Though film has become expensive in the past few years, the price of digital cameras keeps going up as well.
This is true, but to do a proper comparison there you should be comparing the price of used digital cameras, since most film cameras (except disposables) being sold today are used. I don't think the prices of digital cameras on the used market are climbing as quickly as the prices of new digital cameras.
I don't think the comparison to digital cameras is really relevant to the price of film shooting. I only mentioned digital in an effort to put geranlized price inflation into perspective.
Back in about 1500 Nicolaus Copernicus observed that different commodities have different time constants in reacting to periods of inflation. In other words, some items react to inflationary pressures more quickly while some items react more slowly. Rapidly consumed commodities that have to be quickly repleted tend to have the shortest time constants, ie: they react most rapidly to inflationary pressures by exhibiting rising prices. I think the differences in the new/used camera prices fit his time constant model.
Tom makes a good point about the difference in fixed costs vs variable costs in making a breakeven analysis. That's the type of analysis that led many young photographers to embrace film instead of digital -- lower sunk costs, higher variable costs, but the startup cost is so low that the variable costs still provide a lower total cost of ownership experience.
Jan 28, 2024 at 09:17 AM
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