Oct 7, 2006
If film is not dead, it’s dying.
I became a member of the Portland Camera Club, this year. There are lots of cool ways to participate, slide competitions, print competitions, digital discussions, and other club sponsored events, like the John Sexton seminar on October 28 at the Portland Museum of Art.
One competition sounded really interesting to me: One Shot Slide Competition. There are 24 categories and you can submit a roll of slide film, unexposed, with a form indicating which slide is to be considered for each category. This is cool. You carefully collect 20 something photos and submit them, sight-unseen, to the club for processing and judging. How exciting?
Alright, so this sounds cool, but I haven’t shot slide film or even film for four years; at least. I have 4 baggies of film in my cupboard. At some point I admitted to myself that I didn’t need it in the ‘fridge, but I couldn’t part with it. It’s like $8 or $9 per roll. How can you just chuck 15-20 rolls of Fuji Astia/Provia/Velvia in the can? Well, I’m sure the fluctuating temperature and humidity of the cupboard hasn’t helped at all.
Luckily, I stil have my trust Canon Rebel 2000 body. I was really tempted to try to sell it on ebay a while ago. I had it in a big zipper-lock baggie with the Silver Pixel Press handbook, the battery grip, a battery and a film puller. But, I managed to keep moving it around my desk until I was able to forget about it.
I finally went to a local camera shop where I used to buy slide film. I walked in and asked for some Astia. The guy started to walk off, hesitated and asked me to repeat myself. I said something like “Astia. It’s slide film.” He started to walk away looking at a wall of film cubbies. Then he asked, after scanning the wall for a moment, “Is it in the cooler?” Yep.
“Kodak of Fuji?”
“Fuji.”
He peered into the cooler for a while. Touching this. Shuffling that. Bobbing up and down. The door on the cooler fogged slowly.
“35mm?”
“Yes, please.”
“Here it is,” he said, as he started to close the door. “It’s dated ’99.”
“Like, nineteen-99?” I said, looking a little confused, I’m sure.
The whole bin was dated 1999. Obviously, no one is buying Fuji Astia 100F in 35mm at this place, but why do they even have it? And what if he hadn’t noticed and I hadn’t noticed? Who has bought it, before me, and shot a whole roll only to be totally shocked to see the crummy outcome of all their hard work?
Then the visit to this camera store went something like this…
“Ok, how about some Provia?”, I asked.
He looked in the cooler, “400?”
“100, please.”
He didn’t take his head of the cooler to say, “I see 120, but no 35.”
A little resigned, because I had hoped to use film that wasn’t so colorful, I said, “Ok, how about that Velvia 100, I can see it right there.”
He spent some time pawing through bins again and came out saying, “It’s dated this month. It should be fine if you’re going to use it right away.”
“Ok.”
I knew I didn’t plan on “using right away” since the one-shot competition would require me to have a roll of film loaded for when I saw the perfect image. But I was defeated at this point.
When I left, $9 lighter in the wallet, I discovered I had received Fuji Velvia 50, not 100 like I had asked. A full stop slower, more colorful and dated this month. Grrr.
I don’t think you can use this anecdote as a barometer of the film market. Digital certainely has the market share of photo sales, but film is still very strong. I manage a very small independent camera store and we always have fresh film in, over 40 types…. and we sell quite a bit. Many stores have neglected the film market in favor of digital, only to find themselves being out sold by Circuit City and Ritz Camera. Perhaps your local store is one of them. Next time you need some fresh Astia, just ask me : )
OK, JC, so where’s the store?