Would Kodak get back into the instant film business?

[Cholentpot]

Good luck getting your photos developed in any grocery store I went to in the 1980s. Half the time, we mailed our film to York photo. Got it back in a month. Minilabs started rolling out in the early 80s but they weren't immediately adopted by grocery chains. Mid 80s, we could go to Black's in a mall and get photos developed in an hour. That mall was an hour's drive away. The local drug store never did offer any service faster than one week (and it cost more than York photo).
Anyway - what does any of this matter? That technology (the minilab) is what pushed the possibility of cheap, fast prints onto the public. The public doesn't want prints, anymore. They want photos on their phone. Film will never -- never ever -- dislodge that convenience. That day is done - doesn't matter how cheap you make film.

Maybe things rolled out quicker in the USA. We used to drop off at the drug store, we had chains of photo labs, groceries, and others. My grandparents mailed out their photos to official Kodak labs because that's what they always did.

 

[Chan Tran]

Maybe things rolled out quicker in the USA. We used to drop off at the drug store, we had chains of photo labs, groceries, and others. My grandparents mailed out their photos to official Kodak labs because that's what they always did.

Minilab was booming in the early 80's in the USA. In fact I managed one in Northern Virgina.

 

[Don_ih]

In fact I managed one in Northern Virgina.

Did you manage one in a grocery store?

 

[Chan Tran]

Did you manage one in a grocery store?

No! The lab was in a mall and it's a stand alone store. The business was good (made me wish that I could afford to open one on my own). I processed between 60 to over 100 rolls per day and plus enlargement and some copy work. .

 

[Cholentpot]

Minilab was booming in the early 80's in the USA. In fact I managed one in Northern Virgina.

Right. I forgot about the labs in the mall 'Drop off, shop and pick up!' Did you sell film too or just develop? Any memory of what films moved the fastest and how much the going price was?

 

[Chan Tran]

Right. I forgot about the labs in the mall 'Drop off, shop and pick up!' Did you sell film too or just develop? Any memory of what films moved the fastest and how much the going price was?

Well I even sell some P&S cameras. I don't remember the models now but we had some Fujifilm cameras. We never sold any of them though. People just didn't buy cameras from us (besides our prices are higher than a camera store). We did sell a lot of film and we pushed Fuji I guess the owner had a deal with Fuji but the customers bought more of the Kodacolor 100, 200 and 400. We offered print from slides but we did internegative and printed on EP-2 (now it's RA-4) material. The film as I remembered was about $3 a roll. The processing I think was high compared to drugstores. We charged $3.00 for film developing and $0.30 a 3.5x5" print.

 

[Cholentpot]

Well I even sell some P&S cameras. I don't remember the models now but we had some Fujifilm cameras. We never sold any of them though. People just didn't buy cameras from us (besides our prices are higher than a camera store). We did sell a lot of film and we pushed Fuji I guess the owner had a deal with Fuji but the customers bought more of the Kodacolor 100, 200 and 400. We offered print from slides but we did internegative and printed on EP-2 (now it's RA-4) material. The film as I remembered was about $3 a roll. The processing I think was high compared to drugstores. We charged $3.00 for film developing and $0.30 a 3.5x5" print.

$2.98 for the good stuff! 24, 36 was a little more. Pushing Fuji sounds right to me, Kodak was the Coca-Cola to Fuji's Pepsi.

 

[MattKing]

