as well) will reveal their first mirrorless Full Frame camera body at or just prior to Photokina, which happens in late September.
Canon had an early lead in sensor noise (they bet big on CMOS early on when most of the market was treating CCD as the future), from the early 2000s up until Sony moved to on-chip ADC around 2009-2010 and Nikon adopted their sensors wholesale.
It's worth noting that Canon has moved to on-chip ADC and that there's now only around a stop difference in noise between their sensors and Sony's, but from 2010-2016ish, Sony was certainly far ahead of the game.
Exactly this. Canon had significant performance advantages in the mid 2000s thanks to their bet on CMOS technology when almost everyone else believed CCD had superior image quality. This really showed in the clean high ISO performance one got in their DSLRs vs the competition at that time, and it took a long while for competition to really catch up.
This reminds me when the first “affordable” DSLRs from canon and Nikon arrived - both 6 megapixel models (the Canon 300D/Digital Rebel and the Nikon D70). The D70 was the better camera in a great many ways, but many buyers still chose the 300D to get access to the incredibly good for the time low noise CMOS sensor. I can’t count the number of discussions I had with friends looking to get a first DSLR debating the relative merits of those two landmark cameras. A later firmware hack for the 300D that gave it almost all the features of the more expensive 10D made this debate very interesting as well.
The past 5 years are less impressive though, for sure, with the great sensor hardware from Sony etc.
Until 2007 Canon was far ahead of the curve, and they held on to parity until around 2010-2011. Shoot any camera from 2005 other than a Canon and the images will definitely have compromised image quality except in the best conditions, yet a 5D from 13 years ago still produces superb image quality.
Only starting in 2010-2011 did they stagnate in image quality for a time.
I think the break point was around the release of D7000 (APS-C) which suddenly matched (and surpassed in dynamic range) the immensely popular 5D Mk II (FF), the default choice of videographers and fashion/wedding photographers. Around that time 5D Mk II (and to some extent 1D) dominated.
Market share. The estimates I've seen are that between Canon, Nikon, and Sony DSLRs, Canon currently has the largest single share of the market.
Prior to Canon's work with CMOS sensors in the early 2000s, Nikon had the SLR and DSLR market share lead over Canon. (And basically no Sony bodies at all back then.)
Right. Most advances Canon has made in SLRs (say, the AF upgrades the comment you are replying to above mentions) could be easily 'backported' to a film camera: in a real SLR, the sensor isn't exposed to light until the picture is ready to be taken and focus/exposure settings have already been decided, so it's not like those features rely on the digital image sensor in any way.
The reason why Canon doesn't make a film SLR that includes the features that bring their cameras ahead of Nikon is because they don't think enough people will want to pay for them. And that's probably right.
The reason why AF for film is hard is because AF tends to move around the point of best focus and moving a lens is terribly slow compared to the inter-frame time. So you simply don't have the time to figure out what the ideal focus is while shooting film, especially not if camera and/or subject are moving, which is sort of the whole reason for shooting video to begin with.
That’s a small market, and most photogs I know who shoot MF/LF film are using cameras that are 50+ years old (Hasselblads mostly).
A digital back can improve workflow, but quality is still better with film at those sizes. These are studio cameras through and through; and I was able to connect a Hasselblad to some el cheapo Chinese lighting setup I bought on Amazon a year ago. That’s backwards compatibility.
Yep - I have a friend who takes pictures of (very expensive, high profile) weddings all around the world with a MF film Hasselblad. They still can't be beat
Hasselblad is like Montblanc of fountain pens, or Glock for handguns, at the end of the day, there is a leader in any field and they get exponentially high attention (because everyone can name that one leading brand name in any field), so they just charge that much more.
At the end of the day Hasselblad is only 6x6 (i.e the negative size), but there are many bigger format (in medium format) cameras available like Mamiya 6, Mamiya 7, GW690III (which is 6x9, twice the negative size of Hasselblad H1's 6x4.5).
Hasselblad is nice, and fortunately not that expensive these days (probably Leica gears are still costlier :p )
If you are looking for the ultimate medium format system camera, the obvious answer is Fuji GX680. It's waay bigger than the Hassy, and you can also put digital backs on it. The only downside is it's electronic camera, not mechanical.
That depends. Sure, you can dip your toes in the large format pool quite cheaply (everything, as they say, is relative!) - but the fancier optics and cameras get pretty expensive pretty fast.
