In June, Flic Film, a Canadian manufacturer and distributor of analog photography goods, posted on social media that it had released “an all-new film stock.” While that’s certainly exciting on the surface, the announcement sparked a flurry of questions and speculation, with a bit of contention.

Flic Film isn’t alone in this situation either. There has been an increase in supposedly new film stocks in the last few years, but inevitably, the comments are full of discussion about what the film really is. There also seems to be frustration floating around about how all film stocks these days are the same, and that brands are essentially misleading us into thinking we have options. But all of that oversimplifies what’s really going on.

What’s going on with film these days?

Abby Ferguson

If you aren’t closely involved in the photographic film world, some context will help you understand why that post (and similar ones by other brands) ruffled some feathers. At the time of writing, there are only three to four facilities producing color film at a commercial scale. A handful of additional producers are making black and white films.

Despite the limited producers, there seems to be no shortage of film brands. Depending on your location, you can buy film branded by the likes of Lomography, Flic Film, Reto, CineStill, Candido, Japan Camera Hunter, Rollei, Leica and so many more. Even my local film lab has its “own” stock. This is where the confusion stems from. Each of these brands isn’t making their own film from scratch, given the resources and equipment required, so what’s going on?

There are a few things at play here. Some companies are simply repackaging (sometimes referred to as respooling) film. They buy it in bulk from a manufacturer, load it into canisters and boxes with their own label, make no changes to the film itself and sell it as their own.

At times, brands are upfront about this. For example, Flic Film sells Elektra 100, which its website has clearly labeled as re-spooled Kodak Aerocolor IV color negative film. Flic Film named the film something else, but it is upfront about what the film actually is. That’s not always the case, though, and there are certainly instances of repackaged film that don’t have the actual stock disclosed.

It goes beyond repackaging

Abby Ferguson

Another fairly common occurrence is a brand having an existing film stock modified for its use. CineStill is a good example of this, as it takes Kodak’s motion picture stocks and removes the remjet layer for its 800T and 50D films. Other brands also take motion picture stock and modify it in similar ways, so that it’s more easily processed by the general consumer and the labs they take film to.

Modification isn’t only happening on motion picture film, either. Still picture film is also modified in multiple ways in order to create a different look from the base stock. Manufacturers can do things like pre-flashing, which exposes film to a small amount of light to reduce contrast and compress the tonal range, or they can change the backing to alter how light interacts with the emulsion. They can also treat the film in various ways to push the effective ISO higher, add sensitizing dyes to shift spectral sensitivity or add additional coatings.

All that to say that there are quite a few options for altering a film stock that will result in a fairly substantial change in look. Some of these changes happen at the source by the original manufacturer, others are made by the brand in its own facilities. The changes can completely alter the colors you get from a film, its sensitivity to light, its contrast and its grain character, giving it a distinctive look.

Why don’t brands just say what it is?

With that context in mind, let’s look back at what happened with Flic Film’s latest release. When Flic Film posted about its new product, it said explicitly that it is “an all-new film stock.” Given that it seemed highly unlikely that Flic Film managed to establish its own film production facility, or even that they developed something new from the ground up that’s produced at an existing facility, people were upset about the claim that it’s “all-new.”

Flic Film subsequently released a video addressing the questions and complaints. In the video, a representative for Flic Film says, “The only answer I can honestly give is I don’t know.” He goes on to explain that they of course know the manufacturer, but when they receive the film, they get it as a number, not with the original name noted, so they truly don’t know what the stock was originally.

He also explains that when they put out a new film, they buy a master roll from a manufacturer, but that things don’t stop there. “The manufacturers don’t just grab something off the shelf and sell it to us. They actually do little tweaks to that film to make it individual to us,” he says. “They’re not going to sell us their best-selling film straight up and have us just replicate it, that makes no sense and it’s no good for the customers.”

But even when modifications are subtle, or a film is simply respooled, not sharing the name of the original film isn’t inherently nefarious. As Flic Film’s video explained, it’s very possible the brand doesn’t even know what the original stock is.

Abby Ferguson

Non-disclosure agreements (NDA) are another common practice in this industry. When working with a manufacturer, a film company may have to sign an NDA that prevents them from sharing the manufacturer’s name, the original stock name or both. In the case of CineStill, while it’s a poorly kept secret that it uses certain Kodak motion picture film, it’s never listed outright in CineStill’s marketing. In fact, its FAQ page says, “out of respect for our unique relationships with our suppliers, we are careful not to openly claim and benefit from the goodwill and reputation of the brands and trademarks of the original products.”

