Shanghai & Peking - Where to find film and film cameras?

[Svitantti]

Hi all!

I'm asking on behalf of my friend, who is at the moment travelling in Suzhou. Next he will be flying to Beijing and Shanghai.

The question is:

- Where to find nice places to find film (other than just some Superia from tourits spots)?

- Where to find film camera shops in there?

It seems to be suprisingly hard as such big cities (or maybe that is the reason).
Any help would be appreciated! Please, if possible could you give the address translittered to english. Some landmarks would be helpful too.
Thanks!

 

[kully]

It's not hard at all to find places in Beijing at least.

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27386

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74862

In Beijing head to Wu-Ke-Song metro station and ask any of the scooter taxi's to take you to 'photo city' or just point at your camera.

And spend a little time searching this forum, I wrote up the photo places in Beijing during/after my trip there in 2006.

 

[dfoo]

Shanghai at xie tu lu, lu ban lu photography market, or the one near the shanghai railway station. xie tu lu market has much better selection of used old cameras.

 

[Svitantti]

Thanks, I think it helps a lot. You guys know if theres many chinese films like Lucky available? I guess that is the place anyway so maybe my friend will find out himself 🙂.

Yeah was a bit hasty with the topic and not using the search...

 

[newsgrunt]

Wukesong camera market is easy to get to. Take the subway to that stop and head north. It's about a 20-30' walk from the subway. Your friend will need Herculean effort as some of the shops have some very nice Leicas as well.

 

[ethics_gradient]

Wukesong camera market is easy to get to. Take the subway to that stop and head north. It's about a 20-30' walk from the subway. Your friend will need Herculean effort as some of the shops have some very nice Leicas as well.

20-30 feet? I think it was like 15-20 minutes.

Lots of cool, old stuff there, it's almost like a museum (where you can buy stuff!). I was there two years ago and you could buy Lucky 100, the ASA400 had been discontinued and was hard to find. They also have pretty much every other type of film available. I picked up a few Mudan TLRs (Seagull knockoffs?) as inexpensive souveniers for photographer friends back home.

I'd personally be wary of high dollar, collector's items... Chinese bootleggers are pretty enterprising.

 

[dfoo]

The selection of professional color negative 135 films is limited/non-existent. No NPZ fuji, no Kodak portra 160. Its also impossible to find 1600 neopan. If you have a specific film you want to get post here, and I can tell you whether its available.

 

[newsgrunt]

' is also minutes I believe. But yeah, it's a kinda long, boring walk, until you get there. The Holga shop was interesting as well but I was scoping for lf or Leica, neither of which I could afford 😉

 

[Svitantti]

How much for a Holga there? That was something my friend could've been interested in, also.

 

[newsgrunt]

can't recall. thought I had a card for the shop, will see if ZI can find it. there wasn't anyone who spoke english when I visited, had to use ipod touch to show them what I was looking for. can't beat Freestyle for holga pricing imo.