1. The economy was decimated by the housing bubble; Banks tightened up credit and raised interest rates before consumer protection laws took effect.
2. People lost alot of money in the market 2 years back and then bailed out instead of buying.
3. We all know digital has been killing off film cameras sales, which for a time gave us alot of deals on good lenses in dead brands till 4/3rd's came along. Now their just as expensive as ever, if you can find the good ones.
4. Shipping and handling became expensive. Many sellers on Ebay became a little too greedy with their rates.
5. Many older cameras need a cla and when you cost that in the price is much higher.
6. I believe buyers (if any) that are on the sidelines are worried about films continuance. Too many film is dead articles.
7. Labs are dying, processing fee's went up, and mailing film out is not cheap if you have to pay rates like $17 a 36 exp roll printed at pro labs. With mailing back and forth and handling you've got an easy $25 a roll cost for the enthusiast. Local labs are of course is best, doing your own better. Now the cheap route is Costco.
8. The dollar lost value, gas is expensive, home insurance shot thru the roof if your near the hurricane coast, and food prices are up up.
Really, I'm surprised anything sells in the U.S. concerning film cameras. Accessories and lenses go, but bodies(?) why, we all have drawers full.
Given the list of idespread financial setbacks noted above, people
are selling film cameras and equipment. There's a liquidation.
The loss of the local mini-labs locally has absolutely killed interest in film. I see it mentioned in local ads repeatedly and have picked up and flipped a lot of gear lately as a result. No major outlets sell film anymore, nor process it (not Costco, Wal-Mart, nor any similar outlet such as drugstores; the bottom has completely fallen out of the market). Only 2 dedicated photo stores will have anything to do with film, and then it is relegated to the low-profile, back shelf.
One owner says by next year all commercial lab film will be mail order and dry scanned printing; nothing in-house for C-41 even. He's basically looking at a franchise drop box similar to what they have for recycling inkjet cartridges to handle his remaining film customers. His staff will only oversee the paperwork and bulk mailing for processing, and they'll be FTP's the Frontier scans for local printing. He gives that process maybe 4-5 years maximum before he will not be able to cover that cost, but he also thinks within the next 2 years he will no longer be able to stock film at all. The refrigeration costs alone are too much for the return. He used to sell a 25-40 instant cameras per day in summer for the beach and lake crowd; last month total he sold 8. He has a very large clientele of older folks who have been customers for years, often with excellent film gear, and he says that they are also switching to digital.
Why?
At over $20 per roll for 135/36 processing and prints, the cost of using film is far beyond accessible for the average middle class household, pretty much anywhere. Even the local hipster store that had a lot of Lomo gear last year is hardly stocking anything new because there is no local processing and film + processing + shipping = $32. You cannot move camera stock at those prices. Film photography simply cannot even co-exist alongside digital at those prices.
With no obvious source for film or processing, the average prosumer user cannot participate in the market. So film users dump their capital investment in the face of such an enormous increase in their operational cost. What applies to business is a factor in every household as well.
The OP's complaint about prices is the flip side of the fact that film photography is going back to being a wealthy person's hobby.
Everyone already invested in equipment and darkrooms here is so tied up in knots about the survival (and pricing) of film that overlooked is that the demand is driven by the mass market for cameras and processing. The latter is disappearing extraordinarily fast and the former's manufacturing base is almost totally gone from the mid-range market.
You have to look at it this way: Every person who processes and prints their own is a customer also lost to the local lab, pro or mini. But the market has been entirely driven by cost-shifting where prices for all were pushed down to margin by the mass market sales to the mini-lab crowd. Take that away and prices can only go up, up, up. The operational cost between film and digital has reached a severe delta that goes far beyond the cost of manufacturing and distributing film alone.
