Film economics

Brian, there is no way you can put the cost of color film head-to-head against digital. Cost, monetarily AND temporal are the reason that digital has supplanted film in both the commercial and snap shooting arenas. It is only in the realm of use as an artistic medium that film survives (although, many snap shooting hobbyists also join in.)

Fortunately film is a very different medium for expression than is digital imaging. This fact will keep film available for some time to come, however the economics will continue to tilt toward the ease of digital for everything else.
 
Nothing to add `cept I think the last contributions by Joe V ,Chris and Brian have all summed it up very well . I shoot both but enjoy my film for the joy of the cameras and for the different look that film gives me.I get it processed at a supermarket for £1 plus £1 for a CD.C41 of course. If I use HP 5 it costs £7 for processing from Ilford and £10 if I want the CD.
 
I worked it out that processing a film, using some distilled water, D-76, Ilfostop and Rapid Fix costs me per roll...


£1.88 at most -- that is assuming I have to make up fresh fixer; which I rarely do (I process in batches of 4 usually) in which case it comes out at about £1.

Tri-X tends to cost me about £2.80 per 36 exposures. Thankfully I'm not still learning as such; I get a good return on a roll of film; always one keeper, usually about 3-4. Although I had a roll recently where 20 were keepers! If I was where I was 6-7 years ago learning; I might have to strongly consider digital to hone my skils.

Sure it still costs more than digital but if cost is all I was worried about I would have started shooting digital a long time ago.

Of course shooting an M2 is a pleasure in itself, something I don't get even from modern film SLRs; not just digital compacts and SLRs. I prefer an all manual simple camera.

Vicky
 
Some of these arguments about cost effectiveness -- especially the ones about valuing your time -- strike me as somewhat curious. I mean, you're supposed to be doing this because you enjoy it. Do you go to watch shorter movies because your time is so valuable? Try to hurry through making love because your time is so valuable?

Saving money -- the orginal question -- is perfectly reasonable, though I have to say that if I were scanning instead of wet printing, I'd use only XP2 Super in 35mm, because it scans better (no silver image, Callier effect, grain aliasing). And minilabs can handle XP2.

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Some of these arguments about cost effectiveness -- especially the ones about valuing your time -- strike me as somewhat curious. I mean, you're supposed to be doing this because you enjoy it. Do you go to watch shorter movies because your time is so valuable? Try to hurry through making love because your time is so valuable?
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Ahh yes time. One of the fundamental reasons I use film is its slower, I can take my own sweet time and there's no rush on my part. That's why I find it a relaxing antedote to the working week in front of a PC, personally.

I'm an amateur and the only person I have to please is myself. Which I love 🙂

Vicky
 
Roger Hicks said:
Some of these arguments about cost effectiveness -- especially the ones about valuing your time -- strike me as somewhat curious. I mean, you're supposed to be doing this because you enjoy it. Do you go to watch shorter movies because your time is so valuable? Try to hurry through making love because your time is so valuable?
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By George, you've got an idea for a sitcom that writes itself!
 
Some of us still develop and print on occasion to make some money. Since there are people willing to pay a lot more for a real silver gelatin print it can make it very worthwhile getting our hands wet. Of course all of my darkroom equipment from reels to enlarging lenses was bought and paid for way back before Leitz decided that people might be willing to spend an extra fifty bucks for a Leica M2 if it had a built in self timer and Asahi decided that folks might enjoy using a behind the lens light meter in a Pentax Spotmatic.

http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com
 
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Touche' Roger .....Very well put ...hehehe 😀


Roger Hicks said:
Some of these arguments about cost effectiveness -- especially the ones about valuing your time -- strike me as somewhat curious. I mean, you're supposed to be doing this because you enjoy it. Do you go to watch shorter movies because your time is so valuable? Try to hurry through making love because your time is so valuable?
Cheers,

R.
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BW400CN is $9.99 for a 3-pack at Walmart. I get Walgreens processing and prints for ~$7... then only scan the good ones that I want to enlarge.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Some of these arguments about cost effectiveness -- especially the ones about valuing your time -- strike me as somewhat curious. I mean, you're supposed to be doing this because you enjoy it. Do you go to watch shorter movies because your time is so valuable? Try to hurry through making love because your time is so valuable? R.
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Roger:

Yes, do it because we enjoy it, but it isn't enjoyable when you aren't getting much sleep because you are spending hours scanning, so for some of us we need to modify the hobby and keep our health. When time allows, we have more fun. I don't watch many movies these days either.
 
bwcolor said:
Roger:

Yes, do it because we enjoy it, but it isn't enjoyable when you aren't getting much sleep because you are spending hours scanning, so for some of us we need to modify the hobby and keep our health. When time allows, we have more fun. I don't watch many movies these days either.
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Yes, but you're conflating two separate things: on the one hand, the time you have available, and on the other, how much you enjoy what you're doing.

