Posted on 05/25/2006 10:08:01 AM PDT by Drew68
TOKYO - Japan's top camera maker, Canon Inc., will stop developing new single-lens reflex film cameras as more people abandon film for digital, company officials said Thursday.
The Tokyo-based Canon's move followed a similar move by its closest Japanese rival, Nikon Corp., which announced earlier this year it would stop making seven of its nine film cameras and concentrate on digital models.
Canon will continue making film cameras already on the market as long as their demand remains. Whether to withdraw from the film camera business will be "decided appropriately by judging the market situation," said Canon spokesman Hiroshi Yoshinaga.
Japanese camera makers sold a combined total 64.77 million digital cameras last year globally, compared with 5.38 million film cameras, according to industry figures. Yoshinaga said his company could not disclose the number of cameras sold.
Meanwhile, Tsuneji Uchida, president of Canon, told reporters that demand for film cameras will be limited to "special needs" like camera buffs, Kyodo News agency said.
In January, Konica Minolta Holdings Inc., another Japanese optical manufacturer, said it was quitting the camera business altogether — digital and film — and selling its digital assets to rival Sony Corp.
You talk about Polaroid as if they went out of business. I just checked out their web site and they seem to be alive and well and producing a whole range of products. Aren't they?
Seems to me that there will always be a use for a Polaroid instant camera in situations where you need a photograph immediately and don't have the time to go print one out.
I had a pentax ME super...sold it... shoulda kept it!
Digital SLRs do not have shutter lag time that is worse than film cameras. Sports Illustrated has gone entirely digital, and National Geographic is moving in that direction.
Printers are getting smaller. It won't be many years before some offers a Walkman sized printer you wear on your waist. Digital Polaroid.
The photo printer I have doesn't need a computer at all, can just take the memory card out camera stick in the printer and print. The only thing missing to make it totally portable is it still needs household current, figure out a way to run it off battery and walla. And of course there's enough air in the thing a design engineer will eventually figure out a way to merge it with the camera, Digital Polaroid isn't far away.
Battery operated printers exist, but they aren't exactly shaped for carrying around. Something the size and shape of a paperback book would work.
What'll push it is when they merge the camera functionality into it. Polaroid has already proven that people will buy a larger less convenient object (let's face it, physically Polaroid instant cameras were always clunkier than their counterparts) if it's overall feature set is convenient enough. Take digital photos and print them on the spot, with the editing features photo printers already have, and with the ability to keep the file for storage and use later, is a compelling feature set that will forgive a lot of size.
"Lens, viewfinder with exposure metering and the shutter are the same anyway."
Focal length and apeture will be different. Most of your fine SLR lenses won't work well as a digital lens in that the exit pupil is much too large for most digital imagers. Back focus would be an issue also. Hassleblad makes a digital back for one of theirs. It's about $10K. It is amazing how good the pics are from a cheepie digital camera, but there is not as much fun in capturing the image as the old film days..
Most of the new digital SLRs are auto focus. My camera guy told me my collection of Pentax cameras & lenses were not worth much. Like obsolete guns, they become museum pieces...
#43.
"I just can't foresee a need for a land-line phone anymore."
Developing nations won't even build an infrastructure like ours. Surely our grid must be of some use in this wireless age. I am not sure how it works now, but time was if you spoke on a wireless of any kind you had no expectation of privacy. Privacy was only guaranteed on a landline. You needed a warrant to tap a wired phone, but wireless was free for anyone to listen. Is this still the case in a cell phone world?
"#43
Say, at 3.3 microns a pixel 290 Megapixels per chip."
Moore's law says that's about 5 years away. (BTW, I think I saw a Hass digital back in a B&H catalog today, 16M pixels for just under $10K. I agree with post 43 in that one can not have too many megapixles!
Consider this: monochromatic light [microphotography application], Leica lens - 400 lp/mm in the center, about 300 in the corner. One pixel boils down to about 1-1.2 micron - i.e. 3 gigapixels for Hassy frame, 900Mpixels for a 24x36- this is about the limit for non-adaptive optics. But the only film I've heard of at this level is TechPan at 320 lp/mm.
Yep! Developing countries have been able to completely leapfrom obsolete technologies. In fact, cell phones in the United States often pale to the features and quality of cell phones available in other parts of the world.
You needed a warrant to tap a wired phone, but wireless was free for anyone to listen. Is this still the case in a cell phone world?
I believe so. A cell phone isn't really anything other than a fancy radio and unless it is encrypted I am pretty sure that if someone was so motivated, they could intercept cellular conversations without breaking the law.
I thought that's what I said. :-)
Well, film is limited by its somewhat random grain, but CCD imagers are further limited by the grid-like array of pixels.
I really don't think it will be an issue other than in cases of extreme magnification of an existing image. The true technological leap will come when only one pixel is needed for a complete image. Confession: Your last post greatly exceeded my jargon abilities. I've been setting up broadcast video cameras for years now and find myself on the cutting edge of electronic technology, what with high def and all, but I haven't bought a roll of film in many years. Sad, really.
True. Random grain [in case of TechPan that grain is significantly smaller than 1.2 microns - they are close to submicron optical limit there] is what provides this size of a pixel. Bump a cluster of 0.5 micron pixels close together - and it would be a pretty good model of TechPan film. And this is what allows for a randomly positioned 1.2 micron size pixel versus one which has to sit in a pre-arranged grid. So our ideal imaging chip has just become so much beefier.
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