Recycling just doesn't work for plastics. If anything, the only parts of the recycling system that are functional today are for paper, glass and metal.
When I worked in 1-hour photo, the inner metal+plastic 35mm film cans all went into one barrel, the outer 35mm plastic canisters all went into another barrel, and the disposable cameras all went into a third barrel.
These were kept separated, bagged up as needed, and the bags were picked up by the Kodak truck at night along with all of the send-out orders.
It was never cheap. I liked photography from an early age but did less than I wanted because film was expensive. Digital cameras were a big breakthrough for me, although I still prefer to look of film.
They exploded in price especially when the pandemic hit and haven't dropped since.
It feels like the same disease that hit GPUs then has spread not just to film cameras, but to every retro computing or digital gadget like CRT TVs/monitors, 15 year old laptops, consoles and DSLRs.
Everyone now thinks their old commodity e-waste that's not even rare is now worth it's weight in gold on ebay.
If it is, it's because people are paying for it. This is easy to check on eBay via completed listings. The market may be irrational, but if sellers were just setting expectations too high you'd expect competition to pull the price downward.
The problem is likely that people selling on eBay or used camera places handling old bodies are mostly not dealing in functional but “rough” gear. I’m probably typical in that I have one or two old camera bodies at home that aren’t worth selling but still work fine.
I mean sure, but people are paying for it because now the whole market collectively jacked up the prices by 400% so you have no other choice but to buy at 400% or GTFO.
Your only choice of striking a good deal now is a yard sale or something, because online, the market ahs colluded to price fixing as if every customer is a nostalgic with deep pockets.
Personally, I'm not paying, because I refuse to fork up insane markups just to satisfy the nostalgia itch, but obviously some people are.
I got into this in the 2000s and 2010s by which point it was already obsolete-ish. There are levels and levels of bad cameras people can get into for fun: Polaroids, lomography, Holga, Instagram filters, GameBoy camera, Nintendo DSi, Nintendo 3DS. On the video side, all music videos are now made on VHS for a retrolook, but back in the actual 90s, you would show you were artistic by shooting on 8mm. I'm sure that soon all the music videos will shift to being shot on Flip cameras as the cohort of newly 20-something videographers remember that from their own childhoods.
No, it is 100% literally true that there is not a single exception to the trend of all music videos being shot on VHS now. This is how language works. All quantifications are always exact quantifications, and there are never any humorous exaggerations.
Oh hell yeah, always a fun time when the person who failed to convey their humor gets snarky and annoyed at people who don't pick up on it. You have a great day there, buddy! Lemme know if you want a hug!
The only reason to "save"* the environment is so that people can keep peopling. Think of the waste in making a movie -- to me 100% dead weight (I have no interest in movies) but to other people definitely worth it. Who am I to decide what's a waste, in this regard?
* the environment will do just fine if we make all the vertebrates extinct. We just happen to feel otherwise.
I'd be curious to know if this is a fair comparison. A brief search revealed little.
I can see either side of the argument, and probably the result would change based on bounding conditions; for instance, how many more people have 'cameras' in their pocket today compared to 20 years ago?
And a lot of chemicals in photo processing are reused over and over to develop rolls of film – maybe it's more efficient to have one central lab processing photos than a billion phone batteries going into landfill every year?
Practically everyone now-a-days has a digital camera in their pockets, a cell phone.
Dedicated cameras aren't purchased nearly as often because you need a pretty substantial jump in quality to compete with cell phone cameras at this point.
You could argue the rate of cellphone disposal is no good.
A disposable film camera isn't a replacement for a digital camera, it's a replacement for a potato with analog film and the bottom of a beer bottle as a lens grafted onto/into it.
Does it really need saying? We know it is terrible, we know there is microplastics almost everywhere.
At this point it feels like little Timmy playing with fireworks next to the forest fire. Everyone and everything involved is terrible. Timmy still needs a scolding for being a moron.
I am sure you have some type of hobby or passion that uses resources in a wasteful or "obsolete" way. cast your environmentalist critique in meaningful ways and stop diluting its punch by targeting kids and their consumptive practices. just because you dont "get it" doesnt mean its catching forests on fire, and doesn't mean its "obsolete". i have pictures from disposable cameras that carry unbelievable sentimental value to me and my family, and those pictures were taken alongside some on my fancy mirrorless camera and my wifes iphone. guess which photos live in the cloud and which adorn our bookshelves? am i supposed to feel responsible for rising sea tides because i bought a four dollar camera and documented a beach trip?
