This post is a companion to the latest 3DLANES podcast episode.
Everything is digital now. And I think that is exactly why analog things keep coming back.
Think about it. Manual transmission cars are not making a full comeback, but Cars & Coffee never went away. People are still reluctant to call an electric car an enthusiast car. Mechanical watches are completely unnecessary when you have the time on your phone, and yet here we are, talking about them constantly. The reason is the same across the board: tactile experience. You feel more for the object in your hand. It makes you think. It slows you down.
Film cameras are no different. And the demand has come back. That part is not debatable.
But is film photography struggling?
The answer depends on where you’re looking.
The Demand Side Is Fine
35mm color film like Portra, Gold 200, and Fujifilm 400 sells. Premium compact cameras sell. Point-and-shoots sell. There’s a healthy market for enthusiasts who want to shoot film, and they’re willing to pay for it.
That said, it is still a niche. You’re not going to a wedding where the whole thing is shot on film. I talked to Marcus from Formex at Windup, his wife used to shoot weddings on film, and back then that was normal. Now it’s nerve-wracking. You can’t chimp. You don’t know what you got until you develop it. Most photographers shooting film today are also shooting digital as a backup, because showing up to a client empty-handed is not an option.
Black and white seems healthy. Slide film, less so. Large format is not there. Half-frame cameras are getting attention. But the mass market? That is not coming back.
The Manufacturing Side Is the Real Problem
Here is where enthusiasts tend to get it wrong, and I think this applies to watches and cars too. There’s a gap between what consumers want to exist and what a company actually needs to make a product viable.
Film manufacturing is not like buying a 3D printer and starting a business. You need coating machines. You need chemistry. You need to be in compliance with environmental regulations that are stricter now than they were in the ’90s. The industrial equipment that made film at scale is old, scarce, and in some cases, gone. The raw materials are not as accessible. To restart this infrastructure is not a passion project — it’s a massive capital investment with a narrow market to justify it.
The real issue is what film lost in terms of scale. Film used to serve everyone. Tourists. Wedding photographers. Schools. Journalism. Commercial studios. All of it. Now it serves enthusiasts and artists. The production volume needed today is a fraction of what it was, which means higher costs per unit, less negotiating power for the consumer, and a narrower distribution network. There’s a reason you’re mailing your rolls to The Darkroom in San Clemente or Bay Photo up in Monterey instead of dropping them at a lab around the corner.
And if film was genuinely healthy at a mass market level, the signals would show it. Prices would be stable. Labs would be scaling up, not closing. Used camera prices would not keep climbing year after year. The opposite is happening on every front.
Fujifilm vs. Kodak: A Study in Survival
Fujifilm survived. Kodak struggled. That story is worth a quick look because it says something about what film is, and what it isn’t, as a business.
Fujifilm moved on. Medical imaging, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, digital cameras, mirrorless systems. They diversified and found new ground. Film is not what keeps the lights on over there.
Kodak stayed closer to legacy imaging. That dependence became a liability. The film category they built their identity on shrank underneath them, and the pivot was harder. They’re still here, still supplying the bulk of film for the enthusiast market, but they got there the hard way.
The takeaway: the companies that survived film’s collapse did it by not relying on film. That tells you everything about where film sits as a market.
Film Is Becoming a Luxury Item
Here is where I think this lands. Film is not dead and it is not mainstream. It is transitioning into the same category as vinyl records, mechanical watches, and fountain pens.
None of those things are obsolete. None of them are efficient. None of them are for everybody. But for the people who care about them, they mean something real. The scarcity becomes normalized. The higher price becomes acceptable. The emotional value matters more than convenience.
That’s where film is headed, if it isn’t already there. It is not struggling for customers. It is struggling for manufacturing capacity. Those are two very different problems, and only one of them keeps me from shooting more rolls. But I’ll come back to this one with more data, and see if I am off base here or we hit the nail on the head.
Thank you for stopping by,
DL
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