8 ms·

The Market for Discontinued Photographic Film

79 points by leejo 6y ago

i_am_proteus 6y ago
One of the films he mentions, Acros 100, was recently re-introduced as Across 100 II. It seems very similar to the original, although is probably made by Ilford under contract.
- leejo 6y ago
  Yep! It has but unfortunately they're not making it in large format sizes.
vr46 6y ago
I have been scavenging film from people who have switched to digital for decades now, they would give me bags of it. I rescued a load just before lockdown else it was going in the rubbish, some of it was from the early 1980s or late 1970s. You don't know what you'll end up with as a result, but it's all part of the the fun.
- imglorp 6y ago
  Doesn't that go bad eventually, from background radiation if nothing else? Or from slow chemical reactions?
  - vr46 6y ago
    It no longer meets the specifications, that is correct, but expiry imparts its own unique qualities, which reflect the history of its storage and treatment - and that is often quite an attractive trait in film, which retains its mystery until developed :)
throw0101a 6y ago
ILFORD still makes film. They have a tour of their factory on their YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXpoALotxf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXpoALotxf0 See also The Impossible Project, some folks who reverse engineered how to make Polaroid instant film: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM5k4B1C7cs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM5k4B1C7cs * https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/27/weve-come-full-rectangle-polaroid-is-reborn-out-of-the-impossible-project/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/27/weve-come-full-rectangle-p...
- ninjin 6y ago
  That video is nothing short of amazing. Ilford HP5+ [1] has been my go-to film (I only shoot black and white) since Fujifilm dropped Neopan 400 [2] back in 2013 and my supplies ran out two years later. I have heard that Oriental SEAGULL 400 should be similar to my old love Neopan, but there is only so much time I have as an amateur to shoot. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilford_HP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilford_HP [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopan#Neopan_400_Professional_(Presto) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopan#Neopan_400_Professional... Film photography is certainly something I can recommend, at least to anyone interested in photography in general. The lack of instant feedback does indeed change how you operate even when you shoot digital. I would never dream of not shooting primarily digital though if your salary depended on capturing anything but a fully controlled scene.
  - rangibaby 6y ago
    Good on Ilford for keeping film alive. Fujifilm finally ran out of Acros 100 in their freezer, so now get Ilford to make it. There’s some mystique around Oriental Seagull, but in reality it is “just” rebadged Kentmere. It was really cheap and nice for about 5 minutes back in 2016...
- justincormack 6y ago
  I have been on the Ilford factory visit, highly recommended if they run it again...
dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
I still shoot film, but I have to admit I always feel guilty when I dispose of the used chemicals. That, and not the cost, is the main reason I prepare a lot for each frame, and I tend to get much better shots. Still, I'd like to see a day when I could get the same results on digital as on film. The existing solutions like Silver Efex don't even come close.
- klodolph 6y ago
  From my research, the main thing you shouldn’t pour down the drain is spent fixer. Classic developers contain chemicals like metol and hydroquinone, often in combination, as active agents. The remaining chemicals in developer are things like sodium bicarbonate, borax, and sodium hydroxide. If you are concerned, switch to Kodak Xtol which does not use metol or hydroquinone. Stop bath is just acetic acid and a pH indicator. You can use water as a stop bath if you like, you just run the risk of changing the pH of your fixer. As for fixer, it’s not fixer that is the problem per se—it’s the silver that the fixer removes from your film or paper. The silver will mess up the sewage treatment plant. You can remove the silver by dropping some steel wool into the fixer, it will undergo a redox reaction and you’ll end up with rust and metallic silver. The only thing I am actually scared to work with is selenium toner. You should definitely NOT pour selenium toner down the drain.
  - stan_rogers 6y ago
    Quite apart from the waste, selenium toner is... nasty. I mean the smell. One gets rather used to many of the smells of the darkroom, equating them in one way or another with the artist's struggle and horrible little bedsits on the Boul Mich and so on. Selenium is different. It's the sort of smell that makes platinum/palladium seem like a much better idea.
