Kodak Film Production has Doubled from 2015 to 2019

Corran said:
Who's threatened? I think we are just pointing out your statements/arguments are flawed. As you said, you have no numbers to back anything up. Yet the point of this thread...
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The "film is dead" or "film will be dead" preachers feel threatened by any positive news about film.
We see it here for so much years now.

Because these positive news clearly show that their rants have nothing to do with reality.
 
benlees said:
A lot of Pollyanna's in this thread. A lot of conflating arguments as well. Yes, film will be around for a long, long time. In the world of niches. So use it. Just like oil paints and carburators. Just like copper plate and glass plate; still around. Yes, more people are using film right now but the industry is a shell of its former self and this won't change. I imagine sales of b&w film has remained relatively steady for the last few years because it has been a niche for a long time- I have no numbers to back this up though.

The argument that Freestyle or B&H is out of a film shows high demand falls flat on its face because films were available everywhere not long a go. Sure, it's the internet and everyone shops online but I can still get shoelaces at Amazon or at the shop down the road ; film not so much. And like someone mentioned there is no longer convenient infrastructure to get the most out of your film. Most film now is digitized anyway, which is what; better than nothing? Hardly a good business model.


Celebrate roll and sheet film, but it will celebrated as a niche product. Not quite sure why this threatens people.
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Film could see a turn-around if some company (maybe Cosina) started up production of quality film cameras again at reasonable prices (not Leica for instance; though they may follow), with modern lenses calculated for film (Cosina already has some good designs for instance). These could be somewhat basic cameras, but with quality construction and lenses.

Hint (cough, Cosina, Cosina...) cough cough
 
markjwyatt said:
Film could see a turn-around if some company (maybe Cosina) started up production of quality film cameras again at reasonable prices .....
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The turnaround is already there! See the first post! The film sales are growing for years now. All film manufacturers are reporting that. All film distributors and labs, too.

Cameras: There are dozens of millions still unused film cameras out there. The used market is huge. Cameras are not a problem at all.
Not now, not in the mid term.
You can get a Nikon F100 for only 150 bucks, a F4 for 200 bucks.
A Canon Eos 30V / 33V for less than 100 bucks. A Nikon FA for 140 bucks.
 
Skiff said:
The turnaround is already there! See the first post! The film sales are growing for years now. All film manufacturers are reporting that. All film distributors and labs, too.

Cameras: There are dozens of millions still unused film cameras out there. The used market is huge. Cameras are not a problem at all.
Not now, not in the mid term.
You can get a Nikon F100 for only 150 bucks, a F4 for 200 bucks.
A Canon Eos 30V / 33V for less than 100 bucks. A Nikon FA for 140 bucks.
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True, but in order to accelerate and sustain, someone needs to supply non-30+yearold_cameras. The growth can continue with old cameras (and I love them and love the pricing and cameras), but I think an inflection (upwards) will come if film cameras are offered new. I suspect a company like Cosina could be the leader here.
 
So many quality color positive and negative films available in a range of speeds available right now. We're lucky.

Saul Leiter and Joseph Koudelka achieved great work with scraps and bulk roll remainder films. Now go be curious.
Doug
 
Corran said:
Who's threatened? I think we are just pointing out your statements/arguments are flawed. As you said, you have no numbers to back anything up. Yet the point of this thread...
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If you are replying to me, my arguments aren't flawed; hearsay and anecdotes won't refute them. Criticizing my post for not having numbers while not providing any of your own is not productive is it? If you can show me hard numbers that more film is being sold in 2020 than in 1980 I would be grateful. Film is a niche product now and it can thrive as such. I never said "film was dead". Yes, sales have increased since 2015 (and that's great) but this is not indicative of a full recovery. Unless you are convinced the film industry is actually going to come back to its glory days (pre-digital) then we actually agree.
 
markjwyatt said:
True, but in order to accelerate and sustain, someone needs to supply non-30+yearold_cameras. The growth can continue with old cameras (and I love them and love the pricing and cameras), but I think an inflection (upwards) will come if film cameras are offered new. I suspect a company like Cosina could be the leader here.
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Agreed.
But I am fully relaxed concerning that topic. We will see new film cameras. Not now (too early), but probably in about 3-5 years.
The collapse in digital cameras sales will continue for the next years, because the reasons for this decline will continue.
Camera manufacturers will be happy in the mid term to find a new market for film cameras.
Don't forget: Fuji is already producing 10 million instax cameras p.a.
 
benlees said:
If you can show me hard numbers that more film is being sold in 2020 than in 1980 I would be grateful.
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That's called "moving the goalposts" :)

PS, you might want to look at the graphs for digital camera sales in the same time period as was being discussed in this thread :angel:
 
