Film in the 80's: what was available, and how much did it cost?

[Archiver]

Was just wondering what varieties of film were readily available in the 80's, and how much film cost back then in comparison with other things.

Basic film today includes Fuji XTRA and Superia, nice colour neg film includes Reala, Pro 400H and Portra, and black and white has Tri-X, Delta, etc. But what was around in the 80's? Was film expensive to shoot and develop? What did you shoot during the 80's?

 

[daveywaugh]

The main films I shot in the 80s (that I don't now) were all tranny. Lots of Kodachrome, Ektachrome and I think Velvia... I cannot remember prices but slide film and E6 processing was definitely way cheaper then! 🙂 Crazy now.

It's funny, I don't really miss retired films that much, but I REALLY miss certain darkroom papers. I feel there's still enough diversity in film to keep things interesting, but great paper is getting harder to find.

Shot a fair bit if Tri-X in the 80s too and now I shoot 99% black and white. Still lots of Tri-X 🙂

 

[madNbad]

Where to start? 2475 Recording film for some of the most amazing colors, Panatomic X at a blinding ISO of 32, Plus-X at 100 and real Tri-X, Kodachrome 25 and 40, Ektachrome 64, VPS and many more just from Kodak. Agafachrome was always one of my favorites plus all of the fabulous Ilford B&W. Seattle Film Works respooled motion picture film for slides and prints, not to mention all of the other stuff they sold. Then the availability of formats, 110,120,220, 4x5 and 8x10 transparency film (a 4x5 Ekachrome is a mavrvelous thing) and processing everywhere. You'll hear a lot more and I'm glad I was there.

 

[Chuck Albertson]

Kodachrome. 25, 64, 200. Even, for a few years, K64 in 120 format. Prices were $5.00 a roll and up. You could buy a party pack of K64 (50 rolls) and save a few bucks.

 

[CMur12]

I don't remember pricing, specifically, either, though film and processing were definitely less expensive than they are now. I remember in 1972 being able to buy a 35mm roll of 20-exposure Agfachrome CT18 with processing for US $2.99. I think that was a special price to get Americans to shoot Agfa, but the price held for quite awhile.

In the 1980s, I shot a lot of Kodachrome 64, some Kodachrome 25, and some Ektachrome (I don't recall if it was still 64 or on to 100 by then). I really liked Agfachrome 1000 for window-light portraiture and I wish I could get it now.

There are actually more films that I miss from the 1970s (like GAF 64 and Agfachrome CT18) than from later decades.

- Murray

 

[valdas]

Where I lived the choice was limited to Tasma and Svema (rated 64 or 32 GOST - an equivalent of ASA. There was also 125 and 250 available, but too grainy). And ORWO was an equivalent of Rolls Royce...

 

[sevo]

Where to start? 2475 Recording film for some of the most amazing colors,

Colors? It was black and white, and extremely grainy. 1000 ASA, but mostly pushed to 2000. The predecessor of T-Max 3200.

 

[Mark Wood]

Agfa Dia Direct - lovely 32 ASA film (process paid) for B&W transparencies. For some reason, the speed was dropped to 12 ASA before it was discontinued and effectively replaced with Scala.

Kodak Vericolor II (125 ASA) followed by Vericolor III (160 ASA) colour negative film. Slightly grainy in comparison with more recent films but nice, subtle colours. (There must have been more wedding photographs taken using these to films than any others in the 1970s/1980s.)

No point whatsoever in comparing 1980s film prices with the ones we have today unless you take inflation into account sensibly. Then you actually find that the prices now aren't really out of line at all with those we paid in the 1970s and 1980s but we enjoyed a period in the 1990s in particular, where film prices effectively dropped in real terms.

 

[Roger Hicks]

British Journal of Photography Almanac 1981 lists well over 60 colour slide films (admittedly including duplicating films) and only slightly fewer colour neg films.

Cheers,

R.

 

[madNbad]

Colors? It was black and white, and extremely grainy. 1000 ASA, but mostly pushed to 2000. The predecessor of T-Max 3200.

My mistake, it was Kodak 2483 Photomicrography film I was thinking of.

 

[Godfrey]

There were plenty of different films available ... the lab I worked at typically had 20 different emulsions available in five different formats, and ordered more for different customers on a regular basis.

And film was always pretty expensive... except when you bought a lot of 110-135 D&P where we would give you a replacement film for every roll that made half its rated number of prints.

