The days of cheap, easy film photography are gone, and are probably not coming back. Picking up a roll of Kodak ColorPlus used to mean fishing in a bargain bin and paying with spare change – now it means signing up to a waiting list and getting out the credit card. With development costs rising too, and vintage film cameras fetching eye-watering prices on eBay, there’s a real niche opening up for anyone with a way to cut the cost of shooting film. Enter the Kodak Ektar H35.
This point-and-shoot film camera has two things going for it in the war on costs. First, it’s a new film camera, and can be bought off store shelves for around £50/$50. Second, it’s a half-frame camera. You load it up with 35mm film as normal, but it divides each frame into two separate exposures. Whereas a standard SLR or point-and-shoot gives you 36 shots measuring 24x36mm from a single roll of film, the Ektar H35 gives you 72 images measuring 24x18mm. At a stroke, you’ve doubled your shot capacity.
