It seems to be a common result of technology advancement. Think of the automobile whose 'soul' was lost with the now common computer components, the Golden Age of the airlines lost when passenger jets replaced the four-engine prop, or the death of the home-cooked meal after the introduction of TV dinners, fast food and the microwave.
There are good things and bad things about new technology, and we all have the right to stick with the old. If enough stuck with it, the new would never gain traction and the old would flourish. If enough don't, the manufacturers can't justify the expense involved in making it and it dies.
Sadly, much like the major award in A Christmas Story, maybe the old is best laid to rest beside the garage as we hum Taps.
I don't think so. I don't believe George Eastman would think so.
Are some lamenters here only sentimentally attached to film (and vinyl records)?
Yes. As with wine, a blind test would likely reveal that few can tell the difference between capture devices.
Well said.
In the 1980s, when CDs started to hit with ordinary mass-market titles (”Born In The USA” was the first on I noticed, and I’d been buying CDs for a little while before that, even before I had a player), there were old grumblers (including some friends of mine) who said they were a ripoff “because you can’t record on them.” Prior to 8-track and cassette, there was reel to reel, but there was also the record player, which sold far more.
Cassette was nice for building up various artist tapes for the car ride, or capturing stuff off the air, but A) I’ve played a cassette, on average, perhaps once a year since 2000, and B) one of my best friends, who’s only seven years younger, has *never* owned any kind of cassette player or recorder. That one boggles my mind.
Despite the boggling, knocking out various artist CDs for the car ride, or 15 hours of mp3s for the office listening (since they’ve cut our streaming audio, the bastards) is trivial to accomplish. And there’s nothing I want to record off the air. :’)
Professional photographers may use digital SLRs but a large portion of the marketplace used “point and shoots” (that can zoom” but most people are looking at the back of the camera (even some pros) rather than lining up a shot with their own eye through the lens.
And who among the digital realm consider “photoshopping” an image to be cheating? It may be excuseable for the family photo album, but how about for news journalism? It happens every day.
When you read National Geographic are you reading it for an accurate depiction of exotic locales or to see pretty pictures?
Film leaves an unaltered record of what was captured, no matter what you subsequently do to it in a darkroom or computer.
Once the government got you to end your emotional attachment to your car (and car culture) it makes it easier to get you to separate from your car (or your older kind of car).
We are forcing the public to give up their old tvs (and soon radios) as well. I just weathered a hurricane. Digital reception was crap as the receiver has to continue to resync the signal. I may miss a word through analog static, but at least I could still get weather updates on my radio.
Low flow toilets by law? Do these things work with less than 2 flushes?
How about forcing us to switch to mercury laden fluorescent lights?
You may not “see” the difference but it is there in these technologies.
A projected movie strobes (still frames flash in rapid sucession). Projected video is a continous cycle of alternating scanlines. Shoot video or take pictures of the screen and the difference may become apparent. Same way with the green cast and pulse (and hum) of fluourescent lights. It affects different people on a subsconscious level. Shouldn’t the market determine it?
Kodak is a business, no one is tell them to stop making it. Not so with broadcasters and lighting companies.
And with the destruction of all of our major gathering places (stadiums etc) where we witnessed history (not just sporting events or concerts) and regentrification tearing down all the old neighborhoods, we are being forced to break with the past.
Some of it just smells of socialism to me. “it’s for your own good”.