My local professional dealer that I visited this Wednesday only has about sixty rolls of total of 135 and 120 films of colour neg. and colour slide film in stock and no monochrome film at all, when I asked the owner if that was all he had in stock he said "the majority of our customers are professionals, and don't use film".
When I recently visited one of the major professional dealers in our area it was a slow day so the manager chatted me up after my purchase of a manual extension ring set.
When I asked about their newly enlarged darkroom products section he told me they had sold more film in the last year than any of the previous five or so. And there had been an uptick in purchasing by the educational markets. He didn't elaborate regarding specific educational markets.
He also told me that when they recently relocated to a new, larger building the owners had, of course, considered leaving their in-house film processing services behind. But after looking into their crystal ball a bit they kept it, and are now thrilled they did so, due to the rise in film processing business.
When I asked about customer and processing demographics he said that a significant slice of that film processing business increase was C-41 for working professionals. Which professionals? He couldn't say for sure, but guessed it was probably the portrait and wedding photographers.
He then pointed out one of his part-time staff members who did weddings exclusively on film. "She's booked up for the next year..."
Things happen. Then things change and happen again in different ways. That's how the world works. The film-is-
totally-dead crowd may unwittingly be living in a past that never completely materialized.
Ken
