Just a little heads up for anyone in the East of England......Ashcroft Stores on Bute St in Luton has some Kodak Advantix APS film for sale. I do not know the date, but it's behind the counter on a display along with batteries etc.
My .02.....I've talked to a few people who operate (or operated) high street photo labs and they certainly believe that there was a conspiracy to "force" them into investing hundreds of thousands in new Kodak approved APS processing. Because without that, they lost their "Kodak Approved" status which counted for something at the time. I know my acquaintances were (and are) very bitter about that. Some didn't take the plunge, lost the right to hang that big yellow sign outside their store and believe it killed their business. Some made the investment (mostly to keep "Kodak Approved" certification, they knew APS was a dead duck) and lost out financially too due to their investment never being recouped. They were also "encouraged" to push APS film by having it more prominently displayed compared to 135, to tell customers that it was the "next big thing" and they'd better invest in the system before 135 died out...and look, we just happen to sell handy-dandy APS cameras too! You may have come in for a £2 roll of Kodak Gold, but here have this £3 roll of APS film and a £90 camera!
The format actually wasn't completely without merit. The envisioned comprehensive line of films and cameras including professional slide and B&W film all with the ability to "hot swap" films and with some basic metadata wasn't totally out there....but the vast majority of cameras sold were cheap point and shoots, sold on the gimmick of "HDTV" shaped prints...given the poor quality of the lenses and then cropping the already smaller negative, these panoramic and "HDTV" (silly name, like "turbo" hoovers) photos looked pretty bad. I've also seen photos from APS SLR cameras and they did look really good....an advantage was that the cameras were a bit smaller and lighter than a 135 SLR but of course lenses weren't compatible so anyone using the format had to invest in a whole new system. The other advertising point was the fool-proof loading, which already existed in motorised 135 cameras and anything "instamatic". The more serious photographers probably didn't care about film loading. The public were also wary after the Disc fiasco...which just a few years before we'd been told was "the next big thing" only for it to produce photos inferior to previous formats and disappear from shelves very quickly. I never owned a disc camera and only actually saw one (my aunt tried the format and even snap shots were utterly dire). And how was one supposed to home process APS film, even B&W?
I can understand Kodak, Fuji et al not realising how fast digital would catch on....like many users I couldn't see it approaching the quality of film as quickly as it did. And bear in mind part of my degree gained in 1997 was studying theory, design and manufacture of CCD arrays...I just couldn't see a 6MP array of sufficient sensitivity and quality being viable price wise until the 2010s give what I knew and what had been observed in previous computer technology growth....how wrong I and others were on that one.
But APS never caught on with pros or serious amateurs. The snap shooters soon realised that 135 was better and crucially so much cheaper...APS processing was horrifically expensive and the films cost about 30% more too. The gimmicks of the aspect ratios were soon realised to be nothing more than cropping which could be achieved with 135 and scissors....and most such users weren't then interested in metadata. So most stuck with their existing P&S 135 camera and enjoyed cheaper film and processing.
Had digital actually taken another 10-15 years to mature and had phone cameras not become "a thing"....APS might have survived. Though most people I know who tried it (admittedly with low end cameras) could see the point no more than the shop owners who were being asked to push the format.
lol