    - klodolph 6y ago
      Yup. I have never used it indoors.
    - duskwuff 6y ago
hengheng 6y ago
In the age of low-scale manufacturing, how hard would it be to create a film factory with today's technology, creating or buying the various chemicals and the physically transferring them on film rolls? Can't believe there wouldn't be a boutique market by now.
- dogma1138 6y ago
  Probably extremely hard and cost prohibitive you’ve essentially lost all of the economy of scale that used to support this and more importantly the first hand knowledge and expertise in building those machines in the first place.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  In theory there would be, but it depends on how much people are willing to pay for it, how long they're willing to wait for it, and whether you're flexible enough to not be producing until an order comes in. I'm sure similar questions are asked about things like floppy disks / readers, or old 486 compatible CPU's which are still in use here and there, or CRT displays.
- Finnucane 6y ago
  Film chemistry is very complex and no small scale production has been able to match the quality or quality control of Fuji, Kodak or Ilford.
  - mauvehaus 6y ago
    To expand on this: the problem isn’t putting out one batch of high quality film; it’s putting out batch after batch that performs exactly the same. Nobody wants to lose an important shot because this batch of film exposes a little differently from that batch or has slightly different color response. Any craft brewery can make an outstanding batch of beer, and many do it quite often. The miracle of Budweiser is making zillions of barrels of Bud and Bud Lite that are indistinguishable from one another year after year.
    - Finnucane 6y ago
barrenko 6y ago
Film is going to return, no doubt about it.
atoav 6y ago
Curious, just last week I shot one of the last Kodak Aerochrome rolls available in Germany. This was particilarilly challenging because it was a 40 mm sheet glued onto the 120 roll film and I used a Twin Reflex Camera, which I had to use sideways to get a panorama format with that stripe. This means the image in the viewfinder was not only cropped and mirrored, but also upside down. This made the little adjustments to the camera position and angle one usually makes automatically a particular kind of brainfuck. I actually quite like TLRs with their mirrored viewfinders, as it forces you to view the image a little bit more abstractly which gives better results (unless you have to react quickly etc).
lokl 6y ago
An option not yet mentioned in the comments, if you shoot sheet film, is to use X-ray film, possibly cut to the size you need.
ideashower 6y ago
Kodak still makes Ektar and Portra color film, I believe.
- null_object 6y ago
  There are dozens of current film manufacturers (if you include various rebrands and films produced under licence in China and other Asian countries). Among these, the best-known are: ADOX, Agfaphoto, Bergger, CineStill, FilmFerrania, FOMA, Fujifilm, ILFORD, Kodak, ORWO, Rollei, Shanghai and Ultrafine. Kodak still produce Portra 100, 400, 800, Ektar 100, Professional T-Max 100, 400, 3200, Tri-X, Pro Image, ColorPlus 200, UltraMax and also motion picture film of course. As I understand it, Kodak sell about a billion dollars worth of film each year - but still lose money on other parts of their business. Still, I don't understand the generally pessimistic tone of the blog-post - seems very strange considering the poster was gifted a very valuable and desirable load of film.
  - nojokes 6y ago
    CineStill is basically a rebrand of Kodak motion picture film. What is worth mentioning is that Kodak invested to start making again Ektachrome slide film after discontinuing it 8 years ago. Fuji also discontinue its last black and white film Acros but started to produce a new formula after an year.
- modo_ 6y ago
  That's true. But the prices just keep going up -- they increased their prices across the board by 30% this year.
  - null_object 6y ago
    > "But the prices just keep going up -- they increased their prices across the board by 30% this year." This strikes me as a very 'glass half-empty' way of looking at film production. Kodak needed to increase film-prices because their existing facilities weren't able to keep up with increasing demand. I constantly experienced this myself last year, as there were periods when Portra wasn't available in various speeds in 120-format from my normal suppliers. The intention is to balance supply and demand, and use the extra revenue to invest in more efficient production. [1] https://kosmofoto.com/2019/12/opinion-why-the-kodak-alaris-price-rises-may-not-be-a-bad-thing/ https://kosmofoto.com/2019/12/opinion-why-the-kodak-alaris-p...
johnminter 6y ago
Kodak Alaris still sells professional film
mobilene 6y ago