Jamie123 said:
Well of course not literally nobody. What I’m saying is that in the early 2000s when it was still available it was so much of a nice product that there seemed to be almost no evidence of it still being used. But as soon as it got discontinued everybody cried about its demise. (Againc by “everybody” I don’t literally mean every human being on earth.)
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FWIW , that still makes it sound like only a few hundred photographers were using Kodachrome when K64 was pulled from the market in 2009. Kodak sold $22,000,000 worth of Kodachrome in 2009, the lowest amount ever, inflation adjusted. If we are talking about film resurgence, most companies today would kill for another product they could count on to bring in that much revenue, all on its own. In the “early 2000s” Kodachrome revenue was at or above $100 million annually.
It’s not coming back for a variety of reasons, and Kodak killed it because, yes, it was a small and production intensive part of their portfolio by then, but to say “there seemed to be almost no evidence of it still being used” is misleading to those who might not know much about the history of the film and the reasons for its disappearance.
So yes, a niche product, but it was a really big niche.
 
Corran said:
That's called "moving the goalposts" :)

PS, you might want to look at the graphs for digital camera sales in the same time period as was being discussed in this thread :angel:
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It would be moving the goalpost... if you had provided evidence:angel:.

But I'm not sure what digital camera sales have to do with this? My only point is that the recent increase in film sales is not an indication of a full blown recovery. Do you believe it is?
 
Skiff said:
The "film is dead" or "film will be dead" preachers feel threatened by any positive news about film.
We see it here for so much years now.

Because these positive news clearly show that their rants have nothing to do with reality.
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You are making cr@p up, creating a conflict out of no conflict, hoping for brownie points for a forum/social media quick and fleeting dopamine hit.

No one is saying film is dead, more like saying film now is a niche product...most folks use digital now and film is not necessary like before to make a photo image . And no one is hoping for film manufacturers to fail or show no growth or shrink away to nothing.. go and re-read the comments.

I myself as stated in an earlier comment on this thread still use film and film cameras for a majority of my photography.. and have no joy in hoping film manufacturers disappear.
 
Skiff said:
Cameras: There are dozens of millions still unused film cameras out there. The used market is huge. Cameras are not a problem at all.
Not now, not in the mid term.
You can get a Nikon F100 for only 150 bucks, a F4 for 200 bucks.
A Canon Eos 30V / 33V for less than 100 bucks. A Nikon FA for 140 bucks.
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As someone who's "collected" film bodies for years and years, I find this statement hilarious. Do you know how many film bodies are in bad repair, not working, or about to become not working? Sure those of us who are savvy about film photography can usually determine whether a body for sale on the internet or in a second hand store is well maintained and likely to keep working, but give the average younger film newbie a single bad experience buying some decrepit but cool-looking film body in an antique shop and figuring out the plastic film advance bits are broken, or the meter wiring is bad, or any number of other potential problems, and you turn them off almost immediately (or sooner or later - all depends on how flexible their budget is) to acquiring used cameras.

We need NEW film cameras. Something that comes with a warranty. Otherwise we are just maintaining some kind of unjust barrier to entry when it comes to all the kids who don't know much about the gear but want to play with film. Lomography has that whole crowd cornered right now. Go peruse that website if you think there aren't a lot of young people enthusiastically getting into film.
 
Film production will never be what it was before the motion picture industry went to digital projection, and digital production. Yes, there are quite a few directors who work solely on film but for every production using film there are a hundred using digital capture. Only revival theaters now show film prints when that was the standard 20 years ago. A single feature length motion picture shot on 35mm and distributed widely as such would eclipse all film usage in the last decade in the whole world. This is why Fuji no longer makes MP film at all. The only player in that niche is Kodak and they still barely put out anything compared to when all prints were 35mm projections. It's not coming back. Enjoy the great niche still film stocks we still have available.
Phil Forrest
 
xayraa33 said:
No one is saying film is dead,
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LOL,
you should re-read your posts:
Original quotes from you:
"There will be a time in the future when film photography will be a quaint practice of the past as... daguerreotype photography is now, cumbersome, kind of weird ,expensive, not eco or health friendly and material rare and too expensive even just to dabble in it. ……..Once the old generation passes away and the younger ones are now middle age and with more pressing things to do and spend money on then it will be a trickle of film users left that will dwindle down to nothing with the passage of time and through attrition... and film photography will mostly be then a footnote in history.
….. Give it time and film will really be dead.


Maybe you can fool yourself. But you cannot fool us.
 
agentlossing said:
Do you know how many film bodies are in bad repair, not working, or about to become not working?
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Yes, I know this very well: Millions.
But lots of them can be repaired.
And the decisive factor is: Millions of film cameras are properly working and don't need any repair. There is enough of these cameras on the market to power the film revival for many years to come.

No one is saying that we don't need new film cameras in the long run. But we will get them: The demand will lead to supply.
We have seen exactly that recently with mechanical watches and turntables. From almost no production to a huge variety of new excellent models. Often much better than that what was produced in former times.
 
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