Hello Don, 1 - What we can't tell with Adorama and B&H is what is in stock vs how fast stock is turning. My local camera store sells everything Nikon and pentax 35mm and Medium Format. When I bought my *istD last November from them, they told me that film camera sales had polarized. Basically Nikon N80 and below were selling fairly normally. Anything above that virtually dried up 6 months before I bought my *istD. They were selling D1xxxx and D100's as fast as they got them in, but N90, F100, F5 sales were dismal. So what I am saying is that Adorama and B&H may have a good stock of pro level film bodies, but they may be selling very slowly. Something we can't tell except for the general trends.
2 - My local lab has offered 2000X3000 forever. It is the size that the Agfa D-labs normally scan at to print your film. Merely a matter of burning the images to CD. 3 - Again, hard to tell why - demand or marketing by the film companies. My local shop doesn't stock anything by Kodak because of the hassle of dealing with them. They found no real loss of sales by just using Fuji. Perhaps a more hungry film manufacture is now catering to your shop - or perhaps demand for those types of film is up. Again need to see how fast the inventory is turning. 4 - One angle that hasn't been dwelt upon much is the fact that a large percentage of working pros are switching from medium format to digital. They are selling their old equipment for a song. Someone is buying the equipment. My hunch is that serious hobbyists are getting a great deal and moving up in image quality. This could temporarily cause a resurgence in sales of "pro" film and processing. Realistically, all MF film is pro grade. Cost/availability/inconvenience will be the long term death of the film/processing arena. Can't say how long it will take, but at some point, it will become a niche product. Look for the time when the big retailers get rid of their film processors to be the signal of the turning point. They will find that dealing with the film processor isn't cost effective anymore - due to staff and space vs volume that they do with it. -- Best regards, Bruce Wednesday, August 25, 2004, 5:24:10 AM, you wrote: DS> 1.) Adorama still stocks several very high dollar pro 35 slrs. DS> 2.) My local camera shop added 2000x3000 35mm scanning to their lower DS> quality scanning, they have also just added another fridge for pro films. DS> 3.) The local shop is also now stocking 6 more types of 35 and 120 film. DS> 4.) I have recieved 4 e-mails in the last month offering "pro" 35mm DS> processing and printing. DS> I have to agree that digital will win in the end, but the above indicate DS> that it won't be real soon. DS> At least not where I live. DS> No one would be interested in a several thousand dollar 35 slr, or adding DS> $20.00/roll scanning if film is going to die next year. DS> Don
