disposable cameras

How does it feel to want?

I remember when they came out, everyone raved on how great the picture quality was, considering they were disposable. Maybe the novelty just wore off?

Isn't that expensive to keep using disposables?

I think they are losing out to cheap digital cameras. You can get low end ones for about $75. A little more up front expense but there is an immediate return.

Slappy - it hurts (wah). I think they are just re-using them too often.

Acquiunk - how does that adversely effect the image quality?

What I mean, is, are you positive the quality has gone downhill...or were you just really impressed with how good they were then, and now your expectations aren't being reached?

Or maybe they just make them cheaper+sell them for the same to increase profits, because they still sell a ton. I know this is true for alot of different products across the board.

Devil woman.

I knew what you meant, that may play a part. But, I have a good eye, and I'm positive the quality has gone down hill.

They could be making them cheaper, bastards.

Careful, I know where you work.

"Careful, I know where you work" i'm sure you are being generous when you actually mean "I know where you are employed"

I think we just pinpointed the problem: they suck, and they're making them cheaper. Even Mercedes does it know...

I'm screwed. Now I really have to hustle the job search.

hahaha

Image quality? cheaper film, cheaper lens, they are trying to squeeze them for all they are worth while they still have a market.

I dunno... I still see the film market staying for quite some time.

The whole point of popular photography since the first Kodak was introduced in the 1880's has been simplicity and instant gratification. If you can take pictures of little precious at his birthday party. Have a copy of the little tyke with frosting all over his face up on the refrigerator door before the party is over and reuse the photo chip for the trip to the zoo. All of this accomplished with your 75dollar digital and 500 dollar PC. A large segment of the disposable market is gone. Film is gravitating towards the quality market where it will be around for a while.

However, peope continue to use slow-speed film for portraits. I remember everyone said B&W photography was going to cease to be in demand after color photography was made accessible and cheap. They kept saying it. And here B&W is still often used. It's definitely not used as much as color is, but....

Have you ever tried to blow up a digi pic and put it on paper? It sucks. I can take a bad quality paper photo, scan it and pick something from the back ground to blow up. The image may be blurry, but it comes through. Not even close to so with digi pix. I think the technology is advancing, but it's not there and it's certainly not accessible to the general masses.

We attended a wedding reception recently, and they had disposable cameras on each table. We took some pictures with it, and the host sent us our pictures. They look pretty good to us. c.i.

The whole point of the industrial revolution has been "good enough". The rage of the craft associations at early factory owners was not that they were replacing their product but that they were doing so with an inferior product "shoddy".. That was definitely the case, but people were willing to put up withit because it was cheap, and over time it became better. It is the same with film. Ever try and get black and white film for your 35 mm? Walmart doesn't have it, you can't get it in disposables either as far as I know. Black and white film is now mostly used only for studio work (portraits etc) and that's a high end activity. You are going to see the same with film. I have a friend who runs a video production company and she is heavily invested in analog tape cameras and linear editing equipment. She is dumping it all, at some expense, for digital. It is not quite as good but it is cheaper, faster and that is what the clients want.

littlek, Here's another bummer. Try to scan a photo in the newspaper and try to make a print of it. It comes out really bad! c.i.

Acquiunk - I guess what you're saying is true for the general population

Cic, Yeah, I can see that.

don't even get me started on the cost of getting B/W film developed. it's crazy! I used to always carry one camera with colour film and one with black and white. I can't really afford black and white anymore. blechhhhhh.

For all i'm concerned, I have a webcam and only have had 1 disp. camera

Hi there littlek. One thing you might not have considered is where you're getting your film processed. Have you changed labs then noticed a quality problem.

I have a little APS pocket camera that I use for snapshots and the photos always looked okay but not great. One day I dropped the film off at a little independant photo lab that opened in my neighborhood and the photos looked great - really great.

Same camera, same film, different lab. It made a world of difference.

They now do all of my personal film and digital snapshots (I don't like computer prints).

If you want to stick with film you might want to drop a hundred bucks on an APS camera. (I bought my Canon Elph at the pawn shop. Be sure to take in a roll of film to shoot and have it processed before buying the camera though.) Another nice thing is that you can have black and white prints made from your color negatives which I don't know if you can do with disposable cameras.