It looks like Fuji isn't the only one who is optimistic about the future of film. Carl Zeiss released a very upbeat article about this topic:
... And so does "Hollywood". Carl Zeiss, as a leading supplier of lenses for the motion picture industry, can see day-in day-out, that the vast majority of feature films is still originated on silver halide film. Film is the medium of choice for long-term archiving, and is expected to remain so for the foreseeable future. This is why we are so confident about the future of film.
and Zeiss has backed up their words with action, recently announcing a new series of manual focus lenses for the Nikon mount -- just as Nikon announces they are getting out of the film camera business. Of course there's nothing that says you can't put these lenses on Nikon digital SLRs:
Carl Zeiss AG of Oberkochen, Germany is about to introduce ZF, a new range of interchangeable lenses for Nikon SLR cameras, both analog and digital. ZF lenses bring the highly acclaimed Carl Zeiss image quality to the Nikon SLR camera system, which has been the preferred equipment of millions of professional and ambitious amateur photographers for decades. ZF lenses can also be used on the Sinar m professional digital camera and a multitude of industrial video cameras.The first ZF lens will be the Planar T* 1,4/50 ZF, which, in its Contax RTS version, was rated the world's best fast standard lens by "Popular Photography" in 1999. It will be followed by the Planar T* 1,4/85 ZF, which in its Contax RTS version became known as a great portrait lens and story-teller.
Fuji has also issued an upbeat statement regarding film:
Despite the current challenges, we believe that photography is indispensable to humankind because of its ability to express such precious things as joy, sadness, love and the full spectrum of emotions. Our mission is to preserve and nurture the culture of photography to meet the needs of our longtime customers. Silver halide photography, which is fundamental to photography, has advantages over digital in such areas as power of expression, long term storage capability, reasonable prices, easy handling and a highly established and convenient photo development and print infrastructure.We intend to continue our silver halide photography business and to further cultivate the culture of photography, and in so doing, continue to support our customers and retailers and all those who enjoy photography.
I'm moderately optimist, but only for the black and white film, I don't find too much reasons to keep with color film... :-/
I agree. B&W will most likely remain a domain for film for some time to come. I'll be truly sad when Tri-X is no longer available, which may be sooner than anyone expects.
Interesting conversation with Dr. Scherle
of Zeiss. Note the comment on the ZS lenses for Canon EOS.
Zeiss
Camera Lens News
Issue No. 23
January 2006
http://www.zeiss.de/de/photo/home_e.nsf/
Well there is some hope for us Nikon users out here. Zeiss Glass will be expensive but at least it can be used on all our modern bodies. The Canon System is still looking like the way to go.