This Surprised Me

I love digital cameras, largely because I never remember to take film to be developed. I download the picture, and, poof, it's done. But I'm not much of a photographer; I got an "A" in my high school photography class mainly because I didn't accidentally kill myself in the darkroom; it had nothing to do with photographic talent.

My daughter, on the other hand, seems to have inherited something of my grandparents' skill in the area. And she loves film, probably for the same reasons I prefer vinyl records to CDs.

So I always figured eventually film cameras would find the same niche that vinyl music has today; the province of the epicurean, the artist and the pro.

I was wrong, apparently.

The prospect of digital cameras completely replacing their film counterparts, once taken for granted, may be fading fast.

The price and complexity of digital cameras, and competition from cell-phone cameras, have some predicting that unit sales of digital cameras will begin to decline as soon as 2007 and that future digital camera purchases will be largely to replace existing models.

Christopher Chute, an analyst at IDC in Framingham, Mass., believes that only about 55 percent of U.S. households will ever own a stand-alone digital camera.

I have a fairly cheapo little digital camera that works...modestly well. I'll be impressed when digital SLRs drop into the same range where you can now find a film SLR...

Posted by Mitch at May 27, 2005 06:55 AM | TrackBack