Justifying doing something wrong by stating that someone else did equally bad or worse is not a valid argument.
By this reasoning, some random EU country could raise co2 emissions, stating that China is even worse. Problem is: the Planet does not care about artificial, man made boundaries.
To your last question: Yes, you should feel responsible. Who else could be? The point is to be conscious about what you do. Not everybody can be the best version of oneself, all the time, me included. However, denial is probably the worst of all reactions to this problem.
This is a silly argument made by environmentalists for decades now, often to promote failed policies; plastic recycling, ethanol subsidies, and most egregious the prevention of progress around nuclear power.
Not only does moralizing often backfire, it has an embedding effect that prevents actual progress.
The other end of the spectrum to moralizing is completely negating any personal agency over resource consumption that each of us has. And unlike for things like "flight shaming", there is an alternative here.
Also, quite often non-disposable objects feel much more pleasant to use: Cutlery, glasses vs. plastic cups etc., just to name a few, so promoting reusable products over single-use plastic crap is a win-win in my book.
> cast your environmentalist critique in meaningful ways and stop diluting its punch by targeting kids and their consumptive practices
All of these can be true at the same time: Changes to individual consumption habits will not save the planet alone; these changes can still make an impact in aggregate; it can still feel nice to use a film camera while at the same time considering the environmental impact and maybe limiting their use to moments that really matter and not just a novelty thing.
And if people really (re)discover their love for film: Buy a used film camera! You'll get infinitely better results than from a disposable camera and will be able to resell it for practically no loss in value.
I've bought a couple of vinyl records of bands/records that I really like, but would feel quite bad about buying every record that I like that way, since producing them and shipping them around the world does seem like a pretty big resource expenditure for something that a file on my computer can achieve in much higher fidelity.
> guess which photos live in the cloud and which adorn our bookshelves?
I never loved disposable cameras. The pictures were terrible but the ability to pick one up anywhere made it convenient. At least maybe fall in love with 110 cameras.
I just recently picked up a 110 Minolta scuba camera at an estate sale. I haven't been able to find any 110 film cartridges around me, so I'll probably put in an order at B&H.
I think that's the design. Decent metering 35mm SLRs can be had for $100-150.
Given that film is about $25 a roll to purchase and get lab-developed, cheap cameras are basically film toys. At least Lomo deliberately leans in to the aesthetic; it seems to be something people want.
Oh, I was a big fan of my APS camera. Took all sorts of shots with it. Got a whole bunch of these "now, what photo album, exactly, can we put these in" panoramic shots from it.
I enjoyed the film handling, the dating of the prints, the size of the camera, battery life, etc. I even took advantage of being able to stop in mid-roll, and toss in a different one, and swap back.
It definitely went the way of the dodo, not all labs properly supported it (like not printing the date on the back of the photo).
But as a casual photo consumer, it worked really well for me.
One of my most cherished photos, and it's, honestly, a terrible photo, which is part of its charm, was taken with my APS camera.
It's a picture of my now wife and myself on a beach in Catalina from the weekend I proposed to her. The composition is terrible, we're way too small, and, even better, somehow, someway, there's a single shadow of a light pole that crosses the beach and right. through. us.
A few inches either way, and it would have not been an issue. We couldn't have staged it worse. It's a perfectly bad picture of a great day, and I love it.
Nothing to do with APS, mind, just that I took it with that camera. It had a timer :).
Fujicolor was featured in this article. Interestingly, the Fujinon line of cameras which do film emulation, like the Fuji X100v and X100vi, are almost always sold out. The nostalgia for the beautiful “film look” is a blessing to Fuji because of their heritage in the film industry. They translated their proprietary film line into digital cameras with JPEG* emulations and are finding great demand to the point where they had to pause orders and expand manufacturing.
> The nostalgia for the beautiful “film look” is a blessing to Fuji because of their heritage in the film industry
I'm not so sure it's actually helping their film business much. They've discontinued Superia and 400H, their two mainstay color negative films. The "Fuji 200" and "Fuji 400" sold today are known to be repackaged Kodak Gold and UltraMax, respectively. Fuji's slide films soldier on, but supply is extremely limited. To get a new 35mm roll of Velvia in the US, you're looking at a multi-week backorder through an online retailer, or you're going to a local shop and praying they have some in stock.
