An Interesting Article on Film Use Today

[Steve M.]

I saw this article on Yahoo and thought I'd post it here. Unlike 99% of the stuff I read (and laugh at) on Yahoo, this seemed like a decent piece for a change.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110530/...93bXVjaGxvbmdl

[Snacks]

A good find there. Looking back now, I can't believe how much film was being processed as recently as 2000. What I wonder about is how long medium and large format will last after 35mm goes, or vice versa. Lots of businesses have money in their developing machinery, but at some point income will not meet the costs of maintenance and chemicals, and then where will the companies who produce film go?

On another note, I live in a 'college town' in the midst of a somewhat deprived county, and it seems that the locals use disposable film cameras while the students use digital cameras - I've seen a lot of expensive glass here. There was a camera shop here but it moved to the next town because the fall in film sales and online purchasing cut their profits. It's a little sad.

[sreed2006]

Totally off-topic: in the picture that goes with the Yahoo! article, the Kodak employee, Dan Vandelinder, looks just like me - enough to be my twin from the looks of it, chrome dome and all. I am glad my non-evil twin is still making film.

On-topic: I am torqued that film may go away within a decade. I have a whole bunch of film cameras that I want to wear out. Several of them are over 50 years old and still going strong. If they quit making batteries, I'm set. If they quit making film, all I've got is pretty paperweights.

[psarta]

there's still quite alot of high profile professionals using film, should it not be profitable anymore for kodak or fuji to make film, it wouldn't suprise me if they band together, find sponsors and buy the film manufacturing business and continue on shooting film.
coz thats what happened to polaroid film
having said that, i dont think film will go away, if anything we're seing the resurgance of film,

[Peter Wijninga]

The numbers are a bit scary... The 'resurgence of film'... is a nice retro/niche trend but it doesn't make a dent in these rapidly falling volume numbers. No one knows the 'the year when film not be available anymore' but in the run-up to that moment fewer film photographers will pay more for their medium of choice. Except perhaps for those with big freezers. On a beside, could anyone explain why film prices vary to such an extreme ...just have a look at the price of any role of film in South-East Asia, Europe and the USA ... or for that matter at any role of film in the USA and Canada.

[Pickett Wilson]

Don't worry! Someone will post in this thread very soon that film use is actually increasing, despite the fact that film sales are decreasing every quarter!

Kodak's Film and Photofinishing segment, which has managed in the past a small profit despite declining film sales each quarter, lost money in 1st Quarter 2011. That is the real turning point...and it's not a good sign at all for film.

[TXForester]

So, I wasted $$$ on an XA and XA2 that should arrive this week? I blame this on liberals and the green movement.

It's bound to happen. You can't stop progress. Although digital photography and progress may be a oxymoron.

[tic]

Oil paint and canvases will be next to go, all painters are using digital now. And all meat will be grovn in vats and we will all be driving flying cars to work. And Hell will be a popular winter resort.

[Pickett Wilson]

I dunno, tlc. I can put a digital camera set on iA in the hands of someone who has never taken a photo, tell them what hole to look through and what button to push, and they can take a perfectly focused and exposed photo almost every time. Try that will oil paint and a canvass with someone who has never painted! And even if you give them a computer, a paint program and a wacom tablet, they still won't be able to paint a picture.

I don't think there is an analogue there (pun intended).

[tic]

Well you may be right concerning the general user (and color films). But I think b&w film/chems/paper for artists will always be there for the same reason as oil paint and canvases are, but from specialist manufactures (Ilford, adox etc) and at higher prices.

[colyn]

Originally Posted by sreed2006

On-topic: I am torqued that film may go away within a decade. I have a whole bunch of film cameras that I want to wear out. Several of them are over 50 years old and still going strong. If they quit making batteries, I'm set. If they quit making film, all I've got is pretty paperweights.

By the time film goes away I'll have been long dead.

Whoever gets my cameras will have to deal with it when they are old and gray...

[Neare]

Hey, did you hear the world's going to end in october? It's also going to end again in 2012. I also heard through the grapevine that film is going to die, again and again.

If it happens, we'll deal with it then. Meanwhile, I wish all these people would stop fear mongering. It is likely that Kodak may stop, that's fine becuase then fuji and ilford will get more busniess. Less competition is what the film market needs, but I seriously doubt all film manufacturers are going to go out of busness at once. And as we know from these sorts of forums, there IS a market for film and while it isn't as large as it once was, it is certainly large enough for a single company to cater to and make a tidy profit. Fuji and Ilford are the best bets of who will continue producing, I don't hold much faith in Kodak.

[Nikon Bob]

I don't think anyone is fear mongering, it is very hard to dispute the downward spiral in the volume of film sales over the past decade. I never did believe film will go away entirely but I think it will become a very expensive medium to use. I also wish people would stop with all the false hope threads too. It is what it is and you just have to deal with it, now and in the future.

