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News from Zeiss on Wednesday

That's very sad but I suppose inevitable. Maybe Canon will now do the same if they haven't already.
There is still Voigtlander (Cosina) to fall back on though and of course Leica at the moment.
Voigtlander make some interesting looking stop down SLR's amd lenses plus lenses which fit C/Y.
 
It seems Nikon has maintained the lower end and higher end analog cameras because the only market left for film are students and pros. The large middle of the market has all but disappeared.

If you think about it, the real appeal of Contax was in the top end of the amateur market ... (not amateur in ability, but not making an income at photography). I know of only one professional photographer in all my years of Art Direction that used Contax 35mm SLRs.

That middle market is going digital so fast it makes the head swim. In addition, new entries into the SLR market are migrating from digital P&S to prosumer DSLRs.

The respite from all that bad news is that the Nikon F-6 is a really terrific camera and with Zeiss lenses will be an interesting option. Like the RX, the F-6 offers focus confirmation in the viewfinder.
 
I was told just before Christmas that the large dealer here in Palo Alto that serves the full spectrum of photographers sold only 12 35mm film cameras in 2005.
 
Hi, Sorry for going off topic, but I am weary to say the least of so many people perpetuating the urban myth that film is dead. I am not surprised at all about that low figure of sales, since just about everyone is hailing the new digital god, however I am certainly not. I attended a digital 'slide' show last night presented by a well regarded professional photgrapher, all shot on RAW and on one of the better DSLR's, converted properly and projected on one of the better LCD projectors.....the quality to say the least was VERY poor....all of the usual digital gremlins....awful contrast, no deep blacks, burnt out highlights and truly terrible colour reproduction, I was shocked at how bad the images were. They could not get close to even 35mm transparencies. I am quite convinced that many digital users are actually in denial, having spent so much money on their new kit. I do believe many of them have convinced themselves that the results are better than they really are, just to save embarrasment that they have not made a very expensive mistake buying into the digital dream. Sorry to whine on, I just think that like so many so-called technofreak advances, all we get really is convenience and NOT quality. The troulble is that If so many people report the 'death of film' it can almost become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By the way, I have seen some decent digital work, just very little of it. Happy new year all, Grumpy Steve.
 
Steve, this is not to argue with anything you are saying about digital vs film, but I do not think one can judge the quality of EVERYTHING digital based on a slide show though an LCD projector. I am sorry, but anything will look awful projected through an LCD projector. And all of the faults that you listed "awful contrast, no deep blacks, burnt out highlights and truly terrible colour reproduction" maybe well the fault of the LCD projector, rather than digital "picture" itself. That said, I tend to agree that a film slide show most probably will beat the pants off any digital "slide" show.
BTW - I shoot film
 
> [I am surprised that you have found LCD projectors so poor. At our > photographic society we have been very impressed by the very similar > quality of images we get from a DLP projector, as compared to > transparancies - so much so, that few of us make slides any more. I never > cease to be amazed at how good the XGA images are from files of only 2.5 > Mb horizontal or 1.75 Mb vertical. Certainly one would not dream of > trying to print such small files.

Some 6 months ago I switched from Provia 100F film and a Contax N1 camera with a couple of Zeiss lenses to a Nikon D2X with 3 Nikkor lenses. The downside is the extra weight and bulk - now 5 kg. The converted files @ 16 bits are now 72 Mb as opposed to at least double that figure from film. Apart from the avoidance of scanning, the main advantage seems to be the strikingly clean image, (despite what they say about dust on the sensor) with virtually no noise, which does allow much more aggressive sharpening and enlarging than does scanned film. Also I no longer have to spend time removing the 300 or so spots, emulsion artefacts and clumps of grain etc. from each frame. Undoubedly I do get very good technical quality but I have no experience with medium format film, so I do not know if I can reach that level.

Having said that, there is no comparison if you consider costs at the top end. Film wins hands down. Nevertheless, prices are rapidly falling all the time and second hand 2 years old digital equipment is also very cheap (but inferior to the latest offerings because progress is so rapid).

Alan ]
 
Hi... Well thanks John!!! I did actually think twice before posting, but there has been so much rubbish talked about digital here in the UK for 2 years now, that I just needed to let of steam! I do take the point a respondent made about the chance the poor show was solely down to an awful LCD projector, but that kind of misses my point...I saw a show presented by a professional (who should know better) that was very poor, but because it's on digital, for some reason most people seem to give it 'the benefit of the doubt', which is just burying your head in the sand as far as I can see. The root cause of the awful images is not the whole point. Had the images been on film, everyone would have said 'how poor' and gone away shaking their heads. We recently had a group test here by a respected UK photo mag, who tested some LCD projectors all of which cost £500-£1000, a not inconsiderable sum and yet the conclusion was that not one of them was anywhere near good enough for slide shows and they were only good enough for projecting graphics....so why the hell are so many people buying the damn things? .....denial...that is why and electronic company advertising bulls***. It is a real shame, so many people are being fleeced, buying gear with the magic word 'digital' on them, paying out hundreds & thousands for damn poor gear. ....just fallen of my soapbox, ouch...
 
> [Steve, I think you may be on to something here at least insofar as LCD projectors go. We have two fairly expensive ones at our office, each costing several thousand bucks, and they do a great job projecting graphics. When looked at in isolation, the digital photos we project with the, look okay to most audiences, mostly because they are training pictures, not intended as art, and the viewer really has no frame of reference from their chair. However, when I trot out 35mm transparancies and pop them into my Koday professional grade slide projector which I purchased new twenty years ago and project film images, any quality comparison is over, right then and there. As previously mentioned, this may be more a function of the state of projection technology than anything else, but the differences are real, as you say. You know, when I bought that projector in 1986, it cost me almost a thousand dollars, about four times what a "home grade" projector cost back then, and I thought it was pretty expensive, but it's still going stong and in weekly use two decades later. I guess it's true, quality does not cost, it pays.

As far as film versus digital cameras go, clearly the work shown here by pros like Marc Williams and DJ Garcia and others as well pretty much conclusively prove that with the proper knowledge and skill, and thoughtful selection of equipment, there is no doubt that digital photography can deliver the goods. If it could not, working pros wouldn't use it because for them, it's not a fad, it's their livelihood. In any event, I'd kill to be able to produce some of the work these guys do, with film or digital. For me, at the moment, I can get what I want by picking up the old film cameras and MF lenses that I already own, using a technology that I learned a long time ago and don't have to scratch my head over, and produce work that pleases me in my old-fashioned wet darkroom. That seems good enough for me right now, reserving my digicams for convenience shooting and work photos that need to be quickly posted.

Sooner or later I'll grab a DSLR and work some with it, and I'm sure that once I learn what I'm doing, the results will be fine. But, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of old dogs like me who are slow to learn new tricks, and if nothing else, we will keep buying film and it will remain on the market for a long time through a number of sources. I also believe that consumer level film cameras are probably dead from a sales standpoint, but obviously there is a brisk used market and all of those cameras will need film for a long time to come. So, like you, I get a little tired of hearing that film is dead. But as inaccurate as that statement might be, it does not mean that digital work is necessarily substandard.

Okay, the soapbox perch is now vacant once again.] >
 
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