Neopan seems to be doing fine, but that's not saying much. If the only film they can make in-house at a volume commensurate with demand is a single black-and-white stock, that's a dire situation for such a huge operation.
As I said, their film business appears to be in trouble. That article seems to indicate that the rest of the company is doing fine. I'm glad Instax is working out for them.
The astonishing revelation is that their film line is responsible for the success of their digital camera line. How so? Call it nostalgia or a realization that the film look is more aesthetic, but in any case Fujifilm turned their historical film intellectual property into software for film emulation and that move has proven to be very successful and demand for their hardware shows it. It's incredible that a used X100v can still fetch above its original price. For the newly-released successor, the X100vi, you'd have to get on a waiting list or they're on limited stock.
There's certainly a case for their film business aiding their digital business - I just mourn that it isn't a two way street.
What happens to the appeal of Fuji's film simulation as the real film stocks go away? Two of their most iconic brands are already defunct, and as already mentioned, the last two appear to be approaching a similar fate. The photography industry moves in cycles as the brands take turns being trendy (just ask Olympus- erm, OM System). Where does Fuji go from here?
The value proposition is Fuji’s film stock which they have converted to software emulation. No one is allowed to copy it nor do they have the Fuji scientists who developed it. It’s unique, which makes it long term.
There’s at least 20 in the classic Fujifilm film stock. Here’s some of the popular ones. Photographers will recognize them.
1. *Provia (Standard)* - General-purpose film simulation.
2. *Velvia (Vivid)* - Saturated colors and enhanced contrast, suitable for landscapes.
3. *Astia (Soft)* - Softer contrast and natural skin tones, ideal for portraits.
4. *Classic Chrome* - Muted colors and enhanced shadow tones, for a vintage look.
5. *Pro Neg. Hi* - High contrast and vivid colors, used for fashion and commercial work.
6. *Pro Neg. Std* - Balanced colors and softer contrast, suitable for portraits.
7. *Acros* - High-quality black and white with fine grain and deep blacks.
8. *Monochrome* - Standard black and white simulation.
9. *Sepia* - Warm, brownish tones for a nostalgic look.
10. *Eterna* - Cinematic look with low contrast and subdued colors.
11. *Classic Neg* - Mimics color negative film with muted tones and enhanced contrast.
12. *Eterna Bleach Bypass* - High contrast and desaturated colors, resembling the bleach bypass effect.
> No one is allowed to copy it nor do they have the Fuji scientists who developed it
I don't buy this. I can crank green and magenta, pull red, throw in a little contrast, and just a hint of gaussian noise to make the raw files from my OM-5 MKII look damn near identical to Fuji 400H.
Fuji has copyrights on things like "Superia," "Velvia," and "Provia." They have patents on Superia chemistry, and nobody else knows how to make it. What Fuji doesn't have is patents on "vivid greens and magentas with cool-leaning daylight white balance, fine grain and high acutance." Fuji's own ability to accurately simulate their film stocks digitally is proof that digital simulation of arbitrary film stocks is feasible. Just don't call them by name if you don't own the copyright.
You’ve missed the entire point. Sure, anyone can shoot raw. The Fujifilm value proposition is in not having to do post-processing of raw files. The finished good is right there in the jpeg, complete in all its film-like glory.
You missed my point. It's utterly trivial to do with a GIMP/LR/RawTherapee/Whatever preset and a $300 used camera from 10 years ago, it's a weak selling point for a prosumer camera costing thousands. If the X100VI also had a button that instantly uploaded your shot to Instagram and added an LLM-generated 2deep4u caption, well now they have something. The X100VI sells because it's a good camera, and a good-looking camera. Fuji's default color rendering is the best in the industry. The film presets are a convenient way to recycle dying IP.
All of the Fuji slide films are approaching $30 a roll now on the rare occasions they are available. The only black-and-white film Fuji is currently selling is "Neopan 100 Acros II," which is actually now made for them in the UK by Ilford.
