Does this chart reveal Kodak self-destructing again? Did other movie makers follow their lead?
Kodak has a history of being a leader in the film market and then seeing its demise. I argue that this chart tells us Kodak is back on the path of self-destruction and that (several) other movie makers are following them.
Film photography in recent years has been almost entirely a luxury pastime. Does Kodak take a premium for it? Yes. What about Fuji? Sure. What about smaller manufacturers? Dependent. In this article, I will be covering movie prices for a period that doesn’t even last three years (April 2019 to January 2022). Since I couldn’t get official data from B&H on movie prices and change dates (they don’t provide it), I went to the Wayback Machine and searched a bunch of different movie repositories. They are all 35mm 36 exposure film as B&H no longer sells the Portra 400 in individual rolls, I price each roll at 1/5th the price of the professional package. For some stock of movies, especially the more obscure ones, there isn’t enough information there to include in my list even though I would like to include it. I also didn’t include any Ilford movies because although their prices have increased over the past five years, the increases have not been high and there isn’t much data for me to pull from 2017 to 2022.
Where are we now
The last time I seriously went out to buy a movie (seriously I drove all over town, went to every place that sold it, looked for color negatives), I was faced with two truths that came to me. The price of the film had skyrocketed, and there were very few people to buy. I spent so much time filming the hit pre-COVID-19 buy-in that I had no real reason to pay attention to pricing or new inventory. In the COVID-19 world we live in, things get even crazier. This of course does not mean that before COVID-19, everything was sunny and rainbow; The writing was on the wall long before COVID-19. Supply and workforce shortages of the past two years have only accelerated the trajectory the film world has taken.
Movie price 2019 compared to movie price 2022
The price of the movie is skyrocketing, much higher than in any other new product market I know of. Even the car market, which is currently receiving a lot of attention for the extent of the impact of COVID-19, has not seen a drastic increase in the price of new cars. I’ll provide some industry-specific comparisons in a moment.
As you’ll see in the chart above, since April 2019 (less than three years ago), the price of the movie has skyrocketed, to the point where it’s hard to remember a time when the price of the movie wasn’t astronomical. For example, Kodak Ektachrome, a superb projection film that is now the only positive film Kodak produces. That movie has a current rate of $20. Mind you, Ektachrome has always been a stock of high-end, sky-high-priced movies. However, when you think that this movie only cost $13 less than three years ago, it might break your heart a little. That’s a 53.8% price increase! What hurts the most is the fact that it’s the film with the smallest price increase of all the movies I’ve reviewed. Yes, you read that right. Of the seven movie stocks I’ve considered, its 53.8% gain is the smallest! If you’re asking yourself how other people have gotten worse, you’re actually being treated.
Arguably the most popular movie store today, Kodak Portrait 400 (you can find my review of it this), had a (relatively) modest price increase of 64.1% ($7.80 versus $12.80). I was expecting Portra to lead when it comes to the upside, but here we are. The next biggest rise in Kodak movies comes from Kodak TMax 400, my favorite black-and-white film (and the only black-and-white film I searched for due to availability and interest), more than doubled in price in less than three years. Priced at $5 as of April 2019, a 35mm roll of 36 exposures now costs $11, resulting in a 120% price increase. The next two Kodak films and the last were the hardest pills for me to swallow, as they were my two most frequently shot color negatives: Kodak Ektar and Gold Kodak. Kodak Ektar has great color, amazing exposure latitude and (with emphasis on the past tense) is an affordable movie. In early 2019, a 35mm roll will set you back only $6.75, which isn’t much considering how great the stock is. As of January 2022 it is now at $16 – a whopping 137% price increase. You can’t see me now, but I’m shaking my head as I write this. Which leads us to the last Kodak team movie that I included, Kodak Gold. Nothing to love about Gold? This is the only non-professional film on this list of Kodak films and is therefore only available in 35mm. For me and many of my friends, Gold has been a movie worth watching over the years because while it doesn’t have the level of performance you’ll get from Ektar or Portra, the colors are great and it’s a real treat. real bargain in relative terms. Today, however, you’ll be spending almost 2.5 times more than you did less than three years ago at $11 versus $4.50, a 144.4 percent price increase.
This does not mean that Kodak is the only manufacturer to make similar moves. Indeed, Fujifilm has been doing the same thing. Fujichrome Provia, my personal favorite color positive film, increased its price by 66.7% from $12 to $20. And Fujifilm’s budget film intends to compete with Kodak Gold, Fujicolor Superia X-TRA 400, similarly about the price more than double. They will cost $3.33 a roll in April 2019, while currently they are commanding a price tag of $7.33.
Now I can see comments: “COVID-19 is affecting the price of everything” or something along those lines. So let’s compare the price increase to another industry we know has been hit hard since the start of the pandemic: the auto industry. Given that the movie has always been a luxury product, we’ll compare it with luxury cars: the BMW 3 Series, the Audi A3 and the Mercedes Benz CLA class. For starters, the base model price of the BMW 3 series has increased by 2.9% ($41,245 versus $42,445). More than double the proportional increase with BMW, we have the Audi A3 which has increased the base model’s price by 6.1% ($32,925 versus $34,945). The Benz got a significant change over the other two, going from $34,095 to $39,250, a price increase for the base model CLA class of 15.1%. Of course, this is the market for new cars, and the used car market is going crazy, however, it can’t compare to the price increase of movies and it’s an unfair comparison anyway. equal. A fairer comparison to the used car market would be the Fuji Pro 400-H after Fuji announced the cessation of production. The secondary market pushes prices up to dizzying heights.
Inference
Did you know Kodak invented the digital camera? Well, if you didn’t know before, now you do. Do you know what they did with their technology and patents? Not a single thing, at least not when it can make a difference. They bury their heads in the sand while simultaneously doubling down on film only to end up going bankrupt because, you know, digital cameras are a thing. Whatever anyone wants to say as a good reason for Kodak and film production in general, I see little or no reason for the dramatic increase in prices other than simply “because they can”, which seems very short-sighted. Once upon a time, before COVID-19 hit, Kodak said it would raise prices to invest in R&D and add machines to increase production. However, I was very worried about the price increase, but in recent years, when I was hoping for more of their movies and more stock, however, it did not seem to really increase, and the price of Kodak and Fuji got out of control. They seem to enjoy valuing people when buying movies. Thanks God pixl-latr offers an affordable way to digitize film (assuming you already own a digital camera), and Darkroom Labs has kept their prices roughly the same over the past few years, making processing and digitizing your movies is arguably more affordable than before.
I love film and will continue to use it for most of my most personal and meaningful photos. My sincerest wish is that Kodak or Fuji will eventually drop their prices up and Kodak or Fuji, Pentax, Nikon or anyone else make affordable and high quality 35mm and medium format cameras , because, let’s face it, no matter how much film is made, the aging and increasingly exhausted working camera pool is the limiting factor to continuing to shoot movies.
