Film prices, the good old days

When I got out of the military in 1970, minimum wage was 68 cents per hour and that was more than my E5 pay in the Navy. A gallon of gasoline got as low as 19 cents per gallon (remember the words "gas war?") The house in my now "gentrified" hometown that cost $40,000 then is $450,000 now and young people are looking elsewhere. The divide between haves and have-nots is as wide as it's been in my lifetime. Today's backordered "Tri-X" is somewhere between $12.95 and $15.95 (60 cents at the base exchange in 1970). It's no wonder that camera phones rule.

My Leicas sit, mostly unused, not because of digital but because they are not time machines, unable to take pictures of my times, places and people and so it doesn't much matter what film costs.

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Rayt said:
Don’t even need to go back that far. Wasn‘t it only around 10 years ago when a roll of Acros in 120 was like 2 bucks?
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I remember buying 24exp rolls of Kodak ColorPlus for £1 from the local Poundland when I was fixing cameras and/or checking for lightleaks back in 2010. I thought it was utter trash and wouldn't have considered using it for anything "real"; now that same roll costs £8.50 and people talk about it on some pockets of the internet like it's a half-way passable budget replacement for Portra.
 
Franko said:
…My Leicas sit, mostly unused, not because of digital but because they are not time machines, unable to take pictures of my times, places and people and so it doesn't much matter what film costs.
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Were you able to make a lot of photos in your younger days? Places you lived, travelled, family, friends? What I think is starkly clear to any of us in our senior days is that photos we have from our teens, 20’s, have become precious.

I thank whatever camera elves there were in the 1960’s that got a kid like me interested in buying a roll of 127-format B&W film every few months and using a little Kodak Brownie Bullet to make indiscriminate photos of anything I saw.
 
Rayt said:
Don’t even need to go back that far. Wasn‘t it only around 10 years ago when a roll of Acros in 120 was like 2 bucks?
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By 2012 I realized if I won't try BW film, darkroom, I won't get a chance to use it for real later on.
Kodak TMAX 100/400 bulks where something like 40 CAD. It was priced for photographers, not for shareholders.

C-41 film was never cheap, but affordable if pictures were taken in common amateur mode. One roll lasting between NY eve and summer vacation. One of the reasons I recall we were using Konica 12 frames rolls mentioned in OP.
 
Pál_K said:
Were you able to make a lot of photos in your younger days? Places you lived, travelled, family, friends? What I think is starkly clear to any of us in our senior days is that photos we have from our teens, 20’s, have become precious.

I thank whatever camera elves there were in the 1960’s that got a kid like me interested in buying a roll of 127-format B&W film every few months and using a little Kodak Brownie Bullet to make indiscriminate photos of anything I saw.
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Pal K, I was a Navy Photographer during (but not in) the Vietnam War. My last duty station was DC in a time when much was happening. I've never stopped carrying cameras since those days and have many, many photos of politicos, musicians, etc from the sixties till now.

One thing I have come to realize is that they are only meaningful to those of us who were there. Younger people are too busy having their own experiences to care about mine, just like I'm less interested in what's happening now - not my time. I've become outdated. To that end, I pretty much traded cameras for paint brushes since retirement.
 
Rayt said:
Don’t even need to go back that far. Wasn‘t it only around 10 years ago when a roll of Acros in 120 was like 2 bucks?
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In late 2021, Adorama was blowing out short-dated Acros II. A five-pack of 120 for $29.99 and a five-pack of 135 went as low of $24.99. Seeing film prices now, I should have bought way more than I did.
 
dourbalistar said:
In late 2021, Adorama was blowing out short-dated Acros II. A five-pack of 120 for $29.99 and a five-pack of 135 went as low of $24.99. Seeing film prices now, I should have bought way more than I did.
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I saw they had that and bought several packs. Ten or twelve years ago Freestyle had a big sale on Acros, Neopan 400 and their rebranded Fuji B&W. I picked several cases of each emulsion in both 35mm and 120. I think each case had 100 rolls. I bought a small chest type freezer and stashed the film. I’m still using from that purchase and glad I did but getting low on 120 Acros now. I’ve not tried the Acros II yet but will have to soon.
 
