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To: Kirkwood
About ten years ago, there were huge debates about whether digital photos would ever replace film. This was among professional photographers. Now, Kodak has even quit making Kodachrome. The last roll went to Steve McCurry.
17 posted on 02/05/2011 9:01:12 PM PST by Richard Kimball
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To: Richard Kimball
About ten years ago, there were huge debates about whether digital photos would ever replace film. This was among professional photographers. Now, Kodak has even quit making Kodachrome. The last roll went to Steve McCurry.

No real surprise that Kodachrome was the first to go -- the process for it is seriously gnarly, and not shared by any other film, so it took a lot of infrastructure to process it. Your corner one-hour photo lab couldn't do a thing with it. Other films like Ektachrome are still in use.

News photographers were among the first to switch over. For them, fast, cheap and good enough trumps slow, expensive and perfect. The first event the AP shot in all digital was Super Bowl XXX, in 1996 (yes, I had to google that).

Glossy magazine covers were another matter. Depending on the film used, and how you define the comparison of analog grain to pixels, 35mm is roughly equivalent to 15-20 megapixels, a threshold that took digital cameras a while to reach.

Film is still useful for things like disposable cameras, but we're getting to the point where only artists will be interested in it.

26 posted on 02/05/2011 9:23:35 PM PST by ReignOfError
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