I have a lot more black and white film in my freezer but not all of it is current. In fact my wife told me that some of it must be a collectors item by now. 
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What is the market size for film?
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I am not an economist, but recently reading a paper written by an Economist, I came across the following expression “Prices rise like a balloon and fall like a feather."
Well, I dont know about market size, but made my last serious new film purchase about 3 years ago. Mostly I've been using Aviphot 200 expired film from India either self rolled (for 120/220) or cut (for 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 and 4x5), using it at differente EI and developers depending on desired results. Given that I still have 2x 70mm x 90 mts on my fridge and 2 9 inces roll (for 4x5) I dont think I will buy film in probably 2 years, aside from eventually testing of new film offerings, mostly because I'm using all my allocated fridge space at the moment (kindly provided by SWMBO).
Point is, I'm no currently contributing to film sales at the moment.
Point is, I'm no currently contributing to film sales at the moment.
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According to Ilford , it's pretty much all B&W !
Personally , I'd say 90% of what I shoot is B&W in 135 , 120 and 5x4 .
Most of my colour stuff is with digital . Unlike B&W , colour film doesn't really offer me much that digital can't do easier .
Medium format being a bit of an exception .
So when I'm out with the Bronicas or Kiev 88 , I'll take a back with colour in as well .
My main 135 cameras are Minolta A mount and Canon EF , both of which I also have full frame DSLRs for colour and B&W film in the SLRs .
Maybe a third body for Rollei infrared.
The local place I used to have colour development started doing a poor job with old developer ( it seems to me ) so the nearest place I can go is in town .
They do a one hour develop and scan , but it's about an hour and half to two hour round trip if I take it in .
I've never taken my B&W film in for development, I've only ever developed my own .
I think it's more expensive to have B&W developed than colour , but I might be wrong .
Doing it yourself is simple , quick and easy . And you can develop to suit the film type and exposure.
I doubt much care would be taken at a lab , compared to how you do it yourself.
According to Ilford , it's pretty much all B&W !
Ilford periodically conducts surveys (and also publishes results), so they know this is pretty much not the case. They are not investing into colour film because it's easier or cheaper to produce than BW.
That is here the same, at whichever lab I looked at (Montreal, and years ago in 3 different European countries). C41 goes into the minilab (or big lab), b&w more manual, therefore more expensive. This might be different in some places, but most probably follow these patterns. E6 is a different story, more expensive then C41, but don't remember how it compares to b&w in labs (I don't really shoot slides).
I do b&w as well by myself, and color to the lab.
Years ago, I worked on camera and photography retail company, We developed C-41, B/W and E6. B/W and E6 was way more expensive than C41 because the amount develpe was way lower and the chemistry was charged to 2 or 3 persons, while, since we had a higher amount of C41 to develop, the chemistry cost was divided on more people.
I would say today is a similar situation, because most people that use B/W develop themself so fewer people develop their film on a lab.
I would say today is a similar situation, because most people that use B/W develop themself so fewer people develop their film on a lab.
Yeah, but labor is the major cost driver now, not chemistry.
B&W lab development might be more expensive than colour because there is no standard for B&W. Every film can, theoretically at least, be developed in any standard B&W chemicals but they all work best at different development timings, and some respond significantly better/worse to certain chemicals. B&W done at home costs peanuts though, I am doing it for something like £1 a roll.
With colour film there are industry standards, C41 or ECN2 for colour neg and E6 for colour reversal. standardised chemicals are fed to standardised machines which automate the process and every film is optimised/designed for one of these processes.
as for how much film is sold. I recall Kodak saying that they alone had a global backlog of something like 30 million 35mm rolls right before the pandemic which they were already struggling to fulfil. So they might have manufactured 17 million rolls in 2018 but needed another 30 million to fulfil orders.
All indications from within the industry state that amateur colour films are still by far the biggest seller, with professional C41 films next up. E6 and B&W are a much smaller slice of the pie but B&W is specifically easier to manufacture and both have a committed user base.
A lot of the infrastructure for developing C41 in particular has been removed since the days of every small town having at least a one hour photo shop. I'm lucky, I still have a local mini-lab which will do any format C41 dev and scan for £6. That also means that film is more accessible to people in my town (Luton, UK) as the shop finally has a reliable supply of Color Plus and Ultramax after sporadic supplies since 2019. YMMV though, I hear of people mailing off film to far flung places and even then paying 20 dollarpounds for development. Though I do suspect some cherrypicking of the most expensive options goes on here...it is also certain that the days of 1.99 dev and prints are long gone.
