Topic: Is there a world shortage of film?

[Pete_R]

Seems everything I want is out of stock. Anyone else having problems?

[Francois]

Nope, I just open my freezer and it's all there 
But joking aside, I just checked my two local suppliers and I noticed that color film is really hard to come by.
At Argentix.ca, all the color film has evaporated.
At Studio Argentique, lot of the lower cost color film like Kodak Ultramax and Kodak Gold are out of stock.
But at both places, the B&W inventory is still pretty solid with plenty of Rollei, Foma. Kodak seems to be suffering the most of the shortage with Ilford not far behind. Fuji seems to be having difficulties too.

[Kai-san]

Yeah, colour has been a problem for some time both in shops and online. It looks like you'll be better off if you shoot 120 film, you can even get most Kodak films in that format. I bulkroll 35mm films so I have some stock, but I'll have to get more 400 ISO before the dark season sets in.

[Bryan]

I was looking for Fujifilm Superia 400 a few weeks ago and couldn’t find any online.  Luckily a local shop had plenty of it. 

[Francois]

I just called two local shops and got a very different ringtone.
At one of them, the guy just told me that Kodak was going bankrupt (something I doubt is the case right away).
But at the other shop, which caters to professional photographers, I had a more descriptive story.
He explained that he puts in regular orders to Kodak and Fuji but simply doesn't get anything delivered. He's got only 6 rolls of color Fuji film on the shelf and he says that the first guy who drops by for some film and sees them will simply empty the shelf.
He says that the problem is that there is a shortage of a rare metal that goes into color film emulsions and that there is no substitute for it right now. So Kodak can't start their film coating for color emulsion and Fuji is letting the color materials go out slowly as to not empty their stockrooms too fast.

Somehow, I think that the rare metal shortage is probably very real as a lot of exotic metals like Iridium go into the fabrication of the materials.

EDIT: I think I hit the nail on the head when I talked about Iridium. It turns out that there is both a shortage of this rare metal and an increased demand for it as it goes into the fabrication of Hydrogen Fuel Cells and hydrogen production facilities. In 2021, the price of iridium went-up 160%. As this morning, the price was 4,500$/oz.

If you want an idea of what goes-on inside the film recipes, check out this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ8aNPStQ8M

[Bryan]

I just called two local shops and got a very different ringtone.
At one of them, the guy just told me that Kodak was going bankrupt (something I doubt is the case right away).

Kodak is not in Bankruptcy, they would have to report that since they are a publicly traded company, and they have not done that.  However, Carestream, once owned by Kodak, just filed for bankruptcy.  they make X-Ray film, Kodak sold them for $2.35 billion in 2007.  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-23/carestream-health-x-ray-firm-once-owned-by-kodak-goes-bankrupt

[Pete_R]

Interesting about the colour but I'm just looking for black and white. True, most of the Ilford stuff is available, though some seems in short supply, but some of the more interesting and cheaper stuff that I use is completely out. There's no Shanghai GP3 unless you want to pay extortionate prices being asked on ebay, a lot of Rollei stuff is out of stock too. There's others that I don't use that seem to be out of stock also. So choice is limited if not actually impossible to obtain.

[Kai-san]

Check out MacoDirect in Germany (macodirect.de/en), they seem to have most Rollei films in stock. I have not compared prices to what you pay in Britain, but compared to Norwegian prices they are much lower. I buy most of my film from MacoDirect, here you can hardly get any B&W films except Kodak and Ilford.

[Pete_R]

Thanks Kai. I have used Maco in the past but I can usually get film cheaper in the UK, especially with the extra delivery cost from Germany. I just checked Rollei RPX25 bulk and it would be about 20% more from Maco for a single roll. Pan 400 127 film is cheaper but with postage would be more expensive for small quantities. Maco is a useful source though and I do check them.

At the moment I'm looking mainly for cheap film to test cameras with. I've just found a supplier in the UK that had some GP3 120 in stock so I've ordered that and also some Kentmere 100 35mm from another supplier. Kentmere is usually pretty cheap but not as cheap as buying bulk.

[Kai-san]

There is usually nothing that beats Fomapan 100 in bulk for price. Expired film is an alternative, but it's getting thin on the ground.

[Pete_R]

I have used Fomapan though it's not my favourite but, today, 36 exposure rolls of Kentmere were cheaper than the Fomapan though bulk Fomapan would have been cheaper but I couldn't find any in stock. I wouldn't use expired film to test cameras - if it fails, you might not know if it's a camera fault or a film fault.

[Francois]

I know this might sound weird, but yesterday's discovery just sent me down the rabbit hole of rare metals used in photography.
I stumbled upon a patent document for photographic emulsion by FujiFilm (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/56/6b/ff/cd370ccc11f2ee/EP0476327A1.pdf) where they describe the metals that they use.

In the course of forming the respective shells of the core/shell grains in the emulsion of the present invention, doping can be conducted with various dopants. The internal dopants include, for example, silver, sulfur, iridium, gold, platinum, osmium, rhodium, tellurium, selenium, cadmium, zinc, lead, thallium, iron,
antimony, bismuth and arsenic

Which sent me checking rare metals availability.
A lot of them are getting really overpriced as demand grows faster than supply. Now this is really scary for the photo industry as it affects film prices directly. And companies that rely on them for their film production will get hit directly no matter how big or small they are.

And Kodak is particularly in a bind because they have contracts with the big Hollywood studios for movie films. So I think that's why we can hardly find any film from them on the shelves.