Bulk film more expensive than rolls?

seezee · Aug 2, 2017

I was about to bite the bullet & order of 100′ roll of TRI-X, but after comparing prices, it seems it's cheaper to buy it already spooled onto rolls. The cheapest bulk roll was $99, which works out to $5.50 USD per roll, with a little left over. The cheapest for spooled film was $4.65 USD.

Huh? I haven't checked other film stock, but I suspect it's the same situation.

Guess I'll stop hoarding my brass Leica film cassettes.

lantau · Aug 2, 2017

Ilford, Foma, Adox and Agfaphoto have cheap(er) bulk rolls. Kodak doesn't seem to have facilities to roll bulk at a competitive price.

chip j · Aug 2, 2017

Yeah, I've got the brass Nikon film cassettes.

rrusso · Aug 2, 2017

Yeah I discovered this a couple of years ago. Doesn't make much sense, here's my thread:

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

seezee · Aug 2, 2017

rrusso said:
Yeah I discovered this a couple of years ago. Doesn't make much sense, here's my thread:

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Thanks for that link. I did a search on this subject & came up empty. Probably forgot to untick the "search this forum only" box.

sportster44 · Aug 2, 2017

Tri-X is crazy priced. In Toronto they want $250 CAD for a roll, where as I purchased HP-5+ for $80 through B&H. I love Tri-X but not at that price

seezee · Aug 2, 2017

sportster44 said:
Tri-X is crazy priced. In Toronto they want $250 CAD for a roll, where as I purchased HP-5+ for $80 through B&H. I love Tri-X but not at that price

I've decided to buy HP5+ instead.

pentaxuser · Aug 2, 2017

Not wishing to add to Kodak bashing( it does a good enough job there itself) but for the sake of accuracy and in case any new reader thinks this applies to all films, it might be sensible to add the word Kodak between bulk and rolls

pentaxuser

Gerald C Koch · Aug 2, 2017

I switched to Eastman 5222 Double-X ISO 250 some years ago. You can get a 100 ft for $89 plus shipping. I use an EI of 400 and develop in HC-110. Beautiful negatives. Don't miss Tri-X at all.

Dead Link Removed

sr44 · Aug 2, 2017

I've always found bulk rolling Ilford films to be very cost effective, plus it lets me roll 35 exposure rolls, which fit better in the common negative holder sheet sizes. Hp5 is only $59 shipped from B&H, I'm not sure what Kodak is thinking charging twice that for Tri-x.

Cholentpot · Aug 2, 2017

I use Ultrafine EXTREEEEM 400 and it does me no wrong. It's also very cheap.

rrusso · Aug 2, 2017

I didn't go back and re-read my thread, but IRRC, some insight was given (Matt King?, not sure) which explained a bit why the costs are what they are.

edit: Yep, it was MattKing, and he (and others) gave good info.

pentaxuser · Aug 2, 2017

Matt made a very considered response in defence of Kodak's position but we have no means of knowing how well the facts of Kodak bulk roll production squares with his explanation. No word from Kodak of course which is a pity. If I ran Kodak and knew of the very large base for analogue called APUG I might want to explain there why my bulk film is so expensive compared to my cassette film when I realise that many users may not understand my plight to do anything about it. Some believe it is deliberate policy to price its bulk film so highly compared with cassette film. If I were Kodak I'd want to put that misunderstanding to bed asap

I have just expressed my inability to follow a Kodak advert in another thread and discovered that when writing my post the screen "greyed out" . So clearly I have underestimated Kodak's long arm when dealing with those who complain

pentaxuser

Sirius Glass · Aug 2, 2017

Kodak bulk film has been barely worth buying or not worth buying for years. Stick to the packaged film.

guangong · Aug 2, 2017

I buy Ilford Delta 100 in 100ft rolls not only because I have Leica and Contax cassettes but more importantly because there is less waste when slitting for Minox and Minolta 16. But without the need for slitting film I would probably forego bulk 35mm and just buy 36exposure rolls for convenience.

