I'd like to see some of these film sales numbers from an independent source.
"Still selling Bessa IIIs" isn't really an answer.
This actually indicates very soft demand...
In any case, assuming that new film cameras are indeed on the horizon, what would such cameras need, in order to entice purchasers to buy new, instead of buying used?
Sure, a new warranty is nice, but how much is that warranty going to cost?
Considering a new F6 is $2500, and used ones routinely sell in the $600-$800 range, and the vast majority of used F6s were not used professionally and have still have decades of service.
Other film cameras are cheap enough it's easy to buy 2 or 3 in case one fails, so the cost is still far below what a newly produced model would cost.
What, if any, gimmicks/features could be added to a new film camera design to entice buyers?
"Still selling Bessa IIIs" isn't really an answer.
This actually indicates very soft demand...In any case, assuming that new film cameras are indeed on the horizon, what would such cameras need, in order to entice purchasers to buy new, instead of buying used?
Sure, a new warranty is nice, but how much is that warranty going to cost?
Considering a new F6 is $2500, and used ones routinely sell in the $600-$800 range, and the vast majority of used F6s were not used professionally and have still have decades of service.
Other film cameras are cheap enough it's easy to buy 2 or 3 in case one fails, so the cost is still far below what a newly produced model would cost.
What, if any, gimmicks/features could be added to a new film camera design to entice buyers?
HHPhoto
Well-known
I hope so, too
.But I am meanwhile quite relaxed. I have always been optimistic about the future of film. And because of that, I've got lots of bashing and hate here on rff during the last years.
But so far all of that what I have expected and said happened indeed:
- new films on the market
- reintroduction of former films
- near gear (e.g. for professional labs and home darkrooms)
- increasing number of labs
- increasing number of film and used cameras dealers
- more marketing by the film related companies
- even new small film factories like Adox and FilmFerrania
- new instant, pinhole and large format cameras.
And in some years we will see also new 35mm and medium format cameras.
Cheers, Jan
Phil_F_NM
Camera hacker
I would like to see an accurate count of new photo labs being opened because here in the USA, that is not the case. I've been involved in the post-production end of photography since 2000 and I have seen nothing but decline since about 2003. In 2006 I worked for a lab in California that had consolidated from three down to one location. I managed a lab here in Philly from 2007-2009 until the owners of the corporation closed that location as well as five others the same year. It was more profitable for the owners to rent the location out to a low customer volume sushi restaurant. That LLC went from 142 retail locations in the early 1990s to just a single lab 15 years later. All of the Wolf labs were bought out then liquidated in just a few years. All of the Ritz labs were simply liquidated not long after. In the 13 years I have lived in Philadelphia about 20 labs have closed, one changed management and renamed itself and a SINGLE one opened up.
If a person wants to do some custom photo work, the easiest way is to enroll at our local community college.
So if there is a renaissance happening, it isn't here in the USA.
Phil Forrest
If a person wants to do some custom photo work, the easiest way is to enroll at our local community college.
So if there is a renaissance happening, it isn't here in the USA.
Phil Forrest
HHPhoto
Well-known
That is long gone. Film make much revenue today at Fujifilm. They sold 7.7 million instax cameras alone in 2017. The instax lines are running 24h each day in three shifts to keep up with the increasing demand. Fujifilm is by far the biggest photo film and photo paper producer worldwide now.
You should have come to Photokina last year and visit the Fujifilm booth and talked to the stuff there.
Cheers, Jan
markjwyatt
Well-known
I think it would have to be flexible- say along the lines of a Hasselblad or a Graflex system camera. Maybe it could offer:
1. Digital back(s);
2. 35mm roll film;
3. 120 film back 6x6, 6x7, 6x9;
4. Sheet film back;
5. Instax back;
6. Easy pinhole conversion;
7. Optical viewfinder or rangefinder or evf plus ground glass focus; maybe even SLR.
8. Bluetooth to track photos and settings with film plus to transfer digital images;
9. Maybe a simple attachable lightmeter (a built-in may be too complex, but could be part of specific backs);
I have seen some proposals go by from GoFundme type sites for flexible cameras, but not sure if it is this flexible.
