Re: Demise of film

Let's be fair with the digital imaging folks. "Measuring electricity across
a photo-receptor" is perhaps "easy" once you have developed the
photo-receptor. But this took a long time. Also, a digital camera is not
only a bunch of photo-receptors dancing in space. There is a computer
behind, programming, microelectronics...

All in all, digital photography is as complex as silver-based photography,
if not more. This is not "to overlook the brilliant chemists and
physicist", not at all, but let's not overlook the brilliant other people
who made computers and digital imaging possible. Many of us, after
all, use digital techniques for the production of contact negatives, for
example.

  I agree with those that think that the demise of the big players, Kodak,
Agfa, Ilford, Fuji and so on, whose interest was always the large consumer
market, allows the smaller folks to stick their heads out. Mako in Germany,
Foma in the Czech Republic, Forte in Hungary, and other smaller enterprises
are alive and well, selling beautiful b&w paper and film in many formats.
The French Bergger even sells bromoil paper now. I don't know what the
market for bromoil paper is, but it sure looks promising to them.

And yes, if everything fails, we still will be able to make our own
materials...

Tom

At 16:50 08/08/2005, you wrote:
>I agree with Greg. No doubt we'll see "coating your own bromide
>emulsion" workshops in the near future.
>
>With all the excitement that digital has brought to the medium, there's
>a tendency to overlook the brilliant chemists and physicists who
>delivered such amazing image quality during the "classic" era of
>photography. To me at lease, measuring electricity across a
>photo-receptor seems much simpler than the daunting task of coating
>multiple layers of silver salts on acetate to replicate the colors
>around us.
>
>Just my $0.02
>
>Dan
>
>Greg Schmitz wrote on 8/8/05, 9:18 AM:
>
> > That would be one way, but if nobody's making photographic paper.... For
> > the first 50 years or so after photography was invented workers had to
> > make their own materials. Nothing stopping us from doing the same thing
> > now. Indeed, and we have 150+ years of research into, among other
> > things,
> > photo sensitive materials to draw from. What's everybody afraid of.
Received on Mon Aug 8 10:43:43 2005