Some of us don't want to live in a digital world

Sometimes one doesn't want efficiency. Like a lot of novelists, I write my novels with a pen in a notebook

This announcement has been coming for a while, but I hoped the sad harbinger wouldn't come upon us quite so soon. Eastman Kodak announced this week that it is to stop selling traditional 35mm cameras in North America and Western Europe.

Now that digital cameras are outselling the old-style cameras with film, Kodak is going to hasten the process by removing the choice. They are still going to sell their old models elsewhere, and are carrying on producing their popular disposable cameras, but the old Kodak 35mm cameras are on the way out.

It's significant that Eastman Kodak has taken this step. Historically, it was the company which first produced cameras which most people could afford, and took it away from a small group of dedicated hobbyists and put it into the hands of ordinary people. Before, photographs were taken by people interested in photography; afterwards, anyone who wanted a memento of a moment could have one.

So they probably know their business, and are probably right in thinking that most people now prefer the simplicity of a digital camera. You point, press a button, and look; if it isn't quite right, erase and try again; then you save the image, download it onto a computer, modify it if you know how, and send it to all your friends. Very few digital images - perhaps less than 15 per cent of all taken - are ever printed out.

But for the sake of convenience, what a lot of tiny pleasures are disappearing! I remember the first camera I had; everything about it was a satisfying, physical moment, clunky and decent. You pulled out an inch of film, and hooked it onto the teeth of the spindle; shut the mock-leather back with a solid snap, and wound it on with the tiny handle, feeling the resistance inside.

Then, the taking of a photograph: pulling back the silver lever to advance the next frame, letting it go with that pleasing slap, a look through the viewfinder, fiddle with the focus, worry about all the levers and measurements you didn't understand, point and press. Even the pressure of the button was an enjoyment in itself; the way it would resist like rubber, and then seem to snap as all the mechanisms sprang into action and let a fraction of a second inside the camera. Bliss. And what delight, too, to open up an empty camera and see its smooth, strange machinery, the strange patterns of the opening shutters as you pressed the button.

Of course, you had no idea whether you had taken anything good at all. I used to like that. When you got to the end of the film - and there was always one or two illegitimate photos to be squeezed out beyond the official 36 - the camera would tut irritably, and then you could rewind the film with the little silver handle on top.

Then off it would go in an envelope to the developers - because those high street one-hour developers just couldn't be trusted. And back it would come in a week - yes, younger readers, a week - with peremptory little stickers on some of the prints explaining your technical incompetence, and the negatives' fascinating looking-glass world nightmares of flaming hair and blackened skies in a separate envelope. The whole thing was sheer enchantment; enchanting as a musical box.

I suppose one could carry on with the old cameras. But it wouldn't be the same. I don't want to experience these mechanical pleasures as nostalgia, or as self-conscious fogeyism; I liked them because that was how things were, and everyday things offered small physical pleasures.

The same goes for record players; I love everything about them, the click as the needle drops, the crunch as it lifts at the end, like a matter-of-fact matron tutting disapprovingly at the abandoned rapture of the end of Tristan und Isolde, the way that you got to know individual clicks on favourite records, even the needle getting stuck in a groove from time to time. Rationally, I would defend the lovely warm sound of a good LP over a CD, but I don't want to experience it as a nostalgic experience; I liked it best when it was innocent.

Small domestic machines always offer some pleasing physical sensation, which you only notice when they fall into disuse. Fax machines are fast disappearing, and we'll miss hanging over them as they agonisingly discharge some urgent document, trying to read it upside down.

I could even enjoy my first computer of 20 years ago, that terrible old Amstrad you had to charge up with a floppy disc and the horrible green-on-black print on screen; if you worked too long at it, and looked at the white wall behind, you could read your essay floating in purple imprinted on your protesting retinas. Yes, I could even miss that.

Well, no doubt everything is much more efficient now. But sometimes one doesn't want efficiency, but some measure of resistance. I know a lot of professional photographers have no intention of changing to digital; they like the way traditional cameras make things slightly difficult.

I can understand that; like a lot of novelists, I write my novels with a pen in a notebook. All the same, it's sad when handsome, well-made mechanical devices fall into disuse, and take their tiny pleasures with them; when enjoyment taken in everyday things becomes nostalgia, a much duller and more mournful feeling.