On one hand I am extremely happy about this recent renewal of interest in film photography among the younger crowd, which in no small part has saved film photography from being totally obsolete. But on the other hand, I wonder how long this fad will last and when it finally fades away, then what will become of film photography?
I am quite certain, from my own observations, that this renaissance of film photography among young people is just a fad instead of a real enthusiasm and appreciation of film photography. Not much different from any fad du jour popularized by any one of those social media influencers.
My best friend owns and runs a local camera store-film lab (where I hang out at quite regularly). Since the last 4 years or so, his film rolls and processing sales have gone from next to zero to now accounting for a good 30/40% of the store's profit. It's great money. But unfortunately both of us regularly see the ugly and sad side of this trend. Below are some examples. They sounds like poor jokes but I swear that they are real events that we both witness.
(1) Most of the customers do NOT want the negatives back. Most just want the film to be scanned so they can post the images on social media. Not even prints. They either don't come back for it or instruct the staff at the start to trash it.
(2) One time, when the store personnel asked a 20-something whether or not he wanted the negatives back, the young man went, "The what now?" So the store personnel pull up a roll of sample negatives to show him. The guy asked, "What is this brown thing?" He was puzzled.
(3) A group of like 3 or 4 young women came in to buy films. One of the women in the group asked, "Why are you shooting film. Just use your iPhone." The other woman replied, "It's a thing now, don't you know?" They all giggled.
(4) Then we had this innocent (just trying to be nice here) young woman who, I saw, kept opening the camera back. I could clearly see a roll of film had been loaded in the camera. After about the 3rd time I witnessed her opening the camera back, I finally couldn't hold back anymore and asked her politely why she was doing it. Did she need help loading the film correctly? She replied, "How do I see the photos? Is there a button to push or something? I opened it and I still don't see any photo. Where are the photos?"
(5) Almost 1/3 of all the rolls they processed are blank, or severely underexposed, or have light leaks all over the place. And the customers never know why and many of them just blame the lab for ruining their films.
(6) A full 70% of them, I would say, don't know what the aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focal length mean or how they work in taking photos. Not even the slightest clue. The worst thing is they refuse to even read the manual for the camera even though the majority of these manuals are still readily available online.
(7) The worst of it is that many of these youngsters are now "professional" photographers who charge people money for taking photos with the "film look"! Routinely, these "professional" photographers would come in the store and ask the staff questions like, "I have a shoot tomorrow, can you tell how to get the very blurry background I see in these photos?" So they pull up some photos on Instagram to show the staff. Or, they will ask, "I have a shoot tomorrow, can you show me how to use the flash?" And they pull up some photos on Instagram to show the staff. Questions like these, photography 101 things, are being asked by these "professional" photographers on a daily basis. Granted, this phenomenon isn't unique to film photography. The advances in digital photography has lower the entry bar so much that now everyone is a "professional" photographer these days as long as anyone has the gall to demand money for shooting. But I digress.
Anyway, it's just a rant. Tell me how you feel about this fad.
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