The Sunbeams Analogue Photography News – January 5th 2018 – The Sunnies Awards

Hello all and a very Happy New Year! We are Rachel, Graeme & Ade the three co-hosts/musketeers of Sunny16 the UK’s weekly analogue photography podcast.

It seems we’ve entered 2018 with a film-infused bang having just recorded and released ‘The Sunnies’ analogue photography awards for the second year in a row! Hamish himself has even asked us to start writing this regular column for him so we’d better get on with it before all the power goes to Graeme’s head.

For the full Sunny 16 podcast awards show (ep. 83) you can, of course have a listen here but if like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in Fast Five you’re saying ‘just gimme the damn veggies’ then here are the cold hard analogue facts of the voting looking back at 2017.

We had 5 categories; Best Newly Released Product, Every Day I Learn Something New, He’s Not With Us, Film of the Year and last but not least, Pillar of the Community

Best Newly Released Product

In Best Newly Released Product we were extremely pleased to see just how many new films and products were released in 2017. It really does feel like an exciting time for the analogue community and we hope it heralds the launch of even more in 2018. The top 5 were:

5th: Polaroid Onestep 2
4th: Bergger Pancro films
3rd: Japan Camera Hunter Streetpan 120
2nd: Ferrania P30
1st: Cinestill 800T (120 and 4×5)

Every Day I Learn Something New

In Every Day I Learn Something New, an open vote, the 3 favourite ‘drop some knowledge on us – lessons’ as chosen by Hamish (35mmc), Em (Emulsive) and Bellamy (Japan Camera Hunter) were (in no particular order):

• Be fearless and try new things like shooting a whole roll of film without a lightmeter, but just using your experience
• Don’t trust the crowd. The cameras that other people lust after may not be for you
• You don’t need auto features and apps to take pictures. You don’t need a fancy camera to take great photographs

He’s Not With Us

In He’s Not With Us, another open vote, there were some intriguing answers including (ironically) ‘Negativity’, ‘Erotica’ and ‘Trump’ the latter two definitely being terms that should never appear next to each other in our opinion as it conjures up all sorts of worrying imagery.

However, in the end there were only two serious contenders, the runner up being ‘The discontinuation of films by Fuji’ with 7.9% of the vote and the runaway winner of ‘the thing that the analogue community most wished to disassociate themselves from’, with a whopping 42% of the vote was (unsurprisingly) ‘The Yashica Digifilm Y35’  – It is probably worth noting here that in keeping with our newly launched #shootfilmbenice hashtag, this category will probably not be appearing next year 😉

Film of the Year

In Film of the Year we saw voting for a HUGE range of films. In the end, the top 5 contained three fabulous offerings from Kodak and an equal number from the awesome Ilford. We felt that a special mention for Bellamy Hunt from Japan Camera Hunter was necessary however, as up against these titans of the analogue photography industry, his JCH Streepan still tied for 4th place which is an awesome achievement:

5th: Ilford Delta
4th: Joint: Kodak Tri-X and JCH Streetpan (6.6%)
3rd: Joint – Kodak Ektar and Ilford FP4+(7%)
2nd: Kodak Portra
1st: Ilford HP5+

Pillar of the Community

In Pillar of the Community we learnt just how many awesome people there are who make up the analogue community. It’s super lovely to know that there are people literally across the globe who clearly care passionately about the analogue world and who want to share knowledge and champion all it stands for. The winner for this year was the one and only Em from www.emulsive.org who has consistently gone above and beyond in his efforts to share, inspire and keep the film photography community alive and well. Great work sir!

All that remains to say now is a massive thank you to everyone who voted in ‘The Sunnies’ 2017 awards and who has listened and subscribed to the show up to now, you’re all awesome.

We’re really looking forward to writing regularly for 35mmc and going forward we hope to bring you more news from the film photography world. Finally we hope to meet up with some of you in person at The Photography Show in March so if you’ve not already registered for your pass, this is your little reminder to do so. Until next time, happy shooting!

Lots of Love,

The Sunbeams

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