Hello all. I’d hoped to get this post written in the first week of January, but life very much got in the way.
The first month of the year is always a good time to take stock and plan the coming months, and this year I wanted to do this a bit more proactively. It’s the first time I’ve published a post like this – essentially a “What to expect from Kosmo Foto this year” and the more I thought about it the more sense it made, especially with the way 2024 is shaping up.
Kosmo Foto has changed a lot over the past few years – going from blog to film brand and now – with Cameraburo – a camera retailer aswell.
The blog
The site is now more than 10 years old and there are more than 1,000 articles in the archive. While Kosmo Foto has become a film brand and camera retailer in recent years, the blog is still the heart of what I do.
There is a lot to be writing about in the film photography world in the 2020s, and I hope Kosmo Foto can continue to be a useful part of the blogosphere which surrounds it. Just in the last year or so, we’ve had the makers of Ilford emulsions surprise us with a colour film, and Pentax announce they’re planning to make a film compact camera!
If you’re a regular visitor to Kosmo Foto may have noticed a few changes over recent weeks.
Over the past six or seven years, Kosmo Foto has run advertising in order to meet the not insubstantial costs of running the site, and paying for films and processing for camera reviews and other articles. The ad network we joined in 2019 at first seemed like a good solution, using AI to place adverts in the best place possible depending on the user.
Unfortunately, the network added too many ads – especially on mobile – making the site much more difficult to read. The ad architecture also really slowed the site down. Despite regularly tweaking settings to bring the number of ads showing done, things never seemed to fall into place.
Thankfully, the site’s high traffic towards the end of the year meant Kosmo Foto met the minimum requirements to join another ad network. This ad network pays better, and that means we’re able to run fewer ads on the site. The site will also be faster to load, especially on desktop.
“Why ads?” I hear you cry. Ads are a necessary feature for a site like this – I’d rather have a blog that’s free to access than something behind a paywall. But intrusive ads are a pain to navigate around and don’t help anyone in the long run, including site owners. i think the balance is a lot better now. Please let me know if you’re seeing any of the blog’s content covered in ads that are too intrusive or get in the way of enjoying the content.
Film
Kosmo Foto released Mono 35mm film in 2017, and followed it up with a 120 version in 2019, and then our 400-ISO Agent Shadow 35mm in 2022. In that time we’ve sold more than 80,000 rolls of film to customers across the world (via the blog, at camera shows, and through distributors and film sellers across the world).
Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, film production has required much more planning. The companies that make the film and allow us to rebrand their excellent emulsions have been swamped with extra demand. This has sometimes meant some long waits for stock to be produced.
That, along with various other issues that have affected film manufacturing, look set to continue for the short term. All of Kosmo Foto’s films are currently out of stock; we’re hoping that production on all three will be resumed by the end of the year. Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm will be the first to return (hopefully in April/May), but a production date is still to be confirmed. (Note: Though Agent Shadow is out of stock, we still have a few Agent Shadow Briefcase Boxes in stock that aren’t available in the shops – you can buy one here.)
Getting to a point where we have regular and reliable production is a major goal (it definitely helps us and out customers to have film in stock more often than not!), and we’re also hoping to add further films to the roster. We are already working on another 35mm black-and-white film, and that may appear later this year (fingers crossed!).
As soon as we have more concrete details of on the availability of films, we’ll update via the blog and our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, so make sure you’re signed up to at least one of these. We’ll also be sending out emails to all subscribers, so make sure you’re on the mailing list using the form below.
Cameraburo
In 2023 we unveiled Cameraburo, Kosmo Foto’s online camera shop. Originally, I thought I might concentrate on Soviet and East German cameras (given that I shoot a lot with them and there’s a fair amount of content about these cameras on the blog.) In the end I decided to offer a wider range of cameras, but with the emphasis on the affordable end of the market.
Some people aren’t lucky enough to live near markets or charity shops that are regularly stocked with affordable cameras. You can find many reputable camera sellers on eBay, but you are of course bidding against the rest of the camera-buying public and cameras aren’t always carefully checked or don’t come with a warranty.
Cameraburo offers a range of cameras, from point and shoots to film-tested compacts and 35mm camera kits offering a compact with batteries and a roll of Kodak colour film.
We’ve been on a bit of a mission to hunt down cameras in auctions across the UK and have now amassed quite the pile – from Pentax Espio point-and-shoots to Canon AE-1 SLRs and Olympus compact rangefinders. Most of the cameras not already been listed are going to be film tested in the coming months and then offered for sale.
As well as a few camera fairs, including Photographica in London in late May, we’ll be doing a regular monthly pop-up at Aperture Printing in Rathbone Place in central London from February until the end of the year. We did one in November which was good fun – Aperture Printing is a brilliant lab and film shop and well worth visiting if it’s not already on your radar.
If there’s a particular camera on your shopping list, let us know – if it’s not listed on the site, it doesn’t mean that there’s not one waiting to be tested.
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
