The humble 35mm film is rapidly vanishing, vanquished by ever improving digital cameras.
But, in the process we're losing an invaluable resource:
the humble film canister!
These used to flood the world by the hundreds of millions each year, taken for granted, ever present.
Now, they are a vanishing species. Selling for $0.05 EACH in large lots on eBay (I kid you not!)
These things are useful! For everything from storing beads, to making alka seltzer rockets!
K-12 outreach for the sciences could collapse.
Hundreds of thousands of kids might become delinquent with boredom.
There are unconfirmed reports that surreptitious hoarding has already started, with people trying to accumulate thousands of canisters for future use, when supply really becomes tight.
Soon, these icons of the 20th century will become but memories, cherished only by antique camera buffs, fans of the Antiques Roadshow and aging science professors.
Match Stick Holder - and Many More!!
Extraordinary Uses for Film Canisters!!!
Making Friends with Film Canisters...
NASA: Constellation in a Canister!
See, even NASA knows about film canisters. But we need 16 of them! Just for that one project.
What are we going to do people?
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We'll be fine. Trust me on this.
Thanks to a few decades of public health advertising and peer pressure, smoking is becoming more and more taboo these days. Those who do smoke tend to use pre-made cigarettes.
The unintended consequence? The kindergarten and craft industry almost lost one of its most useful supplies: the pipe cleaner.
But it's okay. Craft suppliers stepped up to the challenge. They now supply something called chenille stems. Sure, they're not as absorbent, but they're longer and come in a larger variety of thickness and colour.
Supply and demand will win out. And when rolling your own goes out of fashion, clarinet players will still be able to obtain "lip guard paper" which will closely resemble rolling paper.
Altoids tins are the new film canisters. Oh, and prescription pill bottles! In the Future, we'll all be on so many drugs we'll be drowning in pill bottles.
For those who have children:
Make a memory game of such canisters: take stones, sand and other things and put them in two canisters. The players have to find out which canisters contain the same things. Be prepared to always loose against your children. At least as long as they are below 6, they seem to use a completely different memory.
It used to be when I was the manager of the orchestra I played in, I was always nervous about moving the oboe players' chair, because I might knock over the film cannister with water and his soaking reeds... and you know how prickly oboe players can be!
But, now, it's gonna be me worrying about knocking over the used anti-anxiety medication bottle with water and soaking reeds.
-Rob
They're not going to disappear anytime soon - Kodak still sells 110 film through Walgreens. Remember those 110 cameras? Last time I used one was in 1982! There are still so many 35mm SLR cameras out there, that we'll be enjoying canisters for a long time.
When I was a teenager I found one outside in the woods filled with marijuana. I still have one filled with a petroleum-based eye make-up remover from years ago - the stuff is still in great shape. I didn't know about the Alka Seltzer rockets. Alka-seltzer.com has the instructions...why weren't my science classes fun? I have this sudden desire to try that out...
You can not make AlkaSeltzer rockets out of Altoid tins - their aerodynamics suck.
Nor can you use medicine bottles, screw lids or child proof lids don't work.
Need a snap lid, with just the right amount of resistance.
The 35mm film will linger, but we need LOTS of canisters.
I foresee market failure - where canisters are sought in amounts large compared to their supply for niche film markets, but not enough to warrant actual production, since a lot of their "secondary" uses are substitutable.
I mean bead collectors can use altoid tins, I like altoid tins, but they are not the same.