I don't shoot film, I'm not rich enough...

[Brian Puccio]

Even if I pay $5 a roll for Provia and another $5 to develop, that's $10 for 36 or $0.2777 per frame. Say I shoot 3000 frames this year, that's $833 per year in film and development. My M6 ($1200) and Coolscan 4000 ($800 were up front costs). Five years on this system will cost me $6165 (assuming I don't do any of that super cheap DIY B&W business).

How much does an M9 cost again? $7000? That I don't even have?

So in six years, with the amount of money that I've spent on film I can get myself an M9 (that I can't afford now, so it's moot). By then they'll have an M11 and maybe the corners won't go wonky on super wide lenses. And maybe the resolution will best a roll a Adox CMS 20.

 

[lorriman]

Shooting a normal short trip, lets say 3 to 4 days is 20 rolls 135-36, ~ $250. 4 trips of that kind per year adds up to $1000... (that is only 80 rolls of 135-36 film, 2880 frames).

I can't conceive of shooting so much. 1/2 a roll a day perhaps if I was bored but 20 rolls in 4 days!??!?!? A recent five day trip used up 15 frames. I expect to keep half of them.

A photo reduction strategy is needed I think. Perhaps purchasing postcards for objects and buildings. Perhaps only using the camera for personal shots: friends/family etc. Maybe designing your photos in advance. There must be other possibilties.

 

[semilog]

I can't conceive of shooting so much. 1/2 a roll a day perhaps if I was bored but 20 rolls in 4 days!??!?!? A recent five day trip used up 15 frames. I expect to keep half of them.

A photo reduction strategy is needed I think. Perhaps purchasing postcards for objects and buildings. Perhaps only using the camera for personal shots: friends/family etc. Maybe designing your photos in advance. There must be other possibilties.

To each his own. I just shot 20 rolls in ~3.5 days in Japan, with perhaps 30 miles of walking. It's pretty easy to shoot a roll in a mile of walking through a densely populated city.

Especially when I'm doing street photography, it's a numbers game. Far better to not hesitate, and spoil a frame, than to miss a good shot.

 

[back alley]

I love how people assume we all use digital the same way. When I used film... I could shoot 3-4 rolls a day. Now with digital, I'll shoot 100 something photos on the same type of day... what's changed? Nothing. :bang:

+ 1


ditto

 

[Phil_F_NM]

Part of this comes down to other factors that all add up to opportunity cost of film vs digital. If you don't have the time and don't have an hour lab which will give you the consistent quality processing and scanning you need, then digital is the only way to go.
If you have time for process yourself, then film is definitely a viable medium. It's the one I prefer, but with my program and what I'm positioning myself to do after I complete school, digital is the only affordable medium when all the costs are taken into account, the biggest one being time.
Deadlines are seconds to minutes after a shoot now, instead of hours or a day as it was even a decade ago.

Phil Forrest

 

[charjohncarter]

Try oil painting and/or woodworking as an art. Both are also very expensive. Of course, you could try digital, but you will have to buy a DSLR to have any control over your art. Or then you could buy on the BAY a $10 SLR and shoot film and get great results (how many roll of B&W and processing would $1490 buy), and you would only have to learn f-stop, shutter speed, and ISO (not 20 button functions).

 

[semilog]

Try oil painting and/or woodworking as an art. Both are also very expensive. Of course, you could try digital, but you will have to buy a DSLR to have any control over your art. Or then you could buy on the BAY a $10 SLR and shoot film and get great results (how many roll of B&W and processing would $1490 buy), and you would only have to learn f-stop, shutter speed, and ISO (not 20 button functions).

Chortle. Like the dealer said, the first one's always free. 🙄

 

[shadowfox]

Yeah, but...

Film costs. If you can afford to spend X on photography, you can buy a digital for X and you're pretty much done. Or, you can buy a film camera for less than X and spend the rest on film and processing. At some point, you will have spent more than X, i.e., more than you can afford.

Bill, you forgot that most people upgrade their digital camera every two years. Some less than that.

There is always something new that you need or want. Otherwise the digital camera industry as it is today, won't exist.

So multiply that X by however many times you upgrade given a span of time (see math below). Plus software.

Passion or how much someone likes photography don't count for that much if someone can't afford to sustain a film habit.

Passion has a lot to do with it, but it is not apparent until that time when you *have* to make sacrifices.

But that's philosophical, let's do some math.

If I take the distributed average of my total film consumption, I have shot exactly 1 roll per week for the past 3 years. To make it easy, let's say that's 50 weeks per year x 3 = 150 rolls. Assuming (**) I paid $4 per roll, that is $600 total.

I develop myself, let's say I spend $1 per roll, so we're adding $150 to the total making it $750.

