"Silver prices rise despite the odds."  A story with this headline in the Financial Times this past Friday reports the continuing rise in the price of silver is a surprising outcome in light of Kodak's recent decision to embrace digital photography at the expense of the film business.  What makes this especially odd is the fact photography accounted for about 25% of all silver usage last year (just behind jewelry).  So although photography's market share of silver usage is down from a 27% share in 1998, it would appear investors believe the imminent demise of film based photography has been greatly exaggerated.  This is a sentiment confirmed by a Barclays Capital precious metals analyst who states while film sales in the US, Japan, and Western Europe are declining, film sales are increasing in China and India.

As one who just this past week completely ignored this trend toward digital photography and purchased another Nikon film based camera (see yesterday's update), this reads as a good news story for me.  And while many photographers (myself included) are gear-focused early adopters, there are times when a bargain price for the solid, well-engineered, time-tested older technology is just too hard to pass up.