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.
Kodak helped deliver the greatest military intelligence achievement ever by supplying the U-2 spy plane imaging equipment in the 50's.
Hi TexRepub - I took some killer pics of the Navy's Finest Blue Angels F-18s going 400mph with a Nikon D70s - I can see pilot goggles and exhaust trails with great clarity. The camera was extremely fast.
Very true. 4" x 6" is as big as I print out. I'll need to keep this in mind should I want to print out larger photos.
Now that I have a 512mb memory card for my camera, I ought to experiment a little bit with .tiff format and see what she can do.
I started with a Polaroid Swinger. Moved to a Pentax K-1000. I took that camera everywhere. I took photos underground in caves, inside burning buildings, you name it.
Ping to 144. I'll take digital.
Traditional cameras are going the way of the dinosaur.
I love my X-700 as well.
It's always nice to have a camera with lots of manual overrides.
Rememeber to have buckets of water scattered about.
Many thought that digital would put an end to kodak but they have been a big player from the start.
Kodak launched in 1991 its first digital system the DCS (Digital Camera System), quickly called DCS 100. It is based on the Nikon F3 body with a special focusing screen and a specific motor drive. This motor allows 2,5 images per second.
http://apphotnum.free.fr/N2BE10.html#DCS100
The second picture is pretty awesome!
Is that the SRT-102? I have one of those, rock-solid "combat" camera. TOTALLY mechanical operation. The only thing it uses juice for is for the light meter.
I also have the X-370 which uses juice for all its operation (except film winding). I learned that the hard way one chilly night when the battery died during long exposure astrophotography.
Can one actually take 1/2 minute plus shots with a digital camera? And what kind of ISO/ASA ratings do they have?
>You don't fix electronics, you upgrade.<
And that is why I will always have a couple of upper end SLR film bodies!
>You are using the wrong (older) camera. The Canon EOS-1D Mark II shoots digital images at 8.5 frames per second at 8.2 megapixels each with a shutter lag of 55 milliseconds. Your film camera is certainly slower than that.<
Isn't it true there's no shutter lag with about all the digital SLR's? Lag is a problem with the fixed lens digitals, from what I gather. We've got a Minolta Dimage, and it's got shutter lag, so I don't use it for motion shots.
I wish I could say that. I have no network coverage in my home from my cell provider. I have better coverage 300 miles away than in my home.
I almost got a Panasonic Lumix, simply for the Leica lens. However, I went with my Minolta Dimage because it's powered by good old AA batteries, whereas the Panasonic uses a $50.00, oddly shaped thing I could see problems with finding an emergency replacement in some obscure location.
I'm thinking that improvement may concentrate more on having more bits/pixel. Unless you're blowing up the picture to poster size, you don't need 20 mp
Just an observation from what you just posted: That seems to be the story of alot of American companies. They think they're invincible, they don't adapt to change, and then they become bankrupt and a lot of the times, they expect the taxpayer to bail them out.
I don't know what kind of long exposures you can do with an upper tier digital, the $400 and up models can generally get to ISO 800-1600.
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