Plastic sheet, Light sensitive silver halide salts (photography film) has been almost totally replaced in the consumer market by complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) sensors, or in other words, digital photography.

It wasn’t too long ago that if you picked up a camera, it was no doubt loaded with film, which the camera used to produce the images you shot. If you’re one of those ‘LATE adopters’, you may have not had the opportunity to even shoot photographs with a film camera (wow, that boggles my mind).

It was such a joy to shoot photographs with film (I say this with just a bit of sarcasm). Depending on how old a film camera you had, determined how the film was loaded and how difficult it was, for instance:

There was paper backed films on spools which you had to break this small paper band around the middle of the roll. You would then move the now empty take-up reel to the opposite side of the film holder or camera, you would insert the new roll of film in the camera and unroll a small amount of the paper and wind it onto the take-up reel, then you would close up the camera and start winding the film knob until you got to the first frame of the film.

Single shot sheet films, were even more of a joy to load. In the case of a 4″X5″ size film (that’s big), you would have to load the individual sheets of film into film holders in complete darkness. This was usually accomplished in either a darkroom, or a changing bag, which allowed for doing light sensitive operations when a darkroom was not available, such as loading film in film holders. You would open up the changing bag, place your box of film into the bag, along with your film holders, zip up the bag and stick both your arms into the sleeves of the bag and start loading film. I found this youtube video of a photographer showing how he loads his sheet film holders.

Disc films and easy-load metal cartridges, were as easy as opening up the camera, and dropping the film in and closing up the camera. Although many of the 35mm, single lens reflex (SLR) cameras, you still had to drop in the metal cartridge, pull the film over to the take-up reel and wind it onto the reel.

Back in April, 1880, a small company was born on the 3rd floor of a building in Rochester, New York. That company was started by a high school dropout by the name of Eastman Kodak. Kodak was the pioneer of photographic film, and anyone who has taken photographs with a film camera, has probably used Kodak film at one time or another.

Kodak was not only the pioneer of photographic film, but they were the first to introduce a digital camera. The Kodak DCS 100, was the first commercially available digital camera. The 1.3 megapixel Nikon F3 based Kodak DCS (Digital Camera System) was announced by Kodak in 1991. The camera consisted of an unmodified F3 HP camera body attached to a custom made winder and a digital back. Captured photos are stored on a separate digital storage unit (DSU) that connects to the camera winder via an interconnect cable. This early digital camera would set you back $25,000, that’s a sizable chunk of change for a 1.3 megapixel camera, considering we are selling high-end Digital SLR cameras  with just over 21 megapixels, for under $7,000. These high-end digital cameras of today, are just another example of smaller, faster, better, cheaper.

The transition from film to digital photography was a fairly swift one, considering that film photography has been around since the early 1800′s and digital cameras have only been around for about 21 years. The digital revolution hit fast and hard. Film was being passed over more and more in favor of the digital format. Digital SLRs, digital point & shoot and mobile phone cameras all contributed to declining sales of photographic film. Even the single-use film cameras that use to be prevalent on the tables at many wedding receptions have a digital replacement, and yes they are single-use as well.

Despite all that Kodak has contributed to the photographic world, they couldn’t keep up with all the competition from its competitors in both the film and digital fields. Kodak filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on January 19, 2012 so it can reorganize it’s finances and hopefully come back stronger in the years to come. On February 10, 2012, Kodak also announced that it would cease production of its digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames this year to focus its consumer business on desktop printers, online and retail-based printing, and camera accessories and batteries.

Being a long time Kodak film user, I wish Kodak the best of luck!