What will happen to film Leicas

[IkarusJohn]

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I like this bit.

 

... Certainly commercial considerations will play their part, for the industry lives by turnover, not by ideals and aesthetic considerations.

[Messsucherkamera]

It is worth considering, mutatis mutandis in the context of the present debate on the "end of film" and the advent of the Leica M Monochrom, an editorial piece from Leica Fotographie Number 5/1964, p. 181:

 

HAS BLACK-AND-WHITE A FUTURE?

[…] We may therefore look to the future with confidence, discounting any probability that the prophecies, so loudly raised by astute publicity men, that the end of black-and-white is upon us, will be borne out in fact." [my emphasis]

 

...so B&W has been dying for the past 48 years.

 

Jeez what a long, slow painful death!

[storybrown]

The four horsemen of our modern apocalypse - Globalisation, Privatisation, Deregulation & Free Markets.

 

Who should set the price if not the market?

 

Privatization has incentive to keep cost low. Government has none. Four man garbage trucks as one example, countless others.

 

"Globalization" = increasing internationalization of corporations & their boards & mgt; "privatization" = gov't/"public" operations increasingly turned over to "private" (non-gov't) corporations; "deregulation" = increasing corporate control/influence of gov't/public policy; "free markets" = controlled, subsidized markets. Maybe the only "free" market is & always has been the extralegal "black" market.

 

Privatization = high CEO & exec mgt salaries & perks (typically among the highest of all costs international corporations have): a contemporary form of warlordism & artistocraticism in "developed" countries alongside still flourishing oldstyle warlordism & aristocraticism in "developing" or "undeveloped" countries.

 

In lots of countries with weak "governments" & strong corporations or other "non-government" interests (often inside the "gov't"), there are few or no garbage trucks outside int'l commercial areas & military posts & few public/"social" services generally, e.g., Nigeria, among the richest countries in Africa. Privatization has zip immediate interest in full employment & (outside of Japan - where so-called "privatization" is actually very energetically public or social in its orientation) does not follow any guide beyond a quarterly report or FY plan.