Film Photography Makes a Comeback

[Jason Thompson]

Image: Wen Zeng

The companies that manufacture film - actual camera film - announced growth in the analog film category at CES this year. “We’re seeing film growth of 5% year-on-year globally,” says Giles Branthwaite, the sales and marketing director at Harman. “Our professional film sales have been increasing over the last two or three years,” confirms Dennis Olbrich, president of Kodak Alaris’ imaging, paper, photo chemicals and film division.

According to Time Magazine professional photographers are primarily fueling this growth, thanks to a new generation of practitioners who grew up with digital but have begun dabbling in film, says Olbrich: “They discover the magic of film photography and many of them simply fall in love with it.”

As exciting as that is to hear, it's important to remember the film market peaked in 2003 with 960 million rolls of film. Today it represents roughly 2% of that. Sobering.