Raining here in Tokyo

I can recommend, watching the movie "home", which is the best documentary on that topic, I think ( not mentioning our hobby in particular though ).

Not only educational, it's really enjoyable to watch, just from the visual aspect, containing breath taking pictures of our planet. It also focuses on a very important point: Our planet is a very complex ecological system, where everything is connected.

Very beautiful movie. I really enjoyed watching it.

Mickey,

I agree with all of your beautiful words. I would just wish, that they wouldn't need to be a R.I.P. speech

Bob is right, I think. Interesting question though.

I never ever thought about this issue seriously yet, but I would definitely consider the "short lifespan" as a problem somehow. The trash mountain of electronic goods is tremendous, at least here in Japan ... and the disposal complicated. You have to pay for the disposal of bigger items like TVs, but smaller goods just go to the normal garbage, I guess. Actually a little bit pervert but an expression of our consumer society, they have huge garbage boxes here in Tokyo at the entrances of electronic or multimedia stores, filled with digital cameras and cellphones every day. Plus ... here in Japan, people do have the very bad habbit, that they never use rechargable batteries. It was really hard for me to get some and wherever I asked for it, people looked at me as if I am an alien or so. One way batteries are damn cheap here. You can get 10 for a dollar .. like umbrellas ( which is a different topic of course ). People buy them somewhere when it starts raining and when the rain stops, the streets look like that:


after the rain by bokuwanihongasuki, on Flickr

Disgusting, isn't it.

I don't disagree with that, Dave ... and you said it right: A niche market. That's what film has become in general. However, there is still a demand and if Kodak will stop producing films ( what is really sad, not only regarding the Kodachrome ), others will do it instead. The obvious winner seems to be Fujifilm, because they already thought about raising their prices. Also the lomography company has released a lot of new film types during the last years. I think, they are producing app. 10 different films under their own label meanwhile.

I think, I also said it on another thread, but I think, the fall of Kodak is mainly a problem of missmanagement. They missed the chance for making people excited about film. They didn't do anything for promoting their products ( they just do it for their motion picture films ). Others, like the lomography guys, understood it better and tried to give film a "new face". Some kind of "indy touch". It's all about marketing strategies. The big guys like Canon or Nikon want to make you feel like a professional photographer if buying an expensive DSLR and those lomography guys want to make people feel like an artist if using film with a crappy toy camera. But the lomography community already became a home for just "normal" film photographers as well. They have a huge web community, where people are showing and sharing their pictures, writing reviews about films, tips for experimental photography or vintage cameras. They have a lot of competitions and exhibitions in cooporation with famous brands and magazines, publishing photo books ( like the lomo city guides ) with amazing pictures and many more things.

Visiting their website, you can read something on the top like: "In the last 24 hours there were 5,479 photos uploaded, 1,732 messages written, 994 comments made and 31,821 likes given." I would call that a lively community. The websites are provided in 24 different languages.

And what did Kodak do ? Nothing. Their homepage looks dead boring and and I haven't heard of any activities for promoting their film products ... and they are a huge company, which would have had some budget for that. Business is tough. Things need to be advertised, people need to be reached ... otherwise, you can't sell anything.

Petri made good cameras. Looking forward to seeing some of the pictures, you took with it.