The Market for Discontinued Photographic Film | Hacker News Reader

The Market for Discontinued Photographic Film

leejo.github.io

79 pointsleejo57 comments

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ILFORD still makes film. They have a tour of their factory on their YouTube channel:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXpoALotxf0

See also The Impossible Project, some folks who reverse engineered how to make Polaroid instant film:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM5k4B1C7cs

* https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/27/weve-come-full-rectangle-p...

That video is nothing short of amazing. Ilford HP5+ [1] has been my go-to film (I only shoot black and white) since Fujifilm dropped Neopan 400 [2] back in 2013 and my supplies ran out two years later. I have heard that Oriental SEAGULL 400 should be similar to my old love Neopan, but there is only so much time I have as an amateur to shoot.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilford_HP

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopan#Neopan_400_Professional...

Film photography is certainly something I can recommend, at least to anyone interested in photography in general. The lack of instant feedback does indeed change how you operate even when you shoot digital. I would never dream of not shooting primarily digital though if your salary depended on capturing anything but a fully controlled scene.

Good on Ilford for keeping film alive. Fujifilm finally ran out of Acros 100 in their freezer, so now get Ilford to make it.

There’s some mystique around Oriental Seagull, but in reality it is “just” rebadged Kentmere. It was really cheap and nice for about 5 minutes back in 2016...

I have been on the Ilford factory visit, highly recommended if they run it again...

I work in a retail photography environment. The amount of 16-25 year olds who come in to buy film is astonishing. Many of them don't even know why they're shooting film. They need help loading their cameras and have no idea what to do with the film afterwards. They'll regale me with stories about how they got an amazing deal on a Canon AE-1 for $200. To me it's quite obviously an "in" thing to do with young people right now. I have to admit that it kind of makes me laugh, but overall I am happy that it's helping an element of an industry that I love stay viable.

That's a good attitude to have. Definitely the opposite of every place I ever went to as a teenager trying to learn bass guitar, for example. Keep it up!

200 dollars, for an AE-1? I remember when those were selling for 20 dollars.

They’ve gone from being so old they’re crap to being so old that they’re cool again. All the sweet deals now are on 90s camera equipment.

The autofocus versions of the Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens are competitive or cheaper compared to the manual focus ones even though they have identical optical formulas and the manual focus ones are almost guaranteed to need an expensive professional overhaul at this point.

I have a Canon A-1 I got for about $40 bucks with a camera bag, a few lenses and some extra not-expire film. It's easy to shoot on, has an ok auto mode. Mostly it's easier for me to shoot on than with a phone and I can develop b/w and have a scanner at home. It's not all that hard all in to get good photos and have some physical photos.

Ha, I'll admit that I'm one of those people. I shot on a Fuji mirrorless for years, but photography didn't really capture me as a hobby until this year, when I got into film.

I originally got a Mamiya RB67 because I watched a bunch of Youtube channels and wanted the "medium format look", but I didn't feel like switching off Fuji for full frame as a compromise. The experience of shooting on the RB67 was honestly eye opening. The big waist level finder, being able to actually manual focus instead of focus-by-wire, the highlight rolloff and colors of Portra. I picked up and fixed an Olympus 35RC for 35mm after that, and I had a great compact rangefinder I could carry around anywhere. Way cheaper than buying a Sony RX100 or Ricoh GR.

Part of the fun is just shooting on toy cameras and weird film, too. Despite being able to fire off way more shots on my mirrorless, I feel like I'm more open to experiment when I shoot film, and my digital photography has improved as a result.

It's kinda tough to really verbalize why film is catching on again without coming off as pretentious, but I do think that format, form factor, and the shooting experience are all important to the form of the art that comes out. When I record music, sometimes I'll record on my Zoom, or to a cassette, or maybe just my phone. I'm not trying to put out award winning studio produced albums, just trying to have fun and produce art that's hopefully meaningful to myself and my friends. :)

I think that photography without film or printing isn't worthwhile (as a hobby). Until I messed around with an instant camera, most of my photos were just dumped into a folder I would never have time to edit them. But with the instant camera, knowing that each shot costs money, I try to focus on taking a better picture or capturing a certain moment. Having a price per shot certainly forces you to improve quality. I also prefer Olympus and Fujifilm cameras for having great out of camera JPEGs that don't really need editing. Paired with the Canon CP1300 mobile 4x6 printer it makes shooting fun like film since you have the intent of printing.

