Got in five good hours of shooting yesterday- Ueno Park, then after a meeting at Nippon Camera in Ningyocho walked to Ogawamachi, then to Yasukuni shrine, the Budokan, and then along the outer moat of the Imperial Palace to Hanzomon station. There’s a lot happening during cherry blossom season, at least enough for a dozen rolls in an afternoon.
You may have heard about the recent news of Fujifilm’s price increases- you might have also seen some shallow statements online saying that this company “hates their customers”- Quite the contrary, Fujifilm loves its customers. It’s just that their customers are buying their latest digital cameras and Fujifilm is a company that needs to make a profit. Over the past few days I’ve spent a lot of time out shooting among legions of amateur photographers in parks and was astounded at how many Fuji X series cameras were being used. Not a handful, but dozens- and that’s not even factoring in the fact that the under thirty-five crowd shoots mirrorless 4/3 cameras now. A casual assessment of the scene is that DSLR’s are on the wane. As die-hard of a film shooter I am, I can’t imagine that Fujifilm sold enough black and white film last year to pay for even half of what it cost to make this commercial in Paris for their new XE-1
Back in December a friend told me she had the TV on one Sunday morning and watched president of Fujifilm was being interviewed on NHK. It was stated that film products make up just 1% of all of the company’s business. One percent. (Warning! I’m a guy writing down something he says he heard someone else say they saw on TV and now you’re reading about it on the internet. How accurate is this number? I wish I had link-able evidence for it.)
As for film— I’ve shot literally thousands of rolls of Fuji Presto 400 over the past decade. I know this film inside and out and dearly love it, but the one percent mark was the final push. So back in January after testing what 400asa BW films are available (Kentmere 400, and Kodak Tri-X, and T-max) I switched over to Ilford’s HP-5. Both Presto 400 and HP-5 were priced about the same at Yodobashi Camera but I figure that Ilford is in the black and white film game for the long run. Photographic film and chemistry has to be more than one percent of their business! So HP-5 is going to be my film of choice from here on out as I shoot through the last of my Presto 400 stock. It’s also helpful that you can still get HP-5 in bulk rolls as it’s a great way to cut down on the price of film per roll. Here’s my introduction to bulk rolling 35mm film. Bulk rolling looks like this when you’re done.
I’ve been developing HP-5 with Presto 400 in the same tanks per my development methods and it all comes out great. My benchmark/test for any film is how a 11x14 fiber based print done with it looks- and so far HP-5 is close enough to Presto 400 that any difference in prints is inconsequential.
Thank you, Fujifilm. When times were good you were the best. Long live Ilford!