Create such a a camera on an open source industry standard and let entrepreneurs supply the components. The standard could lay-out:
1. physical construction;
2. Attachment configurations (lenses, backs, viewfinders, flash, accessories);
3. Electrical and electronic connectiosn;
4. Communications parameters;
5. etc.
Being skeptical is not 'hate' or 'bashing.'
I agree with Phil, haven't seen an 'increasing number of labs.'
Haven't seen an 'increasing number of film and used camera dealers' either.
I agree with Phil, haven't seen an 'increasing number of labs.'
Haven't seen an 'increasing number of film and used camera dealers' either.
markjwyatt
Well-known
I think the future could be hybrid- i.e., create cameras that can be digital OR film. Maybe both (SLR where the mirrored image gets digitized?).
HHPhoto
Well-known
Then just do your work and a proper research. Lots of information is online, and lots of information can be achieved by talking to Kodak, Fuji, Ilford, Foma, Adox, the online distributors and labs.
The problem is not that the information is not available.
The problem is that all the armchair experts are just too lazy to invest the needed time.
They expect others to be their slaves and doing the work for them.
In the last decades e.g. I have been on countless photo fairs, and every time on the most important, the Photokina.
At last Photokina all (with no exception) companies from the film industry reported significant increasing demand. The film manufacturers, the labs, the distributors, the gear manufacturers.
That is the reason why we see new products.
Cheers, Jan
Larry Cloetta
Veteran
Wrong.
The numbers are available, if you do a proper research. Some manufacturers are obliged to publish their financial data (like Ilford, Kodak, Fujifilm). E.g. Ilford there has published their film sales, which have been increasing for 4 years. In 2017 (latest published year) they had in increase in film sales of +9%. At Fujifilm their instant film production is running in three shifts 24h each day 7 days a week to keep up with demand. The number of sold instax cameras is reaching a new record every year. Their silver-halide business is 2/3 of their total photo business, their digital section is only 1/3 of it.
Kodak reported for 2017 increasing film sales in the 5-15% range (depending on the country).
All film manufacturers recently have either introduced new films, or increased their marketing investments (or did both). Clear signs of increasing demand.
Furthermore the number of labs and used camera gear shops is increasing because of rising demand. Last weak I heard that in Bangkok alone 8 new labs have opened in the last 12 months.
Last Photokina I talked also to the big film distributors like ars-imago and Fotoimpex and all reported significantly increasing demand. The distributors have hired lots of new employees to keep up with the increasing orders.
The number of film photography channels on youtube has exploded in the last 24 months. The number of film related postings on instagram, too.
Here on rff lots of members are still captured in their "film is dead" bubble. Get out of it
Cheers, Jan
Jan,
“Is there commonly available (reliably independent) sales figures for film stock?”
That was the question Splitimagereview asked. My answer was “No. If there’s is let’s see it.”
Intentionally quoting people out of context in an attempt to make cheap points by categorically labeling others as “Wrong” doesn’t advance your argument, neither does endlessly repeating the same industry talking points.
The OP originally asked one thing, “What if Nikon (and Canon) released new RF FILM cameras (and lenses)?” and said “Wouldn’t that be fun?” Fair enough, and yes, it would be.
The only way to make anything of that order of magnitude appear plausible has been for the thread to devolve into mostly using Instax “film” and Instax camera production numbers to make it appear that the dawning of a new age is upon us, a point further bolstered by talk about new pinhole cameras as if pinhole cameras, fine in themselves, have anything to do with the level of camera this thread was talking about. At least, that’s what I’ve been talking about. Perhaps that is the source of the disagreement, that we’re talking about two completely different things.
