End of an Era goodbye Film hello Digital Photography

E6 Film Processor

 22 years ago I helped to install  and wire in these Film Processors in a new Photo Lab  I also over the years repaired them as needed . But this week they where turned off permanently and taken apart and removed for scrap . over $400,000.00 in equipment now worthless due to the fact very few people still take photos with film.
This dismantling and total waste of resources has happened time and again all around the country and world as digital technology takes hold.  No more big processors and chemicals and pumps and motors. Just snap click  and store to a hard drive or print out on a small affordable printer  which costs $100.00 .
With the advent of digital photography hundreds of thousands of jobs where lost including feeder jobs as well which benefited from providing supplies like chemicals paper etc. Several well known film and camera manufacturers went bankrupt  or fell into terrible finances as well including Polaroid and Kodak  .
No one ever saw digital coming on so fast when the first digital cameras produced by Kodak hit the streets  nearly 20 years ago. which where as big as a shoe box  and cost thousands of dollars and are now in phones and can be acquired for as cheap as $10.00 .

E6 dunk tank

 Yes many photo supply business   never saw it coming buying new mini labs to watch them go from busy to nothing in couple years time to never be able to pay them off . Pittsburgh at one time had nearly 20 professional  quality photo shops for photographers who could buy anything they need it now has one left Bernie's Photo on the North side who I still provide  electronic services to.
Bernie's went from a 2 block operation and almost 50 employees to half a block  and less than a dozen employees as he now rents out floor space in an effort to stay viable in the market as any one can now just walk into a Walmart and buy a high end Nikon Digital camera  where before they where only available thru photo shops. But you will never see or get the kind of service you got from small  photo stores like bernies  from the big box retailers.

While digital has made taking pictures cheap and easy it also presents a major issue and that is storing all the images and being able to print them in the future.  With film you had negatives which properly stored will hold for ever and can be printed easily.  But digital media is changing all the time photos stored on 5 1/2 or 3 1/2 " disks can no longer be read on modern machines  you need an old computer to read them. One click and you can loose all your pictures as well and long term storage what do you store them on CD,DVD, Thumb drive?  If you do not keep moving and updating your storage media when you do go back to find and print that image it may have degraded or you may no longer be able to read the media not a problem with negatives.
 Where is the industry going? well they talk about the cloud for storage  but thats risky as well. and if we are not careful to store the important images properly they will be lost to history like so many old movies which where stored on nitrocellulose film  and self destructed.

84" film processor