I shoot a lot of film; it's my main hobby. I have 50 film cameras here. The FP-100C this fellow writes about was very nice while it lasted, and I enjoyed shooting it.

The trick with expired films is that unless it was stored refrigerated or, better, frozen, it degrades. Some films degrade quickly, others slowly. I sometimes shoot 40-year-old Kodak Verichrome Pan b/w film and it usually looks like new. I've used other expired films that looked like crap. Some people like that degraded look but not me.

There are enough good films still produced that I've decided (except for that Verichrome Pan) to just shoot fresh stocks.

Curious, just last week I shot one of the last Kodak Aerochrome rolls available in Germany. This was particilarilly challenging because it was a 40 mm sheet glued onto the 120 roll film and I used a Twin Reflex Camera, which I had to use sideways to get a panorama format with that stripe. This means the image in the viewfinder was not only cropped and mirrored, but also upside down. This made the little adjustments to the camera position and angle one usually makes automatically a particular kind of brainfuck.

I actually quite like TLRs with their mirrored viewfinders, as it forces you to view the image a little bit more abstractly which gives better results (unless you have to react quickly etc).

I have been scavenging film from people who have switched to digital for decades now, they would give me bags of it. I rescued a load just before lockdown else it was going in the rubbish, some of it was from the early 1980s or late 1970s. You don't know what you'll end up with as a result, but it's all part of the the fun.

Doesn't that go bad eventually, from background radiation if nothing else? Or from slow chemical reactions?

It no longer meets the specifications, that is correct, but expiry imparts its own unique qualities, which reflect the history of its storage and treatment - and that is often quite an attractive trait in film, which retains its mystery until developed :)

I was pretty depressed when Kodak discontinued Kodachrome. There was one place that still developed it for a long while, but then they shut down also. Luckily, Fuji still makes Velvia Fujuchrome. They had discontinued Velvia 100 in 2005, and there was an outcry, and they brought it back with Fujichrome 50, redesigned the original coatings to work with the new base. Actually, I always preferred Fujuchrome to Kodachrome or Ektochrome, colors are more saturated. Velvia 50 tends to make people look a little red, so find and use Velvia 100 for people, but for anything else with color, Fujichrome Velvia 50 is sick.

Yaar, me too, but there is a process again to develop it, albeit in black and white. I still have some Kodachrome left over AND some Agfa Scala! My dad’s Kodachromes from the 50s are still perfect. I miss Cibachromes, though. The ultimate combination.

RVP50 is not good for people. Never was.

I still shoot film, but I have to admit I always feel guilty when I dispose of the used chemicals. That, and not the cost, is the main reason I prepare a lot for each frame, and I tend to get much better shots.

Still, I'd like to see a day when I could get the same results on digital as on film. The existing solutions like Silver Efex don't even come close.

From my research, the main thing you shouldn’t pour down the drain is spent fixer.

Classic developers contain chemicals like metol and hydroquinone, often in combination, as active agents. The remaining chemicals in developer are things like sodium bicarbonate, borax, and sodium hydroxide. If you are concerned, switch to Kodak Xtol which does not use metol or hydroquinone.

Stop bath is just acetic acid and a pH indicator. You can use water as a stop bath if you like, you just run the risk of changing the pH of your fixer.

As for fixer, it’s not fixer that is the problem per se—it’s the silver that the fixer removes from your film or paper. The silver will mess up the sewage treatment plant. You can remove the silver by dropping some steel wool into the fixer, it will undergo a redox reaction and you’ll end up with rust and metallic silver.

The only thing I am actually scared to work with is selenium toner. You should definitely NOT pour selenium toner down the drain.

Quite apart from the waste, selenium toner is... nasty. I mean the smell. One gets rather used to many of the smells of the darkroom, equating them in one way or another with the artist's struggle and horrible little bedsits on the Boul Mich and so on. Selenium is different. It's the sort of smell that makes platinum/palladium seem like a much better idea.

Yup. I have never used it indoors.

All of the non-oxygen chalcogens (sulfur, selenium, tellurium, in theory polonium) are known for their unpleasant-smelling organic compounds -- and, as the elements get heavier, the smells only get worse. Sulfur compounds are bad, selenium compounds are awful... there aren't a lot of chemists working with tellurium compounds, but reports are that even trace amounts have a horrific smell.

An option not yet mentioned in the comments, if you shoot sheet film, is to use X-ray film, possibly cut to the size you need.

