Film may not be dead but plenty seem keen to kill it off!

Keith

Keith

The best camera is one that still works!
Local time
9:36 AM
Joined
May 5, 2006
Messages
19,237
Location
Australia
View My Gallery
I was in one of Brisbane's larger shopping centers today killing time before a job and wandered into the complex's only camera store and probably one of the city's larger ones. There was the usual range of DSLR's, tripods, camera bags etc and the obligatory overly helpful salesperson.

Curious to see if they still had some film for sale I scouted around and eventually found a small stand with an extremely limted range which had some apparent gaps in it ... out of stock!

This is what they did have:

Kodak BW400CN ... $15.00
Ilford HP5+ ...........$13.00
Fuji Velvia ............$30.00

And to be honest not much else!

This is why Freestyle in the US gets all my business! 🙄
 
wow.. I thought Canadian film prices where bad... the drug store 200 and 400 stuff is decently priced, but anything special... like B&W, C-41 B&W, Velvia, Neopan 1600 etc is hard to find outside of MAJOR camera stores like Henry's or Vistek... the regular photo labs like Blacks, Japan Camera, Sutors etc might have one or two of the above but they're all between $10-$15 a roll.

My biggest disappointment is the ULTRA cheap films have disappeared from Dollar Stores, Giant Tiger and supermarkets. I used to be able to find cheap no-name C41 in 200, 400 and 800 for a couple bucks a roll... not anymore all the dollar stores have now are disposable cameras... at least in Ottawa. If anyone knows a source of cheap film in Canada of any kind, let me know. I do a Freestyle order once a year, but it would be nice to be able to grab a couple rolls on the cheap of speeds I don't use that often.
 
Keith said:
Fuji Velvia ............$30.00
Click to expand...

Probably they have read Ken's opinion "Velvia is better than Kodachrome" - quickly looked for what K14 film goes, added some margin and here you are.

That way they aren't killing film, just their profit from film business.
 
Keith, I've been in that exact same camera store! Though not necessarily in Brisbane.

In fact, I was recently in Ted's in Sydney which used to at least pretend, a bit. But the film I'd put in for processing (wanting an 'independent' indicator of how well the meter on a new/old camera was reading) had the negatives messed with (and not in a good way) post-scan. Before I'd even got home and had a chance to notice that, I'd had an argument with the staff in the store, having paid for a scan (which was in the pre-determined charge I had to pay to retrieve my film) but rather noticed they hadn't bothered to put the CD in with the negs and prints. When I tried to remonstrate, and point out that I wasn't paying for a CD they weren't giving me and couldn't find, they tried to charge me on the basis that they'd done the scan even if they couldn't deliver the results.

OK - dumb junior staff, and all, and I eventually received all I'd paid for: but they charge a premium for a service they used to provide and now really don't wish to bother with.

I'm with you: for the most part I'm ordering from overseas and developing my own.

...Mike
 
Last edited:
I'm very lucky, I live about 800yds from probably the best stockist of photographic materials in the area. There are a couple of OK ones in Brighton but not up to the standard of the local place. They essentially have all the Kodak, Ilford and Fuji range, in 35mm and 120, probably sheet too but I've never asked, an excellent range of Kodak,Tetenal and Ilford chemicals and very decent range of Ilford papers including MGIV FB Warmtone 🙂

it's a real pain as I have to walk past every day on the way to work... So tempted!

Also for the darkroom stuff, once the postage is factored in, its cheaper for me to buy local.

They stock digital too (i.e. papers, inks etc.) and also have some cameras, incl. some Bronica ETRSi kit, enlarging lenses and even some Mamiya TLR lenses.

I only buy on-line now if I'm ordering in bulk or its something they don't stock (mostly the Superia 800 and not it matters now but Kodachrome) -- otherwise it's lovely being able to walk into a shop and walk out with little boxes of magic FP4+, Tri-X and Velvia all from virtually on the doorstep 🙂

Vicky
 
Wow! You still have camera stores? As far as I can find, there are exactly 4 camera stores left in the entire state of Oklahoma. Two are in Tulsa, and I've never been in them. The other 2 are in Oklahoma City, and that's an hour and a half drive to get there.

Yeah, without Freestyle, we'd all be hurting.

Wes
 
This particular store seems to be one of the more extreme gougers. I'd just bought a 4GB Sandisk Extreme SDHC card from a nearby hi fi store and paid $56.00 for it which is actually fairly reasonabe here in Oz ... they had the same card for $72.00! 😱

A Canon G10 was just under $900.00 ... that's extortion!
 
