Mike Schaeffer's Blog

January 13, 2006

Nikon has just announced its intent to discontinue production of most of its non-Digital cameras. In a digital world, this isn't too suprising, but for someone who grew up with Nikon film cameras, it's a bittersweet thing.

One notable thing about the announcement is that it also includes lenses for large format cameras and enlargers. These are both low volume but highly significant markets. Large format cameras are view cameras, cameras that offer incredible control over perspective as well as the ability to use very large film for very high resolution. A large format camera might have 80 times the negative size of a 35mm SLR: in digital terms that is roughly equivalent to 80 times the number of pixels. Large format cameras are what Ansel Adams used and represent the very highest performance film cameras. If there was one area where film was likely to offer unique value over digital, this was it.