Yikes, I didn't realize Ilford was manufacturing Neopan (I guess the construction of the canister should have been a giveaway though). For what it's worth, Neopan's definitely not a rehashed Ilford product - its reciprocity characteristics are totally unique in the industry. I keep some around for easy long exposures.
Yes, Acros II is still a unique product which seems pretty much identical to the original Fuji-made Acros. See: https://bluemooncameracodex.com/film-fridays/ffacrosii I've shot a roll of Acros II and liked it, although I thought the shadows blocked up a bit at box speed and will likely shoot my next roll at 64 instead of 100 (or shoot at 125 and push one stop).
(I never said Acros II was a relabeled Ilford product; I said Ilford was making Acros II for Fuji.)
Personally I think a big reason disposable cameras are having a resurgence is that the camera makers have abandoned the compact camera market and don't seem to be interested in making or marketing any camera they can't sell for at least $1,000. That much money can buy a lot of film.
For anyone willing to put in even the slightest effort to learn the basics of photography, picking up an inexpensive used film camera will be much better than a disposable or the "reusable disposable" super-cheap new film cameras available now.
I have several 40–50 year old film cameras that continue to work just fine, and it's a pleasure to own a physical object that continues to function perfectly for decades, in stark contrast to disposable products and the planned obsolescence of virtually everything you can buy today.
Further, the UI/UX of most digital cameras is horrible, with dozens of confusing settings. It's much easier to use an all manual camera like (for example) a Pentax K1000 and set everything yourself than to figure out how to make a digital camera's dozens of settings and automatic functions do what you want them to. Most new DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have user manuals approaching 900 pages!
A student in my media workshop works at a photolab and wants to make a project with the container filled with old disposable cameras. The flash is still working, so we built a small PCB that allows us to trigger the flash from a microcontroller.
She is going to use that for a permanently flashing art sculpture (I made sure to inform her about epilepsy and her need to inform people before they are exposed to the sculpture).
If you're photografing consider just getting a small second hand camera instead — less wasteful, better pics, even if you get a shitty camera.
Some weeks ago, coincidentally, I took an old drugstore brand disposable camera I found lying around in my flat for a weekend trip. The AA battery was corroded and dead, but otherwise the camera worked just fine. The trip was actually a bachelor party, so in the end I gave the camera to the groom and he got it developed. Mostly average shots, along with a few very nice highlights. Would do again.
The things are bloody awful and only bring back the longing misery of not being able to afford something less than awful for me. The things weren't even a match for a cheap no brand 35mm compact in the end. Plus they are instant trash. Nothing likeable at all.
The day I got an n-th hand East German 35mm SLR in the mid-80s the world was good again.
Shooting on film is a protest against the ubiquity and inhumanness of digital photography, and ultimately the commodification of memory.
I use a polaroid camera these days. It is messy and wrong and dark and unreliable and bulky and expensive; the exact opposite of the (awesome! but also generic and boring) iphone in my pocket.
> a protest against the ubiquity and inhumanness of digital photography
A protest to the tune of approximately $1 per photo. I love my 35mm SLR but shooting on it is extremely cost prohibitive. Digital photography doesn’t have to be inhumane, it’s more about the user than the technology.
Its a nice exercise in photography to shoot in film. When I shoot digital I might take four shots of the same subject because why not. I take photos of every little thing potentially. I give myself a headache of 4000 photos with dozens of near identical shots to sift through in lightroom.
You’d think I’d burn hundreds on film but no. A roll might last days or weeks or even longer. Every shot is different. I spend more time framing and making sure the exposure is correct. It forces you to slow down and think. The cost becomes hardly a thing because if I start worrying about $25 a month if that on film and dev, I have bigger problems.
You answered your own question — because you'd "give [yourself] a headache of 4000 photos with dozens of near identical shots to sift through".
It isn't the dollar-cost; it is the attention-cost.
When I shoot digital I might take forty shots of the same subject because there's movement and fractional differences in subject distance will visibly miss focus, so 10 fps.
When I shoot digital I might take one shot because exposure correct for highlights can be post-processed, so frame and focus.
all your "film behavior" when using film can be done @ digital; with the addition of checking if actually you did it right (a great learning tool) + not using chemicals, which aren't eco-friendly, lets not mention if 50% of the population thought like you, nature would get _fucked_ by chemicals disposal
It's strange, my mom and all her friends took thouands of photos on film. I threw away boxes and boxes of them when I cleaned out her house when she passed.