I shoot a lot of film; it's my main hobby. I have 50 film cameras here. The FP-100C this fellow writes about was very nice while it lasted, and I enjoyed shooting it. The trick with expired films is that unless it was stored refrigerated or, better, frozen, it degrades. Some films degrade quickly, others slowly. I sometimes shoot 40-year-old Kodak Verichrome Pan b/w film and it usually looks like new. I've used other expired films that looked like crap. Some people like that degraded look but not me. There are enough good films still produced that I've decided (except for that Verichrome Pan) to just shoot fresh stocks.
dm319 6y ago
Funny to see this come up. I just took my Nikon F6 with me for my family holiday last week. It was such a pleasure to use. I've always appreciated the dynamic response of film.
- tjr 6y ago
  I still have my Canon EOS-3. I usually use a 6D because, well, it is more convenient, and the price both to buy and to develop film is now high enough to be annoying, but in most scenarios, I prefer the photographic output from my film camera.
  - Aloha 6y ago
    I have an EOS-1 that I adore.
    - dm319 6y ago
      I remember a long time ago picking up an F100 and comparing it with a 1v. The 1v felt so light!
ekianjo 6y ago
Surprised to see so many film users on HN in the comments. I also shoot film Ilford and Portra both in 35 mm and medium formats. It feels very different from anything digital.
- cactus2093 6y ago
  I wonder if the increase in quality of smartphone cameras has driven more people back to film cameras. 10 years ago or so, if you wanted to dabble in photography you could spend $500 on an entry-level dslr kit and start taking significantly better pictures than your smartphone or point and shoot. Then you'd quickly hit the limits of the mediocre auto exposure settings and relatively low dynamic range, and be rewarded with even better shots for learning about the exposure triangle and better learning how to control your camera. It still took a bit of work & learning which is part of what makes something a fun hobby. Now days the latest iphone will pretty much nail the shot 8 times out of 10, and for power users you can tweak exposure, focus, and now even low depth of field and extremely low light stills are possible. (This is a bit of a generalization, for some styles of photography like birds and wildlife you obviously still need long lenses. But smartphones can cover the 24-70mm equivalent range really well). It's pretty hard to justify an entry-level DSLR anymore. But a film camera still offers a relatively affordable way to slow things, and make photography more intentional, challenging, and fun.
dillutedfixer 6y ago
I work in a retail photography environment. The amount of 16-25 year olds who come in to buy film is astonishing. Many of them don't even know why they're shooting film. They need help loading their cameras and have no idea what to do with the film afterwards. They'll regale me with stories about how they got an amazing deal on a Canon AE-1 for $200. To me it's quite obviously an "in" thing to do with young people right now. I have to admit that it kind of makes me laugh, but overall I am happy that it's helping an element of an industry that I love stay viable.
- throwanem 6y ago
  That's a good attitude to have. Definitely the opposite of every place I ever went to as a teenager trying to learn bass guitar, for example. Keep it up!
- Aloha 6y ago
  200 dollars, for an AE-1? I remember when those were selling for 20 dollars.
  - rangibaby 6y ago
    They’ve gone from being so old they’re crap to being so old that they’re cool again. All the sweet deals now are on 90s camera equipment. The autofocus versions of the Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens are competitive or cheaper compared to the manual focus ones even though they have identical optical formulas and the manual focus ones are almost guaranteed to need an expensive professional overhaul at this point.
- calvinmorrison 6y ago
  I have a Canon A-1 I got for about $40 bucks with a camera bag, a few lenses and some extra not-expire film. It's easy to shoot on, has an ok auto mode. Mostly it's easier for me to shoot on than with a phone and I can develop b/w and have a scanner at home. It's not all that hard all in to get good photos and have some physical photos.
- mafuyu 6y ago
  Ha, I'll admit that I'm one of those people. I shot on a Fuji mirrorless for years, but photography didn't really capture me as a hobby until this year, when I got into film. I originally got a Mamiya RB67 because I watched a bunch of Youtube channels and wanted the "medium format look", but I didn't feel like switching off Fuji for full frame as a compromise. The experience of shooting on the RB67 was honestly eye opening. The big waist level finder, being able to actually manual focus instead of focus-by-wire, the highlight rolloff and colors of Portra. I picked up and fixed an Olympus 35RC for 35mm after that, and I had a great compact rangefinder I could carry around anywhere. Way cheaper than buying a Sony RX100 or Ricoh GR. Part of the fun is just shooting on toy cameras and weird film, too. Despite being able to fire off way more shots on my mirrorless, I feel like I'm more open to experiment when I shoot film, and my digital photography has improved as a result. It's kinda tough to really verbalize why film is catching on again without coming off as pretentious, but I do think that format, form factor, and the shooting experience are all important to the form of the art that comes out. When I record music, sometimes I'll record on my Zoom, or to a cassette, or maybe just my phone. I'm not trying to put out award winning studio produced albums, just trying to have fun and produce art that's hopefully meaningful to myself and my friends. :)
