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.
I own a Sony MVC-FD95 (2.1 Mega Pixel) and a Sony DSC-V3 (7.2 Mega Pixel. Digital cameras are the ONLY way to go!
Yes,yours is probably a better analogy.
Still film has a certain unpredicability to it that can make for some interesting photos sometimes.
You disappointed me..from you, I expected a pic of Matthew Brady's camera...(g)
Landlines aren't dead. There's still plenty of companies going after the landline market. For many individuals landlines are unecessary, but for many they still are, many others just like them, and then for any business that is going to deal with a lot of phone traffic the landline is still king.
I don't think home produced music or movies are going to seriously impact the entertainment industry. People have been able to write their own stories forever and it never hurt the novel market. A lot of the entertainment industry is more about who than what, unless I can play guitar like Jimi Hendrix nothing I ever do at home will satisfy my desire to listen to Jimi Hendrix.
No doubt about that. The last time I used one of my film cameras was because I wanted to take some pictures of a lunar eclipse and my digital cameras didn't have the exposure time, remote release or zoom lens to handle it.
I should have taken a digital camera out and put it on a tripod to compare results. I wouldn't have wasted shots trying various exposures without seeing immediate results like I did on the film.
Right now I think the megapixel race is becoming pointless. The difference between a 4 MP and 10 MP will really only show if you blow it up really big or zoom in on a small section of the picture. And if you are compressing it, you lose most of the benefits of the extra pixels anyway. I now want a higher shutter speed more than more pixels.
We had a hurricane go through the DC area two years ago; power was knocked out (mostly by falling trees) for a week. That meant no internet OR cell service. The hard wire land line and battery powered radio were our only links to the outside world.
Yes, of course satellites will eventually replace the need for cell towers. We already have satellite phones that can be used from anywhere on the globe. Soon, they will be the industry standard. Internet connections will follow.
I generally agree with you. My Mavica FD-7 was surprisingly good in low-light conditions, which led to a little disappointment with my newer digital SLR even with the large lens I have on it. The point-and-shoot does poorly by comparison to the Mavica, but with such a small lens in front of 6 MP I am not surprised.
Those were beautiful, weren't they? Brings back fond memories, --the sound they made, the clicking motion of winding the film, and the slight shake when the shutter opened. Almost sad to see them go.
The Nikon D50 DSLR has shutter speed up to 1/4000, 6.1 megapixels, and costs about $550 new these days.
I've seen what I think are digitals laid out like SLRs, with similar apeture and other mechanisms adjusting like the old days, so dyed-in-the-wool photographers can use the electrics? Am I right, or have I slid into a parallel universe?
If only there was a retrofit digital film unit easily available.
I remember seeing one advertised years ago, but not since.
I used to have a Nikon FM2, and I loved having a camera that was mechanical. Between it and a sekonik incident light meter I carried around (and the wide latitude affored by Tri X Pan), I loved taking photos for my school papers (in college). I sold it a few years ago, and don't really miss it. If I want to use film, I still have my Olympus OM2n. But I love my Nikon D70s. Digital is fun too, but I miss the exposure latitude.
Mark
Bee-HAYVE!
That's what I'm thinking. The optics are important!
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