250 prints

[Graham.b]

This is a topic that has not long happened in town. We took a slide 50 in for dev. While we were in there we got talking to the young lady about all things pictures. She said her sister had just printed 250 prints at £12, from her digi. This got me thinking, that is 2 rolls of fuji 50 and one dev.
But in another word i asked where her back ups were, on a disk. What about the future, a reply. It will be around until i am 80 years. This young lady is about late 20s.

Well lots of paper for little money, or nothing for the future, does any one care.

Graham

 

[titrisol]

Yes, I perefer printed photos....

 

[mikebarger]

I'm sure I'm going to get lots of hate mail, but I don't know if many of our prints will be of interest to anyone in 80 years.

How many of your grand (or great grand) parents pictures do you display?

Guess I just think the longevity of prints is over rated.

Mike

 

[Graham.b]

So do i guess it is the prints and not the effort that goes into the D/R. Are we looking at the over side. Looks like a throw away world.

Graham,

 

[mikebarger]

For us it is the process and the prints. For 99% of the world it's the print.

When we have been gone for 80 years, really how many of our prints will be on display somewhere. I bet it is less than .000000000something%. So to the general population does it matter if a negataive or print will be around for 80+ years? I don't think so.

It is good enough for me that the products and processes are here for us to enjoy.

Mike

 

[Robert Kerwin]

The family snapshots will persist, the serious "art" stuff that people devote massive quantities of time and energy into making will end up in the landfill.

- Robert

 

[Claire Senft]

I have no idea how people will feel about our photos in 80 years. I do believe that 500 years from now they will be very valuable. Of course, that requires that a lot of care must be taken in making and keeping the photos for 500 years.

 

[aparat]

The family snapshots will persist, the serious "art" stuff that people devote massive quantities of time and energy into making will end up in the landfill.

- Robert

Yes, I agree completely. The likelihood of someone discovering our work in a box somewhere in the attic is very slim. However, the photos that preserve our and our friends' and family's lives will be around for a long time.

 

[pentaxuser]

She said her sister had just printed 250 prints at £12, from her digi.

Well lots of paper for little money, or nothing for the future, does any one care.

Graham

I wonder what paper and inks were used. I had always been under the impression that good quality inkjet photo paper and printer inks meant that the prints costs were at least comparable to darkroom costs and factoring in unproven longevity meant that trad prints were very much worthwhile.

However sivler gelatin paper has gone through the roof pricewise whereas it seems that no such increase from what you tell us applies to non trad paper.

Forget the film and dev, 250 prints in 5x7 trad paper alone is now more like £35 and if it's 6x4 it's only slightly less.

Apparently increase in raw materials account for 2 increases in price for Ilford paper. One stockist is even apologising for it on its website!

Seriously though, such increases may not dissuade the committed darkroom diehards but it will do nothing to effect any positive change in the number debating whether trad methods are worth implementing.

Coming as it does when we enter possibly the worst recession seen since the 1930s, it's bleak. The only bright spot I can cling to is that with an inevitable drop in raw material prices of which oil is the most obvious example, this will be the last rise for a number of years and that our disposable income will eventually rise while price increases will lag behind as producers such as Ilford then take advantage of raw material prices decreases and may even pass them on.

Without such light at the end of the tunnel, I fear that that the alternative is that the light in the tunnel comes from a digi express train which will roll over and flatten analogue photography.

pentaxuser

 

[mikebarger]

For the most part, that train has already rolled by.

How many of your friends/family still shoot with film? I'll shoot with it until it is gone, and my freezer is empty.

I bet only one in thirty of my friends or co-workers shoot film.

 

[benjiboy]

Many people I speak to can't see any point in even buying a digital camera, because they can shoot pictures on their cell phones.

 

[ann]

pentaxuser,

those prints are very likey not inkjet prints, but ones that have been run through the color processing machines . digital files exposed to color printing papers and developed in color tanks.

cost about 10cents a piece here in the states.