I am a film photography fanatic. I do like digital photos as well but somehow if I have to choose between the two, I would choose film over digital. Yet there are moments where I have to shoot in digital for my clients over film. In other words, I couldn’t make a living off of film photos 100%.
Sadly, some of popular films such as Fujifilm ACROS 100 and AGFA VISTA films, they are no longer in production. This proves the number of film users are continuously decreasing. But something is not quite right. Quite the opposite of these facts, the price of used film camera is going up without any limit.
I was glad to know that Kodak decided to produce Ektar Chrome again. Finally I got several rolls of Ektar Chrome. While I enjoy myself film photography with my Leica M7 a lot, my 7-year-old son also started shooting film camera with disposable one. At first, I thought he would do it for fun like a toy camera or mimicking father but after I developed his first roll of Kodak film from disposable camera, I got shocked by his photos. Some of the photos are really well composed as if they were taken by me. He took various subjects. From portrait photos to objects. They were turned out to very interesting photos.
So I’ve decided to purchase him a used film camera. Considering his age, I thought of point & shoot auto film camera such as Ricoh GR1, Yashica T4 or Konica Big Mini.
Soon I discovered that not only price of those cameras are way higher than a few years ago but also it’s hard to find one. It turns out they became super popular again!
What a big surprise! Quite the opposite of my belief, maybe film era has finally returned. For some reason people want to shoot in film again. At first they went for film software filters from photo editor apps but they got tired of faking it. So eventually they decided to use real film cameras!
I thought I was the minority but maybe I might be now in the middle of big crowd. Anyway, I pulled some strings and asked one of my friend who’s in used camera and lenses importing business to find me one but it might take a while.
I hope if more people start using film cameras, maybe film manufacturer will resume producing old films again. This would be awesome!
One day while I walking old alley, I came across a cafe with a title “If you open this door, you will turn back time.” Maybe I should check this place out later, who knows I might be able to find a bunch of old film cameras that I’ve been looking for my son.