(Not to mention the cost of 4x5 or (shudder!) 8x10 processing; B&W is eminently doable in the home, but IMHO where LF really, really shines is with dias film - developing that at home is not for the faint of heart.)
Of course there is a market. Look at used cameras, they sell at very high prices. There is no "mass market", but there is definitely one with quite a few people willing to pay premium for high end film cameras.
That's why I said "in the scheme of things". It's a tiny business. I love cameras and will probably have a medium format digital camera at some point, but it's a tiny business that can't move the needle in a $34b company like Canon.
Put another way, if over night Canon had won 100% market share of all film cameras it would not be noticeable in the next quarterly earnings report.
It's like saying Ferrari doesn't matter market-wise because they sell only a few thousands cars a year. The same goes for large format film photography.
But Ferrari matters greatly in the luxury sports car segment. There's no sin in tailoring a business to a small niche.
Heck, I'd say "in the grand scheme of things", if you look at some of the data available (https://petapixel.com/2017/03/03/latest-camera-sales-chart-r...), stand-alone digital cameras "don't matter market-wise" compared to what has replaced them for a lot of people -- smartphones. Not that all stand alone digital cameras will disappear anytime soon (especially in segments like the DSLR market where the lenses can offer advantages for certain pictures), but the general purpose "compact digital camera" is probably doomed.
A couple of years ago I bought a Hasselblad 503cx w/80mm lens, paid about $1000 for it. Also, a 50mm CF that cost me around another $400. So relatively expensive for a 25-year-old camera, but in inflation-adjusted terms about 10 percent of it's original price. Some desirable cameras still have some value, but a lot are going for pennies on the dollar.
I paid more for the 'blad than either of my 4x5's.
I think people who work in business side of large scale print would disagree. Granted it's no where near the scale of consumer SLRs but there's a reason MF/LF cameras exist.
I actually don't think they'd be shocked, it's not like there's a ton of activity in the segment. They're crucial tools needed by small numbers of people.
No need. Even film cameras from the early 2000s sell for quite cheap these days and take excellent photos. What matters for film more is the end medium, i.e. the film itself. The optics and sensors make it easier to take good pictures but that hasn't changed the game for film since the 70s, except for specific things like sports where having a camera that can take 6fps was a great feature.
I remember my dad going to all of our family gatherings and baseball/basketball/soccer games with his trusty Canon A-1. He passed it along with a few of the lenses he no longer needed when he moved to a Canon SLR, and it's been my trusty sidekick when documenting family gatherings and niece/nephew's baseball/basketball/soccer games (though it helps my {brother,sister}s{,-in-law} don't share pictures on Facebook - they want a nice scrapbook like their parents had for them).
As someone who shot and developed a lot of film (I was a photo editor at a daily college paper..) I won’t miss it. Though printing black and white pictures was kinda fun, they often had dust and getting the exporsure and contrast right was tedious.
I don’t miss film.
Though there were a lot less pictures taken and shared before everyone had a camera on their phone. A different time in a lot of ways.
I still shoot black and white medium format, and spend about 10 hours a week in a darkroom.
It’s hard to compare spending 2 hours on a print vs 2 hours on a shot in Lightroom - they’re very different processes. That being said, the reason why I enjoy it so much is because I’m working with a physical process that - once fully understood - is reliable, coherent, and predictable (to your comment about it being hard getting the exposure and contrast right - split filter processing changed my life. It removes a lot of the guesswork and basically turns it into a binary search). Working with software is anything but - I can’t count the number of times where something didn’t work quite the way it used to because of a software update, or I had to restart Lightroom to get it to behave, or some fairly direct manipulation I wanted to do was hidden under unnecessary layers of UI.
Not to mention that the final output of the darkroom process is a print - whereas the final output of software is a file. Since I care about making large prints, if I worked in software, I’d still have to deal with a printer and all the mess that comes with that to get an object.
The one thing that digital excels at is obviously back ups/instant duplication/being able to navigate through history/etc.
But they really are 2 utterly different approaches to making photographs, and I wish there were an embodied system (à la Dynamicland) that brought to the digital photography process the wonderful things from the darkroom process.
At one point I was probably spending 10s of hours a week doing B&W darkroom work so I have a certain nostalgia for it. I also spent lots of time playing with developer chemistry, etc.
