Film prices, the good old days

[Saganich]

You have to be careful using winders. In dry weather film can build up static electricity and cause streaks and flashes on the film. I’ve had it happen before in the darkroom. You can actually see it happening.

A company I worked for in the early 70’s had a bunch of Hasselblad EL’s with 70mm backs. During very cold dry weather the cameras transported film fast enough to build up static and cause lightning flashes which ruined your film. It actually looks like bolts of lightning on the film when you process it.

Yes, the black plastic bags spark as well.

 

[x-ray]

That's one reason Vision 3 has remjet, to eliminate the effect of static electricity in 24fps movie cameras. Don't think I would be capable of manually rewinding at that speed!

24fps isn’t feet per second, it’s frames per second. I did a lot of cine work in both 16 & 35 mm so I’m quite familiar with that. 35mm at 24fps runs roughly 90’ of film through the camera in one minute. Not terribly fast.

Im very familiar with remjet backing and static marks are still possible with it. On several occasions I’ve had small labs ruin film when rewinding it too quickly in prep for processing.

 

[splitimageview]

Well yes, 24 feet per second would be a whopping 16 seconds of footage on a 400 foot roll. 🤣 I thought it was self-evident than 24fps referred to frames.

Even rolling 24fps working blindly in a changing bag, don't think I'm going to achieve that. It's not a race! lol

 

[x-ray]

When I worked for the DOE in the mid 70’s we did ultra high speed motion picture. We used a 400 ft model Redlake Hicam and shot 16mm film up to 44,000 fps. We used FF33 flash bulbs to light the subjects but regular #3 bulbs could be used because the shutter speed at 44,000 fps was 1/100,000 of a second and 400 ft of film went through the camera in 1/10 of a second. Yes what took 11 minutes to project at 24fps went through the camera in 1/10 of a second. NASA had a classified camera at the time that they used to study rocket engine ignition that shot 150,000 fps.

Often what we were studying only occurred in a half dozen frames or so. Now the Redlake is a toy with much faster digital cameras. But at the time the Redlake was pretty amazing.

 

[splitimageview]

I would say even today it is!

 

[MrFujicaman]

My "good old days" were in the 1970's. We had Freestyle in LA with Ilford 100 foot rolls for $5.69, then we had Bona-Fide Novelities and Fairstryk in NYC with outdated film like aero Plus-X for $3.50 at hundred feet and Tri-X and 4X for $4.00 a hundred fool roll, 2750 for $.3.75 for a 125 foot roll.

Those were the good old days!

 

[PRJ]

I have only one 100' spool. Wish I had saved others...

Could 100 feet be spooled onto that, and the remaining 300 left for later?

Sorry for the dumb questions, but what's a core vs a spool?

A core is just the middle part. A spool has sides that keep the film in place. At least that is what I call them.

Sure. Unspool what you want and put the rest back in the can.

 

[PRJ]

You have to be careful using winders. In dry weather film can build up static electricity and cause streaks and flashes on the film. I’ve had it happen before in the darkroom. You can actually see it happening.

A company I worked for in the early 70’s had a bunch of Hasselblad EL’s with 70mm backs. During very cold dry weather the cameras transported film fast enough to build up static and cause lightning flashes which ruined your film. It actually looks like bolts of lightning on the film when you process it.

Yeah, when I am loading the smaller spool I keep one hand on the spool in case there is any static. Haven't had any issues yet.

 

[froyd]

I'm getting close to waving my white flag of surrender. I am already down to 1/3 of the film volume I used to shoot because the current prices feel so steep. The good old days indeed. I was lucky than until recently I never had to count my shekel before buying a few rolls, but these days the veins in my eyelids start to twitch when I see basic emulsion like Kodak Gold going for USD12. That's the stuff I'd buy for the point and shoot when I did not care about the quality of the vacation snapshots. ugh. Worst of all are the nutcases who try to fleece folks with rolls of 20 years old drugstore c41 film, stored lord knows how, for $50 a 3pack. As far as I knw film is not fine wine, but maybe some people are happy to pay more for the "aged look".

Just another #filmtoodear rant fueled by having run out of my stock of film and having to resupply. Too bad I like my film cameras so much.

 

[steveyork]

I still shoot 150-300 B&W rolls in 35mm a year. I've been bulk loading Orwo or Fomapan for awhile now and it comes out to about $2.75/roll. Even bigger savings come from developing at home. Not sure what I'd do if I was a dedicated tri-x user or color film shooter. I understand they're making 400' and 1000' bulk loaders now, and you can get Double X and Ektachrome (E6) in these sizes. Guess I'd do that. That's where you can save the most, those big rolls direct from the manufacturer, though my last 400' roll from Orwo had a bad portion in it.