Slides/print film and processing did not used to be cost-prohibitive. But I shot a few rolls of 35mm on my old SLR a few years ago and was stunned at the costs to just have them processed and scanned to digital files.
I used to do my own (B&W) processing as a kid and paid for it with paper route and lawn-mowing money; I don't know what that costs these days but it sure seems that film photography is no longer a reasonably cheap hobby.
The masses kept it cheap. Now these film labs have to make 2020s rent and not 1990s rent with the few people dropping stuff off each day, forcing prices to increase substantially.
I’ve seen one of those digital cameras pulled out at a bar but they have not aged as well as the film cameras. For one, the lcd screen you rely upon for everything was totally yellowed to the point of almost not seeing anything on the screen. No clue about battery life or if all the buttons worked but if it was like my old digital cams probably not good. These things could be 25 years old now. Only a few like the canon powrshot were truly prosumer.
I am utterly flabbergasted by that attitude. I totally dig having useless old tech around (hey I brought a mechanical typewriter), but there is nothing inhumane about getting good quality photos of the people in your lives and be able to share them widely.
If you have somehow made your phone inhuman, that's not on your phone.
If you feel like you can take pictures you couldn't take otherwise, start playing with the settings on your camera app.
also pretty weird to have other people checking your photos because you need to process/print the film somewhere... or are you one of these inhumane people who have resources to develop your own rolls @ home? :P
I use an Instax camera (the Fuji version of Polaroid), too. However, I do not see it as any kind of protest. I just really like the way it works (instant photos? magic!).
However, the refills are expensive and the camera itself is very rudimentary (manual focus, limited control). OTOH, thanks to the simplicity, it is very easy to take apart and fix.
I'm not positive, but I think if you take film to be developed at my local drugstore, they will not return the negatives. Consume it whole, make some prints, and then give a CD or some other electronic copy.
Very annoyed when we asked about that to find out they became a black hole for negatives.
The medium is really not important even if you think it is. What you do and where you are is the important bit. Half the photo is what's left inside your head that is activated when you look at it again.
I want disposable cameras to make a comeback a big way. Nothing compares to film, it just looks like memories. It’s convenient to be able to shoot film without the commitment of buying a camera + film and learning how to use it. imo, every person should go through at least a few disposable cameras in their lives! :)
Film has had a big resurgence since 2020. Just ask your local photo lab - yes, there's probably one still hanging around. Just one, though. And yes, they probably still develop color negative film in house. They'll even digitize it for you, as long as you bring a flash drive!
I'm part of the trend - I have a couple Minolta SLRs, 8(?) lenses, a couple point-and-shoots, and even a medium-format camera. There's a Yashica Electro 35 sitting in my lap as I type this.
If you want to play around with film, do the planet a favor and dig up your (or your parents') old 35mm camera instead of buying disposables. It's better off used than collecting dust in a basement. That's just my two cents, though.
At this point, I think the magic is in black and white and the darkroom (not that I have much of the wherewithal to do it these days). C-41 or E-6 color means you still need someone to develop and then scan them which just seems like digital with extra steps. I worked in a photo lab in the waning days of film and really enjoyed shooting it when I had access to all that equipment, but it just isn't the same since I've moved on.
Whatever people decide to do, I agree with you about skipping disposables and getting something vintage. There are a lot of gems out there - your Electro is certainly one of them, though I'd probably look at a lot of the Olympus point and shoots, though pricing seems to reflect the fact that they were quite good and are becoming a bit scarce; it seems like we're long past the point where the mainstream has unloaded all their 35mm gear for cheap.
I mostly agree with you, I do my own B&W dev and use a mail-in lab for my C41/E6 but I have invested in a dedicated negative scanner and do my own digitisation. For me it was another part of the “creative process” and I wanted to control it.
I mainly shoot black-and-white. I find the development process really interesting, and mastering the creation of a perfect negative has proven to be really challenging. There are so many variables - film stocks, metering, filter compensation, choices of chemicals, temperatures, times, agitation, etc.
I'd love to be able to do my own prints, but I simply don't have a room suitable for darkroom printing. I think that's the situation for a lot of folks. It's rare for apartment dwellers (like me) to have that kind of space at their disposal.
