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The Film Price Report is Analo Cafe’s annual look at film prices around the world (Pic: Analog Cafe)
There is an old adage that there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes.
To that I'd add a third – that the things you enjoy purchasing continually rise in price.
That has certainly seemed to be the case with photographic film over the 2020s, sparked by logistics and production issues during the Covid pandemic. Prices only went one way after the pandemic ended: up.
But, according to the excellent Canadian film photography blog Analog Café, dramatic price rises seem to have dropped off over the last year or so. In a recent piece, the site's editor Dmitri Tcherbadji did a global look at popular film prices, which you can read here.
Film prices are still rising in most parts of the world, according to this survey, but less dramatically than we might have seen before. In the EU and Canada, the prices rises are about 5%; in the US, they have only risen about 2%. In Hong Kong, film prices appear to have fallen by around 1%.
Film is of course a niche product, and no longer subject to the economies of scale a few decades ago. But this is good news for those of us who have been resigned to the recent price hikes. Stable prices aren't as welcome as price drops, but they're still welcome.
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When we talk about film in the 2020s, we're mostly talking about 35mm film, of course, though 120 remains popular and in wide production.
But other formats have hung on by their fingernails, and one of them might be enjoying an unlikely renaissance: 110.
If you've been shooting 110 film over the last decade or so, you have had one company to thank – Lomography. But now Chinese brand Reflx Lab has joined them, and released two new 110 films – include colour slide film, cut from Eastman Kodak cinema Ektachrome.
Reflx Lab kindly answered some questions for a recent piece on Kosmo Foto, including how they created new cassettes.
Experimental emulsions
It's not just for the formats that are getting more esoteric.
The experimental film trend that was popularised by Lomography has drawn in new players – not least Harman Technology, who have made two new colour-toned films (Red and Switch Azure) out of their first colour negative film, Harman Phoenix 200.
A light-leak-like shot taken on KONO’s new film Mojo (Pic: KONO!)
The last couple of weeks have seen new weird films emerge. Reflx Labs has launched Diablo 100, a rescale film rendering everything in yellow, orange and red. And KONO! – a boutique German film producer specialising in strangely hued films – has released no less than three in the last week.
A lot of purist film photographers screw their noses up at these kind of films, wondering what the point is – and the point seems to be the fun of experimentation, which is no bad thing. The teenagers buying KONO! films today for something different to their digital grind might become the fellow film fans helping keep your favourite emulsions alive in a decade's time.
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Amongst the flood of simple reusable cameras the last decade or so, the Lomography Simple Use Reloadable Film Camera has been one of the most popular.
Lomography took the ease of use of disposable cameras - including a roll of film already in the camera - and married it with a more sustainable aesthetic. Here, for little mote than the cost of a disposable, was a camera you could shoot again and again.
One version of the new camera comes with LomoChrome Classicolor 200 film (Pic: Lomography)
Nearly a decade after it was launched, Lomography have brought out a half-frame version, called the Half-Frame Reloadable Film Camera. It doubles the number of pictures you can take, comes loaded with colour or black-and-white film, and costs less than £25 - a very welcome addition to the cheap camera market.
The half-frame camera market - which effectively disappeared in the 1970s as 35mm film became more affordable - has had a surprising second wind in the last few years, influenced by rising prices and irregular film production during the Covid pandemic. The most high-profile addition has been the Pentax 17, the first Pentax film camera in two decades, but the Alfie Tych and Kodak Ektar H35N have also breathed new life into an almost-forgotten slice of the camera market.
Lomography are selling this new arrival as “The Social Cam” and Lomography’s options incllude a 16-camera set aimed at weddings. Will it end up on your summer shopping list?