Will Skyrocketing Silver Costs Make Picture Film Even Extra Costly?

After hitting a document excessive of over $82 per ounce over the previous few days, analog photographers might have trigger to fret in regards to the value of their movie. Silver is an integral part of movie manufacturing, and silver costs have greater than doubled in 2025.

While silver buying and selling costs dipped again beneath $80 after buying and selling opened this morning, the current surge pushed silver costs above the $80 per ounce threshold for the primary time amid a broader rise within the worth of treasured metals this 12 months.

The images business has a protracted historical past with silver, as silver halide is the light-sensitive materials in photographic movie. As Lomography puts it, “A photograph is the final result that occurs when a chemical reaction exists between light and sensitive silver grain compounds.”

Given the important nature of silver in movie manufacturing, it’s of little shock that movie producers are main gamers within the silver market. Per the World Silver Survey 2025, produced by The Silver Institute and Metals Focus, the images market demanded about 25.5 million ounces of silver final 12 months and is projected to account for twenty-four.2 million ounces this 12 months.

There are two issues to contemplate as silver’s value skyrockets. The first is how silver’s rising value would possibly have an effect on the price of new movie manufacturing, as a rise in materials prices nearly inevitably will increase the ultimate product’s value; and secondly, simply how a lot new movie is definitely being made.

This second query is fascinating as a result of analog images has skilled a notable resurgence in recent times, but demand for silver within the images market has decreased almost yearly.

This nearly-constant dip in demand is echoed by data from the CPM Silver Yearbook 2025, which reveals total silver fabrication demand by business from 1977 by way of 2025.

In the chart above, there’s a pretty constant, albeit gradual, development of rising silver demand total. The photograph business’s demand for silver peaked within the mid- to late Nineteen Nineties and has decreased almost yearly since, together with throughout the ongoing analog images renaissance. Photography as soon as accounted for an enormous chunk of world silver demand, however is now only a mere fraction, trailing far behind electronics industries, jewellery, and photo voltaic panels, which at the moment are an enormous a part of the worldwide silver commerce.

The historic significance of images for the silver market can also be evident throughout the interval from 1999 to 2005. As images’s demand for silver dropped, different industries needed to choose up the rising slack. The digital images revolution is clear not solely in images’s share of the graph but in addition within the world silver market. Film images was as soon as essential for silver mining and refinement operations.

As the charts present, at the same time as analog images has turn into extra fashionable once more, it has not turn into so fashionable that it’s shifting the needle a lot when it comes to the photograph business’s demand for silver. Increasing demand for movie has considerably slowed the bleeding, and the photograph business’s demand even elevated barely a number of years in the past, nevertheless it has not come shut in any respect to rebounding in an enormous method. With that mentioned, since images is lumped collectively as one large pool within the knowledge, it is usually doable that conventional images’s demand for movie has elevated whereas demand for specialised varieties of photographic movie, like X-ray movie, has decreased, resulting in a slight total decline.

Nonetheless, loads of new movie continues to be manufactured yearly, and silver’s value fluctuations influence manufacturing prices when new silver should be bought.

Even although silver costs dipped 6% after buying and selling opened right now, they’re nonetheless up almost 140% to this point in 2025 and present no indicators of reverting all the way in which to the roughly $30/ounce costs silver began the 12 months at. For legendary, longstanding photograph corporations like Eastman Kodak, there isn’t a doubt that rising silver costs have been noticeable on steadiness sheets or will likely be very shortly. The scenario is maybe much more related for smaller, newer operations, like China Lucky Film, which is making a brand-new 35mm movie proper now.

Hopefully, for the sake of analog photographers in all places, rising silver costs won’t dramatically enhance the price of new movie. Film images is already a dear solution to take images; it will be a disgrace if the associated fee rose even increased, proper as movie images is embracing its second life.

It could be particularly unlucky if movie costs skyrocketed in flip with silver costs, as a result of the rising value seems to be pushed primarily by hypothesis, seemingly surrounding using silver in photo voltaic panels, a rising power market. As the information above reveals, world demand for silver has not doubled. In truth, it has not elevated in any respect this 12 months. Demand is outpacing provide, however that has been true since 2021, and silver costs remained remarkably regular over that interval till the second half of 2025.

“Make no mistake: we are witnessing a generational bubble playing out in silver,” says Tony Sycamore, a market analyst for IG Australia.

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Image credit: Header picture created utilizing an asset licensed by way of Depositphotos and a picture from Kodak.