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APS films 'Where can I purchase-UK'


Denis

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Our film sales were up 39% in the financial year just finished so I wouldn't write film off yet!

We even have regular customers buying the new Ektar 100 film at $17.95, buying four rolls at a time! Its a great film but I didn't stock it initially as I thought it was too expensive.

Our Kodak supplier still has some single rolls of APS film left however I would assume it is close dated or out of date.

We have enough stock here to last for quite a few months more but it will eventually end.

APS camera users are particularly loyal to their cameras however a heap of them are starting to fail one way or another. The cameras not the customers.

So with a bit of luck we will have enough APS film to keep the existing users happy for a while.

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Since APS is coated on polyester (Estar is the Kodak trade name) base, and since professional still films on that base all look to be out of production, I think it's discontinuation has already been deigned.

It will be "discontinued" officially by Kodak when they have a six mo. supply left.

While APS has/had some cool features (the film camera with the digital preview screen is, to my knowledge, the ONLY of its kind short of large school cameras or movie cameras 20X its size), 35mm is a better format in almost every way.

They make/made some very compact, easy to use, high-quality 35mm cameras, the Olympus Stylus Epic, now unfotunately horribly overpriced, but even some compct 35mm SLRs can be had for under $50 today with a sharp sharp 50mm prime lens.  You can put together a 35mm SLR outfit for practically nothing, the cost of maybe 3-4 rolls of overpriced APS and pricessing :-)

I am on the wrong side of the counter to be saying this, but APS was all about selling more paper to customers and making labs more money, it really wasn't about the customer.  The customer friendly features were underdeveloped (pun intended), the 3 different "aspect ratios" are just cropping the same sized negative, and the negative area wasn't really even large enough to SUPPORT a what was it 4x9" print?  The panorama size was a grainy ugly mess.

They killed side film on the vine, which really would've worked well in this format, and now 100 is gone too?  Further, now there is a real lack of good APS film scanners.  Last time I printed APS, I almost just used a manual carrier the old APS carrier was so cranky and "idiot proof."  Great for an idiot operator, not so good for a skilled lab tech who is trying to turn a roll around.

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I regret to say that APS film is gone, and dead.

It is NOT because Kodak or Fuji stopped production, it is because the outside company who makes the plastic APS cassettes has stopped making them! This forced the manufacturers to stop making it.

There is no more stock available unless a distributor finds some in a back room.

I am a great fan of APS, and am sorry to see it go. I can also say that kodak is royally pissed off at the decision to stop cassette production as they did not have any short term plans to stop making it.

On a side issue, film is NOT dead - like Aussiephotos, our film sales and developing are well up, and I plan on making sure this keeps going for some time yet.

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