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Canon has sold its last film camera

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Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#111

Post by snowwrestler »

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…

> What lead are you talking about?

Market share. The estimates I've seen are that between Canon, Nikon, and Sony DSLRs, Canon currently has the largest single share of the market.

Prior to Canon's work with CMOS sensors in the early 2000s, Nikon had the SLR and DSLR market share lead over Canon. (And basically no Sony bodies at all back then.)

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#112

Post by evasote »

exelius wrote: post #109
vvanders wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue there is for Medium/Large format, but that's a whole different ballgame compared to consumer SLRs. Last time I looked the digital back for a Hasselblad was ~$30k.

That’s a small market, and most photogs I know who shoot MF/LF film are using cameras that are 50+ years old (Hasselblads mostly). A digital back can improve workflow, but quality is still better with film at those sizes. These are studio cameras through and through; and I was able to connect a Hasselblad to some el cheapo Chinese lighting setup I bought on Amazon a year ago. That’s backwards compatibility.

Yep - I have a friend who takes pictures of (very expensive, high profile) weddings all around the world with a MF film Hasselblad. They still can't be beat

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#113

Post by jen729w »

Darthy wrote: post #91
carbolite103 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Leica has just discontinued its last "regular" film camera, the M7, a few days ago: https://www.reddotforum.com/content/2018/05/leica-m7-film-ca... All that remains are the purely mechanical Leica MP and M-A film cameras, plus many digital cameras of course.

The MP is a “regular” film camera. It’s the final Mx in the film line, my understanding being that the ‘P’ stands for ‘Perfection’.

If the ISO dial on the back were metal and not plastic, it may well be perfect. I’ve heard of people switching out the dial from older M4/5/6s.

Source: I have one.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#114

Post by wepple »

chuckkir wrote: post #96

I was talking to a friend who recently got into 35mm film cameras. He develops the color film himself, but then immediately scans it in and uses digital tools to work on the images. I left a bit confused; what is he gaining by using film as the medium?

Film has a particular look and feel to it that I’ve absolutely never seen replicated in digital.

I’m confident that one day it probably will be; maybe ML will be up to the task where filters and transforms just can’t do the right job?

Besides that, the process of taking photographs is surprisingly different. You don’t spray and pray - a shutter costs you more than a dollar so you spend more time looking, and learn to hunt with your eyes more. It’s impossible to check your photos on the LCD, so you just get on with photography, and have an element of suspense to find out what you captured. Also, no batteries to go flat. There’s also a forced creativity when working with basic controls like aperture and shutter speed, instead of hundreds of different settings and knobs to get caught up in.

Of course, if I were a profession photographer these would in no way make up for the downsides, so hand me that 5d/d600/M-P, but they’re reasons you may still shoot film and translate to digital to share/store.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#115

Post by lb1lf »

snowwrestler wrote: post #110
anthonybsd wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But their film cameras lagged Nikon in the sophistication of their AF, their automated exposure control, and especially their flash exposure control. I'm sorry, but you are completely off base here. Nikon always had the lead in flash exposure, yes. But in AF and lenses especially? Canon was the first to completely break compatibility with their older (FD mount) lenses which allowed them to have lightning fast autofo…

Canon had high-performance lenses thanks to putting the AF motor in the lense (as I said). But their AF sensors lagged Nikon in their low-light sensitivity and their intelligence with moving objects. This is why most nature photographers did not move from Nikon to Canon until the digital era. Art Wolfe was just about the only big-name nature photographer on Canon for years. EDIT to add about auto exposure: the EOS-1N…

Oooh, the F5.

I've had one for fifteen years plus. To this day, the only camera I've owned which is actually a physical experience to shoot; the AF and film drive motors are actually strong enough for you to feel the torque they develop as you shoot.

(The F5 could officially shoot 8fps; on a fresh set of batteries you would often get nine; this thing could focus, evaluate the exposure, advance the film, stop down the aperture and trigger the shutter _nine_ times a second.)

