Why Doesn't Kodak Sell Double X For Still Cameras?

Kodak has a history of being a leader in the marketplace of film then seeing to its demise. I would argue this graph tells us Kodak is back on the path of self-destruction and (some) other motion-picture show manufacturers are following them.

Picture show photography has in recent years been near entirely a hobby of luxury. Has Kodak permit the premium for information technology get out of hand? Yes. What about Fuji? Admittedly. What about the smaller manufacturers? Depends. In this commodity, I'm going to refer to prices of picture show over a period that does non fifty-fifty span iii years (April of 2019 to Jan of 2022). Because I could non get official information from B&H nigh the prices of movie and the days when the prices changed (they didn't have it to give), I went to the Wayback Motorcar and looked upwardly a range of different motion-picture show stocks. All of them are 36 exposure 35mm film because B&H no longer sells Portra 400 in individual rolls, I priced each roll according to one-fifth the price of a pro pack. For some moving-picture show stocks, peculiarly for more obscure films, at that place was not enough information there to include in my list despite my want to include it. I didn't include any Ilford pic either because while their prices have increased over the past fifth years, the jump hasn't been equally high and there wasn't much data for me to pull from betwixt 2017 and 2022.

Where We Are Now

The last time I seriously went out to buy motion-picture show (seriously being that I drove all over town, to every identify that sells it, looking for the colour negative film), I was confronted with 2 facts that hit me hard. The prices of the moving-picture show had skyrocketed, and there was very little of it to buy. I spent and then much time shooting the motion-picture show I bought earlier the COVID-19 hit that I had no real reason to pay any attention to the price or inventory of new stock. In the COVID-19 world nosotros now live in, things have get even crazier. This is of course not to say that before COVID-nineteen, everything was sunshine and rainbows; the writing has been on the wall for a long fourth dimension before COVID-nineteen. The supply and workforce shortage in the past two years accept only hastened the trajectory of the film globe was already on.

2019 Film Prices Versus 2022 Film Prices

The prices of the film have been on an unusually steep increase pricing, far more than any other market for new products than I'm aware of. Even the auto market place, which is currently getting a lot of attention for but how affected information technology has been by COVID-nineteen, has not seen that drastic of a price hike on new cars. I'll provide some specific comparisons to the automotive manufacture in a moment.

As you lot will see in the above graph, since April of 2019 (less than three years ago), the prices of the pic have gone through the roofs, so much and so that it is difficult to even call back a fourth dimension in which the prices of the picture show have not been astronomical. Take, for example, Kodak Ektachrome, a wonderful slide film that is now the but colour-positive motion picture Kodak produces. That flick has a current going rate of $20. Listen y'all, Ektachrome has always been a premium film stock, commanding a premium price tag. When you consider, yet, that this film was just $thirteen less than three years ago, it tin can hurt your eye a little bit. That is a 53.8% cost increment! What hurts even more is the fact that it is the film that had the smallest price hike of the agglomeration I considered. Yep, you read that correctly. Of the seven flick stocks, I considered, its 53.viii% increment was the smallest in cost! If you're asking yourself how much worse the others were, you are in for a real treat.

Arguably the most popular film stock available today, Kodak Portra 400 (you tin find my review of it here), had a (relatively) modest price increase of 64.1% ($7.80 vs. $12.80). I expected Portra to lead the pack when it came to jacking up the price, but hither nosotros are. The side by side largest increment in Kodak'due south films comes from Kodak TMax 400, my favorite black and white film (and the only black and white film I looked upwards due to information availability and interest), which more than doubled in price in less than three years. Priced at $five in Apr 2019, a 35mm roll of 36 exposures is at present priced at $11, leading to a 120% increase in price. The next and final ii Kodak films are the hardest pills for me to swallow, as they take been my 2 most commonly shot color negative films: Kodak Ektar and Kodak Gold. Kodak Ektar has fantastic colors, an amazing exposure latitude, and was (emphasis on by tense) an affordable film. In early on 2019, a 35mm roll would fix y'all dorsum just $6.75 which was not much considering how cracking the stock was. As of January of 2022, information technology now commands $16 – a whopping 137% price increase. You can't see me at present, but I'm shaking my head as I write this. This leads united states of america to our last movie of the Kodak lineup I included, Kodak Gilt. What wasn't there to honey well-nigh Golden? Information technology is the only not-professional movie on this list of Kodak films and as such, it was only bachelor in 35mm. For me and many of my friends, Gold was the go-to picture for years because though it didn't have the same level of functioning as yous would get from Ektar or Portra, the colors were great, and it was honestly a existent bargain comparatively speaking. Nowadays, however, you will be spending nearly ii.5 times as much as yous would take less than 3 years ago at $11 versus $4.fifty, a price hike of 144.4%.