But, no, I don't really miss it. It was an enjoyable hobby but it was also a pain to the degree that it was a process you had to go through in order to arrive at the final photograph.
And color slides were just always a finicky and fairly expensive way to take and show photos.
I've never shot much transparency film, and I've definitely never developed it. I guess my favorite part of shooting slides is that you can't fix things in the darkroom. What you get off the camera is what you've got (absent digital manipulation, of course).
As a pretty casual photographer (I don't have a darkroom or access to one, and have never really been more than a roll a month shooter), that means I've both been surprised at how well shots have come out, and disappointed at others. It's an expensive feedback loop, to be sure.
I won't defend slide film for more serious work, but I love it for my own casual use.
> And color slides were just always a finicky and fairly expensive way to take and show photos.
When I was a kid in the 80s color slides sessions with a projector were awesome. Since we don't really use projectors anymore and our screen sizes are somewhat limited, I think we have lost something by moving to digital.
Some friend and I did a "show and tell" slide show nights with friends and beers. Most "shows" were trips, though a few other things were covered.
One friend had a digital projector another had a screen. It was fun. We did it for a number of years. tried it outside once, bugs were attracted to screen...
I think film is awesome, provided you have the right process and you actually enjoy that process (or you are fine spending $20/roll to have a lab develop and scan for you). Certainly has been going through a hipster revival of sorts lately.
I agree that there’s something magical about film cameras. I’m 25 years old now, so I’m probably one of the last people to ever experience working in a darkroom during photography class.
There is a sense of anticipation and discovery in having a limited number of photos on a roll of film and not knowing how they’ll turn out until you develop them yourself. Undoubtedly, the photos that you thought would be incredible turn out to be duds, but you’ll also find a gem or two in shots that you thought would be mediocre.
In an age of infinite options, limitless data, and constant connectivity, I’m drawn more and more to these examples of deliberate limitation / non-scalable craftsmanship.
B&W printing in particular has a certain hands-on craftwork aspect to it that you don't really get with digital in the same way. (Working on a computer with Photoshop or Lightroom isn't really the same thing although it takes an equal amount of skill.)
That said, I never really got into multi-hour printing sessions to get a print just perfect. I always came more from the newspaper than the fine art mindset. So it's one of those things that leads me to reminisce about how that was fun without any real desire to ever do it again.
"The model in question is the EOS-1V, which, incidentally, the company actually stopped making a full eight years ago. Since it has simply been selling out the rest of its stock, which, it seems, has finally depleted."
That says a lot about how few they have been selling.
I don’t know that you can read between those lines, manufacturing one unit might cost nearly the same as manufacturing a million units, so might as well stock up despite waning sales based on where you think the obsolescence tail wraps up. For a momentous event like their last film camera sale, today may well have been their target date from 8 years back.
I have a cousin that works in Arrow Electronics’ obsolescence division, where they buy out final production lots in aging technologies (basically keep production lines going a few more months or years) with the intent to supply users of obsolete but operational systems with a fresh supply of parts and service. Lots of government and military equipment.
lucrative business and there is an art to projecting future demand of obsolete tech. Not saying that this was Canon’s intent as well, but it was eye opening hearing him talk about his business.
I think that's pretty standard for a lot of camera equipment. They'll do a run of one lens, and then a run of another, rather than 10 of this and 10 of that.
I dunno about other companies, but Canon does "cellular" manufacturing rather than having huge lines all dedicated to just one thing.
Each cell is 5-or-6 small reconfigurable stations manned by a couple of people, who build a body or lens from start to finish, rapidly re-taskable to different lenses or bodies on the fly. Hundreds of cells on a manufacturing floor.
This is a shame. For professionals, it has long made sense to make the transition to digital. For the amateurs of the world and those of us doing it for the sheer joy of it, film is unsurpassed.
Developing B&W prints is as close to magic as I've experienced. For those who don't know, B&W paper isn't sensitive to red light, so once you've exposed the paper, you can put it in the developer and actually watch the image appear. Plus there's something about the smell of a darkroom. The hot lamps of the enlargers create a smell that mixes with the smell of the fixer and the stop bath that's unmistakable.
Would I want to do any of this if I were shooting weddings? Definitely not. If I'm taking my camera for a walk and want to see what I've captured, absolutely!
