Film Photography News — August 2024 Recap

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What’s new?

Film prices have finally come down 🎉, a new fully functional LEGO film camera may become a thing, Kodak sells one of its brands to a private equity firm then relaunches its colour development kit, and the first Cinema Shorts orders have now been dispatched.

💛 GOLD members get full access to the new app: “Film Price Trends.” In this Community Letter: What’s new? The world’s first fully functional LEGO film camera is now under consideration by the brand to become a kit you can buy. Film prices have finally come down. Kodak Color Negative C-41 Film Processing Kit. The sale of Kodak Alaris. Cinema Shorts film packs are on their way. Latest on Analog.Cafe. Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

The world’s first fully functional LEGO film camera is now under consideration by the brand to become a kit you can buy.

Earlier this month, I interviewed Zung Hoang who designed the world’s first fully functional LEGO camera. Whereas other designs that became kits were models, Zung’s creation is light-tight and has a functional shutter with a plastic lens plus a dual-mode film winding mechanism.

Fingers crossed, LEGO approves. If that happens, we’ll have another brand-new film camera launch this year!

You can check out the sample photos taken with that camera here.

Film prices have finally come down.

Film prices are volatile and diverse. Today’s cheapest roll of film may cost you $5, whereas the most expensive one can set you back $30.

Making sense of those prices is even harder once you realize that the prices you’re paying for film vary between stores by as much as +/-$10 bucks per roll.

But if you step back and analyze all the film prices in aggregate over the past few years, you’ll notice that colour film now costs nearly 6% less than it did six months ago!

Of course, not all shops and film stocks were discounted equally. Some films, like CineStill 800T got a bit more expensive. Black-and-white films are generally the same price. And yet, some stocks, like Fujichrome Velvia 50 are now a full $5 cheaper than they were in January.

I learned all of the above after playing with the new 📈 Film Price Trends app, which renders data I’ve been collecting from nine prominent film photography stores bi-annually since 2018.

The app has a lot more info than what I’ve given you above. It graphs data in six currencies with historically accurate exchange conversions. You can browse historical prices by individual film stocks. And if you’re a GOLD member, you’ll see prices listed for each individual store so that you know where to shop for the best deal.

I’m still learning new insights from that app today, like the fact that Kodak ColorPlus is the cheapest colour-negative film on the market and that it was the cheapest film of all back in 2019. If you’re interested in hearing more about film prices, you can subscribe to the bi-annual Film Price Reports email, which I’ll be dispatching in the next few days.

Kodak Color Negative C-41 Film Processing Kit.

This week I got an email from Dupli, the official European distributor for Kodak Photo Chemicals. They wanted me to know about the new Kodak Color Negative C-41 Film Processing Kit, “designed to revolutioni[z]e the film processing experience for photographers.”

The kit includes all pre-measured ratios for a 2.5L solution and the company will also sell replenishers.

The kit will be available in the UK and Europe starting in September.

In North America, CineStill will make the kit available as an official Kodak distributor. The website lists the expected arrival as September 20th.

Note: bleach and fixer are separate steps in this kit. If you’re used to using simplified colour developer chemistries, you may need an extra storage bottle

The sale of Kodak Alaris.

This month, Kodak Alaris was sold to Kingswood Capital Management.

Some of you may remember that Kodak was broken into multiple businesses a few years back. This led to Rochester selling the film it produces through Kodak Alaris, which owns the rights to brands such as Kodak Portra.

Up until recently, Kodak Alaris was owned by the UK Pension Fund — hardly an entity one would expect to own a film brand. But this August it was sold to Kingswood, a private equity firm that sent shivers down the spines of some film photographers on the internet.

Private equity firms have recently gotten a bad rep. Today they are often thought of as companies that buy failing businesses and run them into the ground to profit from their demise. Here’s the bit about Red Lobster in the LA Times.

Though true in some cases, it’s not a rule. Steven Brokaw, a prominent film photographer with a past in professional finance thinks this acquisition can be good for Kodak.

I agree with Steven.

Kingswood Capital bought an iconic Canadian brand back in 2020, to the dismay of locals who were sad to see a co-op business turn into a banking investment. Yet, there have been zero store closures and no further (loud) public complaints. I visit MEC every year and see virtually no change in how the stores are run.

Cinema Shorts film packs are on their way.

The Kodak Vision 3 Motion Picture film boxes are now wound, tested, packed, and on their way to those of you who bought some earlier this month.

Announced late July as this blog’s anniversary edition product, these triple-set 35mm packs of 36+ frames each are made of Kodak’s modern high-resolution colour film. They come with a printed list of compatible labs and home development instructions.

If this sounds interesting, there are three boxes left:

Option A: 2×250D plus 1×50D (1̶ ̶b̶o̶x̶ ̶l̶e̶f̶t̶ sold out!)

Option B: 2×50D plus 1×250D (2 boxes left)

More info about the film here. Sample photos with both 50D and 250D emulsions (developed using C-41 chemicals) here. And here’s a video of me putting those packs together from start to finish.