Question about medium format folding cameras

[MattKing]

To give you some perspective, before he left, Simon Galley, formerly of Ilford, confirmed that it cost Harman/Ilford more to buy the backing paper for a roll of 120 film then it did to make the film itself, and that the minimum order quantities for that paper were a big problem for them.

 

[nokia2010]

So allmost no one will buy 116/616 format film... but what about 220. This for sure would have had costumers, since there where more just a few cameras that would accept this format. I don't know if there where any folder with 220 format, but rangefinders and S.L.R.'s where.

 

[MattKing]

We have many threads and posts here on 220 film.
Essentially, the paper and the machines that attach it are the problem.
Ilford's machine wore out, and Kodak's may have as well. They would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace or rehabilitate, and the projected sales made that uneconomic.
In addition, the paper used for the leaders and the trailers is both very expensive and, more importantly, the minimum order required by the paper manufacturer and printer is so large that neither Ilford nor Kodak could justify tying up that much capital, for that long a time, to service a relatively very small market.

 

[Donald Qualls]

So allmost no one will buy 116/616 format film... but what about 220

Simple arithmetic: due to market size and capital costs, it costs the manufacturers more to make a 220 roll than it would to make two 120 rolls -- and users would prefer to pay a little less than twice as much (else the only gain from shooting 220 is reloading less). That means if there's any profit at all in 220, it would be lower margin than 120, with a huge investment to restore the capability to make it at all. That makes it a bad business decision, the kind of bad business decision that loses upper managers their jobs and sometimes their pensions.

Shanghai film has 220 recently on a sort of special order basis, but their product appears to have been hand rolled using 120 backing for the start and tail -- and from reports here, the film portion got damaged in the process (easy to do, hard to avoid, when some human is sitting in total darkness assembling the paper, film, and more paper onto a 120 spool).

 

[Sirius Glass]

220 film was used by some professional photographers, but most of the 120 film users did not take to it because:

• A 220 roll cost more than twice as much as two 120 rolls
• A 220 roll development cost more than two 120 rolls to develop
• The selection of films was very limited