With colour film there are industry standards, C41 or ECN2 for colour neg and E6 for colour reversal. standardised chemicals are fed to standardised machines which automate the process and every film is optimised/designed for one of these processes.
as for how much film is sold. I recall Kodak saying that they alone had a global backlog of something like 30 million 35mm rolls right before the pandemic which they were already struggling to fulfil. So they might have manufactured 17 million rolls in 2018 but needed another 30 million to fulfil orders.
All indications from within the industry state that amateur colour films are still by far the biggest seller, with professional C41 films next up. E6 and B&W are a much smaller slice of the pie but B&W is specifically easier to manufacture and both have a committed user base.
A lot of the infrastructure for developing C41 in particular has been removed since the days of every small town having at least a one hour photo shop. I'm lucky, I still have a local mini-lab which will do any format C41 dev and scan for £6. That also means that film is more accessible to people in my town (Luton, UK) as the shop finally has a reliable supply of Color Plus and Ultramax after sporadic supplies since 2019. YMMV though, I hear of people mailing off film to far flung places and even then paying 20 dollarpounds for development. Though I do suspect some cherrypicking of the most expensive options goes on here...it is also certain that the days of 1.99 dev and prints are long gone.
The larger labs will run everything through the same developer and at the same time. They really don't bother figuring out what film was exposed at what E.I. and what curve shape the photographer was looking for etc. So there's no cost factor in that sense, for the larger labs. The cost arises from having a second processing flow that's usually less automated to begin with than 35mm C41.
Smaller labs do manual processing tailored to the film and this will indeed be even more labor intensive (i.e. more expensive) than processing e.g. color film.
Of course, such decisions are down to the individual lab, so the above is just a very crude simplification.
I suspect the reason film sales might be up a bit is that people have used up what they stored earlier. As for color vs. b&w, I agree that b&w most likely far outsells color. It's much less $$, and it's easier to process at home. Yes, you can process color at home but I'm just not seeing a big cost savings. For me, 99% of my film use is b&w. I just use digital for color. There might be one way to get a good idea if film sales really are up or down, and that's to see if B&H will tell us if the aggregate is up and by what percentage. They may have a non-disclosure deal with the manufacturers, but surely they could lump all the sales together. I would bet Foto Impex also has a good general idea. Next time I'm in a smaller, regional seller like Blue Moon Camera etc. I will ask what they are seeing.
Kent in SD
Kent in SD
MattKing
Moderator
The other way around - by far!
It all depends on how you do it. Neither of these statements are accurate for how I do it - my color processing is as cheap as B&W (i.e. cheap enough to not even bother calculating the cost per roll anymore) and it's certainly just as easy, or probably easier than B&W since there's nothing to think about in terms of times and agitation schemes. It all goes the same.
The manufacturers are not in a position to tell retailers not to give their sales data to others. That doesn't mean they'll give you the data. They likely won't. They'll likely keep it at some fairly vague/relative statements. They will likely have no problem telling you, however, that 35mm color negative outsells all the rest by a massive margin.
I know exactly how much film my local independent physical camera shop sells because they'll tell me. But that's just one small shop in one medium sized English town. They'll also tell me about troubles obtaining film, and it was certainly Color Plus and Ultramax which were the difficult ones to obtain.
I do not think there is any doubt that colour film *vastly* outsells B&W. With consumer C41 films being by far the biggest sellers. Every single data point that we have globally points to that.
the forum member who might have some idea of total volume of sales is @Henning Serger
I do not think there is any doubt that colour film *vastly* outsells B&W. With consumer C41 films being by far the biggest sellers. Every single data point that we have globally points to that.
the forum member who might have some idea of total volume of sales is @Henning Serger
I generally shoot 4x5, but lately have been doing a lot of 120/6x6. What C41 home developing kit do you use for small batches? I do have everything but chemicals to do it.
Kent in SD
None; I use Fuji minilab chemistry and store and use it in such a way that it lasts a long time. I started out with home kits but fell for the low cost per film that minilab chemistry offered, and it turned out to work fine in a home setting.
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