Canon may quit film camera business

Canon, a company long associated with all kinds of photography, may become the next player to abandon the shrinking film photo business. While Canon says it has yet to make a firm decision, a spokesman said the company is considering whether it makes sense to continue producing cameras for the film market. Canon's potential withdrawal from the film business would follow a similar decision by arch-rival Nikon, which dropped production of all but one of its film cameras earlier this year. For now Canon says it will continue to support existing models, but you may just want to stock up on glass for that EOS before they change their mind.

[Cloud @ May 25th 2006 10:50AM]

I'm not really certain why film needs to stay with these modern camera's. There is just so much you can do with them.

[doodle @ May 25th 2006 10:54AM]

there does not seem to be any need to stock up on glass as it can be used quite seamlessly with the new digital slrs. and based on the recent sales numbers i doubt canon will abandon that market anytime soon.

[stickwithwhatuknow @ May 25th 2006 11:01AM]

"but you may just want to stock up on glass for that EOS before they change their mind"

EOS lenses work with canon digital SLRs...

[dave @ May 25th 2006 11:03AM]

why stock up on glass? the EOS film cameras use the same lens mount as the new EOS digital SLRs, which should be around for quite some time...

[mickster @ May 25th 2006 11:03AM]

Actually from what I read Nikon is making 2 film cameras, the FM10 and F6 not one.

[will chen @ May 25th 2006 11:04AM]

Film has better quality than digital cameras. However, the gap is slowing catching up and the shear ease of use of digital cameras is making the decision a no-brainer.

[Ryan @ May 25th 2006 11:07AM]

Yeah, what #2 said.

They aren't discontinuing the glass, hence no reason to stock up on it.

[OlivierB @ May 25th 2006 11:15AM]

There is some -limited- sense in what Marc wrote. All EF mount lens will work fine on new DSLR (however with a crop factor when sensor is not full size), however new EF-S lenses will only work on select cameras (EOS 350D, 20D and 30 D). So if Canon goes EF-S all the way, film user could technically be out of luck..
I highly doubt they will forgoe EF mounts however as all their high-end DSLRs (EOS 1 mkII, EOS 5D) are only compatible with EF.

[Gihad Joe @ May 25th 2006 11:23AM]

#4 is correct, film has a megapixel range of between 30MP and 2,500,000 depending on the iso and film type or size.


(The 2.5 million is for old ariel film spy cameras that were commonly used in old reconanssance U2's)

[Androo @ May 25th 2006 11:27AM]

No surprise here. Film cameras will go the way of vinyl records and those funny old round pin plugs we used to have in the UK. Before long CDs and DVDs will follow and everything will be different. It's called history. Or it will be.

[Mauricio @ May 25th 2006 11:32AM]

OH NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS WORLD IS COMING TO AN END!!!!!!!!

[Eric M @ May 25th 2006 11:39AM]

#8 - Not really, 35mm is still far superior to digital in terms of color gamut and a wider dynamic range. Also better contrast. It's not going anywhere because it's better in some cases. Vinyl and such were not.

Fine with me for Canon to end their 35mm camera though. Only good ones will be in production then.

[Gihad Joe @ May 25th 2006 11:45AM]

I think I will be buying a film camera before they discontinue their production. I will miss film. Film is tangable it's hard to say that about a set of 0's and 1's on a compact flash card. Old film is easy to reproduce and 100 years from now it can easily be done. We cannot say the same will be true for digital. My point is, when was the last time you saw /used a 8in or 5.25" floppy/drive? Do you think anyone will be able to read those "digital negatives" of your parents in 30 years?

Digital prints are much more sensitive to being lost forever than old negatives. If a portion of a negative is destroied then it's likely the rest of the photos are still good, but if a portion of a storgage deivce is damages it's possible that hundreds of photos are lost forever and this will only get worse as the density of media increases and the overall size of the chip decreases.

If you can find the PC World commentary by Steven Manes from a few years ago. He commented on this problem and I highly recommend you read it if you can find it. He commented on how paper beat digital and he was right. When I find it I will post it here.

[Peter Krugman @ May 25th 2006 11:55AM]

I love my F6, one of life's simple pleasures is going out and shooting a roll or two of Velvia. Just not the same with the D70.

pk

[MaNhO1E @ May 25th 2006 12:07PM]

they need to make a camera which records to both at the same time

[crescentdave @ May 25th 2006 12:15PM]

#11, Eric: Take a deep breath: Digital has had, for quite some time, better dynamic range. http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/dynamicrange2/

You can read more on the following page a BALANCED response to the digital vs film comparisons. As might be guessed, it's not a matter of black and white.