CineStill is considered one of the more transparent brands, but just because other companies aren’t sharing as much doesn’t necessarily mean that they are intentionally being deceitful. They could have more strict agreements in place with producers, or other factors could be at play. It certainly would be nice to have greater transparency, and I firmly believe brands should disclose information when they are able to. But it isn’t always a sign of a company trying to scam us out of our money if they aren’t upfront.

Modified film is still legitimate

Abby Ferguson

Transparency is one thing, but the other frustration I see coming out of recent film launches is rhetoric that all film stocks are the same these days and choice is an illusion sold to us by all of these companies. In the case of simply respooled film, yes, that is absolutely true. But, producers and brands can create quite distinct looks by modifying stocks. If a film looks different than what it came from, it seems reasonable to call it a new film.

Something similar happens in the digital camera world, too. Camera manufacturers source sensors, EVFs, displays and more from a handful of suppliers, yet it’s silly to argue that all cameras are the same as a result. Each camera manufacturer has to make additional decisions in terms of processing, colors, ergonomics and UI. What matters is what a company does with those common components.

We are quite far from the 1990s heyday when you could walk into a store and see a colorful wall of different film stocks. But a recent resurgence has led to more film brands working with producers in new ways, giving photographers more options than they had just five years ago. More options mean more people finding a film they love, and more people shooting film is only a good thing for the medium, which is always worth celebrating in my book.

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I’m not completely shocked that Sony updated the RX10: the existing model was clearly out of production and increasingly silly second-hand prices suggested there was pent-up demand. And now the work of integrating more modern components with a Type 1 sensor has been done, surely an updated RX100 will be next?

I found myself thinking about what that might look like, and the more I do, the more I suspect it won’t be what I want.

Two years ago I made the argument that there is a market for enthusiast compacts: small cameras with decent image quality and sufficient direct control to give a satisfying photographic experience. I proposed an RX100-style camera with a less-expensive sensor and the original 24-70mm equiv F1.8-2.8 lens. Sadly, that’s not what I’m expecting Sony to make, at all.

Sony is a technology company. A technology company that makes some very good cameras, but ultimately a company that believes that their cameras will always be made better by throwing more and newer technology into them.

So instead of the stripped-back camera with direct controls and a (relatively) accessible price tag that I’d love someone to make, I suspect we’ll get a camera with, at the very least, all the bells and whistles of the RX10 V. I’m going to guess it’ll have the rangier but slower 24-200mm equiv lens, the ability to shoot at framerates around double the speed of a pro-targeted DSLR and a list price of at least the $1500 that the VII’s launch price would equate to, today.

And thinking about this made me remember how frustrated I’ve always been with the RX100 cameras. Because, with their introduction of the Type 1 (13.2 x 8.8) sensor to the compact market, they represented a huge step forward in terms of how much image quality you could fit in your pocket. The JPEG color on the first one was perhaps a little wonky but that 116mm² sensor was nearly three times the size of the Type 1/1.7 (43mm²) chip that had dominated the space up until then, and that’s the kind of difference you could see in every photo.

Richard Butler

But despite the appearance, price and that short, bright lens, the RX100 never felt like an enthusiast compact. Compared to the likes of the Olympus XZ models or Canon’s G and S-series cameras, the Sony sorely lacked engaging control points. Typically I’ll use an enthusiast compact in Aperture Priority mode, so would want to be able to control the aperture value and exposure compensation: both of them settings that adjust in fixed, stepped intervals. The RX100 doesn’t have a well-placed clicking control point, meaning you have to change most settings via the vague, free-rotating ring around the lens. There’s a lag before it recognizes that your input is intentional and there’s no tactile feedback that you’ve changed anything.

The result, even before you visited the old, rather chaotic menus, was a user experience that left you feeling detached from the photo taking process: the precise opposite of what I believe a standalone camera needs to offer. The RX100 series have always been products whose engineering I admired, rather than cameras I enjoyed.