I worked in a department store in the early to mid 1980s, and our photofinishing supplier gave our customers 24 hour turn-around during the week - basically so we could compete with the mini-labs.
They were cheap, and reasonably competent, even if pro-lab user me would sometimes grimace a bit when I reviewed the results with the customers.
As far as film sales, there were probably three leaders.
1) pre-paid processing Kodachrome at $11.99 CDN IIRC. We were a Kodak pickup and delivery dealer, so we had 24 hour turn-around on Kodak processing during the week on this as well;
2) the normal variety in emulsions and formats of Kodak amateur films that one might find at a busy camera/film department in a busy store in a big, busy Canadian city. I have no clear memory of those prices, but $5 or less wouldn't surprise me; and
3) house brand print film (mostly) that was actually made for the department store chain by 3M/GAF/Ferrania. It was very inexpensively priced - about 2/3 of the Kodak prices, IIRC.
Most people who tried out the house brand film eventually switched to Kodak. If you saw the prints made from it by our photofinisher, you would understand why. I never recommended it.
We also sold some Polaroid SX-70 film, plus some Ektachrome. I can't remember ever having any black and white film available, but we might have. We also sold some truly awful house brand or GAF branded E6 processing slide film.
Most of the film was displayed in a wall of film behind the main counter, and we were constantly having to replenish that wall from the boxes and boxes of inventory that arrived frequently in the back room.
A wall that looked a bit like the old setup at Beau Photo in Vancouver, seen here:

It was all part of the Kodak ecosystem that, by its zenith, "manufacture(d) upwards of 70 master stockrolls a day of Kodacolor…each and every day – enough to make nearly 3.4 million spools each day".
The remnants of that ecosystem is what Eastman Kodak is today, and their master rolls - the minimum volume they can economically and practically make - are probably still enough to make nearly 50,000 individual still rolls of film.
It wouldn't surprise me if our absolutely ordinary and unremarkable camera and film department - far from a major player at the time - sold more film back then then B&H, Freestyle or any of the major retail sellers. Certainly more than Amazon.

 

[gbroadbridge]

I have no clear memory of those prices, but $5 or less wouldn't surprise me; and

So about $20-25 a roll in today's prices.

 

[Chan Tran]

$2.98 for the good stuff! 24, 36 was a little more. Pushing Fuji sounds right to me, Kodak was the Coca-Cola to Fuji's Pepsi.

I actually didn't see the price of film went up from the early 80's until the 21st century. I feel the price went up sharply after 2010 or so. Up until 2010 or so I could get Ektar 100 for $5.

 

[Don_ih]

No! The lab was in a mall

Right. It was numerous years before the minilab machines moved into grocery stores and so on to produce quick prints for shoppers. But the entire trend - starting with stand-alone places in malls - helped drive the massive film sales of the 90s.

@Cholentpot - film was not seen as expensive in the 70s and 80s. It was seen as valuable but also not something you bought a lot of. It was not used frivolously by people (for the most part). People valued the photos they got more than whatever they spent on them. If they wanted good photos, they paid someone to take them.

Now people don't think you should spend anything on a photo.

 

[Cholentpot]

Right. It was numerous years before the minilab machines moved into grocery stores and so on to produce quick prints for shoppers. But the entire trend - starting with stand-alone places in malls - helped drive the massive film sales of the 90s.

@Cholentpot - film was not seen as expensive in the 70s and 80s. It was seen as valuable but also not something you bought a lot of. It was not used frivolously by people (for the most part). People valued the photos they got more than whatever they spent on them. If they wanted good photos, they paid someone to take them.

Now people don't think you should spend anything on a photo.

Right. 'That's a waste of film!' It was not expensive, it was an expense. Like filling up your gas tank or grocery shopping. It was a fact of life. We went to JC Penny for professional photos once a year. Or the school photographer. It's not that film is cheaper or more expensive in 2025, it's that there's far more information and accessibility to film in some ways. I can hop online and buy 100 feet at a time with a click. Back in the day you had to actively seek this stuff out and find someone to teach you the ropes.

 

[MattKing]

Growing up and becoming educated - including university educated - while being literally surrounded by elements of the photography world, I often had to remind myself that such easy access wasn't universal.
But it was pretty easy for people to buy film and have their films processed and printed - virtually every drugstore and many other common retail outlets offered the service and sold the film.
And on many Sundays, there would be a Kodak sales rep joining us for dinner - even if their responsibilities were more likely to be the X-Ray film market or the microfiche and specialized office supplies than consumer or professional films - the reps for those were more likely to be based around Vancouver, so they would have their own family dinners to attend.