Assuming a more or less fixed amount of time available to do things you want to do, you have to decide which things you enjoy doing more.

It's also a question of goal-oriented vs. process-oriented activities. A hobby, ideally, is something where you enjoy the process as well as the goal.

Cheers,

R.
 
Yes, I agree. I prefer being able to control each step, but time doesn't always allow this. This brings up one of the wonderful aspects of photography. It is such a flexible hobby as to process, cost, time and end result. My wife uses a point and shoot and posts a few photos on FaceBook. She has fun doing this. Great hobby.
 
Hmmm. This has turned into a long post. And I've forgotten who said what... So, at the risk of repeating some things:

I advise to lower costs by doing your own developing and scanning. Not only is it cheaper but the quality is better.

1.) No scratches on negatives
2.) No over sharpened scans
3.) Better tonality of the the negatives

I agree that the scanning is mind numbingly boring, but what once you figure out how to it is quicker.

I can develop 2 films of the same type in 40 minutes. The scanning is of course longer or shorter depending on how you do it. I bought the roll scanning device for my Nikon and that helps.

Good luck!!

JP
 
Roger Hicks said:
Yes, but you're conflating two separate things: on the one hand, the time you have available, and on the other, how much you enjoy what you're doing.

Assuming a more or less fixed amount of time available to do things you want to do, you have to decide which things you enjoy doing more.

It's also a question of goal-oriented vs. process-oriented activities. A hobby, ideally, is something where you enjoy the process as well as the goal.

Cheers,

R.
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I agree, but photography is a pretty wide-ranging hobby, and some enjoy some aspects of the hobby more than others. For some, the getting out and shooting is far more pleasurable than spending the time in the darkroom or on the computer. For some, like one particular old timer in the local camera club when I was young, getting the perfect print out of the darkroom was the ultimate joy. He would only shoot a couple rolls of film a year and spend the rest of the time trying to get that one or two shots absolutely perfect in the darkroom. He wouldn't go and shoot any more until he was 100 percent happy with the print or prints he was working on. He never produced anything near a large body of work, but every single print he showed won prizes. Some people love taking old cameras apart and tinkering with them, and for some, that would be absolutely maddening. This is the reason behind weighing time in to the equation. Some people would rather have that time to watch the bad movie or to read a magazine, and some would rather spend that time in the darkroom. Some see the time they spend in photoshop as time they could spend shooting more. Some see the time they spend shooting as time they could be spending in the darkroom improving their craft. It is all relative to the individual, and therefore, it is a worthwhile consideration when one is looking in to changing their workflow.
 
Merkin said:
I agree, but photography is a pretty wide-ranging hobby, and some enjoy some aspects of the hobby more than others. For some, the getting out and shooting is far more pleasurable than spending the time in the darkroom or on the computer. For some, like one particular old timer in the local camera club when I was young, getting the perfect print out of the darkroom was the ultimate joy. He would only shoot a couple rolls of film a year and spend the rest of the time trying to get that one or two shots absolutely perfect in the darkroom. He wouldn't go and shoot any more until he was 100 percent happy with the print or prints he was working on. He never produced anything near a large body of work, but every single print he showed won prizes. Some people love taking old cameras apart and tinkering with them, and for some, that would be absolutely maddening. This is the reason behind weighing time in to the equation. Some people would rather have that time to watch the bad movie or to read a magazine, and some would rather spend that time in the darkroom. Some see the time they spend in photoshop as time they could spend shooting more. Some see the time they spend shooting as time they could be spending in the darkroom improving their craft. It is all relative to the individual, and therefore, it is a worthwhile consideration when one is looking in to changing their workflow.
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Absolutely. But to me, somewhow, that's not the same as 'valuing your time', perhaps because I'm conditioned to think of that in $/hour, which is clearly inappropriate in many cicumstances as applied to a hobby.

Cheers,

R.
 
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