G

 

[css9450]

And it was readily available everywhere. I can think of numerous occasions where I was out on a road trip somewhere and ran out of film and I could stop in at a grocery store or 7-11-type convenience store and get a couple rolls of Kodachrome 64. Try that nowadays - with ANY film!

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Film available today

... I checked local Walmart two weeks ago - all film is gone now, only disposable film cameras left.

From ex-habitat of country which was 1/6 of land on the planet Earth I have no idea what was available in eighties at another side of the curtains. My choice was consistent through the eighties - DDR made ORWO color slide film. The rest of limited choice was more dodgy. It was expensive, but I was needed only few rolls per year. This is how many regular people were taking pictures on this territory in eighties . One roll per one year wasn't something uncommon.

 

[MrFujicaman]

This thread made me chuckle...When I got into photography in 1973 in high school, my mom would drop me off across the street from school at a shopping center with a buck for fruit and or juice from the machines at school as we had split sessions. I had the afternoon shift (1-5:45). As soon as she was out of sight, I'd walk into the drugstore and buy a 20 exposure roll of Tri-X. As I recall, it was .95 plus tax.

I lost 15 pounds the first 2 months of school-I called it the Tri-X diet.

As for film in the 80's you had Kodak-all kinds of B &W and at least 8 color print types in 35mm. Then you had Agfa at several discount stores-never much slide film, but most speeds of 35mm. Then you had 3M under all kinds of private labels.

Ah...and then you had Freestyle with outdated surplus film. Neat stuff like 35mm aero Pan-X and Plus-X for about $5 per hundred feet and free shipping.

 

[Mark Wood]

For an idea of what was available in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it's worth tracking down one of the two-page adverts that "Reids of Guildford" used to put into Amateur Photographer magazine most weeks. One page (and it was small print) was almost entirely lists of films and papers.

Agfa CT-18 in 127 format, Kodacolor II in 828 format, Kodak Royal-X (which always seemed to be impossible to find in the UK in the 1980s), Ilford 935 refills (for FP4 and HP5), Kodachrome 25 cine film in Standard 8 rolls...they were all there and many, many more besides.

In the 1980s, Eurofoto Centre in West Drayton had what was basically a long supermarket aisle of nothing but film. (The only place I ever saw (and bought) a 120 roll of Panatomic-X.) What a sight that was, the very stuff of dreams - you tell the kids today and they don't believe you...

 

[madNbad]

While trying to correct a miscue on an earlier post, I came across this site for Kodak films:
http://www.taphilo.com/Photo/kodakfilmnumxref.shtml

 

[David Hughes]

Agfa Dia Direct - lovely 32 ASA film (process paid) for B&W transparencies...

Hi,

I miss it too but Ilford still tell us how to make up for it but I've not tried it yet.

There's a PDF about it here:-

http://www.ilfordphoto.com/applications/page.asp?n=90

The Agfa film cost UKP3-65 for 36 exp in 35mm and included processing and the one in my display cabinet is "process before January 1986" and the price sticker is still on it.

And an 1986 book on the bookshelf lists 15 B&W's; 10 colour negative films and 18 colour reversal films; and that was the author's selection...

Regards, David

 

[Mark Wood]

The Agfa film cost UKP3-65 for 36 exp in 35mm and included processing and the one in my display cabinet is "process before January 1986" and the price sticker is still on it.

...and they used to return the developed Dia Direct uncut, along with a set of cardboard mounts (unchanged from the 1960s) for you to mount them yourself. I'd always assumed the reason for that was the possibility that people would use the film for generating half-frame "film strips" (anyone remember those from school days?!?) for the old, Aldis-type slide projectors but I'm happy to stand corrected on that.

From using CT-18, I used to know the Deer Park Road address for Agfa processing off by heart!

 

[lxmike]

For colour i mainly used fuji and in particularly velvia, for back and white, Ilford HP4 and HP5, film was readily available and labs were on most highstreets......happy days

 

[lawrence]

For me the big event of the 1980s was Kodak's introduction of the TMax films. Until then Ilford and Kodak has leapfrogged each other with improving their slow, medium and fast b&w emulsions, one or the other being ahead at any particular time. TMax was something radically different and to this day I am still unsure whether I like it. The original TMY did have it's own look which I think I prefer to the current TMY2 while TMX is usually something you love or hate (don't ask me which!).