If you can line up people who spent less than $750 in three years shooting digital as often as I did with film, I'm pretty sure that line would not be very long.

** Truth to the matter is, my average is way less than $4 per roll, and I'm not even bulk-loading 95% of the time.

 

[Rob-F]

Digital is more expensive at the beginning (gear cost)...then it's free...
But preserving highlights for me is priceless (hence I shoot mainly film)

Lorenzo, Digital is not free even then! The printing ink works out to around $5000 a gallon. And what about the paper cost? Have you seen what they charge for a stinkin' piece of paper that has not even got any silver on it? Digital is convenient for color printing. And you can make nice "slide shows" for the computer screen. But that's about it.

I agree. I like preserving highlights myself. I'll just keep my film cameras and darkroom.

 

[Keith]

It all becomes a little different when you live in a non film friendly country ... and Oz is just that IMO!

I've sat here with the calculator and worked out my costs exactly when I buy from Freestyle ... including currency exchange and postage from the US and it is dependant on how much I buy at the time.

If I bulk load Arista Premium 400 (Tri-X rebranded) a 36 exposure roll costs me $2.38 AUD by the time I pop it in the camera. The cheapest I have seen Tri-X in Oz is around $7.00 per roll ... that's no small saving!

Buying Arista Premium in 36 exposure rolls from Freestyle works out to $2.94 AUD per roll so I only save 56 cents per roll by bulk loading. Not a huge saving there but I just prefer to bulk load where I can.

 

[dyao]

Last summer I paid about $650 for an E-P1 body...this year sold it for $250. Two years ago bought a olympus e-520 for about $700...gave it to my dad, but now I would guess the value is $200.

Now I have a leica M3 and M4-2 which will probably recoup 80-90% of what I paid for them.

with film, I think, in the end, if you buy quality stuff, if you decide to sell everything in the end you are mostly out the cost of shipping fees and film costs.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I shoot a lot of film. A lot! I spend $1500-2000 a year on film, plus whatever I spend on chemicals (probably $150 at most, chemicals are CHEAP). I should have an M9 or a Nikon D3x, right? Its cheaper after a few yrs! Not for me. I will likely never have $7000 in hand at once to spend. I can buy film a few rolls at a time for $10 or $20. I have income every week thats sufficient to allow that, but I'd have to stop shooting for 3-4 yrs to save the $$$ for a good digital camera. I'd rather be dead than not photograph and I like film and the way my film cameras work, so I'm sticking to film, despite it costing 'more' in the long term.

 

[Mister E]

I could have easily bought an M9 with all of my film development costs not even including selling my film M cameras.

 

[dyao]

I suppose the real way to think of it is in terms of driving a car, or other reoccuring expenses. For example, if you eat out one less time a week, or make your own coffee instead of buying one for $3, or buying generic cereal instead of name brand cereal... you could easily squeeze out enough money for a roll every day or couple of days.

 

[nikku]

Chortle. Like the dealer said, the first one's always free. 🙄

Same is true for digi cams.

 

[sig]

When it comes to cost for film or digital the only way to think is:
Cost of camera and equipment + (Cost of using camera pr photo X How many photos)

Easy

 

[kuzano]

Digital is exorbitantly expensive compared to film.

Digital is exorbitantly expensive compared to film.

Over the last decade, I have spent far more money chasing digital cameras with the same alacrity that I have chased film cameras for forty years prior. Digital has been atrociously expensive for gear, accessories, computers and programs, etc.

But the cost that blows digital way over film expensewise is the time spent post processing.

For the last twenty years, I have been working on computer teching and configuration. All that time I have billed out tech time at $50 hourly. Even now, I am much lower than the market, which is more like $75-80 shop time.

If I were billing myself $50 per hour for the time I spend post processing my images, it would be stupid of me to do digital. The time I spend on post processing could be earning me $50 per hour, if I were working on customer computers, which I could easily support a film habit... (and do)

These discussions are fruitless ... totally unproductive. Everyone has their own rationale.

By the way, my current post processing for the digital I do shoot is to do NO post processing. I have determined the camera that gives me great results using just the OOC jpegs, with more than satisfactory image quality. If I want better, I simply shoot medium format and large format film.

 

[Melvin]

I'm a luddite. I like black and white film. $4 for a roll of tri-x. $20 every month or two for chemicals. The cost of paper I don't count, since you have to buy that either way if you want to make prints. Enlargers can be found very cheap these days. I got my Beseler 45 color head for $20 when a local college downsized its darkrooms.

My point is it's color film that's expensive, not film.

 

[craygc]

With film - film and developing are the recurring costs

With digital - the camera becomes the recurring cost

 

[semilog]

With film - film and developing are the recurring costs

With digital - the camera becomes the recurring cost

With both, the lenses become the recurring costs. 🙄