I continue to be floored by how Leica, Hasselblad, etc. retain their sale value among the photo community. For something that is clearly (to me at least) totally reproducible by digital equipment, cumbersome to use, and expensive, it's like people are clamoring to buy the stuff out of sentiment.

Speaks a lot to the value of brand and emotion, doesn't it?

Note: if I could afford it, I'd buy myself a nice M6 and 903SWC...

See: classic cars. Most cars from the 60's-80's are objectively _bad_, but there's something interesting about driving and maintaining them.

I bought a load of expired films a couple years ago on Facebook marketplace for about $3 each. This allowed me to learn how to develop, scan, test different cameras, and affordably pursue a hobby that would have otherwise cost me thrice as much. Analog photography really changed my perspective and I'm very grateful for that.

I'd love to see a discussion on here about the market for discontinued film cameras. I've sold a fair amount of my point and shoots for 10x-30x as much as I bought them for, mostly because they were usually thrifted for $5-$10.

If someone had the skills to repair some of the "for parts" cameras sold on eBay, such as the highly sought after Olympus mju-ii, a decent profit could be made while bringing some quality, discontinued cameras back into life.

I wonder if/when any company will ever start to reproduce analog cameras again.

Part of me knows shooting with film is ridiculous in 2020.

It's expensive, you don't get immediate feedback, old film cameras can often have light leaks, etc... But there is something magical about holding and shooting a film camera. You physically load the film. You can hear the film advance as you shoot. You take out the completed canister. When you get your developed film back you can see and hold the film that physically changed due to light coming in through the camera. In a world where everything is digital creating a physical image with light is kind of amazing.

I still mainly shoot digital. There are too many advantages to not shoot digital in my opinion. However, if you're a fan of photography I recommend giving film a chance. The experience is really special.

Reminds me of the market for tubes for guitar amplifiers. The "good" tubes are JAN (Joint Army Navy) tubes which were last produced in the 1960s. Someone must have acquired quite a cache of them because they are still turning up albeit at increasingly steep prices.

> The "good" tubes are JAN (Joint Army Navy) tubes which were last produced in the 1960s.

s/1960s/1980s

Sylvania was still making them up to 1981, when Philips ECG bought the Sylvania tube factory so they could supply the US military. They continued making JAN tubes until 1988. A lot of these are still available.

Funny to see this come up. I just took my Nikon F6 with me for my family holiday last week. It was such a pleasure to use. I've always appreciated the dynamic response of film.

I still have my Canon EOS-3. I usually use a 6D because, well, it is more convenient, and the price both to buy and to develop film is now high enough to be annoying, but in most scenarios, I prefer the photographic output from my film camera.

I have an EOS-1 that I adore.

I remember a long time ago picking up an F100 and comparing it with a 1v. The 1v felt so light!

Surprised to see so many film users on HN in the comments. I also shoot film Ilford and Portra both in 35 mm and medium formats. It feels very different from anything digital.

I wonder if the increase in quality of smartphone cameras has driven more people back to film cameras.

10 years ago or so, if you wanted to dabble in photography you could spend $500 on an entry-level dslr kit and start taking significantly better pictures than your smartphone or point and shoot. Then you'd quickly hit the limits of the mediocre auto exposure settings and relatively low dynamic range, and be rewarded with even better shots for learning about the exposure triangle and better learning how to control your camera. It still took a bit of work & learning which is part of what makes something a fun hobby.

Now days the latest iphone will pretty much nail the shot 8 times out of 10, and for power users you can tweak exposure, focus, and now even low depth of field and extremely low light stills are possible. (This is a bit of a generalization, for some styles of photography like birds and wildlife you obviously still need long lenses. But smartphones can cover the 24-70mm equivalent range really well). It's pretty hard to justify an entry-level DSLR anymore. But a film camera still offers a relatively affordable way to slow things, and make photography more intentional, challenging, and fun.

For those interested in the rise and fall of film photography, I recommend Instant [0]. The book chronicles the story of Polaroid. The last parts of the book capture the bad decisions around the shutting down of film production.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/14577509-instant

In the age of low-scale manufacturing, how hard would it be to create a film factory with today's technology, creating or buying the various chemicals and the physically transferring them on film rolls? Can't believe there wouldn't be a boutique market by now.

Probably extremely hard and cost prohibitive you’ve essentially lost all of the economy of scale that used to support this and more importantly the first hand knowledge and expertise in building those machines in the first place.

