It is time to let SantaColor film truly be available globally, by giving it a new home.
In the last 3 years, SantaColor has spread across the globe with almost 200,000 rolls hand-spooled here in Finland.
If you are reading this, there is a strong chance that you were involved much earlier in the story of how Santa's elves found film stocks that were not available globally and helped spread them to users and hobbyists worldwide.
Perhaps you were one of the 1,500 people that helped SantaColor reach the global community in 2022 through our crowdfunding campaign? Or you might have been involved even earlier, already enjoying the original Black and White Santa film stocks (RAE 1000 and Summer 125) available from 2019–2022?
In any case, we thank you for your help along the way. It is time to turn a new chapter in Santa’s film expedition. It is time to let SantaColor truly be available globally by handing the Santa brand over to Optik Oldschool and their custom-built, Germany-based machine spooling operation.
With Santa film there have been always two goals:
Bring film stocks that have not been previously available to the community, to be available globally.
Support good people with the manufacturing of the film.
These two goals are still the at core of the film brand, but as the world and community's needs change, so have the goals changed:
For the first goal:
In 2022 it was very crucial for new film to be introduced into the market while Kodak had production bottlenecks, even if it meant handspooling each roll.
It is not quite as important for the global analog community now, since the launch of SantaColor there have been many other brands bringing the same Aerocolor IV film base to the market. We doubt anyone's reach has quite outsized Santa's elves in terms of volume, but definitely the stock is much more available now globally compared to 2022.
The only place it hasn't truly reached is Japan where the retailers and labs will mostly not accept handspooled film. It also hasn't given the best results for beginners using fully automated “local pharmacy drop off”-type of labs, as the base material of the film is not orange and someone actually needs to look at the scanner to correct it.
So to bring SantaColor to the remaining rest of the world, it needs to be done in a more industrial manner. A side effect of that approach might also be that the costs of manufacturing SantaColor will go down (unless the raw material costs keep rising). So this could also mean cheaper film.
To the second goal:
Elves worktime is precious. Doing things by hand is smart when it is either necessary for a good product, or the hands can really use the work. With Santa handspooling, neither is true anymore.
The Ukranian ladies that have been handspooling the film can nowadays also work on repairing/maintaining film cameras in the world-renowned Kamerastore process or they can even help manufacturing VALOI scanning tools.
Basically, hand-spooling film is no longer needed to sustain these wonderful ladies' jobs, as they have gone through training to perform more specialized work.
This became clear to us when we learned that the team at Optik Oldschool has been working for over half a year custom-building a massive spooling machine. This machine can make the SantaColor base available – for the first time ever – in freshly made, metal cassettes, just like standard film.
Building this spooling machine is vital work; it provides the global film supply chain with one more industrial-level production line that can spool film for the community. With only a handful of these production lines in existence, giving this one a bit more volume through SantaColor seems like an important step for our team.
So what does this mean:
Hand spooled SantaColor will still be available only as long as the already made stock lasts (buy from Kamerastore or Optik Oldschool).
Machine spooled SantaColor will be available once Optik Oldschool ramps up production.
The film world has more production sustainability.
All is good with the elves, the Germans will continue from here.
Thank you from our side and long live SantaColor!
And just as a reminder of what summer and Santacolor film combo look like:
