FROM Henri Cartier-Bresson’s reportage to Mario Testino’s portraits, the camera and film captured the images that defined the 20th century.

But they may soon be available only as expensive collectors’ items, driven out of production by the digital revolution. Within the past few weeks two giants of the industry, Konica Minolta and Fuji Photo Film, have announced their withdrawal from the traditional film and camera business, triggering a frenzy of last-minute buying in Japan.

In Britain, Dixons stopped selling 35mm cameras last August. Jessops, the leading specialist retailer of photographic equipment, has committed itself to stocking 35mm cameras for the foreseeable future but digital cameras outsell them nine to one.

Digital cameras now cost from less than £100, are cheaper to run because they don’t require film, and offer flexibility of shooting styles and effects that traditional photography cannot match. Sales in Britain are expected to reach £963 million in 2009, according to Mintel, up from £215 million in 2001.

The traditional leading camera brands are having to evolve or die. Struggling with losses of nearly half a billion pounds, Konica, the company that made Japan’s first colour film, will close its camera and film operations by March, and is laying off nearly 4,000 workers.

Fuji Photo Film is cutting 5,000 jobs and has begun a gradual retreat from the business that made its name. Nikon has reduced its film camera output to a single model while Canon, the world’s largest maker of digital cameras, is believed to have prepared its withdrawal strategy from the 35mm market. Kodak is trying to reinvent itself as a digital company.

As a result photography stores in Japan have reported “panic buying” of film cameras by enthusiasts worried that the machines will disappear altogether. Cameras which, four weeks ago, were being sold for around £800, have now soared in value to £1,500. A similar boom may be about to hit the British camera market.

Alex Falk, the owner of Mr Cad, the largest independent camera store, has been stockpiling 35mm cameras. “In the past few months there has been a huge increase in the number of people coming back to film. Digital cameras are made from glue and plastic so when they break you can’t fix them. A three-year-old digital camera is worth about three and six but you can sell a Nikon Rangefinder from the 1950s for £3,000.”

For many photographers the feel of a film camera is more important than its resale value. Chris Gatcum, of Amateur Photographer magazine, said: “There’s a real romanticism to film that digital doesn’t have and a lot of our readers are up in arms because they think this is the end of film. It’s not — it’s just the end of film camera production.” Among the professionals, news and sport photographers have used digital cameras for years, but others remain wedded to film. Brian Aris, a photographer who took the Beckhams’ wedding photographs and the Queen’s 70th birthday portrait, said that portraiture was likely to prove the last refuge of film photography. He uses film for 90 per cent of his work but is preparing to move more into digital: “We’ve all got to embrace it.”

David Bailey, arguably Britain’s best-known photographer since the 1960s, agreed: “Digital is great for photography as a whole and for the amateur the advantages are enormous because you can stick your photos straight on to your computer and you don’t have to mess around with chemicals to get your images. But there’s still a place for film and I use it 80 per cent of the time.”

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LIGHT FANTASTIC

1826 Nicéphore Niépce creates the first photograph using a pewter plate and a substance called bitumen of Judea. It is a view of his outhouses in Chalons sur Soane

1855 The physicist James Clerk Maxwell exhibits an early colour photograph of a tartan ribbon to the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

1888 First Kodak camera goes on sale. An improved model with film instead of paper is introduced in 1889. The cameras had to be sent back to the factory for processing, but they could take 100 pictures.

1900 The Brownie camera goes on sale, an inexpensive box camera that made snapshots possible, and remained popular until the 1960s.

1963 Instant colour film; Polaroid is introduced

1981 Sony markets the Mavica as a filmless camera — the first incarnation of the digital camera

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