In theory there would be, but it depends on how much people are willing to pay for it, how long they're willing to wait for it, and whether you're flexible enough to not be producing until an order comes in.

I'm sure similar questions are asked about things like floppy disks / readers, or old 486 compatible CPU's which are still in use here and there, or CRT displays.

Film chemistry is very complex and no small scale production has been able to match the quality or quality control of Fuji, Kodak or Ilford.

To expand on this: the problem isn’t putting out one batch of high quality film; it’s putting out batch after batch that performs exactly the same. Nobody wants to lose an important shot because this batch of film exposes a little differently from that batch or has slightly different color response.

Any craft brewery can make an outstanding batch of beer, and many do it quite often. The miracle of Budweiser is making zillions of barrels of Bud and Bud Lite that are indistinguishable from one another year after year.

It's not really like that. Either you can coat a 5000-foot roll of acetate with 14 layers of chemistry to a high degree of uniformity, then slit and sprocket the film, and package it, or you can't.

Well, I used to be part of a darkroom where people would create their own films and plates, and you learn that manufacturing physical objects is relatively easy now, but manufacturing film chemistry at a consistent level is bloody difficult. Physical build monitoring is straightforward, but feedback cycles with chemical and pollution monitoring isn't. The level of consistency is mind-blowing for motion picture and still film. Any idiot can make bulk craft beer (and indeed does) but few idiots can make a delicate lager with little headroom for error.

People have been using wet plate photography for years. Others have started using dry plates, and someone is selling them commercially.

Then there is a community working on the above and a few working on true roll film.

Probably the best site for making your own materials is http://thelightfarm.com, good discussions about all films commercial or homemade at http://apug.org

Kodak has their own dedicated waste treatment plant. You would face similar obstacles.

Black and white or color?

There are at the moment only 2 large companies (Fuji and Kodak) what can produce color film and one company (resurrected Ferrania) what will in the long term maybe trying to do it. There is one company (Ilford) that maybe potentially could do it when they wanted it but so far they do not.

Any other color film you see on the market is either rebrand of some old or new stock.

There are a bit more B&W film producers:

Fuji (again) Kodak Ilford Foma Adox Agfa Photo (I could not recall which of the old plants in EU is producing actually the product) Bergger Silberra Ferrania

There are perhaps some few more that are producing B&W film.

The last 3 are pretty much your definition of boutique market for film. It exists but it is not grande. Even Fuji and Kodak marked is not large but it is growing.

One of the films he mentions, Acros 100, was recently re-introduced as Across 100 II. It seems very similar to the original, although is probably made by Ilford under contract.

Yep! It has but unfortunately they're not making it in large format sizes.

Kodak still makes Ektar and Portra color film, I believe.

There are dozens of current film manufacturers (if you include various rebrands and films produced under licence in China and other Asian countries). Among these, the best-known are:

ADOX, Agfaphoto, Bergger, CineStill, FilmFerrania, FOMA, Fujifilm, ILFORD, Kodak, ORWO, Rollei, Shanghai and Ultrafine.

Kodak still produce Portra 100, 400, 800, Ektar 100, Professional T-Max 100, 400, 3200, Tri-X, Pro Image, ColorPlus 200, UltraMax and also motion picture film of course.

As I understand it, Kodak sell about a billion dollars worth of film each year - but still lose money on other parts of their business.

Still, I don't understand the generally pessimistic tone of the blog-post - seems very strange considering the poster was gifted a very valuable and desirable load of film.

CineStill is basically a rebrand of Kodak motion picture film.

What is worth mentioning is that Kodak invested to start making again Ektachrome slide film after discontinuing it 8 years ago.

Fuji also discontinue its last black and white film Acros but started to produce a new formula after an year.

That's true. But the prices just keep going up -- they increased their prices across the board by 30% this year.

> "But the prices just keep going up -- they increased their prices across the board by 30% this year."

This strikes me as a very 'glass half-empty' way of looking at film production.

Kodak needed to increase film-prices because their existing facilities weren't able to keep up with increasing demand. I constantly experienced this myself last year, as there were periods when Portra wasn't available in various speeds in 120-format from my normal suppliers. The intention is to balance supply and demand, and use the extra revenue to invest in more efficient production.

[1] https://kosmofoto.com/2019/12/opinion-why-the-kodak-alaris-p...

Ektar is literally the thing that keeps me shooting film, it has a richness and depth that I have trouble reproducing in digital.

Kodak Alaris still sells professional film

Film is going to return, no doubt about it.

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