The other thing that's a damned shame is the way the manufacturing has changed. I've long been a Pentax man, and the old Super-Takumar and Super-Multi-Coated (as distinct from the later SMC) lenses are a pleasure to use[0].
Everything about the way they fall to hand is perfect, and the machining is immaculate. The focus ring is scalloped and knurled, and it's metal. They must have cost a fortune to make. The SMC, K, M, and I'd assume the A series lenses have a lot more plastic on the outside of the lenses, but the feel of the focusing helix is still beyond reproach. Modern lenses, by comparison, are made so that they can be driven by the autofocus mechanisms, and the feel of the ring in manual mode is terrible.
That isn't to say that the modern lenses are optically worse; I'm sure the situation is quite the opposite. Nonetheless, something has been lost. Again all of this is moot for most people looking for the most productivity out of their tools, or for the people shooting casually. The small group of people in the middle, they'll miss it.
Honestly, it's like CD (or any other digital medium) vs records. Records are quantitatively worse by any measure, but for the sheer pleasure of the experience, they can't be matched. If I want to sit down and actually listen to music, part of the enjoyment is the smell of the record and its sleeve, and the tangible process of putting the needle on the record.
I share some of your feelings. But I see both sides, I want to play a bit of devil's advocate here. I tried to hang on to my darkroom equipment for over a decade, and despite the joy of darkroom work, I just never used it. Too expensive, too time-consuming, everything film related being phased out and hard to get. Not to mention digital being so much easier, better, more reliable, etc.
> For the amateurs of the world and those of us doing it for the sheer joy of it, film is unsurpassed.
I feel like that too, but I'd like to understand more clearly exactly what was lost. Are we just being nostalgic? Is obsessing over the tactile part of the experience missing what's important about creating imagery or music? Are we ignoring the fact that the new generation has their own tactile experience that is different but not worse than ours was? We associate these tactile experiences with our joy of discovery and creation, but perhaps they're incidental and not very important to actually being creative.
> Plus there's something about the smell of a darkroom. The hot lamps of the enlargers create a smell that mixes with the smell of the fixer and the stop bath that's unmistakable.
I never got over the feeling that I was giving myself cancer or something else breathing and touching the chemicals. The vinegary smell of fixer isn't something I miss personally.
> something has been lost.
FWIW, doing my own image processing by writing my own code has taken the place of doing my own darkroom work, and white it's obviously less tactile, it still gives me a similar feeling of touching the images.
You need a Fujifilm X100F, with the matching leather case for extra style points. Camera feels great, has a real optical viewfinder, and lots of physical controls.
They're all metal on the outside, but certainly not on the inside. Not that that's a bad thing.
But the tactile experience is a long way from the old actually-all-metal cameras and lenses. I was sorely disappointed the first time I held a Fuji X series camera.
I would encourage you to check out more of the range. They vary quite a bit from the same plastic-y crap with vintage styling and some sincerely robust construction. I've been shooting on an X-E1 for several years now and I treat it like dirt, granted it's not quite like the good old days, but it's stood up admirably compared to the Minolta 35mm I was treating like dirt prior. (Coincidentally, that one's also an XE-1...brothers separated by 40 years.)
I'll agree with you though on the control interface for the lenses. I still often shoot my manual-focus Minolta lenses on the Fuji. The drive-by-wire focus rings just can't compare (seems Fuji thinks the mark of quality is stiffness when it's really about responsiveness) and the aperture ring situation is all over the map in the XF line. I sorely wish someone would revive those delightful knurled rubberized focus rings; but alas, I guess they've all decided "surely no-one really uses these?"
Eh. Film is still around, and I still shoot film occasionally, but I can't imagine buying a new film camera, not when there are so many perfectly good used ones out there - including my own collection (I favor an Olympus OM-1 myself). So Canon isn't making cameras anymore? No great loss. They made millions, and millions are still lying around.
I don't expect film to die entirely; it has simply lost its economy of scale. I'm seeing lots of photographers who have cut their teeth on digital dabbling with it. There is, as you clearly expound, a romance to the darkroom. It won't go away... modern art supply stores are ample evidence of the preservation of older techniques.
Lens-wise, there will always be a market for lenses that inspire. The emergence of short-flange-distance mirrorless cameras has driven huge interest in older glass. If you haven't tried it yet, try adapting your favorite lenses to a modern image sensor. Electromagnetic waves care not how old the optics are.
