In the latest Pixels, Grain & Cookies podcast, Barry Staver and I talk about film photography. In the Show N’Tell segment, Joe talks about finding our what it’s like buying cameras like the Canon AE-1 from Japan in today’s tariff environment while Barry shows both his original and new setup for camera scanning of 35mm negatives.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it? — Ernst Haas
Once upon a time, when there were such things as printed photo magazines* and they had travel budgets letting them to send Contributing Writers, like myself, to the big photokina show in Cologne, Germany. It was considered the ‘s largest event of its kind in world but due to a decline in the imaging market—according to CIPA, shipments of cameras dropped by 94% between 2010 and 2023—the event was indefinitely suspended in 2020. Yet, I have many fond memories from photokina, such as…
At one of the last film-based photokinas, I was in the press room talking with the legendary Joseph Meehan and several other photo magazine editors and he asked us, “How many cameras do you own?”
A (now) former Shutterbug editor sitting next to me said he owned around two hundred cameras. I couldn’t top that but after a few mental calculations came up with 25. (This was a question Barry Staver asked me in a recent podcast as well. Interestingly the number I gave Barry and Mr. Meehan was the same.)
When digital imaging became more practical and popular, I pared down the number of film cameras that I owned. Oh, was that ever a dumb idea.
Film and Film Cameras
Flashing back again: There was a time when twice a year Shutterbug produced special editions and I suggested to the then Editor-in-Chief that they produce one about film photography and he told me, “My bosses would fire me if I suggested that.” Later when I wrote about film photography in my annual trends article in Shutterbug another, different but also now former editor said, “You almost have me convinced.” I wonder what he thinks now?
How I Made this Portrait: I photographed Kim in the living room of my former home using mostly available light from a South-facing window in the back of the house. The camera was my original Contax 167MT, not the one I recently purchased from Japan, which has a P-5 Battery Holder that my original lacked. The lens was a Carl Zeiss 85mm f/2.8 Sonnar. The exposure on Kodak color negative film film was unrecorded. The scan was from Kodak’s Photo CD process and was opened using Lemke Software’s Graphic Converter that produces relatively good quality files from a Photo CD disc but the software is not without its quirks. For a deeper dive (and by no means the final word) on a way to work with these now-orphaned files and how PCD files can be opened in Photoshop and processed, please check out my Film Friday post Working With Photo CD Files
Demographics seem to be are on film’s side: The actual production of different kinds of film continues to grow, On January 26, 2025, Kodak’s CEO, James V. Continenza, said that “the company’s film sales increased in 2023 for both motion picture and still film” The CEO also mentioned that Kodak had been investing in its manufacturing process, including purchasing new equipment and making upgrades to film sensitizing. Ilford Photo confirmed this trend when a survey found that 30 percent of film users were under 35 years old, and 60 percent had only started shooting film in the last five years. Sales of Fuji’s Instax cameras have risen steadily since 2013 and they’ve sold more than 50 million cameras. I own three of them—not counted in my 25, for some reason—as well as a re-born Polaroid camera that Mary gave me for Christmas!
So what about you? My own plan for the rest of 2025 is to shoot more film. Let me know what your own film plans are for this and next year. Click the Contact tab above and tell me about it.
PS: I confess that I love me some divas, especially Celine Dion and when I saw this black and white cover of her album The Essential Celine Dion with her shooting a film-based Hasselblad, it just made me love her more.
*From Facebook: It was recently announced that Outdoor Photographer magazine is officially returning to print! You can subscribe here.