Don't wait too long on those Fuji instant print loads. They don't last well, even refrigerated. No instant print film does.
I started doing photography seriously when I started high school in the 1960s. Film was always the biggest expense ... of course, at the time, buying high end photographic gear was hopelessly expensive too, given I was a teenager, so I just worked with what I managed to get my hands on. I received a couple of big boons by way of my uncles and my parents in that regard, at the time, but the film and chemistry was always on me to figure out how to buy. I just decided that this was what was important to me and spent what little money I had on film rather than on a lot of the other things kids my age were spending their allowances on.
🙂
Same goes for now. The consumables in film photography, mostly film, are always the bottom line in the cost of doing photography. You have to choose what's important to you.
Digital photography's cost matrix is rather different, and its cost is driven up by the marketing which keeps pushing us to regard that two-year-out-of-date model camera to be obsolete and undesirable, new cameras offer so much much more...! I always find this to be very artificial: to wit, my ancient 2003 Olympus E-1 DSLR is still every bit the excellent picture making machine it was when it was first released those 19 years ago. Actually better, since the tools to process raw exposures have become so much better in the meanwhile—not to mention that my skills in using those tools have improved dramatically in the past 19 years as well. But nowadays we're driven to disparage its measly 5 Mpixel resolution and relatively limited dynamic range as "not worth using any more" regardless that this camera was/still is capable of producing superb, exhibition grade 20x24 inch photographs that won me awards. The CF cards I've got for it have never worn out, the batteries are still available, and it just keeps working and working. It's our expectations that have changed, not the equipment.
Ah well, it is what it is... I just finished a roll of Ferrania P30 I was lethargically shooting in my 1954 Kodak Retina IIc, loaded up the 1978 Leica M4-2 with some Ilford XP2 Super and the Polaroid SLR670x by MiNT with some 600 B&W. I'm slowly working my way through selection and printing of the last two loads of Minopan 25 that I shot in my '69 Minox C and '70 Minox B. And the digital Leica CL and M10 Monochrom keep chugging along...
Plenty of work to be done.
😀
G
Panda in Tree - Santa Clara 2022
Minox B + Minopan 25 (aka Agfa APX25)
Scanned with Leica M10-M+Focusing Bellows-R+Summicron-R 50mm
