Walk into any thrift store today and you might see it: a teenager with blue hair and earbuds thumbing through a dusty bin of film cameras, holding up a Canon AE-1 like it’s a time machine. For Gen Z, film was the cool rebellion—the antidote to megapixels and algorithms. They rediscovered what their parents left behind, turned Kodak Gold into an Instagram aesthetic, and made a $50 point-and-shoot worth five times that on eBay.
But here’s the uncomfortable question: will their little brothers and sisters—Gen Alpha—ever get the same chance? Rising film prices, dwindling labs, and a world where AI makes selfies in seconds all suggest they might be the last kids to discover what it feels like to load a roll and wait for the magic to appear.
The Revival Already Happened—And It Wasn’t a Mirage
If you want proof that film’s resurgence wasn’t a niche daydream, start with the simple fact that new film gear is being made again. In 2024, Ricoh released the Pentax 17, a brand-new half-frame 35mm camera—a phrase that would have sounded delusional ten years ago. The company’s own product page lists a June 2024 market launch, zone-focus design, and up to 72 frames on a 36-exposure roll, unabashedly aimed at smartphone-native shooters who like vertical frames.
On the emulsion side, Harman (the company behind Ilford) didn’t just keep the B&W lights on; it poured money into the future. In July 2025, Harman announced it had completed a multi-million-pound investment at its Mobberley factory to increase film-coating capability and expand Photographic’s manufacturing footprint—right alongside a second-generation release of its experimental color film, Phoenix II.
Even instant photography—the other “analog gateway drug”—keeps scaling. Fujifilm said in 2023 it would boost global Instax film production by roughly 20% to meet demand. That’s not a museum piece; that’s a product line growing for teenagers who want a photo they can hold.
What Gen Z Loved About Film (and Why It Stuck)
Ask a twenty-something why they burned through allowance money on Superia, and you’ll hear a version of the same answer: film felt different. It wasn’t just grain or color; it was the cadence. Thirty-six frames force choices. Waiting for a lab forces patience. The negatives are proof that something physical happened.
The culture reflected it, too. Mainstream outlets documented a bona fide point-and-shoot revival, where celebrities and creators made imperfections fashionable and camera stores started dusting off the film cabinets.
Manufacturers followed the signal. Kodak brought Gold to 120, Lomography kept shipping off-beat emulsions, and Ricoh, of all companies, decided a new film camera was worth the bet. When hardware companies place chips on a table this small, it’s because they’ve watched a generation repeatedly put money down.
But Here’s the Catch: Gen Alpha’s Window Is Narrower
Gen Alpha—kids born roughly between 2010 and 2024—are coming of age in a materially different moment. Film didn’t just get trendy; it got expensive. Fujifilm’s corporate notices and independent reporting show repeated price hikes since 2022, with Japan seeing increases of as much as 52% in 2025 on some films and global guidance noting double-digit rises.
Kodak Alaris has also adjusted prices multiple times, including a wave scheduled for January 2025 across its consumer lines (with a few exceptions and even some reductions like certain Tri-X SKUs). Price moves cut both ways, but the headline remains the same for a teenager: color film costs a lot more than it did when their older sibling discovered it.
Chemistry isn’t immune either. Silver—the literal building block of traditional emulsions—broke through the psychologically important $30/oz threshold in May 2024, touching its highest levels in over a decade. Volatile inputs don’t map one-to-one to a roll on a shelf, but they do create headwinds for keeping prices tame.
The Lab Landscape: From Every Corner to a Few Mailboxes
If you grew up in the 1990s, film development was an errand; you picked up milk, batteries, and a packet of glossy 4x6s. That network of one-hour minilabs is mostly gone. Today, big-box retailers typically send film out to third-party labs, quote multi-day or multi-week turnaround, and at many locations don’t return negatives at all. The Darkroom—one of the larger U.S. mail-in labs—keeps a running guide that lays it out plainly.
Does that mean you can’t develop film locally? Not necessarily. Boutique labs have filled the gap, and mail-in services are now mainstream enough that PetaPixel publishes a regularly updated guide for where to send rolls in 2025. But for a 12-year-old wandering into a strip-mall pharmacy, the analog pipeline looks thinner than it did for their older sibling.
The Kodak Question Everyone’s Afraid to Ask
Any conversation about color film today eventually arrives at Kodak. To be precise, Eastman Kodak makes the color film master rolls in Rochester; Kodak Alaris distributes the familiar consumer brands. In August 2025, Eastman Kodak’s own preliminary financial update and subsequent press coverage flagged “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue as a going concern without additional funding or strategic changes—a sobering reminder that the supply chain for color film still runs through a single, fragile bottleneck.
Will Kodak disappear tomorrow? That’s not what the filings say. But it is a nudge toward realism: Gen Alpha’s chance to discover color film at scale depends on a small number of companies staying healthy in a market that’s, by definition, niche.
Meanwhile, the Competition Isn’t Sleeping (It’s Generating)
While film got pricier and labs got scarcer, the rest of image-making sprinted ahead. Google rolled out Magic Editor and generative fill tools that let a teenager rebuild a sky in seconds. Samsung branded “Galaxy AI” features that clean up distractions and move subjects around photos like stickers. Apple introduced “Apple Intelligence” in 2024 with image tools such as Image Playground and Genmoji baked into iOS 18. If your first experience of “photography” is an app that makes new pixels on demand, the pressure to try film has to overcome a mountain of convenience.
So Will Gen Alpha Miss the Train Entirely?
Not quite. The likelier story is that film continues to split into two tracks:
Track One: Black-and-White as the On-Ramp
Black-and-white is simpler and cheaper to process at home. A plastic tank, a changing bag, and a few liters of chemistry can turn a bedroom into a makeshift darkroom for the cost of a couple of nights out. Schools and universities still see the educational value; Texas State University recently invested in a new darkroom facility, part of a broader recognition that analog teaches fundamentals you can’t simulate.
Scanning is easier than ever, too. You don’t need a Coolscan and a FireWire card. With a basic digital camera, a macro lens, and software like Negative Lab Pro, you can convert negatives in Lightroom at quality that would have shocked a lab tech a decade ago. There are even low-cost smartphone-based scanners that make decent files. The workflow is still tactile, still slow—but it’s finally friendly enough for kids who grew up with phones.
Track Two: Color as a Premium Hobby
Color is the expensive sibling—and the vulnerable one. Between rising input costs, limited coating capacity, and corporate risk, C-41 is trending toward “luxury craft” territory where a roll is a treat, not a habit. That doesn’t mean it disappears; it means parents and educators will have to curate the experience: a birthday trip to a camera store for Kodak Gold, a class project built around one shared roll and a lesson on exposure.
And yet, color still has champions. Harman’s Phoenix II is a conspicuous signal that independent players are experimenting beyond monochrome. Pentax 17 uses half-frame to stretch a roll to 72 shots—an old idea tuned to modern budgets. And Kodak Alaris’ mixed bag of price moves in late 2024 (including some reductions) hints at a market trying to find sustainable equilibrium rather than a straight line up.
What Parents, Teachers, and Community Labs Can Do Right Now
If you want Gen Alpha to have a real, lived experience of film, the goal isn’t to stockpile Portra; it’s to lower friction.
Start with access, not gear. A $40 thrift-store SLR with a 50mm lens and a two-roll class project beats a $1,000 point-and-shoot that never leaves the house. Partner with local makerspaces or community labs for monthly “Develop & Scan” nights. Teach contact sheets and sequencing; let kids edit, print, and hang a mini-show in the school hallway.
Choose black and white first. One 100-foot bulk roll of a classic black-and-white film becomes twenty 36-exposure cartridges at a fraction of per-roll retail. Home development with daylight tanks turns the process into a STEM lesson: time, temperature, chemistry, cause and effect.
Scan like a digital native. Put a DSLR on a copy stand or bust out the flatbed scanner, show them how to bracket and invert in software, and let them watch an image appear on a screen from a strip they processed themselves. The tactile connection—loading reels, hanging negs—meets the immediacy of a live conversion.
Make color a ceremony. Build class or family traditions around color rolls: one summertime roll, one winter-holiday roll. Half-frame cameras like the Pentax 17 stretch those dollars. Mail-in labs take the mystery and the stress out of processing when there’s no local option.
The Economic Reality Check
A prediction you can take to the bank: film will never be “cheap” again. Even if demand cools from its 2021–2023 fever, manufacturers have to price like they want to be around in 2030. Fujifilm’s formal notices of repeated increases since 2022 telegraph that logic clearly. Kodak’s distribution arm is tuning SKUs and pricing to chase viability. Input costs like silver aren’t cooperating.
But expensive doesn’t mean extinct. Vinyl records didn’t win on price; they won because enough people decided the experience mattered. Film feels headed for the same kind of future: not everywhere, not for everyone, but undeniably alive.
The Thesis, Revisited
So, will Gen Alpha be the last generation to discover film? It depends on what you mean by “discover.” If you mean stumbling across a $4 roll of Fuji at the drugstore, dropping it at a one-hour lab, and getting your negs back with a sleeve of glossy prints—yes, that world is already gone. If you mean a real encounter with a camera that requires intention, a material process, and a result that exists outside a phone, then no: the doorway is still open. It’s just narrower, and the doorknob costs more.
The burden—and the opportunity—rests with us. Parents can teach the ritual. Teachers can keep the rooms red. Labs can make mail-in development boringly reliable. Manufacturers can keep betting on the nerds and the romantics. We don’t need film to go mainstream to make it matter to the next generation. We just need it to be possible.
Practical Buying and Shooting Tips for Gen-Alpha Families
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For the first camera, pick an SLR or rangefinder with manual controls and a standard 50mm lens. It teaches the core skills and costs less to service than electronic point-and-shoots from the 1990s.
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Buy black-and-white in bulk and reuse cartridges. It’s the cheapest way to give kids repetitions.
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If you want color, consider half-frame to double your exposures per roll. The Pentax 17 is the modern example, but many vintage half-frame cameras still work with a basic CLA.
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Skip drugstores if you care about your negatives. Use a dedicated mail-in lab and budget for scans you’ll actually want to share or print.
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On the scanning side, a mid-range digital camera and a macro lens are a better long-term investment than a flatbed. Learn a software workflow once; it will outlive your scanner.
The Counterfactual That Keeps Me Optimistic
The easiest trap in any “state of film” essay is to mistake volatility for doom. Prices go up; a rumor flies; a coating line pauses; a YouTuber makes a thumbnail with fire emojis. Then, two weeks later, there’s a press release about new capital investment or a new camera launch, and the doomers move on to the next platform.
Look at the scoreboard from the last few years: a new mass-market film camera from a major brand; an experimental color film going to a second generation; instant film production expanding; teenagers lining up for Polaroids in Central Park; university darkrooms getting funded. These aren’t the signs of a corpse. They’re the signs of a culture that has learned to live smaller, smarter, and longer.
If Gen Alpha is the last generation to discover film, it will be because we let the on-ramps crumble, not because the medium ran out of magic.
Images belong to the author, Steven Van Worth
Lead image: My son Jude with his Argus C-4
