Anyone know if there's anyone who actually sells bulk rolls of 120 film to consumers? It would be nice to be able to bulk roll my medium format film, but I cannot seem to find anyone who actually sells 100' lengths of the stuff, or even backing paper
TYSM!! This was extremely helpful! How is rolling 220 vs 120? I imagine you can use one 120 backing paper for two 220 rolls since you just need it for the ends, but is it annoying to find a place that will develop it?Yep, just did it today as a matter of fact!
You can get the film from a few places if you’re willing to buy an entire master roll, but as of right now, Astrum is the only place I can find 61.5mm rolls at reasonable quantities. After shipping and tariffs a roll of FN-64 in 61.5mm costs around $180, ≈$5/roll.
Backing paper is also possible to get, Shanghai sells it for $4/roll, although I bought some for 127 and it was awful so I’m not sure if I’d recommend them.
I have also gotten giant rolls of red/black paper from Astrum, but you need to cut them and mark them yourself. I do this for 220, not for 120 though.
I usually just ask people for used backing paper.
As far as bulk rolling film goes, I honestly wouldn’t recommend it to many people. Can it be done cheaper? Yes, but it takes a lot more time and effort than 35mm.
To put this in perspective, I just rolled about 30 rolls of 2424 infrared film and it took me about 4-5 hours just to roll already slit film into pre-prepared backing paper. including the time it took to prepare the paper and slit the film, it probably took closer to 10 hours.
Meanwhile, I think it takes me maybe 30-45 minutes to break up a 100 foot roll of 35mm in my darkroom without a loader.
Huh, guess I'll remove foot from mouth ...
I recently dipped my toes into hand rolling 120 film. I bought 36"x14" sheets of Fujifilm Super HR-U green x-ray film. It's orthochromatic so can be cut, rolled, and developed under a safelight. With a little practice, it's not that big of a pain, but it does require lots of prep and working carefully. The drawback is that it scratches very easily and of course it's a quirky film stock to begin with. In terms of price, if I use all of the film and there's no waste, each roll is like a $1.25 USD.
I'm still beta testing so we'll have to see if I like the results enough to buy more x-ray film and do this again in the future. It's been a fun experiment at the very least.
I'm hoping to source other film stocks and to try more hand rolling in the future.
I'll echo that prep is very important. I have it down to how many rubber bands go on each wrist and pre slit pieces of tape.
Yes exactly. Anything you can do with the lights on, do it. Have everything you're going to need ready to go at your side, so that you can just focus on rolling and securing the film.
If you're planning to do 5 rolls, have 6 backing papers ready, for when you inevitably drop one on the ground. Same with rubber bands, pieces of tape, etc
As with many of these things, much depends on whether/how much one values their own time. Of course, when speaking of a hobby, it's difficult to determine an hourly rate. Still, if we do so for amusement's sake and put a very modest $25/hr to your labor, we arrive at $100-$250 in labor. Across 30 rolls, let's say $3.25 to $8.25. Add to this the base price of $5 for the film itself, bringing the total up to $8.25 to $13.25. As I understand, Arista 120 film retails for ca. $6.50 (e.g. B&H).about 30 rolls of 2424 infrared film and it took me about 4-5 hours just to roll already slit film into pre-prepared backing paper. including the time it took to prepare the paper and slit the film, it probably took closer to 10 hours.
Why exactly would it be nice? Decide accordingly. It may seem nice, but if the economic perspective prevails, I expect you're better off buying the commercial product, provided you approach the matter rationally.It would be nice to be able to bulk roll my medium format film
Honestly I'd like to be able to shoot 220, which is nonexistent as far as I can tell. As far as the time commitment, to me, this has a positive value, since it lets me spend more time working on photography when it's too dark to shoot. Lower out of pocket cost is nice, and is one of the main reasons I was looking at it (I've averaged a bit under three quarters of a roll per day, so lowering costs wherever possible is a HUGE bonus) but the other thing that was drawing me to it was just that I kind of just enjoy everything about the photographic process and wanted to be as involved in it as I can, start to finish (I'd give it a year before I'm shooting dry-plates and making my own emulsions). Also as a general rule, there is nothing about this hobby that I do because it's rational. I am, it seems, an extremely irrational person.@MCB18 thanks for chiming in! Others, too, of course, but I was particularly looking forward to your response since I knew you are deeply involved in this.
