Out to Lunch
Veteran
Sure, Jan. Believe what you want to believe. In the meantime, all but a handful of shops with film processing equipment in Ho Chi Minh City -10 million inhabitants, have closed their doors. Cheers, Peter
Increasing demand at professional labs: Detailed Numbers
- Thread starter HHPhoto
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HHPhoto
Well-known
The number of Film Photography youtube channels is exploding. There are already dozens of it. That is one of the reasons for increasing demand. And all of them are by young(er) photographers.
And lots of lifestyle, food and fashion youtubers have also discovered film. And make videos about it.
Here an example from young western Canadians, which are using Fuji film and the London Drugs service you have mentioned above:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpMFHUSgfiA
Cheers, Jan
Ste_S
Well-known
To be honest, I find your white knighting of the film industry to be just as misinformed.
The truth lies somewhere in between your and Ted Striker's view points.
HHPhoto
Well-known
They have closed their doors some years ago. That is the point.
Not in the last two years.
As members from HCMC/Saigon here on rff has reported, recently new companies have entered the market in Vietnam.
The number of users in the Vietnamese film photographer facebook group has exploded in the last 1.5 years. This group is now even much bigger than photrio!
Cheers, Jan
HHPhoto
Well-known
"White knighting" - sorry, ridiculous.
I point to what is happening. I just give the links to the numbers and facts.
I refer to that what the manufacturers have explained at photo fairs like Photokina. These guys know their numbers!!
All the "grumpy old men" here ignoring the changes which are going on out there in the film market for example can have a look at youtube, facebook and instagram and the strongly growing film community there. But they don't do it, instead they completely ignore it.
Just another example. From travel vloggers who have discoverd film for them:
Getting straight to about a million views:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2laf8VdZdk
About color developing at home, almost half a million views:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58g_VpDh40I
Cheers, Jan
Out to Lunch
Veteran
Details are welcome. Cheers, Peter
HHPhoto
Well-known
E.g. rff member 'kiemchacsu' from Vietnam has posted pictures of a new lab opening (in his long Vietnam picture thread).
And I stumbled upon two other new ones on facebook last year. But I have not written down the names (I don't speak Vietnamese). In the last months so much new companies have popped up in several countries that I cannot always keep track of all of them. And it is not my job to collect and write down all of them (and do the work the grumpy old men are to lazy to do 😀), I prefer spending my time going out and shooting film 🙂)
There is defintely lots of dynamic in the market.
Cheers, Jan
Labs started closing well before then. And there were several years for the mail order labs to court and bring in customers who lost local support. Takes time to market and convince potential customers who never considered mailing off film before...time to build a customer base.
In addition many of the mail order labs enticed customers with superior scanning services that most local labs did very poorly, this started even before local labs dried up...
There is no real evidence here proving this is increasing film demand, unfortunately.
Further, even if there were verifiable evidence of increasing demand, one must ask: increasing compared to what? What is the baseline of demand (and when was this baseline established) and how much is the percentage increase above that baseline? Speaking industry-wide, not just individual shops.
A few labs here and there doing good business does not necessarily extrapolate to a strong, growing industry; it simply reflects individual companies executing good business plans.
Ko.Fe.
Lenses 35/21 Gears 46/20
Welcome back to where is was.
Fred Herzog has to sent his Kodak slides from Vancouver to somewhere in USA. And Minox users in Toronto used to send their films to NY, NY.
+1.
Fred Herzog has to sent his Kodak slides from Vancouver to somewhere in USA. And Minox users in Toronto used to send their films to NY, NY.
+1.
maigo
Well-known
Sorry, using the Tapatalk app I can’t see your user details. Where are you?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Out to Lunch
Veteran
To the best of my knowledge, 'Kiemchacsu' lives in Hanoi which is 1,646.7 km by road from HCMC. I recommend you take a cold shower and/or two aspirins. Cheers, Peter
jawarden
Well-known
+1, this is ridiculous - these two are apparently made for each other. Tuning out.
Skiff
Well-known
That is not true.
There is lots of evidence.
Clever people just do the obvious: They talk to the people who know the market numbers: Film manufacturers, film distributors and lab owners.
A group of about ten rff members has exactly done that last photokina (the biggest photo fair in the world, all relevant players have been there).
Jan was one of the members, by the way. And I was also in that group.
And all these film companies - independently from each other - explained the same: The film market has changed to the positive. And this change is significant. Some markets and product groups have had already 30-50% growth p.a.. And most have seen at least 5-10% growth rates.
That are the facts. Period.
A friend of mine visited recently the WPPI. Kodak and Fujifilm again confirmed the positive market outlook there. Fujifilm said there that they are prepared to be in the film business for further decades.
Why none of the bashers here visited the WPPI??
Instead here on rff the "armchair experts" and doom and gloom prayers avoid to visit the photo fairs and talk to the relevant people. They are too lazy and ignorant to get their asses up to get true data from the guys who know because they are running the businesses.
These armchair experts have a strong believe in the "film is dead" religion. They have been brainwashed for more than a decade and are blind to see that the situation is changing.
