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[OM] Re: fast film

Subject: [OM] Re: fast film
From: "Bill Pearce" <bspearce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2002 08:14:56 -0500
"IMHO, the demise of the slow films is a result of the ubiquitous P&S and
Wunderziegel mondo 18-1000mm AF zoom lenses that are, by necessity of
design, hideously slow.  Add to that the equally hideously weak integral
pop-up flashes they have.  It has driven their users, who buy much more film
than we do, into ISO 200 to 800 films just to make photographs
outdoors on an overcast day or in open shade, and when indoors to get more
than 6 feet of range out of their crippled integral flashes (doesn't fix
their gross red-eye problems though).

- -- John"

John,

Dead on. This is the best explanation I've seen in a long time of the world
as it is today. There have been several trends over the last ten or so years
in film. First, the lion's share of R&D money has gone to negative films. As
the saying goes, the manufacturers have "gone where the food is." The market
for neg films is where the money's at. Development has been driven in two
ways, grain and speed.

Grain? Look at the development of fine grained films, and compare to the
introduction of APS, with its disc film like neg size. And speed? Look, as
John has pointed out, at the lenses in today's P&S cameras.

This may fall in the be careful what you ask for catagory. We have all
wanted fine grained, faster films. We now have them, and most of us, I'm
sure, have used them. What we didn't expect, was the loss of their slow
brothers. Guess we'll all be investing in ND filters.

There was a post somewhere a few weeks ago that said that last year, Max 800
accounted for 600f Kodak's total film sales. Can this be true?

Bill Pearce



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