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.
Let me explain why we decided to do this.
With Santa film, there have always been two goals:
- Bring film stocks that have not been previously available to the community to a global market.
- Support good people with the manufacturing of the film.
These two goals are still at the core of the brand, but as the world and the community's needs change, so has our approach:
To the first goal:
In 2022, it was crucial for new film to be introduced into the market while Kodak had production bottlenecks and there was massive shortages globally of film. Even if it meant hand-spooling each roll.
It is not quite as critical for the global analog community now; since the launch of SantaColor, many other brands have brought the same Aerocolor IV film base to the market. We doubt anyone's reach has quite matched Santa's elves in terms of volume, but the stock is definitely much more available globally now compared to 2022. Also film in general is available again much better.
The only place SantaColor hasn't truly reached is Japan, where retailers and labs will mostly not accept hand-spooled film. It also hasn't yielded the best results for beginners using fully automated “local pharmacy drop-off” labs, as the film base is not orange and requires a human operator to correct the scanner settings. Full automation simply doesn't do the film justice.
To bring SantaColor to the rest of the world, it needs to be done in a more industrial manner. A side effect of this approach is that the manufacturing costs of SantaColor may go down (unless raw material costs keep rising), which could mean cheaper film for you.
To the second goal:
How we best support good people while manufacturing SantaColor has changed.
The elves' time is precious. Doing things by hand is smart when it is either necessary for a good product, or when the hands genuinely need the work. With Santa hand-spooling, neither is true anymore.
The Ukrainian ladies who have been hand-spooling the film can now work on repairing and maintaining film cameras in the world-renowned
Kamerastore process, or even help manufacture 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 be available only while already made stock lasts.
- Machine-spooled SantaColor will be available once Optik Oldschool ramps up production.
- The film world gains more production sustainability.
- All is good with the elves; the Germans will take it from here.
Thank you from our side, and long live SantaColor!
