The 1st of October is the rallying date for all photographers that still have the means to use it to buy - and possibly shoot and have processed - a roll, or rolls, of camera film.
I think it's a worthy enough cause to lend a hand and I thought that others here might also.
There's a Flickr group and a Facebook group and a blog and a Twitter account, so anyone that wants to follow should find something amongst all that lot.

Mark

Cheers for posting this Mark. I wasn't sure how cynically received it'd be in here.

Not for me, I'm afraid. Besides not having a camera I can use film in any more, I think it might be self-defeating, creating an artificial spike in demand for film leaving stocks low for a while. I hope it has the desired effect, but I don't think it will bring Polaroid back...

Well, I've still got my film camera, and if I can find out where I'd buy film from then I really don't see any harm in it.
I suppose, as Nick says, it may leave stocks somewhat depleted for a short time, but I think a rallying cry for wet photography is a worthy enough cause to spend a little cash on, as long as I have a little at the start of October.

Mark

I hope I'm not being too cynical! I think to save film you need more of a long term plan than a one-off film buying day, but if it does get people back into the habit (I'm looking at you, Mr Casey) then it will have worked.

I bet I need a new battery for the internal metering of the Pentax.
Ohhhh I bet the battery that's in there has left a right old mess. (8+(

Mark

Good luck with it Mark!
The battery should be had quite cheaply.

I'm all for this. Photography is a creative, expressive art and to limit it to 'this' format or 'that' format does none of us a service.
For me, film gives the most interesting results.
If we lose it, then we've lost a big part of photography's soul, IMHO.
Instead of getting bad backs from carrying equipment, we'll get RSI from too much Photoshop instead.

Pretty much none of my photos go anywhere near Photoshop. In fact, when I still used film, I used Photoshop more than I do now. I don't think photography's 'soul' is in the medium, but in the photographs themselves.

I'm kind of with Nick.

While I like the "feel" of film (digital can't seem to quite capture that proper grain structure, and most of the effort seems to be aimed at getting rid of grain and noise), and I'd be saddened by film being lost completely, I don't think it's about what you use to take the photo but the photo itself - and that is the same whatever the medium used to capture it.

I may well buy a roll of film on the day, if I can find any. My old OM10 is fully functional, and it'll be fun to fire off a few shots with it again. What I won't look forward to is the faff of getting high res images in a digital form. I have boxes and boxes of negs here that really need to be scanned, but it's just the time I don't have. There's lots of great images in those boxes.

Me too, except it's slides not negs.

Er... it's 'Gandhi' :)

Note to self: Don't cut and paste, and always check your sources...

That’ll me down the charity shop to buy a manual SLR then.

One thing I love about film is that I can completely change the kind of picture I'm going to take thanks to the variety of stocks. At the moment, I've got about 7 different kind of film in the fridge, each of them with their own look and feel. If I was to get really involved, then I can start playing with chemistry to adjust the sharpness and grain during development.
I'm not convinced film photography is going anywhere in the medium term. After all, vinyl's not quite dead yet, is it?

Exactly - it's not going to die any time soon. I think medium- and large-format is the future for film; there are professionals like Joe Cornish who swear by their Ebony field cameras.

Fine Art photography has yet to accept digital cameras. Film photography will become a craft or niche activity. It may get harder to buy film, but I doubt very much that it will go away for a long time yet.