This is the final part of my series covering every single one of the 180+ photographic film stocks still being made today.

I’ll be breaking down the numbers with a bit of commentary below but as ever, please do let me know if you find anything that needs updating, I am only human, regardless of what the rumours might lead you to believe.

Here’s what’s covered below:

Unique vs “rebranded” films

I consider rebranded film stocks to be those that are made by Company A and sold under another name by Company B. Freestyle Photo’s Arista.EDU line and Cinestill’s BWXX are probably the most well-known examples of this.

For this series, I have included “colour effect” films such as those from Dubblefilm, KONO!, Revolog and Yodica as part of my “rebranded” definition. This gives us ~50 rebrands from a total of ~180 stocks.

However, if we consider those colour effect listed above to be unique in their own right – i.e. they are not simply variations of a colour negative film that produce identical results – the number of rebranded film stocks drops to below 20.

~130 unique film stocks still in production or ~160 unique film stocks still in production. Cut it how you will, that’s a lot of choice.

All this to lead to a little rant…

I’ve been keeping tabs on the community’s reaction to this list since the first part was released back in April and I’d like to share my frustrations at some of the negativity I’ve encountered around a more than a bit of cynical commentary that “most of them are rebranded films anyway“.

UGH.

I’ve tried to deal with this in various places but here seems good for the definitive message that first of all, you are wrong. The numbers don’t lie.

Second and rather more important is that there are now, always have been and always will be rebranded film stocks. The film that you used to get at the mom and pop drug store in backwater Connecticut? Rebranded. The “exotic” colour film you got from a weird sounding company called Mitsubishi back in the 70s? Rebranded.

I honestly don’t see it as a negative point that there are rebranded film stocks out there, or that their numbers are growing. Not everyone has millions to build a film manufacturing facility from scratch and the fact that there are people out there investing their own time, money and effort to pay another business to rebrand their films tells me that there’s a demand for new film stocks – companies do not rebrand for free.

You’ll also find that the vast majority of – if not all – rebranded film stock companies feed their money back into innovating new film photography products which they have – or wish to – bring to market. This is a good thing and not “just making a quick buck”.

If a volume of 50 or even 20 rebranded film stocks from a list of 180 is upsetting, I would like to suggest three effective courses of action:

Ignore them.

Spend your time and energy on shooting film and supporting “true” film manufacturers. Help the market grow and encourage new industry entrants who can give you new film stocks.

Better still, put the same energy into making that happen as you did into moaning about rebrands. We’d all love to see a new (from scratch) film manufacturer come to market. Chop chop, we’re waiting.

Either option is better than losing your rag on the internet.

Rant ends, normal service resumed.

Total film stocks vs total formats

The breakdown of formats within the available film stocks is interesting. As one would expect it leans heavily towards 35mm format film but in recent years the number of large format choices has grown substantially. Shanghai are now back after an apparent 12-18 month break in production and offering an extended number of formats, as are Bergger. Both Kodak and ILFORD offer standard large format sizes and continue their custom of annual ordering windows for lesser used formats. ADOX just announced a new large format film!

Ignoring instant film for the sake of simplicity, here’s how the films covered in this series break down by type and format:

Types / Formats 110 120 127 135 135 Bulk 620 4x5 BW (negative) 1 60 2 83 16 2 27 BW (reversal/slide) 2 Motion Picture BW (negative) 6 1 BW (paper negative) 1 1 2 Color (negative) 2 14 56 3 Color (reversal) 1 5 1 4 3 Motion picture color (negative) 2 6 4 4 82 3 158 21 2 35

35mm film’s domination of format and black and white’s domination of film type is not surprising.

Most shocking to me is the reduction in both colour negative and colour slide (reversal) films. The last three years have seen nearly a dozen colour film stocks disappear as Fuji have scaled back both volume and choice.

Slide film looks to be in a very precarious position, with only Fuji and Rera supporting fresh stocks. This list will, of course, be updated as soon as Kodak’s new EKTACHROME 100 gets a firm release later this year.

Manufacturers by the numbers

Pretty self-explanatory.