I'm sad, too, to see the EOS-1 series end. The design of the EOS-1 RS inspired me, as a teenager, to build my first optical system, something for which I'll be forever grateful.
I wouldn't trade my modern camera for the finest 35-mm film camera, though. The rate at which I can learn with a digital camera is so much greater. Yesterday evening, I probably shot a hundred frames (each while watching for the camera/tripod vibration to settle at 10x-magnified live view), sorted them, processed the best, and printed one, all in a few hours. The only costs were 0.1% of the camera's shutter life, hard-disk space, electricity, and two pieces of paper.
Note that "professionals" still use film, particularly in the high end art market with large format and 'view' cameras in particular. One might think that's "niche" but there are a lot of them out there.
I should have been more clear: I was mostly talking about the vast majority of newspaper, magazine, online, and event photography that transitioned to digital years ago, largely for cost and workflow reasons.
The people doing art professionally certainly count as pros, but (wild hand-waving), most of them probably aren't subject to the kind of turnaround requirements that drove the rest of the 35mm world to digital.
I suppose I'm also excluding the medium and large-format studio folks who, besides art, shoot primarily for ... advertising? I'm totally ignorant of that side of the business.
The Impossible Project seems to be the happy coincidence of a number of people who qualify as miracle workers and the manufacturing equipment not being scrapped. I am awed by the work they're doing, even if I've never shot a Polaroid picture in my life.
Well, said miracle workers used to work at the manufacturing plant, and were the ones who ensured the manufacturing equipment didn't get scrapped. That was point of their whole initial campaign!
But yes, they deserve a lot of respect for what they achieved :)
Sure, but that's understandable no? Even if they had managed to hire all of the former engineers working at the original manufacturing plant, there was probably a ton of knowledge that was simply lost when it was closed. If they now have to rediscover all of that on their own you can't expect them to recreate a century of fine-tuned knowledge from scratch.
Actually, that touches on something that really saddens me: a ton of this knowledge is just lost when a company goes bankrupt. Part of The Impossible Project was to minimise that loss:
> Kaps revealed through a series of blog posts and interviews in 2016 that he had personally approached Fuji about acquiring their machinery in an attempt to to rescue their soon-to-be discontinued FP3000b and FP100b packfilm products. Kaps was unsuccessful in this pursuit, but motivated by his disappointment in Fuji's decision, he established the Analogue Product Institute (API) with the goal of "developing a NEW generation of analog instant packfilm [and] Establishing a rich network of new suppliers, manufacturers and financiers from all over the world".
It's not entirely unlike relying on closed source software, I guess.
As an established amateur I can see how film might work better for you, but digital is way more pleasant for a beginner.
I only recently got into the hobby, and digital is a godsend because I get to experiment on the cheap — I don't feel like I'm wasting film if I take the same photo ten times from different angles, with different apertures, at different focal distances... I also get to go to my computer, take all the photos out, see what worked and what didn't, and get a lot more usable feedback much sooner.
The only reason it made sense to transition to digital is the workflow. Its more efficient to shoot weddings on digital so you can turn out a product faster.
There are a lot of reasons it made sense: getting to see your photos instantly instead of waiting for (and paying for) film development, the ability to change the white balance after photos are taken, not lugging a bunch of film around, not worrying about airport x-rays ruining your film, getting a digital copy of your photos without using a scanner, and many other very big advantages.
My brother is a photographer and works in a camera store in his spare time - or the other way around, depending on when you ask him.
He's spent a fortune over the years on film and cameras and switched to full digital a while ago. Recently he traded all his glass & bodies for new Sony gear, which he reckons outperforms both Canon and Nikon by a considerable margin. So if you're letting go of film and are in the market for digital don't count out Sony.
> outperforms both Canon and Nikon by a considerable margin
Not sure the metric, but SLRs still own the focusing crown for most action-based photography (though the mirrorless cameras are getting closer to being good at it).
And exposure/metering is pretty much even, resolution is pretty even, ISO/noise gives an edge to Sony/Nikon over Canon, body/UX/comfort/grip gives an edge to Nikon/Canon over Sony (unless you have very small hands, maybe...), battery life gives a huge lead to Nikon/Canon over Sony.