They are ignorant to the big amount of young users entering the film market (which can be clearly seen on all social media channels). They are ignorant to the fact that instax film is now the most successful photo product surpassing DSLR and DSLM sales.
Phil_F_NM
Camera hacker
No.
I wish we still had Philly photographics, which was the only lab I trusted in a 75 mile radius.
I have hope for film but on the ground in the 5th largest city in the USA, the situation doesn't look as rosy as some would have us believe. It's not grim either but I wouldn't trust my film to the remaing minilab operators left in the city.
Phil Forrest
Archlich
Well-known
Demand, in some places, are rising. In many other places services and supplies are drying up. Prices are on a wild ride, both camera and film. Don't quite match up do they?
I'd say we'd have to factor in the demographics. It's different people who are getting into the super trendy film photography than those who are forced to leave decades of business and practice behind. Guess who's who.
I'd say we'd have to factor in the demographics. It's different people who are getting into the super trendy film photography than those who are forced to leave decades of business and practice behind. Guess who's who.
ptpdprinter
Veteran
Which begs the question: where is the film renaissance actually occurring?
Phil_F_NM
Camera hacker
Exactly. This thread is about professional labs and I have seen several close recently. NFL films closed their wet lab a few years ago and they were the largest pro bulk processor of film on the east coast, if not the nation. When that happened, most of the college still and motion programs went full digital and are not coming back. Yes, two local colleges still teach film photography, black and white only. One is the community college, the other is the Tyler School of Fine Art at Temple university but for photography degrees, the major is all digital now. All the journalism school labs closed in 2010 and started offering courses in cell phone photography, I kid you not.
So film may be seeing a little uptick and I hope it continues but the milennial attention span may just move on to the next shiny thing after developing film becomes inconvenient for any reason, whatsoever. We'll see.
Phil Forrest
Prest_400
Multiformat
It indeed is an interesting discussion. I observe that some models are shifting, observe how the hip labs that work mail order and scan, sending the files through cloud platforms are having good business. Carmencita lab in Spain grew this last 5 years to process about 6K rolls a day, from a tiny minilab garage operation, and they seem to be quite an important presence with a catchment area up to Russia. The editorial and wedding scene, which are their main clients, seem to shoot happily Portra and 400H.
The club grabbed a lot of free stuff from both from an aerial company and a school. 20+ Rolls of RC paper, a 4x5 durst enlarger and accesories, aerial rolls and a few other goodies. Ironically I was told that the school had a darkroom with 10 enlargers but chose to donate that paper and was buying fresh kentmere instead.
Of course, I'm not counting the possible many that are out there. Many students do shoot film. Yesterday I met a 33 year old who sold me some film overstock. I saw a kid in the pub shooting with a generic 80s P&S and non-chalantly flashing his friends.
There's a monthly open event for darkroom and occasionally a group of 19-22 year olds drop in, but they don't really seem very commited. But the % overall is low. Also, I noticed that spotting DSLRs is becoming rare.
We bought a couple E6 kits to do a developing pool this Spring. E6 does seem to sit on weaker ground.
OTOH I'm in a student city of 200K in Sweden and joined the local camera club. It keeps a solid film group and 2 darkrooms but we are just about 25-30 people subscribed to use them freely. The local school offers a course on film that is taught in our premises.
The club grabbed a lot of free stuff from both from an aerial company and a school. 20+ Rolls of RC paper, a 4x5 durst enlarger and accesories, aerial rolls and a few other goodies. Ironically I was told that the school had a darkroom with 10 enlargers but chose to donate that paper and was buying fresh kentmere instead.
Of course, I'm not counting the possible many that are out there. Many students do shoot film. Yesterday I met a 33 year old who sold me some film overstock. I saw a kid in the pub shooting with a generic 80s P&S and non-chalantly flashing his friends.
There's a monthly open event for darkroom and occasionally a group of 19-22 year olds drop in, but they don't really seem very commited. But the % overall is low. Also, I noticed that spotting DSLRs is becoming rare.
We bought a couple E6 kits to do a developing pool this Spring. E6 does seem to sit on weaker ground.
Bill Clark
Veteran
Face it folks.
Film is a niche market.
The demand went down so much it had no where to go but up a little or it’s the bottom of the 9th.
Here is an article for you to read, if you’re interested:
It’s from a few years ago but the hand writing is on the wall.
https://www.thephoblographer.com/2015/04/23/manufacturers-talk-state-film-photography-industry/
Here’s one on Hollywood using film:
https://stephenfollows.com/film-vs-digital/
Film is a niche market.
The demand went down so much it had no where to go but up a little or it’s the bottom of the 9th.
Here is an article for you to read, if you’re interested:
It’s from a few years ago but the hand writing is on the wall.
https://www.thephoblographer.com/2015/04/23/manufacturers-talk-state-film-photography-industry/
Here’s one on Hollywood using film:
https://stephenfollows.com/film-vs-digital/
Ko.Fe.
Lenses 35/21 Gears 46/20
I like old film films, but it is not competitive media in film industry anymore.
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