E6 cost has finally killed it for me

[Steve Roberts]

As my reserve of refrigerated 35mm E6 dwindles and I look at purchasing some more, I find myself stopping to take stock of just how expensive shooting 35mm slides has become.

Not so long ago, I could buy 35mm/36exp rolls in packs of ten for little over £5 a roll. As we all know to our cost, Fuji have increased their prices dramatically in recent times and the cheap, yet perfectly good, option to buy Fuji masquerading as Agfaphoto Precisa has now gone. Thus, I now find myself looking at 35mm/36exp rolls in the range of £13 - £17.00 each and there seems to be no price advantage buying in larger quantities.

Each time I send off films for developing and mounting, the price seems to have risen since the time before, as does the cost of return postage. The lab I use offers ‘free’ postage to them, but of course that is taken care of in their pricing structure.

If I buy an E6 film at current rates, I’m looking at £13 for the film (cheapest E100 I can find) plus £9.50 dev and mount plus £3.95 for return postage – total £26.45. (Over £30 for Fuji's more expensive offerings @ £17)

Though in the past I have defended the cost of E6 use in these forums, it’s now scary. I equate £26.45 to the best part of half a 100ft roll of FP4 or half a tank of petrol and I’m seriously asking myself how long I can or should go on shelling out this kind of money and whether it’s the time to leave colour work to the dreaded d*****l and spend the money saved on b/w materials instead. I currently have free use of a digital projector but could buy one of my own for the cost of a dozen transparency films plus D & P.

Selling out? Maybe.

“Use it or lose it!” Sure, but there are limits to how much I’m prepared to spend.

I’ve been holding my breath and hoping that E100 will fall in price, but of course that was more in hope than anticipation, so unless I win the Lottery (unlikely, as I don’t do it!) I think that when I’ve used up the last of my current E6 stock I shan’t be replacing it, except possibly a film at a time for occasional use in stereo transparency work.

It’s with great dismay that I find myself thinking along these lines, especially as I received two cracking boxes of slides in the post yesterday but as Bob Dylan told us “The times, they are a-changing”.

Steve

 

[removed account4]

Hi Steve

I don't do this, but is there any way you can buy BULK ROLLS of E6 film you like and then, process it at home? I know there are kits available that do not cost very much money and some say developing color / slide film is almost easier than B/W. If it is the effluence you are worried about, maybe you can strike up a deal with a local lab, and give them some copper/incentive to have them dispose of your effluence, or take it to hazmat disposal day at your local waste recovery center. I have thought of doing these things myself, but it didn't work out. It seems important to you.
Good luck with your situation
John
[added later] I should probably do this myself, I have hundreds of sheets of the good velvia and provia in my stash, and currently process them as b/w in print/film developer, can't afford $5-10$ /sheet processing !

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Shoot digital.

 

[jim10219]

I rarely shoot slide film. I load it into my 3D camera, which I shoot maybe 2 rolls a year (mostly vacation photos). Sometimes I will take a spare body or film back with me and shoot mainly with cheaper film, and might snap off a slide or two if I find something worthwhile. When I travel with my LF cameras, I may take one film holder with slide film, if I find a scene that wants it. But mostly, I avoid slide film due to the limited dynamic range.

What I'm saying is, don't quit shooting E6 film. Just cut back and save it for special occasions. I tend to use Ektar these days in situations where I would have used Velvia in the past. And I've largely switched from Provia to Portra (which isn't much cheaper by the roll, but easier and cheaper to process).

If projection is your thing, you could shoot digital and buy a digital projector. It might be more expensive to begin with, but cheaper in the long run.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

I have few rolls of expired slide film. Once it is done, it is gone. Fresh rolls, plus frame holders are way too expensive.

 

[Paul Howell]

As I print I have used negative film, dont recall the last time I shot a roll of slide film.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

As my reserve of refrigerated 35mm E6 dwindles and I look at purchasing some more, I find myself stopping to take stock of just how expensive shooting 35mm slides has become.

Not so long ago, I could buy 35mm/36exp rolls in packs of ten for little over £5 a roll. As we all know to our cost, Fuji have increased their prices dramatically in recent times and the cheap, yet perfectly good, option to buy Fuji masquerading as Agfaphoto Precisa has now gone. Thus, I now find myself looking at 35mm/36exp rolls in the range of £13 - £17.00 each and there seems to be no price advantage buying in larger quantities.

