business

“In maybe 10 years,” said El Halcon’s Via Veneto branch manager Javier Macías, “film photography is likely to be gone.” The digital revolution has already battered the film developing business, which has long been El Halcon’s bread and butter.

The Panama News talked to Macías on Carnival Friday, when few customers were in the store. Why El Halcon? Why now? Because the store has recently expanded, which is something that few of Panama’s other film developers can say about their premises.

El Halcon has long sold new and used cameras and accessories, along with film and other photo supplies. They also have a portrait photography business, with a constant demand for passport photos and seasonal rushes for school graduation pictures. They also do photocopies, including a school study packet business that’s slow now that school is out.

With the expansion, El Halcon is now selling and repairing digital cameras and accessories and turning electronic pictures into prints much like the ones that you get when you take a roll of film in to be developed. They are also now digitally retouching, restoring and changing the backgrounds on old photos.

Macías told The Panama News that the new digital side of El Halcon’s business hasn’t yet replaced traditional photo developing. “We’re changing,” he said, “but the traditional business will continue.”

So why should it be so slow on a Carnival Friday? There’s nothing new about that, Macías explained. People take their pictures during Carnival and come in to get them developed --- or with the new digital cameras, sometimes to get them printed on photo paper --- after Carnival is over. Then there will be a few days when you may have to stand in line to be served at El Halcon.

Along with the expanded premises across from the Hotel El Panama, the business has changed its logo and now calls itself the “Foto Halcon Digital Lab.” It’s the sort of thing that happens when a small business takes technological change as an opportunity rather than a threat.



















Also in this section:
Business & Economy Briefs
Photo developer adapts to changing technology
Guilty verdict in BANAICO case
Carnival jobs

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