Gimpei 6y ago
Reminds me of the market for tubes for guitar amplifiers. The "good" tubes are JAN (Joint Army Navy) tubes which were last produced in the 1960s. Someone must have acquired quite a cache of them because they are still turning up albeit at increasingly steep prices.
- johnr2 6y ago
  > The "good" tubes are JAN (Joint Army Navy) tubes which were last produced in the 1960s. s/1960s/1980s Sylvania was still making them up to 1981, when Philips ECG bought the Sylvania tube factory so they could supply the US military. They continued making JAN tubes until 1988. A lot of these are still available.
Guybrush_T 6y ago
Part of me knows shooting with film is ridiculous in 2020. It's expensive, you don't get immediate feedback, old film cameras can often have light leaks, etc... But there is something magical about holding and shooting a film camera. You physically load the film. You can hear the film advance as you shoot. You take out the completed canister. When you get your developed film back you can see and hold the film that physically changed due to light coming in through the camera. In a world where everything is digital creating a physical image with light is kind of amazing. I still mainly shoot digital. There are too many advantages to not shoot digital in my opinion. However, if you're a fan of photography I recommend giving film a chance. The experience is really special.
catmistake 6y ago
I was pretty depressed when Kodak discontinued Kodachrome. There was one place that still developed it for a long while, but then they shut down also. Luckily, Fuji still makes Velvia Fujuchrome. They had discontinued Velvia 100 in 2005, and there was an outcry, and they brought it back with Fujichrome 50, redesigned the original coatings to work with the new base. Actually, I always preferred Fujuchrome to Kodachrome or Ektochrome, colors are more saturated. Velvia 50 tends to make people look a little red, so find and use Velvia 100 for people, but for anything else with color, Fujichrome Velvia 50 is sick.
- vr46 6y ago
  Yaar, me too, but there is a process again to develop it, albeit in black and white. I still have some Kodachrome left over AND some Agfa Scala! My dad’s Kodachromes from the 50s are still perfect. I miss Cibachromes, though. The ultimate combination. RVP50 is not good for people. Never was.
cutoff 6y ago
I bought a load of expired films a couple years ago on Facebook marketplace for about $3 each. This allowed me to learn how to develop, scan, test different cameras, and affordably pursue a hobby that would have otherwise cost me thrice as much. Analog photography really changed my perspective and I'm very grateful for that. I'd love to see a discussion on here about the market for discontinued film cameras. I've sold a fair amount of my point and shoots for 10x-30x as much as I bought them for, mostly because they were usually thrifted for $5-$10. If someone had the skills to repair some of the "for parts" cameras sold on eBay, such as the highly sought after Olympus mju-ii, a decent profit could be made while bringing some quality, discontinued cameras back into life. I wonder if/when any company will ever start to reproduce analog cameras again.
javiramos 6y ago
For those interested in the rise and fall of film photography, I recommend Instant [0]. The book chronicles the story of Polaroid. The last parts of the book capture the bad decisions around the shutting down of film production. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/14577509-instant https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/14577509-instant
supernova87a 6y ago
I continue to be floored by how Leica, Hasselblad, etc. retain their sale value among the photo community. For something that is clearly (to me at least) totally reproducible by digital equipment, cumbersome to use, and expensive, it's like people are clamoring to buy the stuff out of sentiment. Speaks a lot to the value of brand and emotion, doesn't it? Note: if I could afford it, I'd buy myself a nice M6 and 903SWC...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jgust 6y ago
  See: classic cars. Most cars from the 60's-80's are objectively _bad_, but there's something interesting about driving and maintaining them.