As with many of these things, much depends on whether/how much one values their own time. Of course, when speaking of a hobby, it's difficult to determine an hourly rate. Still, if we do so for amusement's sake and put a very modest $25/hr to your labor, we arrive at $100-$250 in labor. Across 30 rolls, let's say $3.25 to $8.25. Add to this the base price of $5 for the film itself, bringing the total up to $8.25 to $13.25. As I understand, Arista 120 film retails for ca. $6.50 (e.g. B&H).
Now, of course I understand that there are other motives involved. From the financial perspective, the hourly rate I mentioned is of course fictive/hypothetical and it doesn't represent an out-of-pocket cost. If you're in a position where you want to save every penny, evidently, the value of your time drops in relation to the pennies saved. Also, what @MCB18 does is making available (to himself as well as others) types of film otherwise not accessible to photographers; for someone rolling for themselves, this can of course be a motive. And I can imagine someone enjoys the DIY spirit and having been manually involved in as much of the process as possible (consider wet plate on a DIY camera!)
I guess this brings me to the question:
Why exactly would it be nice? Decide accordingly. It may seem nice, but if the economic perspective prevails, I expect you're better off buying the commercial product, provided you approach the matter rationally.
You could also work on printing/editing technique. In the end, rolling film doesn't do much for the photo as such. But here, too, it depends on what you're after. If this is more about doing something with your hands and the photographic results isn't the primary objective, evidently it's fine to spend time with this kind of thing.lets me spend more time working on photography when it's too dark to shoot
This is true, and I plan to start printing soon, the issue is my schedule is insane due to my job (graveyard shift) and does not mesh well with most of the places offering dark rooms for rent in my area, so short of setting up my own dark room (something some friends and I have been talking about and may possibly be doing eventually) I'm a bit limited there. Ideally, I'd be doing everything myself, entirely analog, and only scanning selected prints if I wanted to post them, but that's a while aways at the moment, so I'm kind of just trying to do what I can as I get the ability to do it. Right now, I'm focusing more on getting the image as close to what I want straight out of the camera, which I know is severely limiting, but until I can edit prints in a darkroom, it seems like a fun experiment and is about the best I can do.That sounds like a perfectly reasonable set of motivations!
One thing I would put up for debate:
You could also work on printing/editing technique. In the end, rolling film doesn't do much for the photo as such. But here, too, it depends on what you're after. If this is more about doing something with your hands and the photographic results isn't the primary objective, evidently it's fine to spend time with this kind of thing.
That's only sensible in the analog world if you're making slides/positives. With negatives, there's no such thing as "straight out of the camera" unless you want to look at an un-inverted negative. I'm saying this because this is a notion/conception that still pops up from time to time and IMO it doesn't make any sense. There's no objective merit to the "straight out of the camera" thing. The negative is an intermediate product; it needs to contain the image information required for the final image; nothing more, nothing less.getting the image as close to what I want straight out of the camera
For me it's mostly just a surrogate metric for technical ability. If I know I can consistently get negatives that could all be printed without adjusting anything about the printing process to get the desired result (basically, the contact print results in images that have all the same characteristics as the image I had in my head for every frame, other than size), then I know I have reached a high level of technical proficiency and really understand what I'm doing. Also since I don't have a dark-room, If I wanted to get enlargements of my negatives made I do have to trust whoever is making the enlargements to make it work. Minimizing the amount of work they have to do would also mean less guesswork on my end as to how the prints should turn out. That being said, I am not very knowledgable on the subject so I may be completely off base with that assumption.There's no objective merit to the "straight out of the camera" thing.