MattKing · Aug 2, 2017

The only thing that Kodak has said is a comment on the Emulsive interview of Kodak Alaris, where they referred to the costs associated with bulk rolls being very high.
And while it is true that I don't have direct communication from either Eastman Kodak or Kodak Alaris about the cost components of bulk film vs. individual rolls, I have a decent understanding about how manufacturing costs are reflected in retail prices, and, I would suggest, much better knowledge than all those who think it should be much easier and cheaper to just "whip up" a bulk roll or two and get it out to the stores.
Kodak Alaris is going to make money any which way they can. If Eastman Kodak can't make the quantities of bulk rolls that Kodak Alaris can market easily and charge a price that results in a competitive retail price, then you aren't going to get a competitive retail price.
I would guess that the market for bulk film might be less than 1% of what it once was. Is it not surprising that the large scale manufacturers are less able to service that market at a competitive price then the smaller scale manufacturers?

John Wiegerink · Aug 3, 2017

I'm still scratching my head over this one. Now, it could be that cost in manufacturing is part of it, but I'd say it is a smaller part than Kodak Alaris says. It also could be they just don't want to mess with bulk, but if they have to then they are going to make it well worth their time and effort. It just seems very strange to me when I can but Ultrafine Xtreme for just a little over $30.00 for 100ft. I'm still scratching my head on that, but maybe it's just head lice?

~andi · Aug 3, 2017

Just yesterday did some cost comparisons (germany):

Code:

film              cost per meter (bulk)  per 36f (bulk)      per 36f (ready made)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
TriX                4.60                  7.36                   5.40
HP5+                2.32                  3.71                   5.10
Fomapan 100         1.38                  2.20                   3.90

- prices in Euros.
- excluding shipping
- 36f roll price based on buying 10 rolls
- bulk roll price based on 30,5m roll
- assuming 1.6m film required for a 36f roll
- prices picked from a single mailorder store, there might be slight variations in the euro-cent range and there might be bigger savings ordering e.g. from the UK directly (e.g. ordering Ilford paper from silverprint vs. from a german shop can save you up to 100%)

A couple of years ago, the situation was almost reverse. Today you can save with almost all offers except Kodak.

August 2017

PS: No idea why the Kodak bulk is so expensive. Assuming the price is not made up by the stores but set by Kodak, i could imagine they want to push sales in ready made canisters because they own a canister or cardboard box factory or the confectioning machine is not written off yet...? i doubt they don't have the ability, all the movie stock is bulk film. anyways, probably only the Kodak people really know why.

Harry Stevens · Aug 3, 2017

If you want to discontinue a product make it super expensive and the claim lack of sales as a reason for it's discontinuation.

RattyMouse · Aug 3, 2017

Harry Stevens said:
If you want to discontinue a product make it super expensive and the claim lack of sales as a reason for it's discontinuation.

Works for Fuji, that's for sure.

Fujifilm never gives us a chance to save a film by paying higher prices. Reala 100 is a classic example. I was paying something like $4.5/roll when it disappeared. I thought that film was dirt cheap and I loved it dearly. Fuji just axed it. I would easily, easily pay $9.99/roll, maybe even a bit more.

Fujifilm took a massive, absolutely massive drop in my eyes after they axed Reala.

Ko.Fe. · Aug 3, 2017

Where I'm Kodak is behind any reasonable and current pricing for rolls or bulks and as of 2016 on chemicals as well. I switched to Ilford years ago not because of it, but because I like Ilford BW films more than Kodak for every possible aspect.
The bulk of HP5+ gives me somthing like 30 rolls for price under two USD dollars.

rrusso · Aug 3, 2017

RattyMouse said:
Works for Fuji, that's for sure.

Fujifilm never gives us a chance to save a film by paying higher prices. Reala 100 is a classic example. I was paying something like $4.5/roll when it disappeared. I thought that film was dirt cheap and I loved it dearly. Fuji just axed it. I would easily, easily pay $9.99/roll, maybe even a bit more.

Fujifilm took a massive, absolutely massive drop in my eyes after they axed Reala.

Well if you're talking completely eliminating a film, versus the price difference between bulk and single roll, there might be a different set of criteria which causes it.

