For Once - If only by a day I trumped NPR Marketplace

NPR Marketplace - The photo wars back then

The above image is from the Robert Burley's Book - The Disappearance of Darkness. It is about the amazingly fast decline of film photography and the decline of analog photography. Something that has been on my mind a lot lately. In fact I blogged about this book only the day before this Marketplace. All this while I contemplate the purchase of a more lightweight 4x5 camera which might be easier to use than my Sinar F. I know all the debate's that have gone on about this. But I just don't see how film becomes anything other then the media of artists. Not that their is anything wrong with that! It just will not be the tool used by common folks for recording their daily lives or the commercial sector. It however has been an amazingly fast transition.  The link will take you to the Kai Ryssdal's Marketplace interview with Mr. Burley.

Amazon Link- To purchase the "Analog" Book

Disappearance of Darkness - Book Trailer

The decline of analog photograpy- The Dissapearance of Darkness

As many of you know I have had an interest in photography since I was a kid. I had my first darkroom in the basement of my parents house when I was in 7th or 8th grade and continued to do film photography well through architecture school. Along with another prized possession, my Bach Stradivarius trumpet, my Nikon F and a bunch of lenses I had accumulated were stolen from my first house and for at least a time put an end to my photography hobby. Photography in the intervening years transformed and shortly after we started Oculus Inc., the architecture firm I own with my wife Lisa in 1994, digital camera's such as the Sony Mavica came onto the scene. For pure practicality and utility digital imaging was the way to go as we could immediately share and use the images for work. Photography for me had become both utilitarian and snapshots. Quick captures of project information or kids, family and events. Not seriously working to capture crafted artistic images. While I had been given a replacement film camera it was already pragmatically obsolete as it was much easier to use, even the sluggish, point and shoot digitals for taking work and family photographs. In the intervening decade film sales plummeted. Mirroring the decline of their analog devices/techniques such as hand drafting, typewriting, vinyl records and such, the analog photo industry almost evaporated over night. The speed of its transformation/decline has really been unprecedented in the history of technology. Today while there are very likely more images than ever being taken/captured film for most part is technically obsolete. Yesterday I downloaded and App on my Iphone which is Kodak's limp attempt to promote its very few remaining of analog film products. What was so immediately apparent was just how irrelevant to the society and economy this product has become. The last significant "volume" of film use/manufacture is for the movie industry which will likely be essentially film free for commercial purposes by 2015. Certainly there are a hand full of users who will continue to use film as their chosen media. Film is still capable of creating some of the best, most powerful images. It for the most part has not changed, unless it is no longer manufactured, but the world, technology and the society around it has. I have been seriously considering purchasing a Graflex "Speed Graphic" as a more convenient large format 4x5 camera to my Sinar F. I find the Sinar very difficult to use in the field where most of my artistic photography takes place. In the course of researching the Speed Graphic camera it has become even more apparent that film is still declining. I was researching less expensive black and white films to  use for example and I discovered that Photokemika or Efke had recently, August 2012, stopped production. I had assumed, wrongly it appears, that smaller offbeat companies like this would be able to remain alive serving a boutique market. It appears there is not enough profit for them to repair ancient film coating equipment and it was easier to just close up shop. With both movies and medicine making their last moves away from silver based analog film will there be enough product manufactured available for the dedicated art photographers to continue to practice their art form?

Today I came upon a serious photographer/writer who has been working on a project for that last few years regarding the decline of analog film photography industry. His name is Walter Burley. He has just had a book published about the project "The Disappearance of Darkness". I hope anyone who reads this does not think I am trying to predict the end of film or that I am supporting it. Quite the contrary. I am saddened by this the way I would be saddened by hearing of the passing of an old friend. But my sadness can't change reality. I am wondering however if I should make a continued effort to pursue film as a viable media. Should I invest more in one more camera that I may not use or which film may not be available for? I have a bunch of gear based around the use of film which would all become moot should the materials become too limiting. Already my preferred film choice E100G has been discontinued by Kodak and Fuji will base the continued manufacture of product on financial/commercial viability. We might be artists but they are a company who's purpose is to make money not art.

 

In any case look at Mr. Burley's site and his book. It is serious work about a subject that I value very much. Walter Burley - The Dissapearance of Darkness

Kodak Bankruptcy

Kodak Bankruptcy Announcement

Kodak Retina I -
Image From Ken Rockwell.com
This was my first camera. All manual!!!

Well the long anticipated announcement of Kodak corporation's bankruptcy has become a reality. The above link will take you to the basic facts of the bankruptcy filing. For those of us who grew up with photography and film or still still use film for some of our business or artistic work this is more bad news. How bad this is and what impact it will truly have will shake out over time. Without having any first hand knowledge or detailed announcements yet from the company about product production or availability it is safe to say that it is almost certainly going to mean some future changes. American Airlines, one of the latest bankruptcies is now reducing flights on unprofitable routes. Kodak will do the equivalent. This was likely a long time coming and so many factors have contributed. The radical very real growth of digital imaging, the speed that digital photography transformed into a high quality medium, the Internet, consumer convenience, poor corporate decision making, a global recession and increased capital standards by lenders where likely all factors. Still it is sad to see this iconic brand of a company faced with such a humiliating situation. Kodak, love them or hate them, have been an icon of the photography industry and of the American industrial landscape for all of my 50 plus years of life. My first direct experience with their products was as a junior high school kid shooting my first 35mm film with my father's Kodak Retina camera. A camera he picked up during his time in Germany during WW II. I was hooked and shortly after that my dad and I built a home darkroom developing Tri-X and Plus-X film in the basement of my parents house. Shooting pictures for the high school year book and experimenting in photography all through high school. Then taking photography again during architecture school. Photography and imaging, seemed to be there either as snap shots at family events, of finished projects at work or as art unto itself for its own sake. Kodak was always the primary provider of the consumable materials.