79 points by leejo 6y ago

One of the films he mentions, Acros 100, was recently re-introduced as Across 100 II. It seems very similar to the original, although is probably made by Ilford under contract.

leejo 6y ago
Yep! It has but unfortunately they're not making it in large format sizes.

vr46 6y ago

I have been scavenging film from people who have switched to digital for decades now, they would give me bags of it. I rescued a load just before lockdown else it was going in the rubbish, some of it was from the early 1980s or late 1970s. You don't know what you'll end up with as a result, but it's all part of the the fun.

imglorp 6y ago
Doesn't that go bad eventually, from background radiation if nothing else? Or from slow chemical reactions?
- vr46 6y ago
  It no longer meets the specifications, that is correct, but expiry imparts its own unique qualities, which reflect the history of its storage and treatment - and that is often quite an attractive trait in film, which retains its mystery until developed :)

throw0101a 6y ago

ILFORD still makes film. They have a tour of their factory on their YouTube channel: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXpoALotxf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXpoALotxf0 See also The Impossible Project, some folks who reverse engineered how to make Polaroid instant film: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM5k4B1C7cs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM5k4B1C7cs * https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/27/weve-come-full-rectangle-polaroid-is-reborn-out-of-the-impossible-project/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/27/weve-come-full-rectangle-p...

ninjin 6y ago
That video is nothing short of amazing. Ilford HP5+ [1] has been my go-to film (I only shoot black and white) since Fujifilm dropped Neopan 400 [2] back in 2013 and my supplies ran out two years later. I have heard that Oriental SEAGULL 400 should be similar to my old love Neopan, but there is only so much time I have as an amateur to shoot. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilford_HP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilford_HP [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopan#Neopan_400_Professional_(Presto) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopan#Neopan_400_Professional... Film photography is certainly something I can recommend, at least to anyone interested in photography in general. The lack of instant feedback does indeed change how you operate even when you shoot digital. I would never dream of not shooting primarily digital though if your salary depended on capturing anything but a fully controlled scene.
- rangibaby 6y ago
  Good on Ilford for keeping film alive. Fujifilm finally ran out of Acros 100 in their freezer, so now get Ilford to make it. There’s some mystique around Oriental Seagull, but in reality it is “just” rebadged Kentmere. It was really cheap and nice for about 5 minutes back in 2016...
justincormack 6y ago
I have been on the Ilford factory visit, highly recommended if they run it again...

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago

I still shoot film, but I have to admit I always feel guilty when I dispose of the used chemicals. That, and not the cost, is the main reason I prepare a lot for each frame, and I tend to get much better shots. Still, I'd like to see a day when I could get the same results on digital as on film. The existing solutions like Silver Efex don't even come close.

klodolph 6y ago
From my research, the main thing you shouldn’t pour down the drain is spent fixer. Classic developers contain chemicals like metol and hydroquinone, often in combination, as active agents. The remaining chemicals in developer are things like sodium bicarbonate, borax, and sodium hydroxide. If you are concerned, switch to Kodak Xtol which does not use metol or hydroquinone. Stop bath is just acetic acid and a pH indicator. You can use water as a stop bath if you like, you just run the risk of changing the pH of your fixer. As for fixer, it’s not fixer that is the problem per se—it’s the silver that the fixer removes from your film or paper. The silver will mess up the sewage treatment plant. You can remove the silver by dropping some steel wool into the fixer, it will undergo a redox reaction and you’ll end up with rust and metallic silver. The only thing I am actually scared to work with is selenium toner. You should definitely NOT pour selenium toner down the drain.
- stan_rogers 6y ago
  Quite apart from the waste, selenium toner is... nasty. I mean the smell. One gets rather used to many of the smells of the darkroom, equating them in one way or another with the artist's struggle and horrible little bedsits on the Boul Mich and so on. Selenium is different. It's the sort of smell that makes platinum/palladium seem like a much better idea.
  - klodolph 6y ago
    Yup. I have never used it indoors.
  - duskwuff 6y ago

hengheng 6y ago

In the age of low-scale manufacturing, how hard would it be to create a film factory with today's technology, creating or buying the various chemicals and the physically transferring them on film rolls? Can't believe there wouldn't be a boutique market by now.

