A few days ago I met with one of my friends, the owner and manufacturer of Amaloco chemicals. He told me that he would stop producing chemicals at the end of the year. Earnings are down to zero, the prospect of ever dwindling sales is emotionally painful when you still love your products. It is remarkable that sales in the Scandinavian countries are still much stronger than in the Netherlands, where AgX Photography is dead. A recent book about the Death of the Darkroom documents the handful of persons who still own and use the chemical darkroom against all odds and all commentaries that digital is the much better choice. While I write these words, I ear a mighty steam locomotive passing by at about 200 meters from my home. There is an old railroad track almost in my backyard, that is daily used by enthusiasts who maintain and operate classical steam locomotives dating from the 1920’s to the 1950’s. Is AgX photography on that same track? Most would assume so, but the maker of high quality motion picture equipment dares to walk against conventional wisdom and in a recent paper argues and even scientifically underpins the fact that AgX capture has a higher performance than the digital video capture. For Super-16 there is hardly an alternative for silver halide materials when one wishes the best of quality employing excellent lenses.
In a paper written by Tadaaki Tani one finds the clam that even in this period of time, so imbued with the digital paradigm, AgX photography s a valid and viable alternative to the digital capture of images. Current silver halide materials can record more than 80 linepairs/mm, where digital capture stops at 50 - 60 lp/mm at best. The distribution of grain clumps in the emulsion is random, where the pixel structure is regular. This fact explains why at the limit of useful resolution, AgX can record more detail, even when the resolution calculations are identical.

I am no Luddite, but I would argue strongly in favor of the coexistence of both media, AgX and silicon. Use the one that gives the best results for the job or the intention and which gives most pleasure. The almost partisan and religious fervor with which the adopters and proponents of the dSLR way of photography attack the AgX users is based more on hype than on substance. You can expect from magazine editors and commercially operating journalists that they follow the gold-rush which happens to be found in the digital and consumer electronics domain these days.

I am still using Kodachrome and every time when I open the box I am amazed and delighted about the vibrance of the colors and the sharpness of the details. The MP with Summilux-M 1.4/50 asph. is still in full use. It is a pity that within the house of Leica the proponents of AgX have been silenced, as if it is a shame to refer to the great Leica tradition and the Leica cult of silver halide photography.

I have to admit that it is not easy to walk around in both worlds and trying to be proficient with all these techniques. It does help you to keep the proper distance to the hype of the day.