Wonder How Long 35mm Will Last

Tom Harrell said:
Kodak seems to be backing out of film at an alarming rate. How long before the rest follow suit? Should we be stockpiling favorite films/chemicals/papers when
possible?

Your thoughts/comments are most welcome.

Tom Harrell
Click to expand...

As many other people already said b/w films should be around for quite some times. Colour film...too.
I cannot really imagine (I might be wrong) Bolliwood going all digital at once and at least they should be using film. I cannot also imagine the good disposable camera for the turist who forgot a real camera to disappear at once, and if someone is doing a film for that camera he will probably also make some sort of film for the people like us who still like to use their old gear. If all goes to the worst one will need to re-learn the art of plate-coating and chemical-mixing, but even that is not so difficult as many think (producing the wanted result however is much more difficult). If you have seen one a platinu-palladium print from a old plate you know that qualitywise we are on the top of any conceivable 35mm camera and modern paper and when you are contact-printing even a negative produced with a single element at its hiperfocal can compete with that obtained from a Leiczeissikkorndestock lens...

Having said this it does not hurt to stock something if you really like it. I whish I had a couple of APX 25 rolls and a few more boxes of APX 100 4x10" sheet films. I bought all I could find when Agfa announced their intencion of stopping the production but the rolls are long gone and I am left with only about 50 sheets...

🙁

Giella lea fapmu
 
I think 35mm film will be around longer than it all ready has been. When you consider the billions of rolls that have been sold each year, even if only 0.01% of that total were used it would still add up to an awful lot of film, certainly sufficient to keep several medium size companies in business worldwide. R & D may stutter for a while as the market sorts it's self out and there may not be many new film cameras for a while. However, once the sales figures settle down I'm sure we shall see many more new cameras. It's just a matter of the companies concerned (potentially concerned) knowing what their eventual customer base will be. The best thing that us film devotees can do is to keep on using the medium.
 
Having recently purchased used M6 myself, I strongly encourage you to go ahead and do it and enjoy it. Film will survive as an artform, I think, for a long time to come. People still paint, do traditional printmaking, etc. in spite of newer technologies that have come along for image making.

I have a digital SLR and I have really enjoyed it, but it actually led me back to film and I have to say it's a very satisfying experience.
 
I just read something very interesting in the fotoimpex forum. One member is complainig about the current batch of Addox R50 compared to last years batch then named Efke R50.

Mirko, the owner of Fotoimpex, answer is a bit lenghty but the message is clear.

They make very small batches of ISO50 B/W filmonce a year and last years batch was very stable and more to ISO60 or 80 and didn't loose much of its senistivity in storage. This years batch is closer to ISO40 while fresh and may get to ISO50 when it matures.

Then they had a mixup with two boxes of 120 film, from 5000 Adox R50 200 where ISO400. The film was labled correctly but the containers were not and it took two month until somebody got the wrong labled containers!

So a production batch of R50 seems to consist of at least 5000 rolls 120 and it takes two month to sell enough so someone finds a 4% error! Think about that, 1 out of 25 rolls are in wrong containers and it takes two month until sombody finds out! Roulete is a one out of 36 chance.

Furtheron Mirko mentions that prices are higer and quality lower the smaller the batches. I think he knows what he is talking about, Fotoimpex is big enough an Efke customer to save them from insolvency!

In another answer he writes that Maco doesn't buy at Efke anymore and technical and X-Ray film, which was the main source of income at Efke, has nearly no demand anymore.

Efke can produce material for roughly 1700 135 films and they work 8 hours a day. In one shift on one day they produce more R50 film than could be sold by all suppliers worldwide in two years.

Since Agfa is gone, there is more demand for Efke and things stabilize on a low level just enough to support the production.
Efkes mashines are very old and half as fast as those from Agfa, the Efke emulsions are pretty robust and can be produced on those mashines but they are not exact enough for newer emulsions.

So we have to live with higher prices and lower quality 🙁
 
Without wanting to sound facetious, I would say that 35mm film will be around substantially longer than any digital camera you may currently have, or will purchase in two years to replace the one that you currently have, or will purchase two years after that to replace the one you purchased to replace the one that you currently have, or will purchase two years after that to replace the one you purchased to replace the one that you purchased to replace the one that you currently have, or...

(Repeat as long as you like, then go out and shoot some film.)
 
Guy, I bought more film cameras than digital ones in the last three years, it's something like 1:5.

With Agfa gone, Efke and Foma in trouble and Ilford barely saved the film supply will shrink, or better adapt to a shrinking market.
We better get used to filmes varying +-30% from batch to batch and "fresh" film which was produced anytime in the last two years.

