Jake Shivery: What’s your most popular film these days?
Mike Bain (of ILFORD PHOTO): Hands down, HP5+, 35mm, 36 exposures.
JS: In the store, it always seems like we’re selling more 120 and sheet film, but Ilford at large continues to sell more 35mm?
MB: 35 is big, but there’s no question that 120 film and sheet film have really done the best over the last several years, looking at the uptick in sales. I think that there are a lot reasons for that – there are a lot of really great 120 cameras used on the market, for starters. People may have wanted these cameras for a long time, and now the prices are down where they can afford them. And the plastic cameras, the toy cameras – we’ve really benefited from that quite a bit. 35 still defines the student market though – we do very well with the 35 films bundled with the RC paper. I’m pretty fortunate in my job because I get to meet a lot of different photographers and a lot of people doing really interesting work. I meet photojournalists who have to take digital for their work, but they tell me that they still shoot film for themselves. When they’re doing their own projects, they shoot all film – and of course, a lot of those folks are shooting 35.
JS: We hear the same thing, pretty constantly. Digital for work, film for art.
MB: Exactly. It’s funny, when it’s important, the same people want to do it on film.
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from a GREAT conversation between Jake Shivery of Blue Moon Camera and Mike Bain, the US Marketing and Business Development Manager for Harman Technology / Ilford Photo.
There’s all kinds of great tidbits for film shooters here- lots of good news- - well worth taking time out to read it.
I switched to Ilford a few years ago and haven’t looked back-
Long live film! Long live ILFORD!