This is not to say that Kodak is the only manufacturer making these same moves. Indeed, Fujifilm has been doing the aforementioned thing. Fujichrome Provia, my personal favorite color positive film, has increased its price 66.7% from $12 to $20. And Fujifilm's budget flick intended to compete with Kodak Gilded, Fujicolor Superia X-TRA 400, similarly more doubled in price. They were going for $iii.33 a roll in April of 2019, whereas now, they are commanding a price tag of $7.33.

I tin can already see the comments now: "COVID-19 is affecting the prices of everything" or something along those lines. And then, permit us compare the price hikes with another industry we know has been greatly afflicted since the beginning of the pandemic: the automotive industry. Given that motion-picture show has always been a bit of a luxury buy, nosotros will compare information technology with luxury automobiles: the BMW three Series, Audi A3, and Mercedes Benz CLA grade. To start us off, the base model price of a BMW three series increased a whole 2.9% ($41,245 versus $42,445). More than double the proportional increase to the BMW, we accept the Audi A3 which increased its base model price past vi.1% ($32,925 vs. $34,945). The Benz took a dramatic turn relative to the other two, going from $34,095 to $39,250, the cost hike for a base of operations model CLA class was 15.1%. Of course, this is the market for new cars, and the market place for secondhand vehicles is crazy, withal, it cannot compare to the toll increases of film, and it's an unfair comparison anyhow. A more fair comparison with the secondhand car marketplace would exist Fuji Pro 400-H later Fuji announced it was discontinued. The secondary market jacked upwardly the prices to dizzying heights.

Conclusion

Did you know Kodak invented the digital camera? Well, if you didn't know before, y'all do now. Do yous know what they did with their engineering science and patents? Non a single thing, at least not when it would have made a difference. They buried their head in the sand while simultaneously doubling down on movie only to eventually become bankrupt because, you know, digital cameras are a thing. Any anyone wants to say as a rationale for Kodak and film production at large, I meet footling to no reason for the drastic uptick in prices other than merely "because they tin can," which seems very brusque-sighted. Once upon a time, well before COVID-nineteen hit, Kodak said they were going to increase their prices to invest in R&D and more than machinery to increase their production. I was all about the price increases then, simply in contempo years, when I had hoped for more availability of their films and more film stocks, yet, neither actually seemed to pan out, and Kodak's and Fuji'due south pricing have just gone out of control. They seem hell-bent on pricing people out of buying film. Thank goodness pixl-latr offers an affordable fashion to digitize film (assuming yous already ain a digital photographic camera) and The Darkroom Lab have kept their prices nearly the same for the past, several years making processing and digitizing your flick arguably more reasonable than it was before.

I dearest film and will continue to utilise it for almost all of my most personal and meaningful photographs. My sincerest wishes are that Kodak or Fuji eventually dorsum down on their price increases and that Kodak or Fuji, Pentax, Nikon, or anyone else articles reasonably affordable and high-quality 35mm and medium format cameras, considering, allow's face up it, no matter how much film is made, the crumbling and ever-dwindling pool of working cameras is the limiting cistron to film continuing.

Source: https://fstoppers.com/film/does-chart-reveal-kodak-self-imploding-again-are-other-film-manufacturers-595687

Posted by: myersgrell1966.blogspot.com