Each time I send off films for developing and mounting, the price seems to have risen since the time before, as does the cost of return postage. The lab I use offers ‘free’ postage to them, but of course that is taken care of in their pricing structure.

If I buy an E6 film at current rates, I’m looking at £13 for the film (cheapest E100 I can find) plus £9.50 dev and mount plus £3.95 for return postage – total £26.45. (Over £30 for Fuji's more expensive offerings @ £17)

Though in the past I have defended the cost of E6 use in these forums, it’s now scary. I equate £26.45 to the best part of half a 100ft roll of FP4 or half a tank of petrol and I’m seriously asking myself how long I can or should go on shelling out this kind of money and whether it’s the time to leave colour work to the dreaded d*****l and spend the money saved on b/w materials instead. I currently have free use of a digital projector but could buy one of my own for the cost of a dozen transparency films plus D & P.

Selling out? Maybe.

“Use it or lose it!” Sure, but there are limits to how much I’m prepared to spend.

I’ve been holding my breath and hoping that E100 will fall in price, but of course that was more in hope than anticipation, so unless I win the Lottery (unlikely, as I don’t do it!) I think that when I’ve used up the last of my current E6 stock I shan’t be replacing it, except possibly a film at a time for occasional use in stereo transparency work.

It’s with great dismay that I find myself thinking along these lines, especially as I received two cracking boxes of slides in the post yesterday but as Bob Dylan told us “The times, they are a-changing”.

Steve

that's fully understandable. I'm warming up to more'd' myself.

 

[Eric Rose]

For colour work I only shoot digital.

 

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

While it's not a perfect alternative to E6, you might want to try reversal processing of B&W film and enjoy the B&W slides.

Orwo UN54 is a relatively cheap film that works well for reversal processing and here's an excellent tutorial to get started:
https://www.flickr.com/groups/1924424@N22/discuss/72157629499928508/

 

[cjbecker]

I have really just taken up shooting slide film in the last year or so for all of out family documenting. It was all shot on b&w before now. We really enjoy looking at the slides on a light table, then the next night projecting a roll, then they get placed in a plastic sleeve thats in a binder dedicated for each year. All the trips and important things are shot on slide film, All the less important, day to day, gets shot on b&w. I will go back to contact print all the b&w and place the contact sheets with the negatives later on.

Shooting slide film is not cheap, and thats fine. For all the positives it has, it outweighs the negatives.

I don't like using digital at all, especially for historical/documenting our lives. Once slide film is gone. (Which now looks like a long time) I will just go back to b&w for everything. I really despise the digital workflow. Ive been there, done that, got the postcard, and won’t be going back.

And with that said, i ordered 5 more rolls of e100 earlier today.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Hi Steve

I don't do this, but is there any way you can buy BULK ROLLS of E6 film you like and then, process it at home? I know there are kits available that do not cost very much money and some say developing color / slide film is almost easier than B/W. If it is the effluence you are worried about, maybe you can strike up a deal with a local lab, and give them some copper/incentive to have them dispose of your effluence, or take it to hazmat disposal day at your local waste recovery center. I have thought of doing these things myself, but it didn't work out. It seems important to you.
Good luck with your situation !
John

I agree. Home slide processing is as easy as black & white once you work out how to maintain the temperature. Then you have to mount the slides in cardboard which becomes easy after the first few.

 

[mshchem]

I love slides for projection, have always developed my own. Costs be damned.
Still I doubt I shoot more than a dozen rolls a year, half 6x6, and half 35mm.

It is crazy expensive.

 

[BMbikerider]

Shoot digital.

This is a comment from someone who obviously has not used slide film. There is absolutely NOTHING that can come even close to a well processed transparency when it is projected.

 

[Agulliver]

Indeed, I don't think "shoot digital" is in any way helpful to OP or to anyone following.

The question seems to be one of whether you suck up the cost and continue shooting E6 slides, shoot fewer slides perhaps for more important subjects, learn to home process or give up on slides.....though I admit I'd love to know where you're getting your 100 foot rolls of FP4 for 52 quid!

