United Film Club - Now it's cheap as free.

Once again. We're going to take a good, hard look at the state of amateur photography in the past., giving it a good expectant glare, waiting for it to explain itself. What with things being the way they are now, the film industry of 1968 will dig it's toe in the dirt and act all awkward, going "Well, I, uuh...". Check it out. The United Film Club.
Presumably, the club bought film in huge quantities and passed the savings onto their lucky members who, through the strength of their numbers, were able to take their snaps for a pittance, due to the cheap film stock. Look what passed for a "bargain" in 1968:

126-12 Kodacolor Instamatic cartridge film for $4.49. This should be a discount, due to the whole "buying in bulk" thing the club relied upon. Take $4.89 and drop it into our handy inflation calculator and it comes out to... duht dah daaaah...$29 in 2009 dollars! Holy shitballs! That's $2.48 per picture - assuming they all came out okay. Today I took my USB stick to Walgreen's and got some 4x6 prints for 29 cents each. That's like getting your twelve prints for sixty cents in 1968.

Never mind the fact that, with modern digital photography, you're choosing only the good shots, and of course you can see the results immediately and delete the bad shots without paying to have them developed. Back in Yore, you were hoping to get a couple of good shots out of your roll of twelve.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are spoilt. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Also, even consumer-level cameras today do look a little better than the cheap plastic boxes we see here in this ad.

Here's a little bonus for Exmas. It's a high res version of the Santa from the ad (Click through for hugeness). The Image Improvement Team contrasted the background to pure white, so if you use it as clip art or something, you shouldn't see a dirty yellow square behind him. If you're some kind of fancy-pants graphics pro, you should be able to vectorize him through Adobe Streamline, LiveTrace, or whatever, without too much trouble. You're welcome.

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