Not literally, of course, but ARRI, Panavision and Aaton have completely stopped producing film-based cameras, their new focus being on designing and manufacturing digital ones.
“The demand for film cameras on a global basis has all but disappeared,” says ARRI VP of Cameras, Bill Russell, who notes that the company has only built film cameras on demand since 2009. “There are still some markets–not in the U.S.–where film cameras are still sold, but those numbers are far fewer than they used to be. If you talk to the people in camera rentals, the amount of film camera utilization in the overall schedule is probably between 30 to 40 percent.”
This doesn’t mean there’s going to be a dramatic change in the coming months or that all future movies will be shot on digital cameras. There’s still a large surplus of parts and the current film cameras will continue to be usable for many years to come, but the current surplus will eventually die down and things will truly shift.
For now though, the only thing this change in production will affect is the rate at which the transition from film to digital is advancing. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We may lose the organic feel of film, but the new generation of cameras is offering many advantages that more than make up for it.