 

[Cholentpot]

Growing up and becoming educated - including university educated - while being literally surrounded by elements of the photography world, I often had to remind myself that such easy access wasn't universal.
But it was pretty easy for people to buy film and have their films processed and printed - virtually every drugstore and many other common retail outlets offered the service and sold the film.
And on many Sundays, there would be a Kodak sales rep joining us for dinner - even if their responsibilities were more likely to be the X-Ray film market or the microfiche and specialized office supplies than consumer or professional films - the reps for those were more likely to be based around Vancouver, so they would have their own family dinners to attend.

Consumer film and processing was everywhere. Slide was also. Anything professional you had to go out of your way. People horded information and knowledge. The internet really democratized the dissemination of information. When I was learning how to do this and that I'd pop online and see something and go 'Huh. That's how its done' Beforehand I'd have to go to the library and hope a decent book was in their catalog. Before the internet really took off a lot of this information was only really accessible by apprenticeship or taking a course. Even now with the internet you still have to seek out the more out of the way places to go beyond the intermediate. I've only learned a few key film techniques in the last year or so. Ten+ years into this stuff and I'm not done learning by a long shot.

 

[mshchem]

I remember buying Kodak Blue Toner, which 1 qt contains just shy of 1/2 gram of gold chloride. It was something like $3 which seemed like a lot, and it was. Today just the gold chloride is about 90 bucks. It's relative to be certain.

I worked in a really good job stocking groceries when I was in high school, thus the blue toner and a Nikon F2S. 50 years ago

 

[reddesert]

I have (G-d help me) an old York Photo postpaid film mailer with prices. I will post a picture of it if any of you are youngsters and want to know what that looked like. On this mailer, they were already advertising prints from media cards and scanning your film to CD, so I'd guess it is from the early 2000s. If you just got 36 exp C-41 film developed and single prints made, with S&H it cost $5.50. You could order an new roll of Fuji or Kodak film for $3-4 + 1.50 shipping. At that time, if you bought say a 3-4 pack of consumer C-41 film in a drugstore/Target/etc, it would also come out to $3-4 per roll.

That is the absolute cheapest in real terms that it ever got, due to economies of scale. If you got your film developed and printed at a minilab it would typically be at least twice as much, which is why York did so much business. Inflation in the US from 2000 to 2025 is 1.9x, so the $3-4 per roll converts to about $7 now, and mail order film developing about $10. Minilab converts to closer to $20 in today's dollars.

So, those prices, inflation adjusted, are not terribly far from consumer C-41 at about $9-10 per roll now (pro C-41 like Ektar or Portra is more, but it was more in the past as well); processing is rather more expensive - although it now includes higher quality scans. IIRC, black and white film was a little more expensive than C-41, and so was getting it developed. Slide film was also somewhat more expensive than C-41 then.

What has changed is that there's so much less infrastructure and fewer film choices. And I think the prices for C-41 film/developing are not horrendously out of line with the past, but the price for E-6 film and developing has increased by a larger factor (and there are far fewer choices).

 

[MattKing]

Consumer film and processing was everywhere. Slide was also. Anything professional you had to go out of your way. People horded information and knowledge. The internet really democratized the dissemination of information. When I was learning how to do this and that I'd pop online and see something and go 'Huh. That's how its done' Beforehand I'd have to go to the library and hope a decent book was in their catalog. Before the internet really took off a lot of this information was only really accessible by apprenticeship or taking a course. Even now with the internet you still have to seek out the more out of the way places to go beyond the intermediate. I've only learned a few key film techniques in the last year or so. Ten+ years into this stuff and I'm not done learning by a long shot.

While I understand what you are saying, from my experience back then it was hard to appreciate it, because I always, right from my teens, had access to what I needed, because I always knew someone who could help me get what I needed.
The industry was large, and once you were involved, you knew people who would usually help you get in contact with the people you needed to reach out to.