With Sales of Film Rolls Dwindling, How Much Longer Can Photographic Film Hold On?

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP).- At Image City Photography Gallery, Gary Thompson delights in pointing out qualities of light, contrast and clarity in one of his best-selling prints — a winter-sunset view of Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan peak shot with a hefty Pentax film camera he bought in 1999 for $1,700. His wife, Phyllis, a latecomer to fine-art photography after they retired from teaching in the 1990s, favors a Hasselblad X-Pan for panoramic landscapes, such as a time-lapse shot of a harbor in Nova Scotia. Of 11 partners and resident artists at the private gallery in Rochester — the western New York city where George Eastman transformed photography from an arcane hobby into a mass commodity with his $1 Brownie in 1900 — the Thompsons are the only ones left who haven’t switched to filmless digital cameras.

Back To Top