As far as I can tell, Fuji doesn't offer bulk rolls, but they do offer bricks, and it's strange, but checking B & H I found that it was hit or miss with the pricing. Some stuff was the same price either way, and some would show a savings, but the biggest savings was about $1 per roll. I didn't check every emulsion, however.

But Fuji is in a unique position compared to other companies in that they produce both cameras and film, and maybe that is a major factor for them that other companies don't have to deal with.

I do think, however, that Fuji listens to photographers more than most other companies (Ilford being an exception). For their cameras, at least, they brought back a more traditional control layout, and they're also not afraid to implement the some of the same features and components in their lower-end line which are found in their flagship products.

But whether you offer bulk rolls or not, if you buy more at one time, there should be a savings factor.

Sirius Glass · Aug 3, 2017

~andi said:
Just yesterday did some cost comparisons (germany):

Code:

film cost per meter (bulk) per 36f (bulk) per 36f (ready made) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- TriX 4.60 7.36 5.40 HP5+ 2.32 3.71 5.10 Fomapan 100 1.38 2.20 3.90

- prices in Euros.
- excluding shipping
- 36f roll price based on buying 10 rolls
- bulk roll price based on 30,5m roll
- assuming 1.6m film required for a 36f roll
- prices picked from a single mailorder store, there might be slight variations in the euro-cent range and there might be bigger savings ordering e.g. from the UK directly (e.g. ordering Ilford paper from silverprint vs. from a german shop can save you up to 100%)

A couple of years ago, the situation was almost reverse. Today you can save with almost all offers except Kodak.

August 2017

PS: No idea why the Kodak bulk is so expensive. Assuming the price is not made up by the stores but set by Kodak, i could imagine they want to push sales in ready made canisters because they own a canister or cardboard box factory or the confectioning machine is not written off yet...? i doubt they don't have the ability, all the movie stock is bulk film. anyways, probably only the Kodak people really know why.

That is roughly what my experience is. Kodak is just not set up to sell bulk film. Also photo finishers would give me a hard time about returning the reusable cassettes. I gave up bulk loading after many years of shooting 100 ft rolls of Ektachrome in Europe and processing in the US.

MattKing · Aug 3, 2017

Sirius Glass said:
Kodak is just not set up to sell bulk film.

Correct, as long as you add the qualifier "in the small volumes that the current market demands".
I'd be willing to bet that if someone went to Kodak Alaris with a request for a quote for something like 10,000 bulk rolls of Tri-X and at the same time went to Harman with a request for a quote for something like 10,000 bulk rolls of HP5+, the quotes would be either very similar or maybe even lower for the Tri-X.

pentaxuser · Aug 3, 2017

Surely the key in terms of answers is a question: At what point did Kodak bulk rolls start increase in price vis a vis its cassettes. On the economies of scale argument and accepting that Kodak's bulk roll production "machinery" is still geared up to economies of scale it can no longer achieve presumably the price rises for bulk rolls started at that point at which bulk rolls sales dropped off drastically.

If this price rise vis a vis its cassettes started, say 2 years ago but there was no sudden fall-off of sales at that point, then it does call into question the "not geared up current demand for bulk rolls" validity.

The fallback argument by "the defence" would then have to be: The price rises started only X months/years ago not because the sales suddenly dropped off then but because Kodak would have been justified in terms of cost of production, putting up its bulk roll prices a good while earlier but it held its bulk roll prices as long as it could but there came a point when the haemorrhaging just became too much.

The counter to that argument is that if bulk roll production is geared up to say X rolls per hour over 8/16 etc hours per day but sales no longer justify that length of production run, you do a version of what Ilford does with its ULF run, namely run the bulk roll production for a shorter period to build up stocks then shut down and divert the labour to other tasks.

I would have thought that bulk roll production isn't like say steel production whereby you cannot just switch on and off simply and seamlessly.

I remain sceptical as you will have gathered.

What I remain pretty confident of is that if Kodak can do nothing about its bulk roll prices and cannot compete against Ilford, Foma etc then consumers will decide the fate of Kodak bulk roll production whose fate is almost certain to be a permanent cessation.

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Bulk film more expensive than rolls?

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