There are only a few aspects where Sony's current flagships have a substantial difference, like high FPS shooting (20 vs ~10 for DSLRs), or 'seeing what you're shooting' in the digital viewfinder.
Also, both Canon and Nikon are reportedly working on some full frame mirrorless bodies to compete with Sony's flagships (they have both had various cameras in the market in the past, e.g. Nikon 1 series, but none were as well-rounded as what Sony's offering today).
> Not sure the metric, but SLRs still own the focusing crown for most action-based photography (though the mirrorless cameras are getting closer to being good at it)
I'm not sure this has been true since the Sony α9. Its autofocusing abilities are amazing, and that's coming from me - a Nikon fan and D500 owner. If I shot people rather than wildlife, I'd probably switch for the eye-AF alone.
The a9 falls down when zooming and focusing at the same time though. That's fairly important for sports and a few other parts of other types of photography.
The Nikon D5 still has the crown when you add in that test and percentage wise will beat Canon/Sony. In absolute numbers, because the Sony shoots so fast it can bring home more 'keepers' in terms of numbers of photos though.
And the focus point coverage is WAY bigger on the a9, so overall I would call it a tie depending on what you are shooting.
I recall reading a really interesting article on how Sony is doing something similar to what Canon did to overtake Nikon back in the day. Perhaps I even found the article through HN.
This is not very surprising news - very recently I was wondering who still sells film cameras. Digital has surpassed film in almost every way.
It is however quite scary to see technology completely go away which was so common not long ago, sometimes even completely lost as technology. You can’t buy proper Polaroid film any more, many other important film materials are completely gone as well.
As far as 35mm systems it's pretty much just Leica and Nikon at the moment, though I would imagine that Nikon is close to discontinuing their F6 flagship soon. Thankfully many 35mm cameras from the 70s and 80s are engineering masterpieces that will likely keep functioning well into the second half of this century. I just hope that companies will continue making film stocks for them.
Nikon even has - or at least had, until recently - two film cameras in their line-up.
The ‘because we can’ high-end F6 and the entry-level, manual just about everything FM10. (Though I think the current FM10 may be made by others under licence.)
I think Voigtländer may still make a 35mm rangefinder, too.
Cosina was the company licensed to make the Nikon FM10 and produced rangefinders under the Voigtländer name. All of those products were discontinued last year, sadly.
As far as I know, the F6 is the last one still in production.
Well, the "M" in the regular Leica M-Series means "Messsucher". The M in "MP" means "mechanical" (as in "mechanical perfection"). So based on that one could argue that the MP isn't part of the regular series :-)
I doubt they are going be able to sell them ever. New F6s are $2500! That's Veblen good prices, but anyone who just wants to get the most expensive thing is going to get a Leica.
- F6 used are about $800, generally in very good condition because anyone using the camera for work would have used an F5.
- F100 which is 90% the same as the F6 in both appearance and function is $200 used.
- F5, Nikon's last "professional" film SLR is $200 used
- F80, a piece of plastic molded to look like an F100 (but nearly identical functionally) can be had for <$50. I got mine in a ¥1 start auction. Final price: ¥1
from here things start to less predictable thanks to people who want a sweet manual camera and collectors. Manual cameras run anything from $100~$500+ depending on their condition. The best deals right now are Nikon FE and FM (not FE2,FM2) and Nikkormats.
I'm seriously curious how they were able to sell that last inventory. Folks buying them for nostalgic reasons? Was there a real market left for top of the line film SLRs that wasn't served by the used camera market? You can get really good used ones for not very much money.
As a film shooter for 20+ years, I decided to break out my old Nikon FA and shoot a roll of film today to mark the occasion. (I still keep some in the fridge, Velvia 50 Daylight.) I wonder if the last place that would still develop slide film around here last time I needed film developed still does it. If they still take film, they probably ship it some place to get it developed rather than do it in-house like they used to.
I was talking to a friend who recently got into 35mm film cameras. He develops the color film himself, but then immediately scans it in and uses digital tools to work on the images. I left a bit confused; what is he gaining by using film as the medium?
Film has a particular look and feel to it that I’ve absolutely never seen replicated in digital.
I’m confident that one day it probably will be; maybe ML will be up to the task where filters and transforms just can’t do the right job?