dogma1138 6y ago
Probably extremely hard and cost prohibitive you’ve essentially lost all of the economy of scale that used to support this and more importantly the first hand knowledge and expertise in building those machines in the first place.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
In theory there would be, but it depends on how much people are willing to pay for it, how long they're willing to wait for it, and whether you're flexible enough to not be producing until an order comes in. I'm sure similar questions are asked about things like floppy disks / readers, or old 486 compatible CPU's which are still in use here and there, or CRT displays.
Finnucane 6y ago
Film chemistry is very complex and no small scale production has been able to match the quality or quality control of Fuji, Kodak or Ilford.
- mauvehaus 6y ago
  To expand on this: the problem isn’t putting out one batch of high quality film; it’s putting out batch after batch that performs exactly the same. Nobody wants to lose an important shot because this batch of film exposes a little differently from that batch or has slightly different color response. Any craft brewery can make an outstanding batch of beer, and many do it quite often. The miracle of Budweiser is making zillions of barrels of Bud and Bud Lite that are indistinguishable from one another year after year.
  - Finnucane 6y ago

barrenko 6y ago

Film is going to return, no doubt about it.

atoav 6y ago

Curious, just last week I shot one of the last Kodak Aerochrome rolls available in Germany. This was particilarilly challenging because it was a 40 mm sheet glued onto the 120 roll film and I used a Twin Reflex Camera, which I had to use sideways to get a panorama format with that stripe. This means the image in the viewfinder was not only cropped and mirrored, but also upside down. This made the little adjustments to the camera position and angle one usually makes automatically a particular kind of brainfuck. I actually quite like TLRs with their mirrored viewfinders, as it forces you to view the image a little bit more abstractly which gives better results (unless you have to react quickly etc).

lokl 6y ago

An option not yet mentioned in the comments, if you shoot sheet film, is to use X-ray film, possibly cut to the size you need.

ideashower 6y ago

Kodak still makes Ektar and Portra color film, I believe.

null_object 6y ago
There are dozens of current film manufacturers (if you include various rebrands and films produced under licence in China and other Asian countries). Among these, the best-known are: ADOX, Agfaphoto, Bergger, CineStill, FilmFerrania, FOMA, Fujifilm, ILFORD, Kodak, ORWO, Rollei, Shanghai and Ultrafine. Kodak still produce Portra 100, 400, 800, Ektar 100, Professional T-Max 100, 400, 3200, Tri-X, Pro Image, ColorPlus 200, UltraMax and also motion picture film of course. As I understand it, Kodak sell about a billion dollars worth of film each year - but still lose money on other parts of their business. Still, I don't understand the generally pessimistic tone of the blog-post - seems very strange considering the poster was gifted a very valuable and desirable load of film.
- nojokes 6y ago
  CineStill is basically a rebrand of Kodak motion picture film. What is worth mentioning is that Kodak invested to start making again Ektachrome slide film after discontinuing it 8 years ago. Fuji also discontinue its last black and white film Acros but started to produce a new formula after an year.
modo_ 6y ago
That's true. But the prices just keep going up -- they increased their prices across the board by 30% this year.
- null_object 6y ago
  > "But the prices just keep going up -- they increased their prices across the board by 30% this year." This strikes me as a very 'glass half-empty' way of looking at film production. Kodak needed to increase film-prices because their existing facilities weren't able to keep up with increasing demand. I constantly experienced this myself last year, as there were periods when Portra wasn't available in various speeds in 120-format from my normal suppliers. The intention is to balance supply and demand, and use the extra revenue to invest in more efficient production. [1] https://kosmofoto.com/2019/12/opinion-why-the-kodak-alaris-price-rises-may-not-be-a-bad-thing/ https://kosmofoto.com/2019/12/opinion-why-the-kodak-alaris-p...

