A few recent thoughts about film.

• I bought a fold­ing press cam­era last week. Excited about the poten­tial of shoot­ing a lot of sheet film, I was going to buy a Kodak Ready­load holder to go with it, only to dis­cover that Kodak dis­con­tin­ued the entire Ready­load sys­tem just a cou­ple of days earlier.
• I wouldn’t have been able to use the Ready­loads any­way. I had meant to buy a 4×5” camera—only I acci­den­tally bought a beau­ti­ful exam­ple of the long-obsolete 3.25×4.25” for­mat. The only rea­son any­one ever shot 3.25” film was because you could contact-print a neg­a­tive right into a two-column news­pa­per lay­out with­out any last-minute dark­room hassle.
• I went to two stores this week look­ing for Fuji Pro 800Z film for Laurie’s wed­ding. Both were sold out. Calumet begrudg­ingly sold me their last roll of the Kodak ver­sion (Por­tra 800). I had to get spe­cial per­mis­sion from the man­ager to buy it because the sales clerk was con­cerned they were sav­ing it for a more impor­tant cus­tomer. (Thanks, Calumet!) Sev­eral other types of film were “reserved.” Lately, buy­ing photo film has been a bit like wait­ing in a bread line. What next—two per cus­tomer? Stores are fre­quently out of what I’m look­ing for. It seems to me that demand out­strips supply.