I admit that I haven't shot slides in over 10 years. It was cheap then and I got a kick out of showing them to my dad on the projector. He died in 2008 and nobody else in the family shares my enthusiasm for a slide show....I "went digital" for a while too which didn't help. At some point I certainly will try the new Ektachrome but it's going to be something I shoot maybe a roll or two a year rather than fire off a couple of rolls per holiday/trip. It's not so expensive that I cannot afford to shoot it on special occasions. As always one must examine priorities. I'm not going to be unable to fill the car with petrol, heat the house or eat sufficiently if I buy and have dev/mount a couple of E6 films per year....and that is enough to satisfy my own need. I am also lucky enough to have a mini-lab I can drop films at including E6 in town when I get back from work in London every weekday. So no postage costs.

 

[perkeleellinen]

I have sort of justified to myself the price by saying I won't need to buy paper / chemistry to print and I won't need to secure two or three days to print as well.

Slides are convenient that way but I've been lucky in that when I heard Precisa was going I bought a lot and then when I heard Fuji was increasing prices I bought some Provia. The problem with that is when I'm done shooting them I will have a shock at the current price. I'm not a big shooter any more - about ten rolls of colour each year, half of which will be slide. That helps.

 

[Robin Guymer]

Hi Steve, Like yourself I am torn with the cost of colour, but using C41 negative. I have been a film shooter for 4 years and become fixated with it having now set up a darkroom. I think colour film is absolutely glorious, however I have an issue with the garbage processing coming out of Melbourne labs developing my film. You see my wife worked for a studio in Cairns in the '80s and she is horrified at the quality of the negatives from the Melbourne labs. They do not clean their equipment and the negs are scratched and spotted with dust. I swapped to home C41 kits and I can produce nearly spotlessly clean, well processed negs. However to make this viable one needs to stock up about 12 shot rolls of film before buying the kit and then processing them all. Then it's the dreaded and hated scanner followed by the even more dreaded software manipulation to get the colours right but it's all on digital. We recently went to Antarctica and I shot lots of B&W film and some colour. I really like some of the colour film shots I got from the trip but (and it is a big but) my lovely adorable wife was using her new Leica QP and I have now surrendered to technology. There is just something about Leica lenses, whether it's an M3 or a QP, the colour is just unique. Hiking in Patagonia I was using a Leitz 28mm on a Nikon FE2, I really like the colour shots I took on our hikes to the glaciers. My wife was using her QP with the similar but modern 28mm lens - the landscapes from her QP are awesome.

So I surrender! I cannot compete with a Leica QP. We are about to take a 4x4 trip to Alice and back down the Oodnadatta and I will still use some colour film but mostly for dusk and night star shots from my favourite camera and best night time shooter of all, the Nikon FE2. The rest will be B&W on my latest addition Konica Pearl II and a couple of the yet to be decided 35mm crew. Yep, the white flag is fluttering for me on colour film.

 

[Steve Roberts]

Hi All,

Thanks for all your replies. To take a few points that have been raised:

I did a lot of experiments with reversal processing of b/w film (FP4) a couple of years ago, partly in preparation for the unavailability or increased cost of E6, and was very pleased with the results. This won't replace E6 as such but will go some way to satisfying my lust for projectable film-based images!
Home E6 processing - yes, one to look into. The temperature accuracy is what's scared me off, though with b/w reversal I had no trouble achieving +/- half a deg C.
I tried to buy a stock of Precisa when I heard it was for the chop, but missed the boat and couldn't find any "for love nor money" (as we say in the UK!)
The comments above in support of shooting digital for colour are perfectly valid in that a) they indicate that people whose opinions I respect on APUG think along the same lines and b) if some of the cash saved by shooting less slide film is ploughed into b/w instead or into 'going places' that may not be a bad thing.
FP4 for £52 - I stocked up last year, direct from Ilford with a discount code. I will admit to not having checked Ilford's prices since, so maybe I'm in for a shock!

Realistically, I guess that a combination of reducing my E6 usage, increasing my use of the dreaded 'D' for some work and maybe some experiments with home processing are the way forward.
Oh, for the days of 20 rolls of Kodachrome 25 from MX3 in Guernsey at £5.50 a roll (including UK processing)!!!! Anyone else buy from them? For some reason, I think relating to VAT, the twenty films would arrive not as two blocks of ten but in dribs and drabs of two and three films. Happy days!