But then digital became all the rage and justifiably so. With the Internet everything changed. Photography transformed but so also did almost everything else from the analog world into new digital. Graphics, music, photography, architecture, banking, medicine, publishing, news they all have seen radical transformation as part of this virtual digital revolution. Ones and zeros. Who would have ever anticipated the impact of these changes 20 years ago. Possibly Nicholas Negroponte at MIT but not most of the rest of us. Certainly not the business leaders of Kodak well or maybe they did (read to the end). The death of the consumer film industry happened suddenly for Kodak and many others. If I am an example one day I was shooting film and taking it to Walgreens. The next day I was taking digital shots with my pocket sized Di Image and printing them from my network printer. I did no look back at all for a long time. For the next 10-15 years my film cameras were in the storage box replaced by several, ever improving versions of digital cameras. Remember the old Sony Mavica which capture images on a CD ROM? Or Minolta's Di Image cameras? Today I still shoot a lot of digital images with Nikon DSLRs. But look at the Sony NEX 7 to see how far, how small and how high quality, 24 mega pixels, consumer digital cameras have come. Today I shoot way more digital photos then I ever did film images, thousands in fact and almost every human with a cell phone has a digital camera at their beck and call. It is convenient and once the camera is paid for the images are free. Yes you still must pay for printing but I know that I print a very small percentage of the images I shoot and hey I can post them out here on my blog for people to see and yet it is.....FREE! Digital is more ubiquitous then ever and digital photography is not going away any time soon. Or until something better comes along. But that is what happened to Kodak. Something better, very much better came along. Not better in quality per say but better in convenience.

But here I was needing something more. Larger images, better quality and after researching it seemed that film might provide an option. We could not afford a professional and I had a long history with photography. I did not have the high end digital equipment but did have the knowledge and experience to go "old school with film. I needed or wanted high quality images, material cost per didn't matter as long as it was less then the cost of renting high end digital equipment shot. I only needed so many shots and could deal with the "inconvenience" as this is not a profit center for our company.

I had only just returned to film photography at the end of last year and for this very specific reason. I was going to start using a large format 4x5 Sinar F2 camera to photograph some of our finished projects, scan them with a flat bed scanner and have an alternative 100 mega pixel set up. Large format film was the standard for architectural photography for decades and it seemed to offer a very real alternative to buying or renting very expensive high end digital cameras/sensors. I have time and knowledge but am limited on money. Large format film is a "huge" capture surface by comparison, even when compared to the largest best professional equipment. It has properties that are still hard to match even today with the best digital equipment. But as I ramped back into the process and relearned techniques, dusting off knowledge that was long before stored away I realized quickly that the film industry had declined far more then I would have every expected. I found this out the first time I went to buy color transparency or "positive" film. Finding that the old standard Ektichrome was not immediately available. After some some work and some waiting I could locate E100g it's new cousin but availability was spotty and limited. Going on line however I quickly realized that Kodak, Fuji and all the film industry and analog products were in a significant state of transformation. Financial problems abounded and product cancellations abounded. Only a few like Kodachrome made the news. Typically the product would just disappear. Information boards are filled with rumors and panic.

The Kodak announcement is no surprise. Those of us who still want to use film as an option can only hope that they will figure out how to scale production down to make it profitable in smaller runs. Or sell the formula to someone else who will. It is unlikely that volume will ever require running whole plants dedicated to single products or product types. If all goes well production by Kodak or someone else will continue for a number of products color, black and white, movie, sheet film, roll film etc. If they don't manage the bankruptcy well they may end up the way of Polaroid with desired and desirable products just dying. Let us hope for a different conclusion. Apparently a Polaroid pissed off employees where shoving equipment out of second floor loading doors of the plant destroying it thus preventing any future buyer from ever being able to realize a value.

Before you basj Kodak too badly you should first remember that from high in the sky the ground is a long way off. The peak year of film production was apparently 2002. Think about that. In only 10 years a whole process became commercially obsolete! Kodak invented, innovated, created, marketed and profited as a giant for a very long time. The decisions that likely lead to bankruptcy where very likely made at the same time GM was making really bad decisions that lead to their, once unimaginable, bankruptcy. If anyone asks you who invented the digital camera sensor you should tell them. Eastman Kodak of Rochester NY in the good old USA The inventor of the digital camera or CCD sensor

See the information boards at Large Format photograpy and Annalog phototgraphy (APHUG) for more infomration on product availablity and alternatives. I hope film remains available but time and change marchs on!!!