Besides that, the process of taking photographs is surprisingly different. You don’t spray and pray - a shutter costs you more than a dollar so you spend more time looking, and learn to hunt with your eyes more. It’s impossible to check your photos on the LCD, so you just get on with photography, and have an element of suspense to find out what you captured. Also, no batteries to go flat. There’s also a forced creativity when working with basic controls like aperture and shutter speed, instead of hundreds of different settings and knobs to get caught up in.
Of course, if I were a profession photographer these would in no way make up for the downsides, so hand me that 5d/d600/M-P, but they’re reasons you may still shoot film and translate to digital to share/store.
So it's sort of like the vinyl record thing then? I suspect the difference in photographs that you see is more in the difference between using an enlarger and photo paper vs. a color printer, and in this case I assume he's printing from the processed digital image. Assuming I'm right then he's not getting that advantage but I can see how someone with an enlarger could do things differently.
As for the technique, I agree that it was more exacting back in the film days. I also had much less money then. The net result was that I didn't take a lot of photos I now wished that I had. Although these days that's what we use our phones for so I guess it's not really an issue.
There is a lot of very nice gear available quite cheaply though. Maybe this will be a trend an it's time to buy Kodak stock?
One of the popular trends right now is scanning a film picture or a piece of physical artwork and then adding things with digital means. I'm not sure that the film adds anything whatsoever - nor the physical artwork since digital is pretty good at mimicking all of it. I think it is all about the process and the skillset a person is showing off. In his case, he winds up with an image that has a lot of steps, has a lot of room for error (film processing), and not many people can repeat his exact process.
People pay for this sort of thing as much as they pay for a clever gimmick.
I tried to muck around with color film processing once upon a time but I found it to be a PITA exacting process that was pretty much straight follow the recipe.
I totally get trying out B&W processing and printing for the sake of the experience even if I have no personal interest in trying it again. But color doesn't have any appeal whatsoever.
I can't imagine many people developing their own color film unless they like the process. It's much more involved than B&W and there's not as much room for playing around.
It's actually a little less involved than B&W. You don't have to look up developer/film times and there are no agitation timing techniques to worry about, because the process is exactly the same for every roll. The only annoying part is getting the chemicals up to 100 degrees rather than getting room temperature water straight from the tap.
When I was 16 (1997) a photographer friend of my parents gave me his old Canon AE-1 (I think released in 1980 or 81) it’s shutter wasn’t working and I took it into the local Canon center where they fixed the shutter, replaced light seal on film door, and even gave me a lens cap for something like NZD$50.
Amazing that companies used to build such sturdy products that they could be cheaply fixed 15+ years after they were sold...
Also sort of amazing is that Canon even had a physical presence that as a consumer I could visit a physical offices and drop of a product in person to be fixed!
> Amazing that companies used to build such sturdy products that they could be cheaply fixed 15+ years after they were sold...
The award for most durable SLR has to go to the Pentax Spotmatic. The first ones were released in 1964, and they are seemingly indestructible.
Even the exposure meter is a future-proof design; it was designed for mercury (1.35V) batteries but the circuit was designed in a way that modern LR44 (1.5V) cells "just work"!
Nikon lenses from the same era generally need a CLA because the grease used on their focusing helicoids gums up over the years and makes focusing feel dry, bumpy, and just plain nasty. I have come across some Super Takumar (Pentax) examples that are moldy enough that they would probably grow mushrooms if you left them outside soon the shady side of a tree, but the focusing feel is always smooth and perfect.
The only lens I have that feels better is a Voigtlander and it cost $500 vs $10 for an ugly but usable Super Takumar lens.
-The Pentax Spotmatic is wonderful (I used my father's Spotmatic for years until I had saved enough to get my own SLR - my teenage rebellion was buying into the F system rather than Pentax... :))
I'd argue that the Nikon FM2 is just about as indestructible, though - but I won't argue about the lenses; I have enough old Nikkor optics to know better!
Ohhh yeah! I don't have an FM but do have an FE and it is probably my favorite camera full stop. It's just the right amount of "camera", and is never annoying or frustrating to use, in either automatic or manual modes.
Agreed 100% on the indestructibility - whoever used mine before I got it dented and brassed up good. The camera doesn't care.
The focusing screen is a joy and better than any DSLR. It's telling that the big and bright finder is a selling point of the D850. If you still use your FM2 I would suggest getting a K3 screen. Nikon still sell them new!