If you are self developing black and white you ought to do your own prints too with an enlarger. Its like another chance to expose the shot and play with all that is involved there.
I perhaps should have elaborated; the magic is seeing the print emerge in the developer bath. Developing panchromatic black and white film is more of a straight up technical exercise since it has to be done in total darkness. Also, doing your own color develop and print is certainly possible, but much more complicated than black and white and has the same issue with requiring total darkness.
> It’s convenient to be able to shoot film without the commitment of buying a camera + film and learning how to use it
Is it such a big commitment? You can find decent used point and shoot type film cameras for 10-20EUR on ebay, at least where I am – sure it's not a Leica or whatever but they work well, at least in my experience.
I need to make an app which doesn't let you preview your photos, waits until you've taken 24, then mails you a hard copy a week later for a ridiculous fee. Optionally I'll also create some plastic waste and put it in landfill for you. Hipsters will love it and I'll be rich. The end.
Having owned two AE-1s (one of which was an AE-1 Program), I'd avoid them. I know every TikTok/YouTube influencer will disagree with me, but they're not actually that good of a beginner SLR.
AE-1s are notoriously fragile. Their light meters break pretty easily, and then there's the shutter squeak of doom. Plenty of more reliable SLRs can be had for less money. Then there's the price - they're stupidly expensive, in part because of the influencers causing beginners to flock to them on eBay. I find the AE-1's shutter priority mode less useful than aperture priority on other cameras.
If you already have an AE-1 and you like it, don't get rid of it because of my comment. If you haven't bought a 35mm SLR yet, take a good look at the Canon T70, Minolta X-700, and Nikon N2000. All of them match or beat the AE-1/AE-1P in feature set, all can be had for cheaper than an AE-1, and all of them are better-made.
I wouldn’t do color though. B&W is super-simple. Need more gear for printing blowups obviously. Stating with color is probably a recipe for frustration. Back in the film day pretty much no one started out with color.
No one started with color - and most people kept it that way! Color is a real pain in the ass to work with in a traditional dark room setting. Having started my photography career in an actual dark room, I understand why newbies are interested in the process and there should definitely be community resources available where they can learn the ropes of film and paper photography. But then they need to move on. Yes, I fondly remember my days working in the dark room. No, I don't want to go back to working in the dark room and always smelling like fixer afterward. Hmmm...thiosulfate smells good! NOT!!!
Personally I don’t disagree but I’m also not going to tell people what they can and cannot do. But other than processing a roll or two of B&W film, much more than that gets pretty frustrating in the absence of a properly kitted-out darkroom. It’s not something I’d make a personal investment and I doubt anyone doing this has the spare room at home.
I’d probably start by trying to find a local camera club that probably has some camera gear to loan/rent.
That's why I was thinking a community resource would be nice. A fully kitted-out darkroom available to lease out in 2 hour chunks. Lessons available for new people. I do think everybody should do it a few times. Also there's a few times I'd want to use an actual darkroom for some projects, but like you say, I'm not dedicating the space and funding to a darkroom. But I'd gladly pay, say $50, to use a darkroom for a couple hours. Heck, I'd pay to lease out some cameras. It's been a long time since I've used a Hasselblad medium format!
Polaroid-type instant cameras are fun; but I fail to see any benefit over the same thing but non-disposable (other than shareholder value and environmental waste). I'll pass.
You'll need to excuse the Washington Post Style section, which exists to explain the outside world to sheltered Boomers, even if it means vomiting up 2,000 words about an anecdote to make it look like a trend.
Don't want to be this guy - but isn't this article just an ad for fujifilm? The author only mentions fujifilm and there is a link to buy one of these cameras right at the beginning.
Maybe it's more of a try to generate a trend then a real trend the journalist is describing?
Something about this comment thread just makes me feel really sad.
It's like my childhood is just gone. Not the cameras, not the film. Just the sense of - yeah, man, go and do that cool thing.
Yes, disposable things cause trash. A thousand of these things could probably fit in my dustbin. Even back in the day with no other options we maybe used 20-50 of them in my entire childhood.
You're allowed to be happy, you know. Them and you too.
But for film companies this is a great product. They can sell their film with added plastic bits and a flash for a decent markup.