Steve

 

[donkee]

I have a few d****** cameras that I use for color if needed. The cost of E-6 priced me out a few years ago. I am starting on B&W positives now and will probably be happier since it is all under my control and cost is much lower. I do have a bunch of Ektachrome 400 that was kept in the freezer that I picked up from an estate sale but once that is gone I doubt I'll be shooting much in the way of E-6. We'll see if filmferrania comes out with anything interesting, or anything at all, might get lucky. I miss the old days of bulk E-6 with the Kodak kit and even though I had far less money than I do now, it seemed like it was far more affordable back then.....

 

[guangong]

Shooting color slides has always been expensive. Also true of color reversal Super 8 and 16 mm movie film. Just when one presses the shutter release can make a big difference in cost. I use much more discretion when shooting color reversal than with b/w. For example, with b/w I may take chances if light is technically insufficient just to get some kind of negative. With color reversal I am more hesitant.
Doing any kind of plastic art is expensive, be it painting, sculpture, etching, etc.
By the way, Kodachrome was not exactly cheap considering no opportunity for home processing.

 

[Ste_S]

The comments above in support of shooting digital for colour are perfectly valid in that a) they indicate that people whose opinions I respect on APUG think along the same lines and b) if some of the cash saved by shooting less slide film is ploughed into b/w instead or into 'going places' that may not be a bad thing.

Plenty of good C41 films that you can shoot at reasonable prices without turning to digital for colour should you wish. As mentioned previously in the thread, Ektar is great and has more or less replaced slide film if you don't need to project. It's half the price of a roll of E6.
Fuji C200 is £25 for 10 (when 7day shop get some stock in..) and with a little over exposure ( I shoot at 160ISO) is a really nice film. Relatively fine grained for a budget film and a nice colour mix, saturated, but not overly so.
Portra is getting expensive now, but if Kodachrome defined the colour film look previously, Portra does so now in the modern era.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

This is a comment from someone who obviously has not used slide film. There is absolutely NOTHING that can come even close to a well processed transparency when it is projected.

Wrong. I've used slide film on and off since 1977. I shot loads of it in Japan in the 90's. Haven't used it in years as the alternative is better for me. Oh and a dear friend and I used to project it on his medium format protector.

 

[Agulliver]

Ilford's own price on their website for FP4+ in 100 foot rolls is now £73. I can get it a bit cheaper but it's not been £52 for a long time....unless you are able to fiddle the VAT.

 

[StepheKoontz]

Hi All,

Thanks for all your replies. To take a few points that have been raised:

Home E6 processing - yes, one to look into. The temperature accuracy is what's scared me off, though with b/w reversal I had no trouble achieving +/- half a deg C.

Steve

A water bath using my kitchen sink provides enough water mass where it's really simple to maintain.

 

[removed account4]

This is a comment from someone who obviously has not used slide film. There is absolutely NOTHING that can come even close to a well processed transparency when it is projected.

Hi BMbikerider
Maybe, but I pretty much agree with everything Andrew said. I used to shoot a lot of client-chrome back in the day and the only good thing about it was the client paid the cost of the film and processing. This really isn't a digital vs analog debate, but a what you can afford debate. The reality of life is that a dslr has pretty much caught up to MF even for shooting and viewing chromes. As the OP has lamented the cost of film and processing for chrome film is a bit excessive ( not that it has ever been inexpensive ) but IDK 20-35$ a pop for a roll and / or upwards of 10$ a pop / small sheets of film ( and upwards of $40-50 for bigger ) when a client isn't paying ... a digital projector doesn't really cost much, if the images need to be projected and it seems to hold its own compared to the olde skool alternative ( a plasma tv set looks good too ) . Personally I am kind of amazed that the film makers still make slide film. Im not a Duke and not related to any, and it seems more more one needs to be a .com millionaire having amassed a personal fortune to be able to afford to use slide film on a regular basis.

In the end its whatever floats your boat. My boat seems to be in the need of caulking, water is seeping in through the seems and it hard to bail with 1 arm.

 

[StepheKoontz]

Hi BMbikerider
Personally I am kind of amazed that the film makers still make slide film.

I'm more surprised they make color print film. A color slide, especially medium format and larger, on a lightbox is a viewing experience that really can't be duplicated. Anyone I have ever shown a large slide to is impressed. As far as the cost, I try to compare it to let's say playing golf. I'm pretty sure shooting a roll of slide film is still cheaper that shooting a round of golf most places and if I enjoy it, then I should just go do it and not obsess over how much a frame it costs.