I've finally made the leap to digital. I bought my first real digital camera this week. I decided to finally convert after I realized I'm shooting more and more on my little Cannon point and shot digital, and less and less with my 35mm SLR. And when I do shoot film, when I get it developed, I don't even get prints anymore, I just have it put on a CD.
So I broke down and bought a Nikon D90 (which after only two days I already love). And it seems that I've got it at just the right time, because I was soon to learn that film is dying.
Armed with my fancy new high tech dSLR I went to go out taking some pictures and decided to bring along my trusty ol' 35mm as well.
Having no rolls of 35 left in the house, and being a weekend and after 6pm when my neighborhood mom 'n' pop camera store that I always go to was closed, I drove over to Ritz Camera to get a few rolls of Fuji 1600ASA (I was going to be shooting indoors in low light with a fast shutter).
I walk into the store and up to the counter, a sales clerk politely asks me, "What can I do for you today?"
"I need some film," I respond.
"We've got a little of that here."
Being a camera shop I thought he was trying to be funny, it turns out that he wasn't, in fact, they ONLY had a little of it.
"I need Fuji colour 1600," I said, "36 shot."
"Well, now you're picky," he said, "we don't have any of that. In fact we don't stock much film these days."
He wasn't lying. Behind the clerk on a half filled shelf was a measly selection of only four or five different types of film. And that was everything they had.
"You're a photography store," I said, "how can that be the only film you have?"
"Everyone's gone digital now," was his matter-of-fact response.
I walked out of the store with the fastest film they had, Fuji colour 800, a four pack and a bargain at only $10, but not before having a brief conversation with the clerk.
It turns out, he according to him, that Kodak has stopped making film. I was shocked! I knew Polaroid had stopped making film earlier this year, but Eastman Kodak!?! Apparently, they are putting all their money into their line of compact digital cameras, and into the digital print kiosks that you see in supermarkets and drug stores, and Fuji is ramping up their line of digital cameras and will probably soon cease production of film too.
I left the store with mixed emotions. On the one had I felt validated in my decision to finally buy a digital camera (this was a significant purchase for someone on my budget), but also very saddened about the future of photography.
No don't get me wrong, I love my new digital camera, and I use photoshop to touch up almost all my photos (even the ones shot on film, and them print them on my digital photo printer), but I cannot help think that digital photography is something that is, well, not photography.
Nowadays you can take a digital photo, and shoot it with everything in focus and sharp and crisp, and then after the fact add in photoshop later a shallower depth of field or desaturate to black and white or do this or that or any number of other things. I've met many photographers, both hobbyist and professionals who shoot this way. "Well I have everything there if I want it, so I can play with it in post if I want to," they say.
Now, I can appreciate that, and I realize that it takes its own skill-set and talent to do these things, and the result is still beautiful art, but somehow, to me that is not photography. It's something new, and something great in its own right, but it's not photography, it DIGITAL photography.
I love film. I love that its something you can feel. When you develop film you can put the negative up to the light an look at your work, and hold it in your hands. It's something physical, it exists, it not a bunch of intangible ones and zeros on a screen or a on memory card. Anyone who has ever developed there own photos knows what it's like to hold your negative in your hands, to see your photo slowly appear, almost magically, on the paper. It is nothing like the instant gratification of digital.
If an industry giant like Eastman Kodak can no longer make the product which won it its fortune, than what future is there for film?
But this is progress, and the cut worm forgives the plow. So it is with new spirt, not with a heavy heart, that I go forth with my new tools of technology, and at last fully embrace the digital revolution, but never forgetting that now antiquated medium I loved for so long.
Rest in peace film.