Spool your own film Economics 101

What's out there?

What's out there?

venchka said:
As I said earlier, this idea was prompted by a new Watson loader in a local shop for $32. I suppose if I really want to save money I should buy a loaded from a friendly RFF member.

"Bueller? Bueller? Anybody?"

Is there a nice low mileage bulk film loader out there collecting dust? Would like to find it a good home? What about that roll of bulk film taking up space in your freezer? I have cash.
There are two mini labs within walking distance from my abode. I should be able to get empty canisters from them.
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Bulk Tri-X won't last on the shelves forever. If I'm going to do this I at least need to get a roll or three of Tri-X soon. Kodak also does Plus-X and the tMAX films in bulk. Fuji Acros 100 and some of their E-6 films can be had from Megapearls in Japan. Ilford has a good selection. Efke too.

This could get expensive initially. But then I could coast for awhile. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm....
 
"Given that Tri-X bulk rolls are fading quickly over the horizon "

Says who, again?

FWIW, I bulk roll TriX and PanF. The bulk rolls aren't cheap from my perspective, but a damn sight cheaper than buying pre-rolled film.

I can spend $50 or so on one bulk roll and it lasts the better part of a year or more. The same money buys me less than ten 24 ex. rolls. You do the math. There is no way $50 is going to buy me the same number of frames of pre-rolled. Sure, more money might let me close the gap, but I don't have "more money" to spend. And I certainly don't have thousands to spend on a hobby. If I did, I sure as hell wouldn't be a trustworthy source of data concerning the economics of bulk rolling for the amateur hobbyist. No offense to anyone who does have thousands to spend on their livelihood, of course 🙂
 
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Tom A said:
There was also the problem that he had mixed up a couple of cans and had both Tri X and Russian Type 17 (an aerial surveillance film that he picked up for $2/100ft while there). I did settle on Beutler as a standard, Tri X gets a bit grainy in this, but it suited the subject and the Type 17 was OK. However, I think the Cold War was a sham - you could not distinquish between an outhouse and a T-34 with that film!
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It was probably one of the only films he could get at the time. When I was doing research for a year in Poland in 1989 I bought 35mm microfilm (probably made by Foton) in bulk and used it for copying documents. It was probably more on the order of 50 cents for 100 feet or maybe even less. Photocopiers were hard to come by at the time, and I didn't want to have to ship all those paper copies at the end of my stay. I measured it by putting two pieces of tape on the bathroom wall, and I rolled it into canisters I got from a lab, and I had them process the film.

Film I used for street photography I bought on the black market once I ran out of the film I brought with me.
 
David, my friend Chris was offered a 3000ft reel of unspecified film when he was there. Wisely enough he declined! I think that the price was something like $80-100. The Type 17 he got from a russian photographer friend and he did bring some back. He also brought back the marketing nightmare for a film-maker. Russian 35mm 64 asa film named "Chernobyl". Tried to get that in your local store. It wasen't too bad at all and no. it did not glow in the dark. Translated from Russian it simply means" black and white".

Fred ,my rather high consumption of film stems from my background as a journalist/photographer and later as an industrial photographer. You quickly learn to shoot more than you think you will need and bracket, both for exposures and viewpoint. Clients do not want to hear that you "ran out of film". Film was also the cheapest component of assignments, air fares,hotels,food and busted equipment was far more costly.

Even today I flip the camera for a vertical shot - I can hear some grumpy editor going "Damn. why did you not shoot that vertical instead! - Or some AD going " Oooh I had a vision of this as a wide horizontal!".

I do agree that at time the shooting/processing overtakes the editing and things back up! At the moment I have started a new "program". Each time I wash film after processing, I pull a random binder of negs (100 sheet x 36-37 negs) and glance through it. I usually pull maybe 10-15 pages out and then scan 3-5 shots/page into Lightroom and after edit, put some on Flickr.

What is interesting is that the ones that I marked as "to print" or "2nd look" when they were originally filed away are usually not the ones that I scan today. Perspective changes with time!

My "organized" files go back about 25 years and beyond that they are in binders, but with no real indexing. Also our previous habit of moving a lot (7 countries - 3continents) had stuff going into the black hole of lost stuff. OF course what survived was a box with binders from the 60's and early 70's with "rejects" and film/camera tests! Murphy's law reigns supremely.

Right now it is all black/white, but I should also tackle 40-50 140 trays with kodachrome 25/64 and the boxes with 100's of file-pages of the same stuff. This means of course that I have to wash more film which in itself adds to the problem!
 
Hey all, new here but I thought I'd chime in. I've been bulk loading for a while, about 10 years. I have had more problems with scratches on factory-loaded film developed by pharmacy minilabs than on my own stuff.

I ran some packing tape (you know, the big, flat, clear and sticky kind for sealing boxes) through the felt traps of my cassettes before the last batch of Tri-x/plus-x that I loaded, figuring that it would pick up any large crud or loose fibers and it seemed to work out OK. Still no scratches and some of these cans are on their 4th or 5th reuse.

I'm going to have to get some more stock loaded soon. I went in to work on Tuesday and saw that they were _throwing away_ the darkroom. I snagged everything, including about 900 ft of bulk film. Lots of Panatomic-X, Kodalith, Tri-X, including one sealed 400ft roll of Tri-X 320 that expired in 1965. Time to get testing...
 
Greetings, and welcome to the forum!

Sounds like going to work on Tuesday was well worth it! What a great windfall - congratulations.


cosmonot said:
Hey all, new here but I thought I'd chime in. I've been bulk loading for a while, about 10 years. I have had more problems with scratches on factory-loaded film developed by pharmacy minilabs than on my own stuff.

I ran some packing tape (you know, the big, flat, clear and sticky kind for sealing boxes) through the felt traps of my cassettes before the last batch of Tri-x/plus-x that I loaded, figuring that it would pick up any large crud or loose fibers and it seemed to work out OK. Still no scratches and some of these cans are on their 4th or 5th reuse.

I'm going to have to get some more stock loaded soon. I went in to work on Tuesday and saw that they were _throwing away_ the darkroom. I snagged everything, including about 900 ft of bulk film. Lots of Panatomic-X, Kodalith, Tri-X, including one sealed 400ft roll of Tri-X 320 that expired in 1965. Time to get testing...
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