x-ray said:
I saw they had that and bought several packs. Ten or twelve years ago Freestyle had a big sale on Acros, Neopan 400 and their rebranded Fuji B&W. I picked several cases of each emulsion in both 35mm and 120. I think each case had 100 rolls. I bought a small chest type freezer and stashed the film. I’m still using from that purchase and glad I did but getting low on 120 Acros now. I’ve not tried the Acros II yet but will have to soon.
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Speaking of Freestyle, back in 2017 they were clearing out some bulk rolls of Fuji Superia 400, again short-date stock. At an astonishing price of $25 per 100-foot roll, or five bulk rolls for $100. I somehow managed to get five rolls. Sent one roll to Colton Allen (though I'm not sure if he ever got to use it) and I still have a few rolls in my freezer. I don't think I've seen any bulk rolls of color C-41 since. Oddly enough, Freestyle still has the product page up:

Fujicolor Superia 400 ISO 35mm x 100 ft. Roll - Short Date Special | Freestyle Photo & Imaging

Limited quantity available. Expires 09/2017. Cold stored.Fujicolor Superia 400 is an all-round general purpose, high-performance, high speed color negative film delivering truly fine-grain. Superb for snapshots or action, in low light with flash, outdoors or indoors.FeaturesTraditional Color...
www.freestylephoto.com www.freestylephoto.com
 
Coldkennels said:
I remember buying 24exp rolls of Kodak ColorPlus for £1 from the local Poundland when I was fixing cameras and/or checking for lightleaks back in 2010. I thought it was utter trash and wouldn't have considered using it for anything "real"; now that same roll costs £8.50 and people talk about it on some pockets of the internet like it's a half-way passable budget replacement for Portra.
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Some people talk about Kodak Gold like they are lucky to have it too. Like it is the film to have. Crazy film world these days.
 
jsrockit said:
Some people talk about Kodak Gold like they are lucky to have it too. Like it is the film to have. Crazy film world these days.
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My favorite was Kodak Royal Gold when they made it. Now, Kodak Gold (200) is my preferred color print film - I think it is very neutral, not saturated. After that I use Ektar or Ultramax, but they obviously are more saturated.

I‘ve never been able to like the Fuji color print films - although I like Fuji Instax.
 
Pál_K said:
My favorite was Kodak Royal Gold when they made it. Now, Kodak Gold (200) is my preferred color print film - I think it is very neutral, not saturated.
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That's ok, but in the past it was a very pedestrian film available in almost any store...even convenience stores. Now I see social media posts acting as if they found the holy grail of films.
 
There might be some Kodak Gold Grocery Store Film still in my freezer. I bought some for my wife years ago but she never used it and I wouldn't use it. Nasty stuff. People's faces looked like strawberries. Looked even worse with direct flash. Gross.

The last film I bought was in the mid 2000s. It was a 50 roll box of Ilford HP5+. I liked Tri-X best but HP5 cost less and pretty much looked the same to me. Anyway, I think the price worked out to a little over a buck fifty a roll for the HP5.

I keep toying with the idea of buying one of the last Nikon film cameras--F5, F100, etc. But I always come to my senses before going down that road and falling into the rabbit hole.
 
Dogman said:
There might be some Kodak Gold Grocery Store Film still in my freezer. I bought some for my wife years ago but she never used it and I wouldn't use it. Nasty stuff. People's faces looked like strawberries. …
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Strange. I never got that result. I grew up with Kodachrome II, so Kodak Gold seems to be closest to that.
 
I always found ColorPlus to just be wildly inconsistent. Sometimes you'd get something that was half-way passable, and often you'd get the strawberry faces @Dogman mentioned - especially if there was any hint of underexposure. Looking through old scans, there's test photos where two photos taken right next to each other had completely different colour casts.

Now, admittedly, my scanner back then was god-awful (Canoscan 9000F with the default software), but I never had that sort of problem with any other film, and on the rare occasion I got 6x4 lab prints done from ColorPlus, they weren't a lot better.

For the record, I wasn't a huge fan of Superia either... but at least it was generally more predictable and neutral than ColorPlus was. I think ColorPlus is what ultimately put me off C41 for life.
 
Crazy film world indeed. I just bought 400 feet of Kodak XX and rigged a split reel to spool it down to 100'. Even that wasn't cheap.
 
This topic could apply to almost anything. When I first started driving, gas was ~$0.50 a gallon (that's when they called premium "ethyl").

My first summer job paid $1.90/hr.
 
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