You know, there's a subtle point in this: Often when technology changes the a medium, quality goes DOWN for a rather long time period.

Film IS higher quality than digital. Land lines are better quality and far more reliable than cell phones and VOIP. Plasma and LCD TVs are still not as clear as a glass tube picture. CDs were lower quality than analog for a long time. Watching video on a laptop is not as good as on TV, etc.

There are, of course, exceptions, but for many things, it takes a lot of adoption, volume and cost-amortization for the new technology to cross over the quality level of the old.

The masses take the convienence of the new a lot faster than the purists let go of the quality of the old.

Photo's inevitiable transition to digital? Perhaps you need reminding of what Paul Delaroche said in 1839 upon seeing a dauerrotype (an early photographic technology) "from today, painting is dead!"

Clearly then, all the film cameras in the world have stopped functioning because of the advent of digital cameras. And exept for Fuji, which has recently introduced two new slide films (Velvia 100 and Provia 400X), the film makers have all gone out of business. Ignore the fact that Kodak, which has about 40% market share in film sold over $1 billion in film and related items in the last quarter.

The problem you are running into here is that you are not comaring apples to apples. Film cameras are a capital asset; they continue working for a long time (decades), and the input (film) is a disposable. Digital cameras, however are diposable (albeit one with a long life span). They wear out and need replacing regularly (after about 50,000 shutter actuations).

I agree with what (I think) you are saying - people actually prefer digital, despite what the Ilford person may claim. Of course don't forget the person you quote appears to work for a film company, and in sales no less - what did you really expect him to say?!? It's important for capitalism that he says and does the most self serving thing possible - I like the invisible hand ok?

For the record, there are unfortunately some things that you can readily do with film, but cannot do well with digital, such as long exposure photography. When doing "deep sky" or wide sky astronomical photography (like those beautiful pictures of galaxies and nebula), it is imperative that you collect a lot of light which requires the shutter to be open for minutes if not hours. At that length of exposure, electronic noise effects from the CCD/CMOS chips in digital cameras easily ruin the image. Post processing efforts must be employed, and even then, it is just not the same as film.

Of course, this will all be dealt with in Digital Photography 2.0.

Nigel --

As always, your post is highly entertaining.

Lesseee.... I didn't make an "all or nothing" argument; instead I clearly and consciously said that the photo market would almost certainly transition mostly to digital -- but that there would inevitably be a film component left. Hence my point that film would be art snobs and people who like stereos with vaccuum tubes.

With respect to Kodak, I'm sure that the company continues to shed jobs, lost over a billion last quarter, and has nine out of ten analysts rating it at hold or lower are all contrarian pluses.

Paul,

I always strive for entertaining. I recognize that you were not making an all or nothing argument. My point is that comparing digital cameras to film cameras is the wrong comparison. The comparison should be digitial cameras to film - the purchase of a digital camera is in fact the purchase of about 50,000 digital pictures. The purchase of a roll of film is the purchase of 36 (or 24,or other numbers depending on format) pictures.

With respect to Kodak, I am not arguing the investment merits of the company. I am simply pointing out that a player in the film market, one with less than 50% market share, is still selling an economically interesting amount of film products. My understanding (which could be quite wrong) is that the losses at Kodak are stemming from the digital side - Kodak is unable to keep up with the cost improvements that are normal in the electronics industry.

Hmmm, I had posted a response to John K's post but it appears to have disappeared. I got sent to a page that said my comment would be added after moderation: is that because of your comment spam filter? I thought Paul had enabled a new comment moderation feature on all comments but that doesn't appear to be the case as I commented on another post with no moderation. Looks like this blog is back to eating comments.

In response to Nigel, most people will never use up those 50K digital pictures and I doubt Kodak's problem is mainly on the digital side of their product line.