Once upon a time when I worked for a photofinisher, we sold film for essentially what it cost us to buy it AND gave a new roll of film away with every roll we processed that printed out 50% of the frames. And a full 36 shot roll of 35mm film D&P was $9. This was predicated on the fact that that $9 price tag per roll incorporated a 65% markup from our cost of operation, and we sold a lot of D&P. The profit from that alone was enough to pay the rent, the salaries, and the operating costs of the lab with a little left over for growth and development. The same was true of every camera shop and photofinisher I knew, they all priced out film in the same way.
Photofinishers now have virtually no D&P income. So film has to be sold at the actual retail price, not the D&P-subsidized deep discount it once was. And the actual retail prices have risen dramatically because there is insufficient demand to keep those expensive film production machines running at their most economical rate, so the cost of manufacture has gone up. Big vendors selling mail order can afford some discounting because they earn their profits across a broader stroke of product sales.
The entire chain of business profitability for the camera vendor has been impacted severely in recent years due to increase in the costs of rent, the costs of insurance for employees, the cost of salaries, etc etc., as well.
So before you go accusing your friendly neighborhood camera/film dealer of "gouging", be sure you understand how lucky you are that someone is interested enough to figure out how to stay profitable enough not to just close their doors so that you can still buy film at all. And go buy something from them so that they have a chance of not seeing another month of red ink on the balance sheet. Because without customers and profits, they'll surely be gone soon.
G
