Niall,
it’s sunday now and I have some time <img src='http://forum.fotoimpex.de/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':P' />
Regarding to your question there are hundreds of threads in german newsgroups who deal with this topic- as well as in english groups.
People tend to expect the worst and already talk about the analoge photography being dead.
But if you take a close look these people are usually not Fotografen or actually involved in the industry- rather they are digital camera freaks and shouting on public internet forums.
Real magazines or knowledgeable authors usually come to the conclusion analoge will consolidate down to a certain size and then remain as a special interest market while the mass markets are shifting to digital.
Thus we can expect a decrease in the availability of amateur colour products very soon.
This market makes about 80-90% of the whole analoge market and since this is shrinking fast all companies like Kodak and Agfa have tremendous problems.
If the b/w market was to decrease these companies would only be little or not at all affected.
This is why I would like to separate my answer into 3 sections.
1) Cameras
2) Colour amateur products
3) b/w films and papers
Obviously FOTOIMPEX is mainly interested in number 3.
Number 1 will probably consolidate to highest quality and things digital can’t do (e.g. large Format or panoramic - try to bend a chip 360 degrees- etc.) and to a market made of people who just like the feel and click of a good analoge apparatus. Also don’t forget the equipment sales which are almost never captured by those statistics of number of cameras being sold. Analoge cameras are very robust and usually can expect (a certain quality given) a lifetime of 100 years and more.
Number 2 is likely to vanish except for those areas where analoge has an advantage over digital (e.g. it is almost always much cheaper and often even faster).
Number 3 has not been affected by digital much if we are looking at our artists and hobby market (excluding industrial film, the graphics industry, Xray and any other commercial use of film).
This market has been a niche since the early 80ies and definitely since all press photographers stopped using b/w when newspapers started to print in colour over the 90ies.
Analoge enthusiasts actually had no reason other than personal preference to become involved in b/w since then -thus giving them no such reason to stop doing it and shifting to digital now.
It is a totally different experience to use a film expose it, go to the darkroom, hear the water running in the dark, smell the developer and gelatine feel the fibre based paper sensing the spirit of Adams and Weston while you are shaking your trays.
You are actually producing a piece of art. You are using all your senses- have control over the process can make mistakes- learn from them and the whole process suddenly makes sense and can be captured by your brain by just looking at what happens.
This is not the case with digital photography. Digital photography does not smell, ist fast and efficient and who knows what made the image pop up on the other side of the camera in the screen ? Electricity ? Silicon sand ? Elvis ?
This is ideal for people who don’t care about all the background and who are perfectly satisfied to get a happy snap in seconds.
Whoever went through the whole process of studying how to develop your own film, setting up a darkroom and starting to do printing finally holding the dripping wet but perfect print in his hands (of a picture he shot at least 5 hours ago) simply can’t get this satisfaction out of any instant image producing "fraction of a second"- digital process.
The celebration of slowliness and letting your phantasy go- relax and think about your image it won’t be ready before 5 hours anyways. All this is important and forces you to concentrate and think before you press the shutter.
Having said all this before here comes my answer to your question: "As long as there are people out there who want to buy b/w films, papers and chemicals they will be available".
The process is so simple that the whole production on a small scale could theoretically be done in a garage (certain limitations involved).
It does not matter if Kodak’s shares fall or raise. This matters only to Kodaks strategic decisions on planning the production. Same for Agfa, Fuji and Ilford.
And it even is not a bad sign if these companies now spend most of their research money on inkjet. They have to. It’s a new market where they are not leaders yet. In b&w they are market leaders and there is little they have to do to keep the position. So any smart company leader will invest just as much funds as necessary to keep this position and spend the rest on becoming number one in a new future mass market.
All these so called "indicators" used by those people who want to persuade the world analoge was dead are not such indicators if you look at them closely. Rather they are facts which make sense as a reaction onto current market realities.
And let’s be honest: Who cares about 9x12 cm drugstore colour prints for 9 cents and happy snap 39,59 cameras ?
They are the majority of the market and will probably disappear sooner or later.
There is one important market impact though which will also strike b/w (I have said this several times before in this forum in German): the production volumes of the raw chemicals and base materials.
As some of these chemicals and bases are used for both b/w and colour the decreasing colour print film market will lead to price increases and the loss in availability of certain raw ingredients.
Thus some very high tech products involving certain very pure and complicated formularies will disappear.
Also RC paper might eventually become more expensive than fibre based paper (due to an increase in base price).
But I think all these price increases are in a range that no one has a reason to stop using it. Digital will very probably stay more expensive all the time as it is a much more complex and costly process in general and there are no hard facts why analoge printing should ever be more expensive than digital as long as inkjet papers don’t start using a base which just cannot be used for coating it with silver nitrate and gelatine (currently it’s the same just that Inkjet paper has some special ingredients in the coating and -obviously- is not sensitized).
If small and flexible companies like efke and forte make it over the next 5 years of price dumping by Agfa and Kodak they are looking into a very prosperous future after the big players decided to pull out because a market of 900 million USD per year worldwide is peanuts to them.
They will be the suppliers of b/w products for the future. If they won’t make it there will be new factories built. Wherever there is a demand someone will make things happen to supply it.
Cheers,
Mirko
Galery: too much server space needed OR image quality will be of a kind that it can’t be considered serious :-((
