That’s the headline of a story that appeared on the British website Kismo Foto on January 4th. The story was based on a September interview of Leica CEO Andreas Kaufmann by the French website Phototrend. Turns out that Leica sold almost 5,000 film rangefinders in 2023 compared to the 500 they sold in 2015 and film cameras accounted for 30% of their rangefinder camera sales!!!

This exciting news follows last year’s announcement by Pentax that it is seriously exploring production of a new film camera that most certainly will be a less expensive alternative to Leica’s current offerings.

Of course there are tons of perfectly wonderful used cameras around looking for good homes, including original Lecia M3s and M6s, and they can be had for much less than the cost of current production MPs, MAs and M6s. But that’s not the point.  Look, it’s great that these beauties are available and people are buying all that can be made. And the more sold the better. But the other good news is that more and more of the used ones are being sold too, and in the case of Leica’s the prices are heading north.

What does all this mean? Film photography is growing!! That’s right baby!!! Recently, I talked to several owners of expensive digital cameras that are ditching them for real thing. And that’s not all. No they’re using black and white film … Tri-X to be exact.

So there you have it. Now, what are you waiting for?

Get yourself a film camera, new or used … and some Tri-X.

It’s the way it was meant to be.

Stay well,

Michael