If you spend time around me, you’ve likely heard me lament the eclipse of the photographic film industry as digital cameras become All Powerful or whatever. It’s actually happening a lot faster than I expected. The first major life-changing blow was Fuji, who stopped making their flat-out awesome reversal (Type R) paper several years ago. That pretty much single-handedly killed my number one hobby, which was printing my own slide prints at Portland’s UDevelop rental darkrooms. I got past that only to have Fuji announce the end of Fuji Velvia 50 (RVP), which I genearlly regard as the Best Slide Film Ever and shoot about 90% of the time. So what am I to do? Am I really to accept their 100ISO Velvia replacement? Am I really so inflexible that I can’t?

Our recent move puts me within about six blocks of Citizen’s Photo, the place where I have taken my E6 (slide) film for years and years. They have 2-1/2-hour turnaround (anywhere else, you’re looking at days if not a week) and do an amazing job. But it’s a bittersweet time. I am waiting for the day when Citizen’s packs it in and starts outsourcing their E6.

With this in mind, and considering its parallels to vinyl buffs and perhaps my penchant for letterpress printing (versus digital offset printing, which is probably a thousand times quicker and easier), I have to posit what the future is for film. Here are my wacky theories:

1) In the end, there wll be a few film manufacturers. My bet is 2-5.
2) Those who remain in the film business might not be the ones we expect. I’d like it to be Fuji, but it may well be someone like Ilford.
3) Film will be more expensive.
4) The quality of film will be universally high.
5) Remaining film stocks will be almost exclusively professional grade. I expect to see stuff like Kodak 400 go away.
6) The consumer base will be a niche collection of artists, a few diehard wedding photographers, and perhaps science applications.
7) Large corporations with a film capacity may spin off the film branch into its own company.

Let’s see if I get any right. You guys got ideas, too?