The Final Blunder of Amateur Film

Now everyone has heard of 35mm film right? How about APS film? It was sold as Advantix by Kodak (I can't recall what the Fuji and Agfa called theirs) and came in a nifty little cartridge that was quite fool-proof to accidentally expose or otherwise screw up. In fact, the film's negatives were stored in the actual roll! While this would be annoying for a pro, it means that people's memories would be safely intact, forever. No longer would they accidentally scratch or crease a negative. Plus, it prevented some dumbass from accidentally cutting into the picture on your negative.

As you can see, the APS cartridge is slightly smaller than 35mm film.

At least someone that's reading this should remember seeing it in stores.

Why did it go away so quickly? Well, for one, it was smaller than 35mm, meaning less resolution. Secondly, it was more expensive. And thirdly, it wasn't intended for the professional market.

Ken Rockwell claims that APS film was a conspiracy to get rid of mom and pop film processors by the big film processors, and that it was also a ploy to sell less film to people for more money. While this may be true, the reality probably falls more into the middle ground. While the processing equipment was quite expensive [$500,000], the film incorporated complex mechanical systems which made it easy to process. All you had to do was set the processor and pop the film in. The rest would be taken care of by the machine.

One of the greatest points of this film is that exposure information was stored on the film in the form of a magnetic strip. Too bad this film was too small for the professional market because this is HUGELY helpful. Think of it like the EXIF data that is tagged onto digital photos.

What really sucked about this film though is that it was more expensive to buy and process. Although Canon and Nikon both made SLRs for APS film, few people bought them because the people that usually buy SLRs versus point and shoots didn't like the small film size and thus poorer quality of APS compared to 35mm film.

Although it had a slick, modern design, the EOS IX never caught on.

How could this have been done to win EVERYONE over? Well, let's start with the film size. It should have been the same as 35mm. Most pros back then only shot 35mm because of its convenience. When you had to do highly detailed shots you used medium format or large format. Going smaller automatically turned off the professional market to APS.

Next, they should've given people the option to get their film back inside the roll or cut and placed into negative sleeves. When I go through my negatives I'm usually looking for one specific photo out of 36. I don't want to be guessing with which roll may or may not have the photo I need.

Lastly, they should've made it as cheap or cheaper than 35mm film to process. And I mean it should've been at MOST $5 a roll. Nothing higher. Development costs is probably what really killed this film.

If the marketers of APS did these things, APS would've been much more fondly remembered by everyone. Sadly though, this was not the case and in the end, it's just a small blip in the history of film and [hopefully] the last film among a long line of small amateur film formats to thrown in the garbage by consumers.