johnminter 6y ago

Kodak Alaris still sells professional film

mobilene 6y ago

I shoot a lot of film; it's my main hobby. I have 50 film cameras here. The FP-100C this fellow writes about was very nice while it lasted, and I enjoyed shooting it. The trick with expired films is that unless it was stored refrigerated or, better, frozen, it degrades. Some films degrade quickly, others slowly. I sometimes shoot 40-year-old Kodak Verichrome Pan b/w film and it usually looks like new. I've used other expired films that looked like crap. Some people like that degraded look but not me. There are enough good films still produced that I've decided (except for that Verichrome Pan) to just shoot fresh stocks.

dm319 6y ago

Funny to see this come up. I just took my Nikon F6 with me for my family holiday last week. It was such a pleasure to use. I've always appreciated the dynamic response of film.

tjr 6y ago
I still have my Canon EOS-3. I usually use a 6D because, well, it is more convenient, and the price both to buy and to develop film is now high enough to be annoying, but in most scenarios, I prefer the photographic output from my film camera.
- Aloha 6y ago
  I have an EOS-1 that I adore.
  - dm319 6y ago
    I remember a long time ago picking up an F100 and comparing it with a 1v. The 1v felt so light!

ekianjo 6y ago

Surprised to see so many film users on HN in the comments. I also shoot film Ilford and Portra both in 35 mm and medium formats. It feels very different from anything digital.

cactus2093 6y ago
I wonder if the increase in quality of smartphone cameras has driven more people back to film cameras. 10 years ago or so, if you wanted to dabble in photography you could spend $500 on an entry-level dslr kit and start taking significantly better pictures than your smartphone or point and shoot. Then you'd quickly hit the limits of the mediocre auto exposure settings and relatively low dynamic range, and be rewarded with even better shots for learning about the exposure triangle and better learning how to control your camera. It still took a bit of work & learning which is part of what makes something a fun hobby. Now days the latest iphone will pretty much nail the shot 8 times out of 10, and for power users you can tweak exposure, focus, and now even low depth of field and extremely low light stills are possible. (This is a bit of a generalization, for some styles of photography like birds and wildlife you obviously still need long lenses. But smartphones can cover the 24-70mm equivalent range really well). It's pretty hard to justify an entry-level DSLR anymore. But a film camera still offers a relatively affordable way to slow things, and make photography more intentional, challenging, and fun.

dillutedfixer 6y ago

I work in a retail photography environment. The amount of 16-25 year olds who come in to buy film is astonishing. Many of them don't even know why they're shooting film. They need help loading their cameras and have no idea what to do with the film afterwards. They'll regale me with stories about how they got an amazing deal on a Canon AE-1 for $200. To me it's quite obviously an "in" thing to do with young people right now. I have to admit that it kind of makes me laugh, but overall I am happy that it's helping an element of an industry that I love stay viable.

throwanem 6y ago
That's a good attitude to have. Definitely the opposite of every place I ever went to as a teenager trying to learn bass guitar, for example. Keep it up!
Aloha 6y ago
200 dollars, for an AE-1? I remember when those were selling for 20 dollars.
- rangibaby 6y ago
  They’ve gone from being so old they’re crap to being so old that they’re cool again. All the sweet deals now are on 90s camera equipment. The autofocus versions of the Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens are competitive or cheaper compared to the manual focus ones even though they have identical optical formulas and the manual focus ones are almost guaranteed to need an expensive professional overhaul at this point.
calvinmorrison 6y ago
I have a Canon A-1 I got for about $40 bucks with a camera bag, a few lenses and some extra not-expire film. It's easy to shoot on, has an ok auto mode. Mostly it's easier for me to shoot on than with a phone and I can develop b/w and have a scanner at home. It's not all that hard all in to get good photos and have some physical photos.
mafuyu 6y ago
Ha, I'll admit that I'm one of those people. I shot on a Fuji mirrorless for years, but photography didn't really capture me as a hobby until this year, when I got into film. I originally got a Mamiya RB67 because I watched a bunch of Youtube channels and wanted the "medium format look", but I didn't feel like switching off Fuji for full frame as a compromise. The experience of shooting on the RB67 was honestly eye opening. The big waist level finder, being able to actually manual focus instead of focus-by-wire, the highlight rolloff and colors of Portra. I picked up and fixed an Olympus 35RC for 35mm after that, and I had a great compact rangefinder I could carry around anywhere. Way cheaper than buying a Sony RX100 or Ricoh GR. Part of the fun is just shooting on toy cameras and weird film, too. Despite being able to fire off way more shots on my mirrorless, I feel like I'm more open to experiment when I shoot film, and my digital photography has improved as a result. It's kinda tough to really verbalize why film is catching on again without coming off as pretentious, but I do think that format, form factor, and the shooting experience are all important to the form of the art that comes out. When I record music, sometimes I'll record on my Zoom, or to a cassette, or maybe just my phone. I'm not trying to put out award winning studio produced albums, just trying to have fun and produce art that's hopefully meaningful to myself and my friends. :)

