Kodak has reduced the price of its popular Tri-X black-and-white film by up to 30%, making analog photography more accessible.
As reported last week by Digital Camera World and seen today on Kosmo Foto, Kodak Alaris revealed the price cut through an Instagram story on the Kodak Professional page.
Digital Camera World captured a screenshot of the story, in which Kodak Professional says it implemented a catalog price reduction on 135 format Kodak Professional Tri-X 400 Black and White negative film. The 135 format options, catalog numbers 1590652 and 8667073, will see up to a 30% price reduction depending on the region.
“Our expectation is that this lower price will be passed on by retailers to photographers worldwide as inventories turn,” Kodak Professional wrote.
If this 30% price cut were to be fully realized by customers, it would result in a 36-shot roll of Kodak Tri-X film dropping from around $10 to $7 in the United States and down below £10 from £14 in the United Kingdom. This could result in significant savings over time for busy shooters who love Tri-X film.
Of course, retailers may not pass the entire catalog discount onto photographers, but competition will at least drive the price down some.
Kosmo Foto reports that the price of Tri-X has already been reduced by several British shops, with some listing the film for £9.
Eastman Kodak first released Tri-X in the 1940s as ASA daylight 200 and tungsten 160 sheets. It was among Kodak’s first high-speed black-and-white film stocks. The film made its way to 35mm and 120 format photographers in 1954.
The film has undergone numerous changes in the decades since its release, including significant re-engineering in 2007 that made the grain finer and reduced the amount of silver in the stock.
While traditional journalism has long since shifted to digital photography, Tri-X, an old favorite of photojournalists, remains popular among niche journalists and documentarians.
“When you load a roll of Tri-X into a camera, you’ve joined a club, one that includes photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, W Eugene Smith, Josef Koudelka and Jane Bown. A club that’s captured the world, in all its beauty and tragedy, with the gritty grain of a Kodak classic,” wrote Stephen Dowling on PetaPixel in 2016. There Dowling discusses the history of Tri-X and investigates if it’s the best black-and-white film of all time.
Image credit: Featured image credit Kodak Alaris. The included photo was taken by Marco Bressi.