Bob

[jsrockit]

There is no film resurgence, but it is not going to die anytime soon either... it'll just become more niche.

[Keith]

I'm quite happy to use film while it's inexpensive and plentiful ... when that changes I'll be quite happy to use digital.

Having my rights removed to take photographs of whom and whatever I want (within reason) in public places by some type of paranoid hysterical legislation would concern me far more than what medium may be available to me.

[robert blu]

Originally Posted by Keith

Having my rights removed to take photographs of whom and whatever I want (within reason) in public places by some type of paranoid hysterical legislation would concern me far more than what medium may be available to me.

Keith, you touched the problem...hmmm, film or digital this is a common point.
robert

[alexnotalex]

Interesting.

I found myself thinking "who's making money from selling film cameras?" Hardly anyone.

Holga and lomo folks use expired film, so that's unlikely to boost production of new film, although I'm sure Kodak and co know how to make film that is already expired.

I pulled up jessops website, a popular camera store in the uk. No film cameras to be found.

Would I still use my M3 if someone gave me an M9? Now there's a tricky one.
An M9 with a winder lever and M3 VF?. Yes please, farewell film.

My two cents worth of random thoughts

Alex

[shadowfox]

Originally Posted by Keith

Having my rights removed to take photographs of whom and whatever I want (within reason) in public places by some type of paranoid hysterical legislation would concern me far more than what medium may be available to me.

But Keith,
There are so many photogenic trees, rocks, park benches, fences, old houses, old cars, old anything (really) and animals out there still.

Street photography will live one, regulations or not.

Just like film, it'll be there still, naysayers or not.

[rover]

The scale and scope of film photography and film production has to be reborn. The companies who produce film will shrink volumn and capacity, cutting overhead which will allow for it to survive as a profitable niche. The price of the product will increase, as will the number of individuals who practice this form of voodoo. The old model is dead and stinky at this point. A new one will be born, or is being born as we speak, perhaps with much smaller companies than Kodak and Fuji who will be the future.

[JohnTF]

I was quite content to ride the "coat tails" of all those P&S guys with the little AF cameras, it benefited all the more serious guys as Kodak was making such a profit, it could pour money into R&D and production.

MF, even 15 years ago, I was finding folks at airport security who had never seen any, I had some with red paper and you know what they thought it was. 220 was hard to find, I looked for it in APX 400 for a while, until Agfa told me they never made it. The two guys in tech support and I had a nice chat, and they told me then that B&W was less than 1% of their output, but they could afford to keep supplying it with the profits from the color negative side.


Film will survive, but we will never again have the choice from the variety that once was.

It was amazing Kodachrome lasted into 2011, B&W lasted 60 years longer than anyone might have suspected when color made it big mid 20th century.

What we choose to do with film may be the interesting question.

I do not know if I will ever learn to duplicate the analog images I have in my modest personal archive to an acceptable degree. One of the sidebars to the article spoke of someone carrying a large camera, shooting MF and producing beautiful large prints, from scans of course.

Regards, John

[Nikon Bob]

Well when you shrink volume and capacity you increase costs hugely if you are talking producing at a plant. There already has been a huge amount of volume and capacity taken off line in the past decade. If manufacturing film is anything like producing pulp and paper the trend has been to run larger/faster machine 24hrs a day 365 days a year at as fast a speed as possible. You don't want to interrupt the process or slow the machines down as this would eat into profits by increasing costs. I really don't think that the production of film at a level that would provide the same profit margins and keeps costs to the consumer reasonable can be done on a small scale. I am not saying small scale film production can't be done it is just that you will have to pay very dearly for it. That alone drives more people away than it would attract.

Bob

[JohnTF]

Originally Posted by Nikon Bob

Well when you shrink volume and capacity you increase costs hugely if you are talking producing at a plant. There already has been a huge amount of volume and capacity taken off line in the past decade. If manufacturing film is anything like producing pulp and paper the trend has been to run larger/faster machine 24hrs a day 365 days a year at as fast a speed as possible. You don't want to interrupt the process or slow the machines down as this would eat into profits by increasing costs. I really don't think that the production of film at a level that would provide the same profit margins and keeps costs to the consumer reasonable can be done on a small scale. I am not saying small scale film production can't be done it is just that you will have to pay very dearly for it. That alone drives more people away than it would attract.

Bob

One of the sidebars states that Kodak will sell off to someone, implying? they either will run it in to the ground, or survive on smaller volume and profit?

