Loved by photojournalists, passed through the hands of Annie Leibovitz or Henri Cartier-Bresson, the M6 is a legendary camera. However, in 2002, its manufacturer Leica He decides to remove it from his catalog. The German brand, although renowned for its exceptional handmade cases, cannot resist the wave of digital photography. But your M6 is a silver camera: to see the result of your work, you have to wait for the magic of chemistry to develop the film.
For a decade, those nostalgic for the model only had the second-hand market to satisfy their devotion. up to leica He comes to respond to his wildest wish, by announcing at the end of October that he will resume production of his M6 model with its initial characteristics.
“We were always seeing more requests,” Gaëlle Gounguené, communications manager for Leica France, told BFMTV.com. “We have always worked a lot with the second-hand market, but the phenomenon was such that we were beginning to see speculation. Everybody today wants their M6. So we wanted to put this mythical box back on sale”.
vinyl phenomenon?
Returning to manufacturing film cameras in 2022 may seem anachronistic at first glance, but it actually reflects a dynamic.
Ebay has thus witnessed a veritable explosion in demand since 2015, as explained by Dawn Block, vice president of the commerce site in charge of material goods, in an interview with the New York Times in January 2022. For second-hand Canon, Pentax, Nikon and Leica cameras, sales have even “shot up” in the last two years, between +42% and +79%.
At the local level, the report prepared by Lucca Barnet, an employee of the Lyon photography shop Marinette Workshops, is the same. “The store launched into photography in 2013 through Polaroid and cinema in 2016,” he explains.
How to explain this sudden resurgence of attention for a technology considered by many to be obsolete? A detour through music can help to understand the phenomenon.
For several years, vinyl has been recovering interest, and in several countries it is even catching up with CDs, which were invented to replace black cakes and are now surpassed by streaming. In the US, CDs were overtaken by vinyl in 2020. In the UK, it was American pop star Taylor Swift’s latest album to achieve this sales feat at the end of 2022. Physical music.
“The resistance of film can, in our opinion, be explained in the same way as the survival of vinyl,” Joël Bornet of Négatif Plus, a Parisian photo shop with an annex dedicated to film photography, tells BFMTV.com.
The enthusiasm of a certain youth.
Vladimir, a 24-year-old enthusiast, started film photography in 2018, during his studies in Lyon. “What seduces me about film photography is the limited number of photos and the special attention that each shot requires. Film photography allows you to slow down the pace of the photos and understand how the light, the camera, the lens and all the work in the darkroom afterwards,” he explains.
For the film photography shops interviewed by BFMTV.com, the strong comeback of the practice is mainly explained by the enthusiasm of urban youth. Tired of the snapshots that mobile phones allow, some young photographers, amateurs or professionals, decide to slow down.
In Paris, Negative Plus, Open since 1992, it has experienced a marked change in its clientele in recent years. “Today, in our film store, we mainly reach a young audience interested in the aesthetic representation of the film”, instead of professional photographers from the beginning, emphasizes Joël Bornet.
466 kilometers further south, in Lyon, same observation. “The public that our sale of photographs reaches will be divided into two groups: a majority -80%- of young people who are learning photography or who are attracted to film rendering and photographers who have returned to this process or who do not have never abandoned him”, we say in Les ateliers de Marinette.
Instagram is also a prime place to share your photos. From now on, all the laboratories offer the digitization of the developed films, which we receive by email or on a USB key. For example, the hashtag #filmisnotdead (“the film is not dead”, editor’s note), includes more than 24 million posts on the Meta-owned platform.
dandruff shortage
The latest proof of this enthusiasm for cinema: the film shortage that the sector is experiencing in 2022. On November 22, the Japanese brand Fujifilm issued a press release. “Regarding the shortage of raw materials, the supply and demand of ‘size 135 color negative film’ and ‘size 135 reversal film’ will be limited at present,” the company’s website reads. japanese.
Negative Plus regrets this situation, while demand is strong: “We have been experiencing supply difficulties since the beginning of 2022, mainly in the color film ranges. For example, we only receive Kodak films occasionally, and almost never Fujifilm.”
On dedicated blogs and forums, all movie fans lament their difficulties in obtaining supplies. On Reddit, some even go so far as to ask internet users based in Asia, a continent less affected by shortages, if they wouldn’t be ready to mail movies. “I’m willing to pay for the inconvenience,” insists a UK user.
A situation all the more surprising since in 2013 Kodak was on the brink of bankruptcy. The company had suffered from its skepticism regarding digital and had been forced to fire chemists out of revenge, which it is currently rehiring. Similarly, the American brand had sold its photographic film business to a British pension fund.
psychedelic dandruff
The reproduction of analogue models, such as the Leica M6, remains an exception. “Very few new devices are arriving despite this enthusiasm,” says Joël Bornet. “It is true that many investors are wary of entering such a market, which everyone thought was long gone.”
On the movie side, despite the scarcity, some brands continue to launch new models, despite the technological challenge that a product of this type requires. In 2022, Kodak reissued in 120 format, less popular than 135 format, its popular Kodak Gold film, synonymous with warm color photography.
Manufacturers have also identified their new clientele, offering movies in tune with the times. lomography reissued his LomoChrome Turquoise in 2022, a film that tints photographs with a mysterious bluish cast. And the Japan Camera Hunter brand, initially a specialized Japanese site founded by a Brit, presented, still last year, its Fugufilm 400, with a psychedelic packaging.
An expensive practice
All of this comes at a cost. To enjoy film photography, enthusiasts need to get a camera, but also film, the most popular models of which only allow 36 exposures to be taken. Finally, it is still necessary to go through the checkout to reveal the shots, a price that varies depending on whether or not you want to print the copies.
The price “does not discourage” Vladimir. But it influences the practice of it. “For a student it is prohibitive. I had to slow down because if a film costs 15 euros, developing and scanning make the total go up to 30”, explains the young man.
But as the enthusiasm around the Leica M6 underscores, the passion of movie nostalgics is such that even prohibitively high prices don’t slow down demand. The case, put up for sale at 5,050 euros, is already sold out, two months after it was returned.
The brand isn’t even sure it can “deliver them all.”
Source: BFM TV