Oooh, the FE is a very nice little camera (Never owned one, but have adopted one on occasion. Mounts just about everything, except them new-fangled G lenses. Well, it will MOUNT, but...)
I have to admit I actually swapped the K3 for an -hm- B3, I believe - the all-matte one with a circle to show the coverage of the center-weighted meter - I found the split prism was more of a distraction than an aid _for my eyes_; I realize I am the odd man out on this one.
Matter of fact, I shot a couple of rolls of Tri-X in the FM2 just the other day; will process it one of these days when the kids fall asleep early enough for me to still feel like actually doing something after their bedtime!
I don't understand why Google / MS / Amazon etc don't buy either of Nikon or Canon? It'd give them credibility and they'd immediately improve the DSLRs. Imagine a decent Nikon with the Google Photos processing? Decent wifi? Regular updates?
What credibility are Nikon or Canon missing? Both companies have a level of brand recognition unrivaled in the Photography world...? Only in recent years has Sony and maybe Fujifilm developed more respect due to some of their advancements where Nikon and Canon have lacked.
Their DSLR's are market leaders still. Again, only in recent years have Mirrorless cameras have started to catch up with the DSLRs Nikon and Canon have been releasing. Based on current rumors, both Canon and Nikon are supposedly working on their first serious Mirrorless cameras to compete with the likes of Sony's A7 series...
EDIT:
Personally, I would avoid any camera that had Google integration built in. Part of the reason I still carry around a DSLR today is because I like knowing that the photos on my camera, and then stored on a local HDD at my house. I don't think I'm alone in this thought either. Computational Photography is cool and all, but I don't need to provide all my photos into a server farm to be analyzed.
Lots of stuff when you start thinking about it. Automation, as an example. Say I want my own custom metering algorithm - I can't currently upload that to my camera and try it out.
Take a look at what you can do when you can program your phone:
A phone's sensor is much worse than in Nikon/Canon. Yet if I want to reproduce the results in that post it's a fair amount of manual work to do so on a DSLR.
Say I want to shoot a photo of a tourist spot, but with no people in the photo. A standard way is to take several shots seconds apart, and then on the PC merge them using the median. All the people disappear. Why can't I program my DSLR to take 20 photos every 5 seconds and do that computation, and discard the 20 images and just keep the processed one?
Once you start thinking this way, you suddenly realize you're holding a product whose interface resembles something from 1980's DOS.
Good points, but the market is dying for DSLRs. I wince each time I use mine for the terrible wifi capability, the awful OS, etc. Why can't it be modernised? Because Canon and Nikon won't do it.
My Canon M5's WiFi actually "just works" and does what you want : view and download images to the phone in the field. It also uses the phone's GPS to geotag images. This is with an Android phone -- the workflow isn't as smooth with iOS apparently because Apple doesn't allow apps to drive the WiFi association. The phone maintains a BT connection to the camera and uses that as a side channel by which it coordinates an on-demand WiFi association.
Previous generations were not so easy to use -- my 6D does work but lacks the auto-connect via BT feature. Presumably the 6D2 has that though.
Its dying because the mechanical mirror in the DLSRs is not needed anymore with todays tech. So mirrorless cameras will make the game once ppl learn to not miss the click sound. They will simply get replaced with less complex and cheaper cameras.
Optical viewfinders are still better. And I say that as someone who has a Canon DSLR but shoots more with a Fujifilm X-E3 because it's a lot smaller and lighter. The day will certainly come when electronic viewfinders become dominant but there are still advantages to mirrors today.
Optical viewfinders are great, but the tiny ones in consumer DSLRs are no fun compared to full-frame ones. Moving from a full-frame optical viewfinder in my film camera to the much smaller viewfinder in an APS-C DSLR was painful.
It's not necessarily the sensor size. I never liked the Canon Rebel viewfinders but, as I recall, the higher end APS-C models were fine. (Personally, I didn't go to DSLRs before full-frame was relatively affordable and have a 5D MarkIII today.)
The challenges of integrating with the very conservative and traditional Japanese corporate culture of a Nikon would be enormous. Google had enough trouble with Motorola.
Canon has all the same challenges and also about $47 Billion USD in equity. They're a huge multinational.
I'm so tired of the TechCrunch blog spam on this site. They've literally stolen another site's news story and HN mods never replace their links with the original source of the article.
Why is this site always given a pass for content theft?