Regards, John

[Paddy C]

Originally Posted by Nikon Bob

Well when you shrink volume and capacity you increase costs hugely if you are talking producing at a plant. There already has been a huge amount of volume and capacity taken off line in the past decade. If manufacturing film is anything like producing pulp and paper the trend has been to run larger/faster machine 24hrs a day 365 days a year at as fast a speed as possible. You don't want to interrupt the process or slow the machines down as this would eat into profits by increasing costs. I really don't think that the production of film at a level that would provide the same profit margins and keeps costs to the consumer reasonable can be done on a small scale. I am not saying small scale film production can't be done it is just that you will have to pay very dearly for it. That alone drives more people away than it would attract.

Bob

This is something that I think some people have been missing to a degree.

If you work with printers you get the picture. Printers need to have presses running. That's how they make money. It doesn't matter if they are running small jobs at cost in between the big stuff, the presses have to run. That's how you maintain cash flow, that's how you keep people who know how to keep everything running paid and at the printing plant.

If work slows and presses are idle you will begin a domino effect that will end in the printer closing shop.

At the moment, I'm a film guy, but I don't see any of the big players able to keep it going for too much longer I'm afraid.

I do feel that a company like Ilford may be best suited to keep things going on a smallish scale as time goes by.

But don't think this is about people making stuff in a bathtub. It's not. There's a breaking point, I just don't think anyone really knows where it is.

One should also note that the history of photography has been about shedding old technology and processes for newer and better ones. While the "newer" of digital photography cannot be disputed, the "better" remains an argument for only a few and is, at best, highly subjective.

I sometimes wonder if film at this point is as much about cameras as process? The interest in and success of the X100, X1, and M9 give some credence to that possibility. I love simple, well built cameras and these are few and far between in the digital world. This and nostalgia are strong anchors. But if more products like the X100 are released and as sensor technology improves and prices fall (hopefully) will the film fans continue to be fans?

I think I'm at that point where I'm questioning film but not yet able to part with it.

[Keith]

Originally Posted by Paddy C

This is something that I think some people have been missing to a degree.

If you work with printers you get the picture. Printers need to have presses running. That's how they make money. It doesn't matter if they are running small jobs at cost in between the big stuff, the presses have to run. That's how you maintain cash flow, that's how you keep people who know how to keep everything running paid and at the printing plant.

If work slows and presses are idle you will begin a domino effect that will end in the printer closing shop.

At the moment, I'm a film guy, but I don't see any of the big players able to keep it going for too much longer I'm afraid.

I do feel that a company like Ilford may be best suited to keep things going on a smallish scale as time goes by.

But don't think this is about people making stuff in a bathtub. It's not. There's a breaking point, I just don't think anyone really knows where it is.

One should also note that the history of photography has been about shedding old technology and processes for newer and better ones. While the "newer" of digital photography cannot be disputed, the "better" remains an argument for only a few and is, at best, highly subjective.

I sometimes wonder if film at this point is as much about cameras as process? The interest in and success of the X100, X1, and M9 give some credence to that possibility. I love simple, well built cameras and these are few and far between in the digital world. This and nostalgia are strong anchors. But if more products like the X100 are released and as sensor technology improves and prices fall (hopefully) will the film fans continue to be fans?

I think I'm at that point where I'm questioning film but not yet able to part with it.

It's interesting that Fuji have stated they'll be in it to the end and when you think about it they're one of the few manufacturers to be in a position to do this. Kodak seem to be struggling in areas aside from film and the other players who are purely film manufacturers will likely implode when they can't sell enough of the stuff to survive. Fuji's film business is stated to represent less than 3% of their profit so a down turn won't send them to the wall ... they'll just keep cutting back by reducing emulsions until such time that they just can't be bothered any more. They have a lot of very successful irons in a lot of different fires ... pharmaceuticals comes to mind here!

The X100/X1/M9 are good examples to use here because it definitely changes the playing field somewhat and if Fuji actually brought out a camera with changable lenses another few thousand film shooters would jump ship pretty quickly IMO and so it goes on. If film became unavailable tomorrow my X100 would instantly become my main camera for my hobby and I'd probably start saving for an M9 ... and although I'd shed a tear over the loss of film I certainly wouldn't be devistated. In the meantime I'll happily keep using it!

[Nikon Bob]

Originally Posted by JohnTF

One of the sidebars states that Kodak will sell off to someone, implying? they either will run it in to the ground, or survive on smaller volume and profit?

Regards, John

We will see, if and when the day comes, whether or not a buyer can be found. If one can be found I doubt very much that they could operate the machinery on a smaller volume and generate enough profit unless the price per roll climbed drastically. There are fixed costs to a plant regardless if it is running or not and that is one of the reasons why a machine needs to run continuously year round as fast as possible. It is just cheaper to do so. Some processes don't do well with constant starting up and shutting down. It is not as easy as flipping a switch. Like I said before, I doubt you will not be able to get film in the future but I am almost as sure you won't like the price.

Bob