Every single film stock still made today

And here’s the complete breakdown. Just tap in your search term(s) – name, type or ISO to automatically filter the table. Due to size constraints, the table is best viewed on a desktop/laptop or tablet in landscape orientation, although you can scroll horizontally on smaller devices.

The name of each film links back to it’s individual listing.

What is the future of film?

Kosmo Foto’s Stephen Dowling covered this topic in his excellent December 2017 article. I suggest you read it and not only because he featured some of my thoughts.

I will do my best not to put a dampener on things but to me, whilst vibrant today, the future large-scale mass production aspect of film still seems a little precarious. There is no doubt that we have a healthy availability of film choices today, however there are challenges ahead to a) keep it that way and, b) specifically improve the diversity colour negative and slide film options.

Making black and white film ready for consumption is not simple. There are a million moving parts from the supply chain and science, to production and engineering and then on to packaging and logistics. Any number of issues can arise from the smallest unaligned variable – even Kodak, who have been making film for 130 years have had recent issues with consistent product quality.

With additional layers, increased chemical complexity and a host of other additional factors, colour negative and slide film production presents an even greater challenge. To pick on Kodak again for a moment, it has taken their film production business over 18 months to bring new EKTACHROME 100 to market and they haven’t exactly been sitting on their laurels.

What’s the solution?

We need investment…?

There is the idea that rising consumer demand over the past three or so years is enough to warrant the large investments needed to build out and expand existing film manufacturing infrastructure – product development, coating, and finishing. “Kodak or ILFORD could just spend the money and do it”, right?

That money could be spent is correct but returns are uncertain – our current film photography renaissance is a relatively short blip in nearly two decades of decline.

Speaking to the physical process of making film alone, the challenges for current manufacturers with an in-house ability to prepare, coat and package film are not insignificant. With historically weakened volumes, investment in maintenance and training is more important than investment in expanding capability. Fix the foundations, reestablish and strengthen market share, grow the market.

I believe that with the continued growth in interest of all-things-analogue, a point will come when the (current) larger manufacturers will need to make a call: live by existing max production volumes and accept that there may be periods of logistical stress as consumers are left without product, or invest in R&D, engineering and other areas to build or spin-up latent capacity.

I don’t work for any of them and I can’t tell you what they’re thinking but I’d be surprised if these conversations hadn’t already happened at some level. My guess is that the bottleneck is human: hiring people with the right skill sets is difficult and training them to the required level takes time and people still in the business to learn from.

So to answer my question, yes, investment is needed and it needs to be financial and in education and training. It will no doubt come – check out ADOX’s efforts to build a new coating facility – but I believe something needs to happen (or keep happening) before those investments happen…

You need to shoot film. New film.

Shooting expired film is great and I enjoy the challenge, result and price point but the industry is supported by and grows with demand. That means spending money on new film.

Buy it, shoot it, enjoy it.

Next, do your part for the community: feed the community by sharing your knowledge.

Write about it, talk about it, interact with your fellow film photographers. I see comments all the time on social media that say things like, “I wish there was a website/YouTube channel/etc., that did X”, or “I wish I could find an article about Y”. Often, these comments come from the very people that hold the knowledge they are talking about finding but for some reason or another are not getting it out there.

I speak from my own experience of three years trying to get more darkroom and photographic technique articles here on EMULSIVE. None of that content creation is easy but honestly, people won’t shoot you down in flames and yes, people will find your perspectives valuable. I didn’t start EMULSIVE as someone who could write a salient article – I still can’t – but for what it’s worth, I try and through trying I get better.

If you don’t want to start a blog, drop me a line, or Hamish at 35mmc, or Bellamy at Japan Camera Hunter, or Stephen at Kosmo Foto, or somewhere else you enjoy reading. There’s no shortage of people who want to help share knowledge and build a stronger knowledge base for the community. We’ve already lost so much, let’s try to not lose any more.

Finally, if you do something and do even reasonably well – product photography, street photography, portrait photography, something more esoteric – drop one of the podcasts a line. I know that Sunny 16, Negative Positives, and Classic Lenses would love hearing from you, and that’s only scratching the surface.

What ever you do, do something oh, and keep shooting folks!

~ EM