Instax cameras are the Easy Bake Oven of the photography world. Photographers who have and enjoy one in addition to their other “real” cameras, that’s great. I’ve considered one myself. But, people who have an Instax as their only (retro hipster lemming trendy vibe) “camera” that’s entirely something else again. People who are 30 in calendar years, but 9 in developmental years. Dedicated followers of fashion. Lemmings. Yeah, okay, that’s harsh, but, seriously, get off my lawn.
A minority percentage of those people will indeed go to their favorite Etsy store and buy an old “real” camera for $60 to help cement their retro cool status among their manscaping friends, but I personally doubt that is going to bring about the future of new, solid, legitimate 35mm cameras from major players that this thread was about. It wasn’t about something I can make in my wood shop. (Nothing wrong with that, and it would be a “film camera”, fun and legitimate in its own way, but fairly far afield from what many of us are talking about, and what many of us thought we were all talking about.)
Attached is a photo of a Nikon F2A I bought 6 months ago on eBay, available to anyone, in the midst of the purported exploding “rising prices” phenomenon. It functions perfectly, the meter has exactly matched the readings I get from the F2AS I had Sover refurbish for me. One of the best film cameras ever made. It cost me $245, shipped, from Japan. It’s possible to acquire cameras like this all day long.
I made a joke a day ago about the fact that I had bought most of the cameras on eBay. Sometimes it feels that way. Most of the people on this forum, and on every photography forum worldwide, have more than one camera. People my age tend to have way more than one camera. It’s the “so easy and cheap to buy all those wonderful cameras I could never afford when I was younger” effect. Cameras just like this Nikon F2A.
Here’s how this works and affects the supply side of camera economics: when people my age die, all these cameras, lovingly maintained, come back onto the market. By the hundreds of thousands. This is in addition to all those constantly coming onto the market when people of all ages, who now only use their phones, decide to clean out their closets. It’s the camera version of Neitzsche’s Eternal Return. There are going to be hundreds of thousands, or millions, of (repairable, maintainable) cameras available for a very long time, for dollar amounts that are so low, even if they quadruple, that no manufacturer will be able to compete with, by building a camera of similar quality and sell at a comparable price.
The magical thinking quality of responses to this thread have even included scoffing at the economic effects of the supply and demand curve, so people will continue to see what they want to see, regardless. I’m not immune, and I’d love to see Canon or Nikon do this (as originally proposed), but there is simply no need.
If the conversation has shifted to a discussion of a startup making new pinhole cameras in a shed, in the stated 4-5 year time frame, I’d agree that was perfectly realistic.
But, Jan, if it’s your honest belief that “For future 35mm and 120 format cameras: I expect that in about 4-5 years to start”; If you are talking about something of the same marketable and saleable quality as the F2 shown here, or the cameras this thread started off being about, and if you are willing to bet $1,000 this will happen in 5 years, and if we can find an escrow account held by an independent party, I will write a check to cover that bet today, because it’s not going to happen until the supply of all the existing cameras is exhausted. (If even then, due to the short lived nature of the trendy.) And that is going to be decades from now.
“Here on rff lots of members are still captured in their "film is dead" bubble. Get out of it.”
That is my roll of Panatomic -X in my $245 Nikon F2, so I’m personally not in the film is dead bubble. But...“Film is alive”, and “major manufacturers making F2 and Nikon SP level cameras as a viable business is alive” are two separate things and the latter does not follow on from the former. Not in this world, not in five years.
Adox, Ilford and Ferrania are surviving, and hopefully doing well, by serving the existing market comprised of the millions of perfectly competent already existing film cameras. There is no logical connection between the given fact of a possibly healthy emulsion market, and the need for, and rationale for, new film camera production.
If you can’t manufacture a perfectly functioning F2A, sell it for $245, and make a profit, you don’t have a viable business model, because that’s exactly what the competition is doing. And that competition is going to be there for decades. Maybe after that there will be a business model for a new film camera, if anyone still cares.
