Canon has sold its last film camera • Hacker News Board

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#31

Post by ekianjo » Thu, May 31, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #27

ekianjo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there is a market. Look at used cameras, they sell at very high prices. There is no "mass market", but there is definitely one with quite a few people willing to pay premium for high end film cameras.

That's why I said "in the scheme of things". It's a tiny business. I love cameras and will probably have a medium format digital camera at some point, but it's a tiny business that can't move the needle in a $34b company like Canon. Put another way, if over night Canon had won 100% market share of all film cameras it would not be noticeable in the next quarterly earnings report.

It's like saying Ferrari doesn't matter market-wise because they sell only a few thousands cars a year. The same goes for large format film photography.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#32

Post by mauvehaus » Thu, May 31, 2018, 4:56 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #16

acomjean wrote: post #6

As someone who shot and developed a lot of film (I was a photo editor at a daily college paper..) I won’t miss it. Though printing black and white pictures was kinda fun, they often had dust and getting the exporsure and contrast right was tedious. I don’t miss film. Though there were a lot less pictures taken and shared before everyone had a camera on their phone. A different time in a lot of ways.

At one point I was probably spending 10s of hours a week doing B&W darkroom work so I have a certain nostalgia for it. I also spent lots of time playing with developer chemistry, etc. But, no, I don't really miss it. It was an enjoyable hobby but it was also a pain to the degree that it was a process you had to go through in order to arrive at the final photograph. And color slides were just always a finicky and fair…

I've never shot much transparency film, and I've definitely never developed it. I guess my favorite part of shooting slides is that you can't fix things in the darkroom. What you get off the camera is what you've got (absent digital manipulation, of course).

As a pretty casual photographer (I don't have a darkroom or access to one, and have never really been more than a roll a month shooter), that means I've both been surprised at how well shots have come out, and disappointed at others. It's an expensive feedback loop, to be sure.

I won't defend slide film for more serious work, but I love it for my own casual use.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#33

Post by msbarnett » Thu, May 31, 2018, 4:56 PM UTC

bitL wrote: post #17

snowwrestler wrote: post #2

I'm not surprised; in SLRs at least, Canon was never the dominant film camera company with the biggest customer base. Their SLR business did not catch up to and pass Nikon until the digital era. Canon's decision to put the AF motor in the lens helped them in verticals that use huge telephotos (sports, mostly). But their film cameras lagged Nikon in the sophistication of their AF, their automated exposure control, and…

What lead are you talking about? Canon's sensors were a running joke in the past 5 years comparing to Nikon (that used modified Sony sensors), manufactured in 3 generation-older process than their competition. Seeing e.g. D750 vs 5D MkIII in low-light was an eye opener. The only selling point of Canon remained their unique "pleasant" color mapping (and photographers getting stuck with older Canon-only lenses/strobes…

Canon had an early lead in sensor noise (they bet big on CMOS early on when most of the market was treating CCD as the future), from the early 2000s up until Sony moved to on-chip ADC around 2009-2010 and Nikon adopted their sensors wholesale.

It's worth noting that Canon has moved to on-chip ADC and that there's now only around a stop difference in noise between their sensors and Sony's, but from 2010-2016ish, Sony was certainly far ahead of the game.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#34

Post by gnarcoregrizz » Thu, May 31, 2018, 4:57 PM UTC

bitL wrote: post #17

snowwrestler wrote: post #2

I'm not surprised; in SLRs at least, Canon was never the dominant film camera company with the biggest customer base. Their SLR business did not catch up to and pass Nikon until the digital era. Canon's decision to put the AF motor in the lens helped them in verticals that use huge telephotos (sports, mostly). But their film cameras lagged Nikon in the sophistication of their AF, their automated exposure control, and…

What lead are you talking about? Canon's sensors were a running joke in the past 5 years comparing to Nikon (that used modified Sony sensors), manufactured in 3 generation-older process than their competition. Seeing e.g. D750 vs 5D MkIII in low-light was an eye opener. The only selling point of Canon remained their unique "pleasant" color mapping (and photographers getting stuck with older Canon-only lenses/strobes…

Canon's sensors are decent, not a running joke as you say. But yeah they are known more for their colors (which is actually very important). Sony has destroyed the competition with their sensors though, and has really pushed the boundaries, at least until recently with that 50 mpix sensor that Canon released. Haven't researched that much though, I'm a few years behind myself.

