6. Film cameras: When Polaroid announced in February 2008 that it would stop selling its famous instant-developing film, people ran out to buy up the remaining stock in order to preserve this unique form of photography. Kodak and Fuji still make film, but they, like Polaroid, are counting on their digital-camera lines to keep them afloat.
Just like cameras did away with pencils and paintbrushes, right?
Digital cameras do not offer the same response as film.
True, but the difference is becoming vanishingly small. Some cameras (see RED cinema cameras) exceed film outright.
The place where the eventual loss of film cameras will really be felt is in publishing, especially newspapers if they last as long as film cameras. Very few papers have made arrangements to keep all the shots taken at an assignment. In the film days the photographer would put all the negs from a shoot in an envelope marked with the date, story slug and various other info. That’s no longer done. They hang on to the images that are actually published and a couple of others that were put into the archive system to be available to reporters, page designers and editors. The newspaper where I worked had negs going back over 80 years, often with a neatly folded copy of the article in which the pictures were used.
A lot of really important pictures have surfaced over the years when someone went back into the files to see what else was shot that day. It was not uncommon for the photographer to shoot five or six rolls of film and then keep it all filed away.
For 95% of photographers, the difference is insignificant. (I'm assuming you refer to light/color response, rather than shutter release time...)
With regard to resolution, witness the Nikon D3X.
35mm film has roughly 20 megapixel resolution. The D3X? 24.5 megapixels.
Yes, it's currently an $8,000 camera, but that boat on the horizon is headed our way quickly. For the great majority of uses, the age of film is drawing to a close.