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The decision seems a purely pragmatic one – last year the store pulled VHS recorders off its shelves to make more room for DVDs. But film cameras are part of the DNA of the company. When Dixons opened its first store in Southend almost 70 years ago, all it sold was cameras. The brand started life as a photographic studio.

Quoted in a report in the Financial Times (subscription required), Bryan Magrath, marketing director at Dixons, admits that the decision marked “an emotional departure” but that “time and technology move on.”

In recent years there has been surge in the popularity of digital cameras. Specialist camera shop Jessops says that since 2001, sales of digital cameras have leapt from accounting for 27 percent of all products sold to a whopping 97 percent of sales. Euromonitor International says that retail sales of digital cameras rose to £3690m in 2003, more than a sevenfold rise in just five years.

Many retailers admit that the film camera market is in terminal decline, but Dixons is the first retailer to act on this trend. Unsurprisingly, film providers such as Kodak and photo processing firms are fighting for their lives. Boots, the health and beauty chain which has more than 580 photo labs in its 1,400 stores, has put more than 1,100 digital photo kiosks in its shops. But the amount of people printing out digital photos is not growing sufficiently to cover the shortfall.

According one film processing company, Bonusprint, the total market for printing films is dropping by 30 percent a year, while digital processing is growing by just 10 percent. Online services such as Flickr.com and Photobucket are making it simple for people to store and share their photos online – negating the need to print them out.

Photographic specialists do not think that this spells out the end of the film camera completely. Says Garry Coward of Amateur Photographer,”It doesn’t mean that film is dead. Film is still the highest quality medium to record your images in.” Indeed, cinema survived the advent of television, black and white film survived colour and vinyl records stubbornly cling on. Annual sales of seven inch vinyl singles are now higher than in 1998, according to the British Phonographic Industry.

It seems that as long as a medium has an emotional tug, enthusiasts will ensure its survival. Clearly nobody loves the VHS format enough. Camera phones already make a faux click and whirr to mimic a film camera – maybe our love affair with them is not yet over.