Gimpei 6y ago

Reminds me of the market for tubes for guitar amplifiers. The "good" tubes are JAN (Joint Army Navy) tubes which were last produced in the 1960s. Someone must have acquired quite a cache of them because they are still turning up albeit at increasingly steep prices.

johnr2 6y ago
> The "good" tubes are JAN (Joint Army Navy) tubes which were last produced in the 1960s. s/1960s/1980s Sylvania was still making them up to 1981, when Philips ECG bought the Sylvania tube factory so they could supply the US military. They continued making JAN tubes until 1988. A lot of these are still available.

Guybrush_T 6y ago

Part of me knows shooting with film is ridiculous in 2020. It's expensive, you don't get immediate feedback, old film cameras can often have light leaks, etc... But there is something magical about holding and shooting a film camera. You physically load the film. You can hear the film advance as you shoot. You take out the completed canister. When you get your developed film back you can see and hold the film that physically changed due to light coming in through the camera. In a world where everything is digital creating a physical image with light is kind of amazing. I still mainly shoot digital. There are too many advantages to not shoot digital in my opinion. However, if you're a fan of photography I recommend giving film a chance. The experience is really special.

catmistake 6y ago

I was pretty depressed when Kodak discontinued Kodachrome. There was one place that still developed it for a long while, but then they shut down also. Luckily, Fuji still makes Velvia Fujuchrome. They had discontinued Velvia 100 in 2005, and there was an outcry, and they brought it back with Fujichrome 50, redesigned the original coatings to work with the new base. Actually, I always preferred Fujuchrome to Kodachrome or Ektochrome, colors are more saturated. Velvia 50 tends to make people look a little red, so find and use Velvia 100 for people, but for anything else with color, Fujichrome Velvia 50 is sick.

vr46 6y ago
Yaar, me too, but there is a process again to develop it, albeit in black and white. I still have some Kodachrome left over AND some Agfa Scala! My dad’s Kodachromes from the 50s are still perfect. I miss Cibachromes, though. The ultimate combination. RVP50 is not good for people. Never was.

cutoff 6y ago

I bought a load of expired films a couple years ago on Facebook marketplace for about $3 each. This allowed me to learn how to develop, scan, test different cameras, and affordably pursue a hobby that would have otherwise cost me thrice as much. Analog photography really changed my perspective and I'm very grateful for that. I'd love to see a discussion on here about the market for discontinued film cameras. I've sold a fair amount of my point and shoots for 10x-30x as much as I bought them for, mostly because they were usually thrifted for $5-$10. If someone had the skills to repair some of the "for parts" cameras sold on eBay, such as the highly sought after Olympus mju-ii, a decent profit could be made while bringing some quality, discontinued cameras back into life. I wonder if/when any company will ever start to reproduce analog cameras again.

javiramos 6y ago

For those interested in the rise and fall of film photography, I recommend Instant [0]. The book chronicles the story of Polaroid. The last parts of the book capture the bad decisions around the shutting down of film production. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/14577509-instant https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/14577509-instant

supernova87a 6y ago

I continue to be floored by how Leica, Hasselblad, etc. retain their sale value among the photo community. For something that is clearly (to me at least) totally reproducible by digital equipment, cumbersome to use, and expensive, it's like people are clamoring to buy the stuff out of sentiment. Speaks a lot to the value of brand and emotion, doesn't it? Note: if I could afford it, I'd buy myself a nice M6 and 903SWC...

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jgust 6y ago
See: classic cars. Most cars from the 60's-80's are objectively _bad_, but there's something interesting about driving and maintaining them.