It seems like just about everyone has a digital camera these days, and that fact represents a revolutionary shift in focus for companies that were processing only film just a few short years ago.
All those companies now offer digital do-it-yourself kiosks for processing, and you don't even need a computer. The kiosks all have ports for digital memory cards. You can also use CDs and floppy discs - as long as the discs are formatted to PCs.
The digital switch also has broader implications, from archival to legal, according to some industry sources. One thing is clear, though. Sales of digital cameras and prints have gone through the roof, while old-fashioned film cameras and prints are starting to go the way of videotapes when DVDs became popular.
Digital prints are incredibly popular this year, according Marco Zarate at the Fred Meyer store in the Broadway Market on Capitol Hill. "We're almost there," he said of digital processing overtaking film processing at Fred Meyer stores, which have Fugifilm digital kiosks.
The same can be said of Bartell Drugstores in Seattle. "We used to get two or three (50-film-canister) bags a day of orders," said Hannah Fretz, who works at the photo counter at the Bartell's in Magnolia Village. Now it's only one or two bags a day, she added.
"There's a lot of people doing digital," is how Fretz put it. Bartell's installed digital Kodak Picture Maker kiosks in all 52 of its stores on Thanksgiving, and they've caught on in a big way.
"We had lines waiting for this at Christmas," Fretz said, gesturing at the countertop picture maker, which makes 4-by-6 prints. Larger digital prints are sent to a Kodak processing center in Chehalis, she added
Bartell's staffers went through training to operate the machines, but the public has also faced a learning curve, she said. "People keep putting the (memory) cards in the wrong way. Other than that there aren't any problems."
The Kodak kiosk machines use a dye-sublimation process to make prints from digital JPG files. According to the howstuffworks.com Web site, the process uses a roll of transparent film with end-to-end blocks of embedded cyan, magenta, yellow and black dyes. The blocks of differently colored dye pass over a roll of glossy paper.
Each block of color, in turn, is subjected to a heat process for each print, "causing the dyes to vaporize and permeate the glossy surface of the paper before they return to solid form."
It's a brand-new technique and involves the most advanced software Kodak has, said Mike McMurray, vice president of marketing for Bartell's. The software includes red-eye reduction, as one of the touch-screen features, and the prints are 100-year-archival quality, he said.
"It's been pretty amazing, and volumes have exceeded out expectations," McMurray said. "We've experienced customers coming in with handfuls of memory sticks." The beauty of the digital approach is you don't have to print every picture you take, he added. "My reaction is that the memory saver in families will convert to this (digital) technology."
Over at Kits Cameras on Lower Queen Anne, the revolution is in full swing. So much so, in fact, that staffers answer the phone by saying: "Kits Cameras: Your digital headquarters." Indeed, customers have come in to print 200 to 250 digital pictures at a time, said Lynn Kim.
Kits has two Fugifilm digital kiosks. One is a Printpix Digicam Picture Center 1000 that uses the dye-sublimation process that works for 4-by-6 or 6-by-8 prints, while the Ritz Digital Big Print Center makes prints up to 8-by-10 using a positive-negative wet process, he said.
Like its Kodak counterpart, the Fugifilm kiosks will read memory cards and CDs, along with PC-formatted floppy discs for the larger machine. The prints are of a higher quality on the Big Print Center machine, and prints from both machines are of 99-year archival quality, Kim said.
"The trend has been towards digital," said Bob Devita, advertising director for Maryland-based Ritz Cameras, the parent company of Kits Cameras. "It's impacted the numbers of (film) rolls brought in to our stores," he said of the company's 1,200 outlets in 48 states.
Film developing and printing are still going strong at the Ritz stores, but processing for digital photography has started to outpace film processing this year, Devita said.
The same goes for camera sales at Cameras West, another Ritz company in downtown Seattle, according to staffer Vinnie Pickens. "Digital has definitely taken over the market," he said, adding that now the ratio of sales is 80 percent digital and 20 percent film cameras. "Today, I've only sold digital (cameras)," Pickens said when he was interviewed last week.
However, the rush to digital photography could pose a problem, according to Devita. "With digital, it's like I take 1,000 pictures and print one," he said in some exaggeration.
Devita worries that a generation of memories might be lost because of that pick-and-choose approach to print making. That's because it might not be possible to read the digital-photograph files in 40 or 50 years as technology changes. Think Betamax video recorders or eight-track tapes.
"Unless you really get the message out that you need to make prints, all that might be lost," he said. Devita stressed that film still has a place in photography. "We'll never see the date when film disappears," he said. "The superior-quality difference will always be around."
"I think film will stay around for a long time," agreed Kim at Kits Cameras in Queen Anne. Photographers have more control with film cameras than they do with many digital cameras, and the picture quality is generally better, he said.
"There's more of an art form to it," Kim said of film photography. He also thinks film will still have a place in legal proceedings because digital images can be so easily manipulated.
That's not necessarily true, according to Dan Donohoe, a spokesman for the King County Prosecutor's office. "The courts do accept digital images, but the defense attorney might challenge it," he said.
Fretz, over at the Magnolia Bartell's, said she has a cheap digital camera. The exposure has to be just right to get good prints, she said. "But when it is, it's good."
Still, Fretz said she prefers to use "good, old-fashioned film," and she doesn't see film disappearing anytime soon. "There's still too many diehards out there who will still use it."
However, there does appear to be a generational divide over the use of film versus digital photography, according to Zarate at the Fred Meyer store on Capitol Hill.
"A lot of people are bringing in their (digital) memory cards," he said. "But it seems like older people still do 35 mm and disposable (film) cameras."