The metering system can only be described as exquisite; after a few dozen rolls on the F5 I actually got into the (bad!) habit of not bracketing most of my color positive shots - the metering was spot on just about all the time, regardless of tricky conditions.

I think I'll take it out for a shooting session tomorrow, it's been a few months since it last saw any use. Thanks for the reminder!

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#116

Post by cptskippy »

stan_rogers wrote: post #100
anthonybsd wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But their film cameras lagged Nikon in the sophistication of their AF, their automated exposure control, and especially their flash exposure control. I'm sorry, but you are completely off base here. Nikon always had the lead in flash exposure, yes. But in AF and lenses especially? Canon was the first to completely break compatibility with their older (FD mount) lenses which allowed them to have lightning fast autofo…

Yessir. They were first to break compatibility, immediately (ish) after Minolta did it.

True and his transgression was an easy one to make because most people will say "Mi..who?" They merged with Konica sometime in the early 2000s and exited the camera market. Minolta was never considered more than a prosumer camera maker, it's cameras lacked many essential features that professional photographers demanded in their SLRs.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#117

Post by chuckkir »

wepple wrote: post #114
chuckkir wrote: post #96

I was talking to a friend who recently got into 35mm film cameras. He develops the color film himself, but then immediately scans it in and uses digital tools to work on the images. I left a bit confused; what is he gaining by using film as the medium?

Film has a particular look and feel to it that I’ve absolutely never seen replicated in digital. I’m confident that one day it probably will be; maybe ML will be up to the task where filters and transforms just can’t do the right job? Besides that, the process of taking photographs is surprisingly different. You don’t spray and pray - a shutter costs you more than a dollar so you spend more time looking, and learn to…

So it's sort of like the vinyl record thing then? I suspect the difference in photographs that you see is more in the difference between using an enlarger and photo paper vs. a color printer, and in this case I assume he's printing from the processed digital image. Assuming I'm right then he's not getting that advantage but I can see how someone with an enlarger could do things differently.

As for the technique, I agree that it was more exacting back in the film days. I also had much less money then. The net result was that I didn't take a lot of photos I now wished that I had. Although these days that's what we use our phones for so I guess it's not really an issue.

There is a lot of very nice gear available quite cheaply though. Maybe this will be a trend an it's time to buy Kodak stock?

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#118

Post by foobar1962 »

cptskippy wrote: post #116
stan_rogers wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yessir. They were first to break compatibility, immediately (ish) after Minolta did it.

True and his transgression was an easy one to make because most people will say "Mi..who?" They merged with Konica sometime in the early 2000s and exited the camera market. Minolta was never considered more than a prosumer camera maker, it's cameras lacked many essential features that professional photographers demanded in their SLRs.

Sony bought part of the Minolta/ Konica camera business. Minolta had an AF slr very early in the game iirc.

They weren’t pro mainly because they didn’t have an extensive range of lenses ands accessories, and the lenses were mainly slow zooms.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#119

Post by bronson »

gambiting wrote: post #82
bronson wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's true then why does everybody know who they are?

Why would there be a correlation here? Ferrari could disappear tomorrow, and it would have zero effect on the automotive market.

On sales? Sure. But the market as a whole? Ferrari is an outsize innovator, both in technology and design. If they disappeared, you'd notice.

Re: Canon has sold its last film camera

#120

Post by lb1lf »

wl wrote: post #56
vvanders wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue there is for Medium/Large format, but that's a whole different ballgame compared to consumer SLRs. Last time I looked the digital back for a Hasselblad was ~$30k.

Maybe the market for medium format film is better, but my experience with large format is that people practically give the gear away.

That depends. Sure, you can dip your toes in the large format pool quite cheaply (everything, as they say, is relative!) - but the fancier optics and cameras get pretty expensive pretty fast.

(Not to mention the cost of 4x5 or (shudder!) 8x10 processing; B&W is eminently doable in the home, but IMHO where LF really, really shines is with dias film - developing that at home is not for the faint of heart.)

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