[No] Film at 11

Some folks find it kind of scary and strange that Nikon has announced that it will stop making most of its film cameras in favor of digital cameras. I don't find this so odd; sales of film cameras and film itself has been near moribund for half a decade (ask Kodak about that). Even professional photographers as long ago as 2000 were eagerly pursuing digital SLRs or digital scanning backs for studio cameras. Yes, you'll always have a few Luddites (or, I shoudl say, folks who cling to a older technology), but generally, the market is moving in decidedly digital directions, and has been for years. Not really news.

I don't think this is any stranger than a TV maker saying it has stopped making black-and-white televisions, or a car stereo maker saying it has stopped making 8-track players, or a stereo component maker saying it is moving away from phonographs to focus on CD players (or MP3 players). It's just the inexorable march of technology. I mean, I've never owned a Victrola and likewise I don't expect kids today or tomorrow to have ever owned a film camera.

It's funny; I was talking to Dr. Joe this afternoon and he pointed me to an online editorial which I will not mention, but it included the line "Pundits blithely predicted we'd print all photos and greeting cards on desktops. But it ain't so." No--we're just transferring them digitally and not printing them on anything at all. And if you scroll down, you'll see that an emerging product category is a Wi-Fi-enabled picture frame that will let you upload digital photos. You can even get wearable digital photo "buttons," too. Oh, and the other day Gizmodo had this:

Remember Total Recall, with good old Arnold—when he was still a moviestar? The first scene showed this real cool digital wall/mega-TV thingy I will never forget. Visiting the future zone at the ground floor of the Panasonic Center Tokyo was a flashback to that scene. In the special presentation room is a wall-size, huge screen (twice the size of a 110-inch display), and it’s a touchscreen. The images on the screen change as you touch them (it’s online, of course), and you can choose from an extensive menu of options and tools. It functions not only as a TV and PC, but also as interior decoration by changing the image from a bookshelf for the living room to a graffiti space for the kids’ room. It is supposed to appear on the market around 2010 and the price will be horrendous.

And so it goes.