Film Is Dead

SA*

The Online Photographer is relieved to report that film continues to go downhill. Soon it will be widely unavailable, and everyone will be shooting digital, as they should. Film is inconvenient and, what's worse, old-fashioned.

We all should get with the fashions!

Printed books are going downhill, too. Many texts can now be found online, and there will be less and less need for bulky paper versions. Some libraries are "guillotining" rare old books—chopping off the spine, scanning the pages, and then throwing the pages away. No longer needed. Sounds modern. Good for them.

No one likes tube audio amplifiers any more, either. Transistors are much more efficient, and they measure better! Less distortion, more power. Everyone likes that.

Of course, CDs replaced vinyl years ago, and now CDs themselves are in steep decline. (Did you know? It's true.) Why? Well, do you know how many MP3's you can store on an iPod?

Back to photography, few people want to trouble themselves with platinum/palladium prints, dye transfer, or other alternative processes. If people were still doing such work then the rest of us might have to look at it. No, that's all gone the way of the Dodo, not to mention the way of copperplate etching, stone lithography, woodcut, and other obsolete, antiquated methods of image reproduction. Good riddance.

Wooden boats are dead too. Nobody likes wooden boats, and no wonder, when you can have boats made of shiny, gleaming Fiberglas. Resin molds are where it's at. Wooden boats take so much longer to make and require (ugh!) maintenance.

And on that topic, who could want a boat that's powered by wind? How primitive.

(Why do they think God made diesels, anyway?)

Of course, view cameras are a thing of the past. That's natural. You can perform the equivalent of view camera movements in Photoshop, with less hassle. And why else would someone use a view camera? Am I right?

Natural fibers are no longer valued for clothing. We can now do just as well with petroleum-derived synthetics, can we not? You have to iron cotton. Silk. Linen. Wool. Bah.

People used to have to make pottery and ceramics by hand. You gotta be putting us on.

Furniture can now be made by CNC machines, using dimensionally stable composites, veneers, and plastic varnishes. Much of it can be cleverly designed to be flat-packed, too, making it easy to ship. There is no longer much call for skilled craftspeople making furniture out of solid wood by hand, the only real advantage of which is beauty.

Food technology has also greatly improved in recent years. We can now make an astonishing variety of foods almost completely out of corn. For instance: orange drink mix, which can be 100% corn-derived—even the citric acid in orange drink is made from corn. Cool, huh? With chemical flavorings, it's no longer necessary to worry about the quality of raw ingredients in cooking.

Believe it or not, cars used to have manual transmissions. That is, you had to shift gears using a hand lever, coordinating the motion with a foot-pedal clutch. Whew. (Some such cars only had two seats, if you can believe that. And no cup-holders.) Someone please explain the appeal. Now we drive proper modern vehicles that are as tall as a full-grown man, are built on nice strong truck frames, use lots and lots of fuel (which is important, as fuel is plentiful) and can transport a whole Little League team at once. As a result, driving is more fun than ever.

And while we're on the topic, let's thank our lucky stars that no one has to ride horses any more. Transportation should not require exercise, and it should certainly not have a personality. Horses are going downhill, too, just like film. Maybe they'll soon go the way of the dodo.

Let's hope humankind continues to improve convenience and eliminate the need for craft. Most of all, it's important to limit choice. We wouldn't want to support alternatives, especially alternatives that are old-fashioned and require care and effort. If we don't practice them ourselves, it's important that no one else practice them either.

And anyway, some film doesn't even record color.

The prosecution rests.


Posted by: MIKE JOHNSTON

*Satire Alert