That said, Canon has historically been the winner with their lens selection, and IMO UX. Sony is quickly catching up, or even surpassing them though with e-mount, especially now that more 3rd party lens manufacturers are killing it (Sigma). I also like EVFs more than OVFs since you get a better exposure preview and focus peeking for manual focus. I really, really, really wanted to buy a Sony a7, but I ended up buying a Canon 6d due to lens selection a few years ago (and the Canon beat them on price). I'm a huge fan of mirrorless tech and I'm actually surprised that SLRs are still around.

The camera body is being commoditized. I'm a canon fan and hope they catch up with a full frame mirrorless, my buddy who follows the tech more said he's heard rumors that they are releasing one next year?

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#35

Post by hamitron » Thu, May 31, 2018, 4:59 PM UTC

mauvehaus wrote: post #24

This is a shame. For professionals, it has long made sense to make the transition to digital. For the amateurs of the world and those of us doing it for the sheer joy of it, film is unsurpassed. Developing B&W prints is as close to magic as I've experienced. For those who don't know, B&W paper isn't sensitive to red light, so once you've exposed the paper, you can put it in the developer and actually watch the image…

The only reason it made sense to transition to digital is the workflow. Its more efficient to shoot weddings on digital so you can turn out a product faster.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#36

Post by carbolite103 » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:00 PM UTC

_ph_ wrote: post #26

This is not very surprising news - very recently I was wondering who still sells film cameras. Digital has surpassed film in almost every way. It is however quite scary to see technology completely go away which was so common not long ago, sometimes even completely lost as technology. You can’t buy proper Polaroid film any more, many other important film materials are completely gone as well.

As far as 35mm systems it's pretty much just Leica and Nikon at the moment, though I would imagine that Nikon is close to discontinuing their F6 flagship soon. Thankfully many 35mm cameras from the 70s and 80s are engineering masterpieces that will likely keep functioning well into the second half of this century. I just hope that companies will continue making film stocks for them.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#37

Post by macintux » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:01 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #31

jonknee wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I said "in the scheme of things". It's a tiny business. I love cameras and will probably have a medium format digital camera at some point, but it's a tiny business that can't move the needle in a $34b company like Canon. Put another way, if over night Canon had won 100% market share of all film cameras it would not be noticeable in the next quarterly earnings report.

It's like saying Ferrari doesn't matter market-wise because they sell only a few thousands cars a year. The same goes for large format film photography.

Ferrari doesn't matter market-wise.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#38

Post by sureaboutthis » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:02 PM UTC

mauvehaus wrote: post #24

This is a shame. For professionals, it has long made sense to make the transition to digital. For the amateurs of the world and those of us doing it for the sheer joy of it, film is unsurpassed. Developing B&W prints is as close to magic as I've experienced. For those who don't know, B&W paper isn't sensitive to red light, so once you've exposed the paper, you can put it in the developer and actually watch the image…

Note that "professionals" still use film, particularly in the high end art market with large format and 'view' cameras in particular. One might think that's "niche" but there are a lot of them out there.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#39

Post by jacquesm » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:03 PM UTC

sjm-lbm wrote: post #9

jonknee wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that and there is almost no market for new film cameras.

Right. Most advances Canon has made in SLRs (say, the AF upgrades the comment you are replying to above mentions) could be easily 'backported' to a film camera: in a real SLR, the sensor isn't exposed to light until the picture is ready to be taken and focus/exposure settings have already been decided, so it's not like those features rely on the digital image sensor in any way. The reason why Canon doesn't make a fil…

The reason why AF for film is hard is because AF tends to move around the point of best focus and moving a lens is terribly slow compared to the inter-frame time. So you simply don't have the time to figure out what the ideal focus is while shooting film, especially not if camera and/or subject are moving, which is sort of the whole reason for shooting video to begin with.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#40

Post by twblalock » Thu, May 31, 2018, 5:03 PM UTC

hamitron wrote: post #35

mauvehaus wrote: post #24

This is a shame. For professionals, it has long made sense to make the transition to digital. For the amateurs of the world and those of us doing it for the sheer joy of it, film is unsurpassed. Developing B&W prints is as close to magic as I've experienced. For those who don't know, B&W paper isn't sensitive to red light, so once you've exposed the paper, you can put it in the developer and actually watch the image…

The only reason it made sense to transition to digital is the workflow. Its more efficient to shoot weddings on digital so you can turn out a product faster.

There are a lot of reasons it made sense: getting to see your photos instantly instead of waiting for (and paying for) film development, the ability to change the white balance after photos are taken, not lugging a bunch of film around, not worrying about airport x-rays ruining your film, getting a digital copy of your photos without using a scanner, and many other very big advantages.