> Sadly, the numbers are against us. The fact that it is slowly starting to
> happen is an indicator.
Maybe, maybe not, because you can't extrapolate saturation. Mark Twain wrote
a funny essay in which he calculated the rate at which the Mississippi river
was getting shorter, as the result of engineers shortening "S" loops by
cutting more direct channels. He ends by marveling that at that rate, by
2012 the river would be twelve feet long. (I may have the numbers misquoted,
but you get the point.)
Similarly, you can prove that right now, digital is growing. At some lesser
rate than its total growth, it's taking customers from film. But what if
only 80% of current film users will EVER switch to digital? That would leave
some market for film.
Similar example: when point-and-shoots were taking over the camera market,
SLR sales dropped precipitously. It was tempting to say that "at this rate,
SLRs will be extinct by 20XX." In fact, there are somewhere between 300,000
and 1,000,000 SLR buyers who haven't switched over to point and shoots, and
that number has stayed relatively stable for a number of years now (even
during years when the p/s market has grown). It's true that SLRs no longer
sell in the millions, but it's not true that the SLR has died entirely. As
we all know. And it hasn't exactly affected the development of the SLR
adversely.
So it's possible that some "core" of film users may continue to prefer film,
no matter how good digital gets. It's possible that some percentage of
photographers may use both. As the film market shrinks, it may be good to
remember that we really don't know how MUCH it will shrink.
The other point to remember is that people have been predicting that "film
will be dead in five years" for at least twenty years. It's a very common
predicition--everybody seems to like to repeat it. But it's a canard.
--Mike
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