 

[raydm6]

I haven't been shooting much film recently. My fridge has turned into a film HODL repository. 🙂

 

[MrFujicaman]

Did any of you ever shoot some Ilford "Selopan" film ? As far as I can tell, it only came in roll film sizes-127,620 and 120. Freestyle used to sell it in the early 1970's for as little as 23 cents a roll if you bought 100 rolls.

I always wondered if it was Ilford's version of Verichrome Pan.

 

[x-ray]

I was for sure shooting in the 70’s but never heard of Selopan.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

I still shoot 150-300 B&W rolls in 35mm a year. I've been bulk loading Orwo or Fomapan for awhile now and it comes out to about $2.75/roll. Even bigger savings come from developing at home. Not sure what I'd do if I was a dedicated tri-x user or color film shooter. I understand they're making 400' and 1000' bulk loaders now, and you can get Double X and Ektachrome (E6) in these sizes. Guess I'd do that. That's where you can save the most, those big rolls direct from the manufacturer, though my last 400' roll from Orwo had a bad portion in it.

With bulk loading "rolls" means next to nothing. I could load anything from 12 to 42 frames.

I was going through six 30meters bulks at least per year.
Cheapest at BH is Arista. 63x6=378 $. 427 USD after Canada taxes.
Five years and it is more than new Pentax Monochrome, which you have to pay once and it will lasts two decades easy.

I get it, many are willing to go hybrid, because film cameras are cool (as long as they work and someone is willing to fix them at reasonable price).

But to me, if you do bw film for real, which is darkroom printing, this is where huge cost smashes as freight train. Or you have to find old DR paper, which is less and less these days.

E6 is dead. Nobody using projectors and scans of any film is nothing but digital representation of something which was never visible on wet prints 🙂

 

[Dogman]

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.

So....I did. Bought a pristine F4 and a sticky F100--both total bargains (and the "sticky" F100 cleaned up nicely). Shot some of my freezer B&W film that expired last century. Haven't processed it yet but I bought the chemicals and I have all the tanks, reels, thermometers, etc., I need. Even bought some of that platinum-plated, diamond studded Tri-X film floating around out there these days. Ouch!

I'm apparently easily led. Especially down rabbit holes.

 

[Freakscene]

Did any of you ever shoot some Ilford "Selopan" film ? As far as I can tell, it only came in roll film sizes-127,620 and 120. Freestyle used to sell it in the early 1970's for as little as 23 cents a roll if you bought 100 rolls.

I always wondered if it was Ilford's version of Verichrome Pan.

Ilford Selopan was Ilford’s old tech medium speed film. Originally the H&D equivalent of modern 16-32 speed but in the 1930s before the 1943 ASA standard or the 1974 ISO standard. There was also a “Selochrome” but I’m not sure if it was the same, related, or different. Selopan evolved into FP2, then 3, then 4 and finally FP4+. Ilford have historically kept a generation earlier film in production and sold it in lower cost markets and to students. Pan 100 and Pan 400 seem to have turned into the Kentmere films, so they are still doing it.

I saw a few rolls of Selopan in the 1990s and it needed looooong development to get usable density. If memory serves me right, it needed long development times even when it was fresh from the data I dug up back then.

I still have several film cameras. More than I care to admit, really.

 

[rulnacco]

So I'll share my "good old days" story, prices included--and yes, they were good days indeed!

From 2002 to 2005, I lived in Atlanta, where the Wolf Cameras flagship store was located, on 14th Street. And we had (it's still in existence) Wings Camera, which sold all kinds of great film gear at excellent prices. (The proprietor explained to me that, at that time, many of his customers were doctors and dentists; so in his words, "They'll buy something and play with it for a few months, then bring it in and ask me to get whatever I can for it, they really don't care about the money." I took *full* advantage and bought lots of cool stuff, most of which I still have.)

When you walked into Wolf, on the right just inside the door was a big plastic trash can, sometimes two. Whenever the "professional" film expired, they'd send it back to the Atlanta branch to clear out. That waste basket was full of all kinds of film, usually for $1-$1.50 per roll. I'd go digging through it, pulling out all the Kodachrome, Provia, Astia (god, I loved that film), Portra, NPH, NPZ, Reala (another great film, RIP), etc. It was mostly 35mm, but once in a while they'd have 120 film and sometimes even 220 film in there.

And at that time, the pros were starting to dump film for digital, and so I was buying most of my medium format film, color at least, on eBay for pennies basically.

