Kodak has overtaken Fujifilm as Japan's most-used film brand: 71% of surveyed photographers shot Kodak stock in the past year versus 68% for Fujifilm, per a survey run by researcher Kimiyasu Morikawa with FilmFocus covering November and December 2025, as reported by PetaPixel.
That's a reversal from 2024, when Fujifilm led. The survey drew 1,337 valid responses, nearly double the roughly 670 collected the year before, using the same methodology both times so the two years compare directly, PetaPixel reported. The swing tracks a pricing move: Fujifilm raised its Japanese domestic film prices by roughly 20% on color negative stock and 30 to 50% on reversal (slide) film, and Morikawa points to that hike as the driver behind the brand shift, per PetaPixel's account of the survey.
Cost is the dominant reason shooters gave for cutting back overall, cited by 62% of respondents as their top reason for shooting less — unchanged from 2024. But the survey found photographers adapting rather than quitting: the average number of distinct film brands used per photographer fell from 3.0 to 2.2, even as total volume held flat at 13.9 rolls of 35mm and 7.0 rolls of 120 format per shooter for the year, PetaPixel reported. Morikawa's read, per PetaPixel: photographers are “consolidating on staple films, picking up cheaper stocks.”
Black-and-white is where that shows up most. Sixty-one percent of respondents shot black-and-white film, and the budget-tier Kentmere line posted 16% usage, ahead of boutique brand CineStill at 12%, according to the survey as reported by PetaPixel. Staple black-and-white stocks like Ilford's HP5 Plus (ISO 400) and FP4 Plus (ISO 125) remain the kind of film that consolidation favors — familiar, cheap to replace, easy to batch-develop — while a specialty stock like CineStill's 50D or 800T, currently listed at $17.99 for a roll of 35mm or 120 on the brand's own site, sits further up the price ladder shooters are trimming away from.
The cutback isn't even across experience levels. Only 6% of first-year shooters said they'd reduced how much they shoot, against 40% of photographers with a decade or more behind the camera, PetaPixel reported — newer shooters buying less to begin with, longtime ones feeling the price increases against an established habit. On the lab side, 67% of respondents send every roll to a commercial lab, 25% mix lab work with home development, and just 8% develop everything themselves; when picking a lab, quality outranked price as the deciding factor, 41% to 24%, per the survey.
None of this points to film shooting disappearing in Japan. It points to a market getting pickier: fewer brands per shooter, more black-and-white, and Kodak picking up share less because Fujifilm did anything wrong than because its prices, for now, moved less.
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