Nice post from Steven Manes. It reminds me I have a lot of denial over how much time I'm "saving" using all my gadgets. Heresy, I know ...

[matt @ May 25th 2006 12:21PM]

unless i am wrong, i believe Nikon also kept their all manual film camera for students...

[dougr @ May 25th 2006 12:21PM]

Eric M...
not so, the better dslr cameras have higher dynamic range than any color 35mm film, and all 35mm films (including black and white) at speeds above ISO50. problem is, those sensors are damned expensive, and not suitable in some applications (e.g. extended landscape photography). as far as contrast, same as DR... if a camera has more DR, then it has better contrast all other things being equal. now, if you are talking color gradation, then it depends on the color depth of the sensor (have not seen an analysis of that, but the printing is usually the limiting factor here). there are applications where film is better than any digital camera (no digital sensor I know of can touch large format B&W, but that is not 35mm, and a very niche market). for consumer and photoournalism, digital technology is on par or better than film (35mm)... good summary with analyses here: http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/film.vs.digital.summary1.html

[theunsquare @ May 25th 2006 12:34PM]

While film may not be the medium of choice for the masses before long (or are we there already?), the #12 comment is right on the money.

Many movie studios, while moving toward digital or fully engrossed, are indeed still using film to archive just about all their materials. Film is nearly a univeral format and the technology to run it has not and probably will not change. Whereas digital technology changes all the time.

Paying to have all your media transferred to a format readable in the furtue will mean you are constantly spending money to keep up with the Jonses. That is not so with film.

I personally like the tangible aspect of film for still photography (again in accord with comment #12). I really like the smells, oddly enough, and the hands on approach to processing it. Also, I've not seen yet a print off the computer (not matter what fancy printer is used) even come close to the look of a print from a neg. In it's home environment a digital picture may rule, but in my family photo albums film prints cannot be beat.

[Marc Perton @ May 25th 2006 12:39PM]

OlivierB:
Thanks for clarifying my point. Will Canon cease making traditional EF-mount lenses, and focus solely on lenses designed specifically for digicams? I certainly hope not, but it seems like a real possibility at some point, if digital continues to grow as film shrinks.

[Matt B @ May 25th 2006 12:58PM]

While old film may be recovWhile old film may be much more recoverable than equally old digital storage media, you are ignoring digital data’s best trait: it can migrate to new media with no loss of quality. Good luck getting data off a 10 year old 3.5” floppy. However if that data has been migrated to new storage media as it was made available (like moving a document archive to a new hard drive as you install a new computer) getting at that data is as simple as opening it as any other file.

If anything, the real concern is not can the data survive, but can you interpret the data at a much later date. As file formats progress support for older formats is depreciated and eventually removed. I think this is a small concern at best.

As for the comment about picking up EF glass. Canon has shown their ongoing support for full format digital sensors. They have made three digital cameras (two currently available) that have sensors that are the full size of the original film media (24mm x 36mm). They also have a limited crop (the 1Dmk2 and 1Dmk2n) Pro bodies that also only can use EF glass. In fact every camera they call Pro only uses EF glass. I fully expect to see more EF glass that as good or better than any of the L glass currently available.

[DemonSun @ May 25th 2006 1:05PM]

At least until someone starts making single 4x5 sensors, You wont be able to pry my film from my cold dead hands.

And this is coming from somebody who uses mainly digital, Both Nikon and Canon.

It is sad though that they are dropping many of their film cameras, but it's fine, as long as they don't stop developing their non digital lenses. the same thing applies to nikon as well.

[Little Joe @ May 25th 2006 1:11PM]

If youve used a Medium Format digital camera... then you know film is going to die.

Then again, those medium format cameras are as high as $30,000.

:o

[Samuel McConnell @ May 25th 2006 1:26PM]

A small nitpick...Nikon is still producing two 35mm cameras: the F6, and the FM-10.

[D W @ May 25th 2006 1:37PM]

In response to Matt B. I think you're totally underestimating time and effort in your migration concept.

For the majority of pro's and serious amateurs like myself who still shoot slide film, you're typically looking at THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of slides. This is not a trivial job to convert to digital, but the upside is a much greater likelyhood of retrieval 25+ years down the road (if you're organizing it!)

Having been in the PC biz for two decades, experiencing the transision of storage technology, and also experiencing more cases of total data loss from all types of media (including 3 different cases with camera cards), I've learned to distrust all digital media.

My first question to you, at what time should you consider converting your entire collection to the newest medium? When it starts degrading? And how long do you think it would take you to upgrade it? Until you have garnered the storage mass a professional has, you're really not understanding the problem. Until you've come across numerous burned CD failures 1+ years after writing, you're also not going to see that it's already too late for many photos. I'd suggest you try it.

Film costs nearly nothing to archive without loss, and good storage in a dark room with a stable temperature is all you have to worry about.

Digital is awesome for instant gratification, and instant access (and instant deletion), but film will always win when you want something from an archive. Example: The one picture of Monica Lewinski with Pres. Clinton was on FILM - all digital copies photos had been erased as it wasn't considered worth keeping at the time.

http://www.cah.utexas.edu/photojournalism/detail.php?nickname=cah_mission&picid=3

Another case in point, the video tapes I shot of my daughter with an analog 8mm Sony Camcorder just 10 years ago are no longer supported/played by all camcorders/8mm players Sony sells today. How would I update these tapes?

[Jeff @ May 25th 2006 1:52PM]

"film has a megapixel range of between 30MP and 2,500,000 depending on the iso and film type or size. "

Wait, so film can have 2.5 *million* megapixels??

Ummm, no. No film has 2.5 trillion crystals per frame (the rough equivalent of pixels).

And the "30MP" equivalent is taking all three layers of color film into account, and also only applies to professional-quality films - there is always, obviously, a lot of overlap between crystals on different layers.

The tests I've seen have shown even pro-level 35mm film stocks, when printed by a pro lab on high quality paper, to have a practical resolution equivalent to about 12-15 megapixels (Pop Photo did one such test). That's pretty much a best-case scenario. If you're shooting Kodak MAX and printing your stuff at Walgreens, you're probably not even gonna get 1/4 of that. Meaning that even a low-end digital camera today offers better real resolution than the equivalent film camera choices. And even at the high-end, it is possible to buy a camera (like the Canon 5D) that offers both the dynamic range advantage of digital as well as resolution that's at least as good as pro-level film equipment would give you. *And* it has all the convenience factors and cost advantages of digital.

When you get to medium and large formats, things are a bit different - but you're still not talking 2.5 million megapixels. I'd think that was an honest mistake if not for the way you phrased it (with 30MP being the low end of your range).

I say this as a diehard purist who still edits motion picture film by hand on a Steenbeck editing table. But I cannot deny the advantages of digital in still cameras - there is simply *no* advantage to film anymore, unless you're hung up on intangible touchy-feely things. (Yes, different films give different looks, where digital's goal is always to reproduce everything accurately - but you can create any look you want in software with a digital photo.)

[Matt B @ May 25th 2006 3:48PM]

D W you missed the point of my comment. What I’m saying is that digital data on its own is easy to migrate to new storage media. Not that many years later the original digital media is usable. Perhaps a real world example is needed.

Say you have a nice large raid and as it’s used over a period of time, it gets filled. The way the storage industry is going when it’s full or reaching the end of its useful life, you will be able to move that data off of that onto a newer higher capacity raid. After the migration you will have faster storage with more capacity and media with a useful life again. Who cares what happens to the old raid, the data has been copied without loss to the new raid.

I’m also not suggesting that analog media should be converted to digital. While there may be advantages in scanning a few slides for a specific purpose, there is little motivation to digitize an entire collection at the highest resolution. Regardless any scanning will lose data sine there is a conversion involved. There is no conversion involved in migrating data from one storage media to another.

As for film staying around longer because people delete files. That’s really a non issue. You can throw away film as easily as deleting photos. You can also save digital files for later use. That’s more of a workflow question than a Digital vs Analog question.

I’m sure trying to deal with your 8mm analog video tapes is annoying. Were that digital, you could have migrated it to another media type and not been dependant on a now outdated and unavailable media type.

[Pip @ May 25th 2006 5:05PM]

Canon will never got "EF-S all the way". EF-S was created for cameras less than full frame such as the 350D, 20D, and now 30D. The industry is moving entirely to full frame, and eventually EF-S will die. The Canon EOS EF and EF Ls will always be around.

[EC @ May 25th 2006 7:39PM]

Wow! You arrived at all the wrong conclusions about that story.

Canon is "considering" stopping "development" of future film SLRs. NOT production. It just means that they'll stop paying people to work on future generations of film models. They're still going to produce/manufacture film cameras even "IF" they decide to stop R&D in that area. Development and Production are two different things.

All the EF lenses that work on the digital bodies work on the film bodies, so no need to panic about that either. While the few EF-S lenses won't work on film bodies, they never did.

[l @ May 25th 2006 8:15PM]

come on guys... he obviously doesnt know what hes talking about, whats the point

[zafar @ May 25th 2006 9:49PM]

ain't this a beauty!!