I remember being advised “stop trying to make it do what you want, and just use it as a point-and-shoot,” and finding that helped. But if I wanted to just take snaps, I’d probably use a smartphone, because the phone makers know their devices aren’t about taking control, so they’re happy to shoot and combine multiple images with every shot, letting them rival or exceed the image quality of a Type 1 camera taking single photos.

I could be wrong, of course. Sony might significantly rework the RX100 to make it fun to take control of. Or it might not make one at all. And, even if it does, I’m not going to assume that the things I, personally, want are the things that the market as a whole wants: Sony will have a much better idea of what sells and what doesn’t, and of what would-be customers are asking for.

But, while the whole thing remains hypothetical, you can’t blame me for hoping.

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I’ve always liked enthusiast compacts: relatively small cameras with built-in lenses and a decent level of direct control. A camera I can travel with but still enjoy using. But, following a halcyon period in the early 2010s, the available options dwindled to the point that it became almost impossible to buy one.

However, things seem to have moved on since CP+ 2025, when we received relatively little enthusiasm from the manufacturers we asked about the prospects of a compact camera revival. The first flicker had already come the year before, from a slightly unexpected quarter, when Leica announced the D-Lux 8, a refreshed version of the enthusiast model last updated 6 years prior.

Richard Butler

Then, perhaps even more unexpectedly, in mid 2025 Sony updated its full-frame, prime lens compact, the RX1, a decade after the previous version had been released. It was not a camera I expected to ever see, as I thought its job as a signifier that Sony ‘gets’ photography had been served, now that its full-frame Alpha cameras have received such widespread uptake. But, while some reviewers insisted it should have been more ambitious, I found the camera that actually existed to be one that addressed almost all the shortcomings of its predecessor, and added up to an excellent (albeit determinedly niche) photographers’ compact.

Signs of life

By 2026, the tone of many manufacturers has changed when asked about the market for compacts, and these past few months have seen the release of two major updates of well-liked, but seemingly abandoned models.

The Panasonic L10 is a substantial reworking of the LX100 series, eight years after the last model. It brought a larger body and the same, rather laggy zoom, but, like the RX1R III, it directly addressed the biggest criticisms we’d had with the previous versions. So again, while it’s easy for armchair R&Ders to demand more, the thing that you can buy is rather good.

And now we have the Sony RX10 V, which brings the latest autofocus and video performance levels along with a bigger battery, better viewfinder to a (comparatively) large-sensor superzoom, bringing into sharp relief the degree to which camera performance has continued to improve in the 9+ years since the last version. Even if image quality appears to have plateaued (or even peaked?) for now.

Richard Butler

All four models have been met by derision from some quarters, not helped by the cumulative effect of inflation driving the prices up, in money terms at least. Others have criticized the degree to which these new cameras depend on existing parts for some of their key components (in all four cases, the lens designs date back around a decade, to the often less-demanding pixel counts of that time). And it’s true that none of these makers have shown the faith in the enthusiast photo sector that Canon and Sony did in the vlogging market, when they spent the money to develop new optics for the likes of the PowerShot V1 and ZV-1 II. But most of them got redesigned bodies and accommodate different batteries to their predecessors, so there’s more than just parts-bin diving going on.

Another criticism we’ve seen is that you can buy an ILC more cheaply. And this is sometimes true, even if you exclude second-hand and end-of-life bargains that no new camera can ever compete with. But, even in the (very) few instances where you can closely match the spec of these enthusiast compacts, while maintaining a similar level of hands-on, direct control and competing on size, it usually turns out that the person making the criticism simply doesn’t like the concept of fixed lens cameras, which can lead to the whole point of such cameras being dramatically missed.

Richard Butler

There are times when you want the near-endless flexibility of an ILC (or ‘system camera’ if you prefer). But sometimes, some of us want a smaller camera, or a self-contained one. One that does the thing it’s designed to do, without constantly inviting the cost of additional lenses or forcing you to ponder which combination to pack.

I’m not, at this point anyway, suggesting we’re entering another golden age of enthusiast compacts. It’s clear that the cameras we’ve seen so far are updates of existing models (and not necessarily upgrades, to the extent you might hope). Sadly, I don’t think anybody is about to put the effort into delivering a larger-sensor successor to the Olympus XZ-2, which to me remains the high watermark for enthusiast compacts, in many regards. But at least, for whatever concerns we might each have about pricing or increased size, there are, after all this time, options.

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