Why Shoot Film (Sometimes)
Society has a way of coming around full circle every couple of decades with trends. Take bell-bottoms for instance; they were hipster-cool in the 1960s, died somewhere in the ’70s and resurfaced in the late ’90s — 2000s. The cycle is most pronounced with fashion trends.
Styles seem to exist along a continuum of so cool, to, he’s seriously still wearing that? then later to, dude, that’s so retro. There usually is a little bit of rebranding before it becomes retro-cool but it’s generally still close enough to the original to be recognisable. Anyone old enough to remember the origins of those converse-styled sneakers will know what I’m talking about.
So, the year is now 2018, and a little company called Kodak is reintroducing a once-popular film stock called Ektachrome. I say little, but just up to three decades ago this company was a behemoth which ultimately became an MBA case study in how NOT to innovate.
The digital revolution was thought to have dealt film photography a death-strike. It certainly brought film companies — like our MBA case study above — down from their almost angelic abodes to their now earthly echelons. But, film never completely died.
The nature of the technology didn’t allow digital to debut with sufficient technical image quality and a low enough cost to outright challenge film’s dominance. However…
