Fortunately I have always been a Pentax user, and have a good supply of analogue cameras to last the rest of my life, including their 6x7 model. As long as film will be available I should be OK. Having a film scanner I confess it is much more convenient and safer then messing about with chemicals.
The latest digital heavy duty Pentax model also allows me to use my lenses dating back to the seventies.

Pity. I am a photo enthusiast and I must say that digital cameras are good, but for Sunday morning photographers. Do not get me wrong, I know that digital cameras are good enough for 90% of shooters. The thing is that I can compare pics taken with my Fuji 9500 and Minolta Amigo (a Japanese version of "European/American" Minolta Maxxum/Dynax, with slightly better light measurement algorithms and methods, as well as some body parts made of metal instead of plastic). The old good film is much better, however, often not so convenient as the digtal counterpart. Therefore I prefer to take pictures with my ol' good analog camera and scan them rather than to "go digital".

As long as they always have Digital SLR's I'll be happy.

Most of the Digital SLR's are bad@$$.

This is a sad day. Don't get me wrong, I love digital photography and technology, but just think about it. We will soon be losing an entire generation of artisans and master photographers. It's a shame that both types of photography cannot be allowed to co-exist in this brutal, mercantile world we now live in.

While I somewhat share your feelings that it is sad, I also think this is the way things happen. Recently I had the pleasure of watching a blacksmith create some wind chimes. He was incredibly skilled at it(each one came out the same), and his proficiency with the hammer was simply amazing.

But that's how all things go. We humans improve on something technologically, and then other humans require less skill to get the same effect, and sooner or later pass requiring any skill altogether(AKA automated assembly line; you're not a blacksmith, you're a screen-watcher).

Looks like now more photographers will be migrating to screen-watching aswell.

I disagree with that somewhat. Even with a digitial camera, the skills to produce a good photograph (as opposed to a snapshot) is still the same. You still need a steady hand, a good eye, patience, the ability to compose a shot, judge exposure, etal. The only thing you dont' need anymore is the extra cost/time/effort of developing the film.

The only sad part in this is the loss of the richness that film can deliver, in terms of dynamic range and tonal quality.. especially B&W film.

If you were to use the Blacksmith analogy, it would be more like a cheaper/faster forge, than an assembly line.

Currently Nikon is producing a 12, 10, three 6 and a high speed 4 mp and an updated version of one of the 6mp and an update of the 4 mp. the 12 mp flag ship is the D2X. Cannon is producing a 16 mp DSLR the EOS-1Ds Mark II There digital flag ship. I have one of the Nikon 6 mp DSLRs the D70 and a Nikon F5, the D70 uses the same auto focus and exposure system that’s in the F5. I shoot slide for my self and Kodak portra pro film for weddings. Would I like a D2X, I'd sell body parts for one, but when you factor in the 5k price tag (for the body only) compared to the $700 for a used F5 on eBay, and there’s a lot of them, I'll take the F5 and get a $500 Nikon film scanner with Kodak’s digital ICE-4, and 4000 dpi resolution or an effective 22mp. I'd be very disappointed in the loss of film camera lenses, Since the Nikon news release said they’d be keeping there high end film cameras the new last year F6 and the all manual FM10, I don't expect to see film lenses go away any time soon. File size has been kept under control by using a compressed RAW image format Nikon’s NEF, a 6mp image is 6meg in size, a 12mp image file should be around 12 or 13meg in file size. JPEG's would be smaller but image quality would suffer. a few years ago it was stated in a photography publication that a 32mp image would be required to be comparable to the high quality pro level 100 ISO 35mm films. And every thing I've said goes out the window when you move to a large format film...

I'm sorry but I like B/W photography a lot I can't see digital produced a good quality photo.Maybe in the future, but now I'm happy with film, I bye bulk.

Pretty soon I will need to bye a lot put in a secure environment until there is no more

Soon you'll be like those who still use vinyl records when they want to listen to music, and photo plates where you have to stand still for several minutes to take a picture. :)

Some things are more than just technology, they're art.

Kodak was testing a 14 megapixel camera not too long ago. The pictures were 40 to 82 megabytes each. To get the exact quality as a 35 mm camera you need at least 10 megapixels.

http://www.dpreview.com/...02092304kodakdcs14n.asp

On a computer screen maybe. Can you get prints that rival the quality of a film negative though? Most inkjet prints I've seen look like crap.

I suppose that they're put out a photo printer to go along with the camera as they do for other digital cameras.

I've seen an example of a picture and you can zoom in so far that you can actually see a person's pores in the skin.

Plus, most film developing now is done through a digital process. The negative is digitally copied and then the pictures are either modified or just printed out.

Even my crappy lexmark printed a 2 megapixel(1280x1024?) photo off that looked better than from real film. Being able to alter the lighting levels and other things after taking a shot really increases the number of good pictures that you can take.

...even if it takes 40 minutes to print.

That depends on how big you are going to print. Even if the film negative can keep that much resolution, most people's prints won't need more than 3-5MP to get the proper detail and colour.

For those that regularly make really large prints, they are more than likely pro photographers/artists who are already using the high end stuff they are still making.

Try a Dye-sub printer. My mother has a PnS Digi cam and her prints come out looking incredible.

Film is still FAR superior to digital, but pretty soon you won't be able to find it anymore. :(

It can be, but now Digital offers about the same quality as Film.

Saw -in person- the raw hi-res results of a shoot by a pro Photographer using Nikon's most expensive Digital SLR of 2002, and even then it convinced me that film was dead as soon as the technology became diffused and affordable.

I' am a Pro Photographer and Digital Photography has far better. Although, you need to understand that good digital cameras are SLR Models.

In theory, film should be far superior because film is an analog medium and photos (being images of the real world) are fundamentally analog. The problem, however, is that film can become contaminated and will deteriorate over time. Digitally captured, no matter how good/bad a photo's quality starts out, it can be preserved for hundreds of years with no worries of scratches, yellowing, etc. It can be copied and transmitted across the world with no loss of fidelity. That has been the key advantage of digital, and as digital continues to climb in resolution, the theoretical superiority of film continues to become irrelevant.

Right now, (Negative) Film has two areas that it surpasses digital:
1) Dynamic Range
2) Resolution

The first only really makes a difference for quick snap shots, since you can compensate for it in other ways and the laster only matter for really large prints.