Much of the artistic choice is made in the printing stage. You're not just relying on the person who makes the print to make it work in a basic sense, you're relying on them to interpret your image. There's a fun exercise we did not too long ago; perhaps you noticed it: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/lets-all-print-or-maybe-scan-one-negative-2025.215648 We all had the same negative (roughly speaking) and the same set of scans to work with. No two prints were the same - and that was a fairly straightforward scene to begin with.If I wanted to get enlargements of my negatives made I do have to trust whoever is making the enlargements to make it work
I would offer for consideration to look at it from the other side: the guesswork would really be on the side of who makes the print; they have to figure out what you went for when you photographed the scene. In the world of fine art photographers and printers, it's common for photographers and printers (or post-processors) to have long-standing relationships that involve a great degree of co-specialization. They know each others work and vision and the printer/processor knows (after a while) how to interpret the instructions or comments they receive from the photographer. There will often be several versions of the prints/final images based on initial samples and iterative adjustments leading up to the end result.Minimizing the amount of work they have to do would also mean less guesswork on my end as to how the prints should turn out.
This is exactly why I started doing it, and although most folks are interested in 120 for various reasons, I do still make 220 for myself and others when they ask. I can even make my own backing paper now!Honestly I'd like to be able to shoot 220, which is nonexistent as far as I can tell.
Exactly right! In no this case though, for 2424 I am doing it in exchange for the rest of the roll. I’d definitely rather have the rest of the film than the ≈$350 I’d charge for making all of it 120. And I will say, if I did sell any of it (and tbh I probably won’t), it would definitely be more than $15.As with many of these things, much depends on whether/how much one values their own time. Of course, when speaking of a hobby, it's difficult to determine an hourly rate. Still, if we do so for amusement's sake and put a very modest $25/hr to your labor, we arrive at $100-$250 in labor. Across 30 rolls, let's say $3.25 to $8.25. Add to this the base price of $5 for the film itself, bringing the total up to $8.25 to $13.25.
Honestly I'd like to be able to shoot 220, which is nonexistent as far as I can tell. As far as the time commitment, to me, this has a positive value, since it lets me spend more time working on photography when it's too dark to shoot. Lower out of pocket cost is nice, and is one of the main reasons I was looking at it (I've averaged a bit under three quarters of a roll per day, so lowering costs wherever possible is a HUGE bonus) but the other thing that was drawing me to it was just that I kind of just enjoy everything about the photographic process and wanted to be as involved in it as I can, start to finish (I'd give it a year before I'm shooting dry-plates and making my own emulsions). Also as a general rule, there is nothing about this hobby that I do because it's rational. I am, it seems, an extremely irrational person.
@MCB18 thanks for chiming in! Others, too, of course, but I was particularly looking forward to your response since I knew you are deeply involved in this.
As with many of these things, much depends on whether/how much one values their own time. Of course, when speaking of a hobby, it's difficult to determine an hourly rate. Still, if we do so for amusement's sake and put a very modest $25/hr to your labor, we arrive at $100-$250 in labor. Across 30 rolls, let's say $3.25 to $8.25. Add to this the base price of $5 for the film itself, bringing the total up to $8.25 to $13.25. As I understand, Arista 120 film retails for ca. $6.50 (e.g. B&H).
Now, of course I understand that there are other motives involved. From the financial perspective, the hourly rate I mentioned is of course fictive/hypothetical and it doesn't represent an out-of-pocket cost. If you're in a position where you want to save every penny, evidently, the value of your time drops in relation to the pennies saved. Also, what @MCB18 does is making available (to himself as well as others) types of film otherwise not accessible to photographers; for someone rolling for themselves, this can of course be a motive. And I can imagine someone enjoys the DIY spirit and having been manually involved in as much of the process as possible (consider wet plate on a DIY camera!)
I guess this brings me to the question:
Why exactly would it be nice? Decide accordingly. It may seem nice, but if the economic perspective prevails, I expect you're better off buying the commercial product, provided you approach the matter rationally.
There used to be thousands of feet of it in 70mm on there, which is what I bought. Much easier to handle. I have been thinking about how to make a 9.5 inch roll slitter, but that is a very big project so I have yet to make much progress besides saying “This is the concept for how it should work.” If I can get that made then I can offer many more old and obscure film sizes to folks.Part of it definitely is cost savings. I originally got interested in the idea of handrolling 120 when I saw those big boxes of Aviphot on eBay and calculated the theoretical cost per roll. However, I couldn't resolve (at least not yet) a way to easily and safely breakdown a 9.5" x 250' roll in the dark. It would probably require a custom built jig. Happy to hear any suggestions about this project though
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