Last saturday the photo store told me that they are out of fixer and don't stock chemicals any longer but they are happy to accept my B/W film to send it to a lab for the very low price of 6 Euro a roll! Add another 4 Euro for contacts and 0.5 Euro for a digital 9x13cm print or 5 Euro for a 13x18 wet print on PE paper.
At those prices I'll take up a cheaper hobby, like restoring a Porsche Speedster 🙂
 
Hello Socke,

My post was intended as a reply to the question posed by the original poster "How long will 35mm film last?"; I should have quoted that question in my post to make it clear. Apologies for the ambiguity.

Regarding your post, I understand that the world of b&w film is shrinking, and that products are more scarce than in the past, and I realize that this trend will undoubtedly continue. That said, I can buy at my local camera store (Freestyle, in Hollywood, CA) dozens of different b&w papers, a number of different b&w films, and a wide variety of chemicals from a number of companies, from developers to toners. Sure, there are less of these items available than before, and many "classics" from the past are no longer around, but the choice is still surprisingly rich, IMO.

FWIW I am currently experimenting with 3 different b&w films and printing on 7 different professional grade b&w papers, and this doesn't begin to exhaust the possibilities that are available now in spite of the industry-wide move to digital.

Though b&w material is not as prevalent as before, it is certainly not on the verge of extinction, as some people seem to suggest.
 
Guy, I have to order online or drive some 60 miles :-(

And to add insult to injury, when I stood at the counter with two Contax Gs on my shoulder the sales droid tried to sell me a Canon 5D with a 24-105 zoom "It's an L lens with constant f4 and it's cheaper in the bundle". Morons!

I'm interested in the 5D, but he should have tried to sell it bundled with Contax/Yashica adapters 🙂
 
I was pleased to see a Bergger display at PMA and spoke to one of their people for a
few minutes. It always helps when you begin the conversation with raves about
their products (the paper...oh man...). He told me it's still "A $100 milion a year
business". I should have thought to ask if that figure is their slice or the grand
total.

Fred
 
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Socke said:
Guy, I have to order online or drive some 60 miles :-(

And to add insult to injury, when I stood at the counter with two Contax Gs on my shoulder the sales droid tried to sell me a Canon 5D with a 24-105 zoom "It's an L lens with constant f4 and it's cheaper in the bundle". Morons!

I'm interested in the 5D, but he should have tried to sell it bundled with Contax/Yashica adapters 🙂
Click to expand...

Zoerkendorfer makes a good adapter but it's the most expensive. When I mention adapters, people who sell Canon typically say something like,
You'll void your warranty if you use an adapter.
bs.gif


If it's a good one with a stop screw, you shouldn't have any problems. More HERE.


R.J.
 
I believe is was the Nobel prize-winning physicist Nils Bohr who first said that "making predictions is difficult, especially about the future". My best guess is that film will eventually die out, but slowly. Unfortunately, as the market shrinks, economies of scale will gradually disappear, so film and processing will become more costly 🙁
 
Andy K said:
They are also reintroducing old lines such as their Postcard paper, and are researching new films, such as a Delta 25.
Click to expand...
I'd be camping out in front of Central Camera if they actually came out with that film.

Even if film did die, I'd have negative files of Tri-X and Delta 100. Many others have archives of film.
 
well, this summer my mom expressed a sense that digital doesn't have the feeling of creating memories that she got when she tucked an envelope of prints and negs into her photo box. She noted that she has no idea if the pics on her hard drive will be around even into the next decade, but can sit and look over prints from her wedding, and know that the negatives are right there ready to go if something happened to the prints. Currently my parents get prints of their digital shots, but not having anything like a negative as a back-up apparently bothers her. I can't help but feel that she cannot possibly be the only one in the world feeling that way. I know I prefer film, even if I do have a small digital P&S.

I have a feeling there is going to be a small backlash against digital in the coming decade as people upgrade their PC's and find their beloved digital snapshots are missing. As has been said, Kodak certainly is selling enough film. At an average of ~$5 a roll, a billion rolls of film from Kodak alone adds up to quite a bit of money in the market. Considering retailers might take 50% of that, that's a lot of money for the grocery stores, drug stores, and gas stations of the world to give up, not even figuring the processing. I don't think film, especially 35mm, is going anywhere soon.
 
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Tom Harrell said:
I want to put together a small dark room and learn printing b & w photos. I really don't know if I should stick to that idea or not. Tom Harrell
Click to expand...


Dear Tom -

As long as people do what you are describing above, there will be some one willing to take your money in exchange for some film. If shooting film is what gives you pleasure, then do so and enjoy it for how ever long it lasts.
🙂

I make a living with digital imaging, but have no intentions of stopping my use of film, both professionally and privately. I also highly doubt that we will see the complete disappearance of film in our lifetimes.


Cheer and good light.


HL
 
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