[Gihad Joe @ May 26th 2006 3:33AM]

#25
My memory is shot.

I am not talking about tradtional 35MM film. There is a man who has been doccumenting America on a decomissoned modified U2 spy plane camera. The negative will create a print that is 6 feet tall. He did not know it at the time, but when he first developed on ; there were a group of lone women subathing nude that were not visible to the naked eye. Upon further inspection he noticed a few men in the distance with binoculars peeping over the California Cliffs to get a glimse of the women a few miles away who did not think they were being watched.



In responce to #25 and those who doubt films megapixe upioriority, I encourage you to check out the Gigapixel film camera.

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/printerfriendly/technology/generaltechnology/43f47ce253607010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html

Get a copy of that Popuar Science issue to see the actual photos. They will amaze you.

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,115071,00.asp

[Ken @ May 26th 2006 10:31AM]

1) The guy using film to make gigapixel images is an unbelievable chump. It can be done digitally with much better quality: http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/gigapixel.htm

2) #29 is right; the Engadget precis is a complete misreading of the Reuters story.

3)That said, even production of film cameras will stop soon. Few people would start a photography hobby these days with film, so these cameras are serving a replacement market. And that market could be well served by the jillion skillion cameras currently gathering dust in people's closets.

[zz @ May 26th 2006 5:18PM]

On Dynamic Range, from what i recal in my reading, Negatic Film has a much higher dynamic range than digital sensors (something like 11 stops vs 5). That's why it's so hard to get the right exposure for scenic shots and the like. Slide film ont he other hand has close to the same dynamic range.

As for Storage, i would not trust my photos to Optical as an archive source.. maybe a back-up, but not my primary archive. Stick with RAIDs (or some other form of mirroring on hard drives. It is simple, fast, efficeint, and easy to move up, when you need more space.

[josh @ Aug 21st 2006 8:16PM]

I am a film photographer and i think that digital cameras are a great invention but i still believe that everyone should be able to use what they want.
Photography with film is old fashioned maybe but it still is much more fun in my opinion, being in a dark room and developing the film.

[Jeff Tix @ Apr 30th 2007 3:26AM]

Im from the old school and although digital is nice and makes things easier. I love film and as long as I can help it I will use film until the bitter end, even though I do sometimes use digital for taking a quick picture which I can print immidiately.

Jeff

[Jeff Tix @ Apr 30th 2007 3:28AM]

Fact is I am from the old school and I will shoot film until the bitter end. Also justa quick note. I believe that although digital is useful and photoshop has a great many uses, If you take a picture on a digital camera and then go fix it in photoshop what is that saying about your skills as a photographer. Hmmmm I screwed up this photo so I will just digitally enhance my screwup to make it look the way I orginally wanted to look but didnt have the forsight to correctly frame the pictureetc....., I just think your cheating a bit. Use film and develop your skills. Just because some new technology comes along doesnt mean you need to abandon the old way of doing things. Film is great and yes I will probaby use both but lets not kill it!!!

[Matt P @ Jun 1st 2007 11:28PM]

film vs. digital is a subjective discussion and it also depends on one's financial situation.
I like the feeling of film, shooting with film and the print quality compared to what I can do with my point-and-shoot digital. I am more careful when shooting with film and end up having far less images to mess with and spend much less time in thinking about which pictures should be kept and which ones should be thrown away.
I returned back to film after nearly losing all of my digital images that was saved on the hard drive when my harddrive died suddenly. I know it may be silly not to have a backup on an external drive but it happened to me and may happen to other people. The drive was finally rescued but with long days of pain. I have tons of negatives in boxes and I don't worry about them except for fire or a natural disaster.
also, with my limited budget, I can afford better film camera equipment than digital. I bought a professional level slr on ebay, while I can hardly dream about a digital equivalent. I am not comparing technologies but what I can afford at the time being. what good digital camera I can buy for $150? May be in 10 years digital quality and prices will become affordable to people like myself but those years would have missed opportunities.
Film cameras never become obsolete. I can take my father's old camera, put new film in it and it becomes a new camera. can you do that with a digital in 20 years from now?

[GreenGate3000 @ Oct 22nd 2007 8:49PM]

i don't like the idea of Canon stopping making cameras. i personally own the rebel xti canon camera and find it to be the best camera i ever used in my life. i go on stock photography sites all the time like http://www.glowimages.com/ or www.istockphoto.com. both those websites have excellent quality photos and i am able to achieve the same quality image with my rebel. i plan to continue buying canon and it would really be awful if they stopped making cameras. please don't stop canon.