Canon Considers Ending Film Cameras

Canon is thinking about dropping their film camera line due to the huge fall in film usage. Goodbye to an era. It was a great past but film's time has disappeared.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...archived=False

It took me a minute to find the Canon link on that page. Try this:

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...APAN-CANON.xml

First Nikon goes down to 2, now Canon considering a similar move. It's definitely a quickly-turning point in photographic history.

Ah, those poor, confused people who still think digital is better than film :D

Yeah, you could see it coming. An end of an era indeed. But think of the great prices on used film equipment just in case a wild hair of retro-ness strikes. You can get A2Es for next to nothing these days and even the prices on A-1s and AE-1s have started to drop. The 1-V is an insanely durable camera and will be on the used market for about 100 years. But finding film though.... Film is over when Wal-Mart sells their Fuji Frontier machines.

You could tell that film cameras were not on Canon's priority list. Even the 1V had the old E-TTL flash system which sucked for fill flash. Nothing on the pipeline so it's pretty clear that Canon is going 100% digital.

The new generation digital cameras have better technology.

Nikon's committment to film is for pros, and I can see them only making the F6 in the near future. They put too much technology into that camera to end it anytime soon.

As for film..it's alive but for a small percentage of people. If the film manufacturing people concentrate on the pro crowd they will make plenty of money. They lose all of the money on cases of Supra or Kodak Gold being dumped int the garbage.

Just like CD's were the demise of Records and Tapes. The laws of supply and demand are the cause of the demise of film. Now days you will not find any 16mm film projectors in schools because VHS video tapes have displaced film. I'm just supprized that it's happening so soon.

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Originally Posted by mwfanelli

Canon is thinking about dropping their film camera line due to the huge fall in film usage. Goodbye to an era. It was a great past but film's time has disappeared.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...archived=False

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Like vinyl records going by the way side. I dunno...there's still nothing like holding a strip of slide film up to the light after developing and drying and seeing those jewels of light come to life, then sorting and mounting and carefully examining them under lupes, and sliding them into slide sheets, and deciding which ones were worthy of printing on cibachrome/ilfochrome. Or making a contact sheet from negatives and eagerly developing them so you sort the negatives for keepers and throw outs. I guess it's time to put my remaining A1's and AE1's on the display shelf with my world war II vintage box cameras. :(

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Originally Posted by greghalliday

Film is over when Wal-Mart sells their Fuji Frontier machines.

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Huh - so is printing digital onto photo paper !
I use our local CostCo for digital prints. They turn off all the fancy settings and corrections and print just the image as I present it, OK it means I have to wait more than 1 hour ... but I'm lucky to have a team that care about their results.

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Like vinyl records going by the way side.

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I can still get the albums I want on vinyl...I'm still rocking the Technics 1200. Thanks to creative artists/musicians that have been innovative, vinyl is far from dead. Vinyl has a unique sound that will NEVER be replaced by cds.

Film is the same way. It will never be as prevalent as it is or was...but it is far from being dead. Just because Canon will stop making cameras doesn't mean other manufacturers will not fill the gap. Look at Cosina voigtlander...

Don't give up on film. It will forever fill a spot(need) that digital can and will never be able to fill.

Film & vinyl rock! :) :p :D :cool:

Even if they end film cameras, fortunately we can buy thier best film cameras on EBAY for years to come. Just like watching reruns of Gilligan's Island and the Cosby Show.....it will always be there!!

This is a good thing.....now they can put MORE R&D into making less expensive FF DSLRs!!!!

My Canon A2 will last forever....until the control dial breaks....but how can it break if I never use it.....hmmmmmm?

For me, the surprise was that Nikon made their announcement before Canon... :)

The Fuji Frontier scans negatives and makes digital prints from them. Of course they can also make prints straight from digital files, but at some point in the future they probably will have a Frontier that only does printing - no developing. We're probably years from seeing that, at least at most places.

I used to run a Photography store running Frontiers- there's always a separate machine to develop film than there is to print it. So unless the industry and machinery have changed that much in the 5 years since I worked in the biz, all they have to do is get rid of their neg processors. I'm sure however that there will be improvements in thr print size and qualities of the Frontier printers tho! :D

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Originally Posted by Lionheart

and deciding which ones were worthy of printing on cibachrome/ilfochrome:(

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As far as I have heard, Ilford also is out of the paper biz (they have already sold their paper-making production lines) and is totally committed to making inkjet coatings. Ilfochrome is gone too. As soon as existing stock is sold out, there will be no more produced. (unless you have some serious chemistry acumen and can find/make your own azo dyes.) :(