Lomography, the popular analogue photography brand, has revealed some interesting statistics for its film-sales in the UK, and across the globe.
Heidi Mace, Online Manager for Lomography UK, told us, "Film sales are growing month on month, film for us is our biggest selling category by quantity, in every country."
Looking at sales figures, Lomography sold 10,793 rolls of film in the UK in December 2011, an increase from 9, 576 in the same month of 2010. "On average we sold 348 rolls of film per day - there's plenty of call for it and we don't see that easing off at all right now."
Mace also said that Lomography worldwide sales across all departments grew 15% in the last year. Lomography introduced its own processing lab in March 2010, and has since processed 10,748 rolls of film across its 3 UK stores and online.
To celebrate, Lomo has released some interesting stats about its lab. It uses a Fuji Frontier 375 printer, Fuji FP363SC film processor and Fuji SP300 scanner. It also uses an Epson V700 flatbed to scan films that are shot on a Spinner 360 camera.
Stats
It gets through 1,116 metres of photographic paper each month, along with 300/400 litres of photographic chemistry a month.
Lomography has also revealed that people like to, er, reveal a little too much. "People seem to enjoy taking their Diana F+ into the shower with them, not recommended!" said one of the Lomo lab workers.
Meanwhile, the company is keen to point out, despite the resurgence in film popularity of late, it is not trying to compete with digital.
Speaking to TechRadar, Mark Appleton, Key Accounts Manager for Lomography UK, said "We're not trying to say digital is bad, so you should throw away your digital cameras, they work hand in hand."
Lomo has produced several adapters and products that work in conjunction with digital cameras and smartphones, such as the Diana lens for DSLR, and the recently announced iPhone holder for the Lomokino which allows (moving) films to be digitised.
Appleton continued, "We're really not trying to compete with them, and there's no denying it's very useful having the images straightaway [from digital], but we're trying to bring the roots of analogue photography back."
Hardcore
With three standalone stores in the UK alone, and a series of planned pop-up shops planned for 2012, Lomo as a brand is increasing is seemingly ever increasing in popularity, with Appleton saying that some users do become "hardcore Lomographers" and go completely analogue.
Film is currently enjoying a resurgence, with Fujifilm telling us that the decline in film sales had slowed down in the past six months, while Kodak, who announced it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week still maintained that its film business was one of the only areas of the company that was still turning a profit.
Lomo has a wide variety of cameras, which accept 35mm or 120mm film, with each characterised by unpredictable effects such as light-leaks, strange colours and blurry images. Appleton also told us that he believe that people were "bored" by digital photography and its reliable nature.