I sent a roll of 120 Superia to a New York City lab this week - a test roll from a new camera. When i called the next morning to see if it was ready, the person on the other end of the line didn't even need to ask my name - she stated the name/type of film, and said Yes.... Sounded very much like my simple processing order was a very rare thing these days. If it's true that an old Manhattan lab had only one roll of film in-house, that's a sad thing.
 
Having been warned of Oz prices I meant to get a big order in for my trip there and to the States this Sat. Unfortunately I've been too busy with work and so haven't been able to buy from 7dayshop which I usually do; around £2.30 per roll for Delta 100, TriX and Kodak B/W C41 with discount on bulk buys... instead I've just had to order 50 rolls of Delta 100 at £6.50 each and 50 rolls of Kodak C41 at £5.00 per roll from Jessops! Jessops being the only high street store that stocks anything more than the usual ISO 200 colour films.

I'll make sure that I get my order in to 7dayshop in plenty of time from now on!
 
What's the name of the store? It sounds wonderful!

Best regards,
RoyM


Lilserenity said:
I'm very lucky, I live about 800yds from probably the best stockist of photographic materials in the area. There are a couple of OK ones in Brighton but not up to the standard of the local place. They essentially have all the Kodak, Ilford and Fuji range, in 35mm and 120, probably sheet too but I've never asked, an excellent range of Kodak,Tetenal and Ilford chemicals and very decent range of Ilford papers including MGIV FB Warmtone 🙂

it's a real pain as I have to walk past every day on the way to work... So tempted!

Also for the darkroom stuff, once the postage is factored in, its cheaper for me to buy local.

They stock digital too (i.e. papers, inks etc.) and also have some cameras, incl. some Bronica ETRSi kit, enlarging lenses and even some Mamiya TLR lenses.

I only buy on-line now if I'm ordering in bulk or its something they don't stock (mostly the Superia 800 and not it matters now but Kodachrome) -- otherwise it's lovely being able to walk into a shop and walk out with little boxes of magic FP4+, Tri-X and Velvia all from virtually on the doorstep 🙂

Vicky
Click to expand...
 
I work about 5 minutes from Central Camera in Chicago and 15 minutes from Calumet Photo.
Central has tons of film and darkroom supplies , all at still reasonable prices.
Calumet has a pretty full gamut of film and darkroom supplies as well.
It helps that Columbia College is down the street, as long as they have wet darkroom and film photograpghy classes, I'm in good shape.
Prices for B&W are around $3 to $5 a roll, and I'm happy to say they recognize RFF "membership" for a 5% discount as a film club member.
 
yeah.. I'm giving up with trying to buy film locally. My yearly order from Freestyle will be going in in August sometime so if anyone in the Ottawa Area wants to get in on it and split duty and shipping let me know. It's worth it even if I pay all the added charges myself... but it would really lower the cost if a bunch of us went in on it.
 
OurManInTangier said:
Having been warned of Oz prices I meant to get a big order in for my trip there and to the States this Sat. Unfortunately I've been too busy with work and so haven't been able to buy from 7dayshop which I usually do; around £2.30 per roll for Delta 100, TriX and Kodak B/W C41 with discount on bulk buys... instead I've just had to order 50 rolls of Delta 100 at £6.50 each and 50 rolls of Kodak C41 at £5.00 per roll from Jessops! Jessops being the only high street store that stocks anything more than the usual ISO 200 colour films.

I'll make sure that I get my order in to 7dayshop in plenty of time from now on!
Click to expand...

If I go to my local Jessops (two of them) then they have to look in a drawer to see what films they might, if I'm lucky, have in stock. Last time I got lucky and got the roll of BW400CN and I once got a roll of XP2 as well.

Having said that, the girl, or I should really say young lady, in my most local store does run the frontier well and is helpful at processing time. hat I find a bit frustrating is that if I take in a couple of rolls of Portra I leave with my set of 6by4s, my film uncut and two 'free' rolls of 200iso film that I don't necessarily have a use for...

Mike
 
Keith: I recently bought a Canon G10 for $414 delivered to the door! $900 for the same camera is insane.

I, too, buy all my stuff from Freestyle.
 
I know I'm repeating myself, but my real worry isn't whether I can find film, but it's the crappy processing that is continuing to spread and will become a snowball effect and bring film further and further down as more and more people lose the desire to bother with searching for a processor and just say the hell with it and park their film camera for good.
 
agreed... that's why I develop my own B&W.. use digital for color and the only thing I get processed now is when I take my E-6 to Shoppers Drugmart for one hour cross processing. No matter how crappy their processing... the film's getting messed up in the wrong chemicals anyways and always comes out looking great despite.. or maybe because of crap processing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom