AUGUST 2006 IN
RICK ASTER’S WORLD
It may come as a surprise to some that the photographic film market still exists. With digital cameras now available for about the price of a pair of shoes, why would anyone still be using a film camera?
Part of the answer, of course, is found in professional photography. The high resolution and other performance qualties of film assure its continued use in selected professional applications, but professional photography is a tiny segment of the total photography market. It is not enough by itself to keep the film factories running. The larger answer is found in the photography habits of the general public.
You can see what’s happening to the film business by going to the supermarket and looking at the changes in the film display. The display could be smaller than before — perhaps film is no longer a bigger category than batteries — but more importantly, the product mix it shows is quite different than what you would find a few years ago.
If you went to the film display looking for a broad selection of 35mm film — the most popular format of photographic film — you would be disappointed. You’ll find 35mm film, but look closely, and you’ll find that most of it is already loaded into disposable cameras. It is the disposable camera that has, for the time being, saved the film industry.
If the disposable camera seems like a strange product concept, it helps to remember that film has always been, by nature, disposable. You can use a roll of film only once; after you’re done with the pictures that come from it, you might as well throw it away. So why not have a throwaway camera too?
And disposable cameras aren’t exactly thrown in the trash when you take them to the photo lab for developing. Instead, they’re sent back to the factory where the parts are tested and, to a significant extent, reused to make new disposable cameras. So they don’t represent quite the environmental insult that they might seem at first glance.
Disposable cameras aren’t for everyday picture-taking. If you just want to e-mail a picture to someone, it’s twice as fast to use a digital camera — and you save the cost of supplies, at that. Instead, people mostly use disposable cameras in unusual situations where digital cameras aren’t so easy to use. Disposable cameras pop up at places like these:
It could be a decade before engineers make digital cameras that can match the price and picture quality of disposable film cameras. In the meantime, the disposable camera gives film a niche that it can call its own.
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