Oh, and did I mention I had a JOBO system I'd gotten for a very reasonable price? And you could still buy E-6 (I always used the Kodak six-bath process) and C-41 kits very inexpensively? I processed all my slide and negative film at home--and in those days, you could actually *take your Kodachrome to Wal-Mart*, they'd send it off to Dwayne's or someplace, and within 10 days you'd have it back, for less than five bucks.

As if all that wasn't great enough, I bought an excellent-condition Crown Graphic from Wings for about $250. When the 4x5 Polaroid expired, they would bring that back to Wolf, too, and stack it on a folding table. A box with 20 exposures worth of film back then cost $52-$55, depending on the film type; Wolf would clear it out for *$11.99 per box* after it expired. Whenever I saw some sitting there I was gonna walk out of the store with 5-6 boxes or more. And I made my money back and then some: I hung out downtown by Five Points and did street portraits, selling them for $3 or $4 per Polaroid. (If it was someone interesting, I'd take two, and discreetly keep the best one for myself.) People were amazed seeing the print when you peeled apart the holder (most film developed within a minute or less), and they sold like hotcakes. At the price I was getting the Polaroid for, I used that Crown Graphic like the world's biggest point-and-shoot.

Plus, I'd bought a house outside the city with a mother-in-law suite (with a bathroom for water) down in the basement. That became my luxurious darkroom. There was nothing better than sitting in the amber glow of the safelights, a glass of wine at hand, and Miles Davis or Beethoven coming through the speakers I'd run down through the ceiling, and printing all night or in the heat of the day (as the darkroom was in the lowest part of the house, the AC kept it *nice* and cool).

That was probably the most productive period I've ever had as a photographer. I was having *enormous* fun, too, while not having to spend much money at all on gear, chemicals, and film, and I knew that...it wasn't going to last. Sigh.

 

[x-ray]

I don’t remember Ilford before the 70’s. It may have been around but wasn’t readily available. Adox and Agfa made their appearance in the 60’s and used some of it especially KB14 and KB17. Neofin Blue or Rodinal for KB14 and Rodinal for KB17. Both made beautiful negs. I still have a good supply of frozen Efke / Adox 25 in 35 and 120 and 4x5 and 5x7 in 50 speed. All were outstanding films under the right conditions. I really liked the old Agfa 100 and 25. I have an unopened frozen box of 4x5 25 I’ll use one day. I used Agfa 100 in 120 for fashion work for years and shot thousands of rolls.

Agfa had a promo about 30 years ago for a certain number proof of purchased you could get a Domke photo vest and a leather Domke F2 bag. I still have and use both.

 

[Retro-Grouch]

With bulk loading "rolls" means next to nothing. I could load anything from 12 to 42 frames.

I was going through six 30meters bulks at least per year.
Cheapest at BH is Arista. 63x6=378 $. 427 USD after Canada taxes.
Five years and it is more than new Pentax Monochrome, which you have to pay once and it will lasts two decades easy.

I get it, many are willing to go hybrid, because film cameras are cool (as long as they work and someone is willing to fix them at reasonable price).

But to me, if you do bw film for real, which is darkroom printing, this is where huge cost smashes as freight train. Or you have to find old DR paper, which is less and less these days.

E6 is dead. Nobody using projectors and scans of any film is nothing but digital representation of something which was never visible on wet prints 🙂

I'd be careful of being a little too dogmatic! E6 is not dead for me. I love it and will continue to shoot it. And a quick calculation at the B&H prices for Ektachrome and Fuji mailers shows that I am paying $2.66 each time I push the shutter for a 6x6 exposure on 120 film. And yes, I say "Ouch!" each time I do, since I ain't rich, by a long shot. But this is what I choose, and although it may not be a "rational" choice by many people's standards, love and passion often appear that way.

 

[x-ray]

Rulnacco I live in East Tn and went to Atlanta often. You probably remember when KEH was on State St in an old house and you would ask to see a piece of equipment and the clerk would go in the back and pull the item and bring it to the front. Then they moved next door to E-6 of Atlanta out near 10th st. Unfortunately E-6 of Atlanta is gone now. Their E-6 was the best processing I’ve seen.

Kodak in Chamblee was in your back door. I think their Kodachrome processing was the only ones in the south. My TSR arranged for me to tour the facility and got to talk to the techs and watch them run Kodachrome.

The Kodak and Fuji reps called on my studio often. Bill Prudner was the Fuji rep and worked out of Atlanta and my Kodak reps Jeff McLeod and Jim Much were out of Knoxville. All three were great assets to the pro industry. Polaroid even had a rep and Leica and Nikon reps called on us too.

The good old days!