Besides, Phones do bokeh now, I’ve seen it on the tv.
All the above IMO.
No animals were harmed in the making of this screed. May the past be with you.
markjwyatt
Well-known
Mini-labs make a LOT of sense, and always did. When I talk about 3D printing cameras, I am really talking more broadly about another concept- distributed manufacturing. What this means is rather than depending on a Nikon to make cameras or a Fujifilm to supply all film (don't get me wrong we still need their infrastructure and they are part of the community), we need to be able to make things and do things where they are need on a flexible basis.
What 3D Printing (and more generally "additive manufacturing") offers is a possibility for a design to occur in one place, and manufacturing to occur locally where the users are who need the components. It also allows for quick printing of replacement components and sub-components as needed.
Such a philosophy allows for more customization also (print my cover green instead of tan, please...).
Expand the idea of a open source platform for film (and possibly digital) cameras to an open source platform(s) for photography. Bring as much of the manufacturing and services as close to the user as possible- from DIY to local service centers to full scale/high-volume manufacturing.
Create a network for photographers based on common, open standards, and let the entrepreneurs contribute as the market will tolerate. Just as all electronics operate on standards today (Bluetooth, WiFi, USB, Linux, Windows[proprietary, but still a standard], etc.), try and build such a set of standards for photography, and you have a better chance of keeping film, digital cameras (which are also being lost to phones), and photography alive.
What 3D Printing (and more generally "additive manufacturing") offers is a possibility for a design to occur in one place, and manufacturing to occur locally where the users are who need the components. It also allows for quick printing of replacement components and sub-components as needed.
Such a philosophy allows for more customization also (print my cover green instead of tan, please...).
Expand the idea of a open source platform for film (and possibly digital) cameras to an open source platform(s) for photography. Bring as much of the manufacturing and services as close to the user as possible- from DIY to local service centers to full scale/high-volume manufacturing.
Create a network for photographers based on common, open standards, and let the entrepreneurs contribute as the market will tolerate. Just as all electronics operate on standards today (Bluetooth, WiFi, USB, Linux, Windows[proprietary, but still a standard], etc.), try and build such a set of standards for photography, and you have a better chance of keeping film, digital cameras (which are also being lost to phones), and photography alive.
markjwyatt
Well-known
What you are saying is true, and I have a few of those ebay cameras, and I paid a lot less for most of them than $245 (I am considering a Nikon F2 on and off...). But the truth is they are also a crap shoot on ebay. Some of them really do not function properly. A couple have ended up at my [somewhat] local camera repair (the ones worth the investment). Some of the used camera dealers are better I am sure. They at least check them out and bring them up to some standard.
Still, people want to go out and buy a camera they know is reliable and is going to work for them and last. The people like us who buy classic gems on ebay are called enthusiasts. Enthusiasts alone may not keep film alive, unfortunately. A properly designed, and priced new camera design which is flexible (and maybe can adapt classic lenses and possibly even components) may help create a new generation of enthusiasts.
HHPhoto
Well-known
Sorry, but one have to be very blind concerning the market to make such a statement.
All film manufacturers said at Photokina that the film revival is very strong in the US, with 10-20% increase in 2017 and first half of 2018.
New shops like shotonfilmstore, f-stopcameras, brooklyfilmcameras have opened. New labs like Northeastphotographic, shotonfilmstore, Adrian Bacon have opened. Lots of local stores offer film processing again. The number of US based film photography channels on youtube have exploded in the last two years. On photrio you will find a thread where data from more than 25 US labs is shared which all report strong increasing demand.
You should also have a look at instagram, because lots of US labs are very active there. And have follower numbers in the 50,000 to 90,000 range.
Cheers, Jan
Anecdotal evidence is fine, however the question was concerning independent figures.
Industry figures from manufacturers is fine, too, but it's not independent. After all, they have a vested interest in painting a rosy picture...
Since you've already done the research, let's see the links to the independent data.
It would be helpful to have real data to back up your position, other than "go do your own research."
Industry figures from manufacturers is fine, too, but it's not independent. After all, they have a vested interest in painting a rosy picture...
Since you've already done the research, let's see the links to the independent data.
It would be helpful to have real data to back up your position, other than "go do your own research."
Phil_F_NM
Camera hacker
Thanks Jan for completely discounting my experience in the process and post-process side of this industry. I don't care about youtube channels or yet another speculative thread on photrio or anywhere. All armchair economists. Well, I can do that too but I can also show you pay slips from the now-defunct labs I have worked for and I can show you locations of former labs all over the country. Call me incorrect or narrow minded or what ever pejorative you may but I have been a part of this side of photography for quite a while and my data is not compiled from me cherry picking figures from the internet to support my argument. It is what I have lived so maybe experience counts for something. Add that to your data set please.
Phil Forrest
Phil Forrest
HHPhoto
Well-known
This comment clearly demonstrates how ridiculous all your requests are.
Manufacturers are the only ones who knew their production data. No matter whether you look at a car factory, a furniture factory, a food factory or anything else.
Look at the CIPA data for digital camera sales: The data is deliverd by the camera manufacturers.
There are no "independent" data specialists standing in side of production lines in factories counting the units produced!!
Saying that the production numbers of manufacturers should not be used is completely out of reality. All the national economic statistics worldwide are using the data delivered directly by the manufacturers themselves!
And they are correct because the balance sheets are proved each year for taxes.
What you all think why Kodak has re-introduced TMZ and put lots of R&D in a new Ektachrome?
Why Kodak is investing in new marketing, e.g. on instagram?
Why Adox has introduced new papers, developers and film?
Why Adox is building a new factory?
Why FilmFerrania is building a new factory?
Why Fujifilm has re-introduced the 3-packs on the NA market?
Why Fujifilm is investing in marketing for standard film on instagram and on a complete new internet page?
Why lots of film related Kickstarter projects have been successful, just recently the packfilm project?
Why there is new developed gear like the Jobo film processers, or the lab box, or new scanners?
Why new labs open?
Why film distributors are hiring new staff?
Sorry, but I am out here.
It makes no sense to discuss with people who simply do not want to have a look at all the recent changes in the market.
The situation is very different to that some years ago.
The same people who tell me now that it is completely impossible that we will see new cameras in the future have told me in the past
- that film will die
- that instant film will die at first
- that E6 will die and we will never see reversal film from Kodak again
- that it is of course completely impossible that new film factories are buillt.
Reality has proven them wrong.
Cheers, Jan
Larry Cloetta
Veteran
Wasn't me, I'm not that same people.
"that it is of course completely impossible that new film factories are buillt." This bit, that's me.
aizan
Veteran
The Nikon F2A is a great, well-made camera, but it's not one of the more desirable models. The popular cameras are in high demand and their prices reflect that. Any new film camera would have to be a reissue of a popular camera, or at least be as equally desirable as one. That means choosing the right specs, beautiful design, and great build-quality.
markjwyatt
Well-known
For the enthusiasts, perhaps, but what about the non-enthusiast? Maybe we have already lost them to iPhones, etc., but what could attract them? I suspect it would have to be something new.
Ted Striker
Well-known
I said "traditional". That means still photography film, not including INSTAX.
This is what makes up less than 2% of Fujifilm's revenue, at least according to their CEO.
Ted Striker
Well-known
Being skeptical is not 'hate' or 'bashing.'
I agree with Phil, haven't seen an 'increasing number of labs.'
Haven't seen an 'increasing number of film and used camera dealers' either.
I have not seen one lab open. Not one. And, I live in a town with a major university next door. 40,000 students. The lab that is in town does a single run of film per week. Just one run.
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