Carver Mead is not only a pioneer in VLSI technology but he also spent some time in the 90s trying to develop an electronic retina.

Reading your comments about technique and the craft of lighting and mood reminds me how inspired I was by that film, "Visions of Light".

I think film will be with us for a LONG time yet.

We might see consumer-level 35mm films and 110 instamatics and Polaroids disappear, but hobbyists and professionals will be using film for a long time yet.

I've got a second uncle, Lee Friedlander who's a fanatic pro photographer. I doubt he'd even consider trying digital. He has a whole lifetime of techniques that are 35mm specific.

Someday there will be as great a body of technique around digital photograpy, and then 35mm will be as rare as 8 x 10 plates are today.

Edited by author 02-11-2002 02:40 PM
They've been saying video will replace film since the sixties. There are still many qualities of light that video does not capture in a like manner as film, and the artistic and painting qualities of capturing that light with film have been proven superior since the birth of video. What is important is not that one 'replaces' the other. There are optimal uses for each format, and each has an ideal purpose. Even if the mainstream substitutes video for film in many uses, exposing film is as much a craft as it ever was. It's like saying aluminium will replace wood. There are places it's more optimal, but wood is wood.

For years my friends and I have always held to belief that one day 'video would be better than film', but, honestly, I never thought I'd live to see the end of the film era. It's sort of sad, really.