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In the most recent fiscal year ended March 2005, Nikon said that film camera bodies accounted for 3 percent of the 180 billion yen ($1.5 billion) in sales at the company's camera and imaging division. That is down from 16 percent the previous year.
By contrast, sales of digital cameras have soared, the company said, jumping to 75 percent of total sales in the year ended March 2005, from 47 percent three years earlier. Scanners and other products account for the remainder of the division's sales.
Wow! I'm sad, but it's hard to argue the business merits of the decision.
I love my film camera, dammit! I love my digital cameras too, and as someone intending to buy another Polaroid camera, perhaps they're not talking about me.
I want to believe that the sales of digital cameras will plateau, and that film SLRs will always have a place.
But then you have this -- who the HELL needs thirty nine megapixels¹?
¹: Rhetorical.
Because I like them. They have a total spontaneity that other technologies can't match. They're made for snaps that go up on corkboards, or fridges--and honestly, the pictures seem to be more representative to me.
I see your point - but you can't get the same spontaneity with, say, a digital camera and a portable picture printer (like this [link] Of course, with the digital camera and portable printer, that's two things to carry....
I think Polaroids make a great first camera for kids because they get to see the results very quickly.
It's really useful to have something where you can see the image quickly.
I think Polaroids make a great first camera for kids because they get to see the results very quickly.
This, and I think the same kind spontaneous feeling is why camera phones got so huge so quickly. But you can't watch the picture emerging out of the murky pre-developed plate the way you can with a polaroid, and that's a kind of childhood magic.
I ran across my film SLR while cleaning a few weeks back, and realized that while I haven't used it in ~15 years, I've always brought it along with me because I'd want to have a decent camera rather than a point/shoot at some point; this time, it struck me that I just don't have a place for film in my life any more. I'm always in that market that wants better than a low-end camera, but not serious enough to get, well, serious. And the okay but not great SLR doesn't have a place in the way that a good film camera still would.
