Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

out of the camera business

There have been some interesting developments lately in the camera world. Earlier this month, Nikon announced that it will phase out most of its film cameras in favor of digital cameras. And last week, Konica Minolta announced that it’s getting out of the camera business altogether.

My first camera was a small point-and-shoot Minolta, a Christmas present from Santa when I was in middle school. (Actually, it was my second camera … My first camera was a brick-sized Fisher Price camera that I got when I was in second grade. But the Minolta was my first real camera.)

I didn’t really go whole-hog into photography, though, until about three years ago, when I got my second digital camera, a Canon Powershot Digital Elph S230. I loved being able to futz with settings to produce a desired effect, and, most of all, being able to know right away if a photo had turned out the way I wanted it, rather than going through the expense of having film developed and learning only then that, say, my sister’s eyes were closed in that otherwise perfect family photo. Going digital freed me to experiment, not having to worry about whether I was wasting film with my photos of the mundane.

That said, in the back of my mind I’ve also always wanted to take a black-and-white photography class where I could learn how to develop my own film in a darkroom. There’s something so tangible about a darkroom, where you’re producing a physical copy of your photograph with your own hands, and manipulating the final product with levels of light that you have to learn how to control. It’s much more work-intensive and time-consuming than uploading those digital files to, say, Shutterfly … But there’s a tangible reward at the end, and the knowledge that this print, from shutter click to picture frame, is the product of your work.

One of these days, I’m going to sign up for that class … and hopefully the low-tech methods of developing film haven’t disappeared by the time I do.