Is there a way to cut down on film costs?

[flavio81]

What the heck is POTA?

President of the Apuggers

 

[flavio81]

There is no such thing as APUG.

You mean me, AgX, Sirius Glass, Paul Howell, cholentpot, benjiboy, cooltouch, Les Sarile, and all the other guys are an ILLUSION?!?!

 

[flavio81]

If you can regularly get 70mm film and use a medium format camera that uses “film backs”, the 70mm ones are currently very cheap. The film canisters can be loaded with a shorter length, although some film is lost in the loading process.

I've seen 70mm film, and backs, and even the cassetes.

But what's rare to see are the loaders, and the film development tanks.

 

[AgX]

Concerning Pota: As usual there with special purpose developers it is no developer without shortcoming... Reported were very short life of working solution and inability to clear some anti-halation layers.

Out of the Pota concept even two german firms evolved busy with researching processing high-resolution films apt for pictorial photography.

Well, this all was brought up in context of using lesser expensive film, saving money, the actual topic of this thread...
But over the years the availability of such films changed and even new concepts emerged as the Adox Speed Booster.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

There is no such thing as APUG. Hasn't existed for years.

One can either ask redundant questions on PHOTRIO to find out what POTA is or just use a search engine:

https://www.digitaltruth.com/products/photoformulary_tech/Phenidone%20Extended%20Range%20Developer%20(POTA)%20%5b01-0070%5d.pdf

You are wrong. To Sean's own statement it still exists. It only has been combined, not deleted, with the Hybrid and the Digital Forum, under one umbrella.

Apug thus is the section of analog-only users at Photrio.

Nope. Content from the no-longer-in existence APUG has been incorporated into PHOTRIO, but APUG as an entity no longer exists.

One can just say nothing here at all and just "Google" stuff all day long. I'm pretty sure everyone has heard of search engines by now.

One of the main reasons for posting here (and at other forums) is to correct misinformation when others propagate it.

You mean me, AgX, Sirius Glass, Paul Howell, cholentpot, benjiboy, cooltouch, Les Sarile, and all the other guys are an ILLUSION?!?!

Nope. They're real posters who suffer from the illusion that APUG still exists as an entity. Perhaps they believe that if they say it does often enough, it will return. Sadly (for them) it won't.

 

[mtnbkr]

Apug still exists in DNS. That's how I found my way to photrio. After getting back into film last year, I remembered Apug from my previous film days clicked my long-ignored bookmark...and here I am.
Whether or not the .5 server that apug.org resolves to is a separate box or just another virtual interface on the same box as photrio.com is unknown to me, but it still exists as an entity of sorts.

> apug.org
Server: 8.8.8.8
Address: 8.8.8.8#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: apug.org
Address: 72.52.156.5
> photrio.com
Server: 8.8.8.8
Address: 8.8.8.8#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: photrio.com
Address: 72.52.156.35
>

Chris

 

[mtnbkr]

POTA is also "Parks on the Air"

Heh. I was thinking the same thing. AR is one of my other hobbies.

Chris

 

[Marcelo Paniagua]

Seems there is some love for obscure developers like POTA

 

[fez]

Edit... edit in your mind. I see stuff, and say... I've seen that, or what am I going to do with that.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Well, going down the road with high contrast microfilms and POTA etc developers can be awfully disappointing in terms of capturing highlights and deep shadow values properly. People do it; but it tends to engender the proverbial "soot and chalk" look.

 

[flavio81]

Nope. They're real posters who suffer from the illusion that APUG still exists as an entity. Perhaps they believe that if they say it does often enough, it will return. Sadly (for them) it won't.

Our enthusiasm makes APUG a living, breathing reality. You're welcome to enter the APUG realm.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

Apug still exists in DNS. That's how I found my way to photrio...

Sean set up a redirect when he ended APUG and started PHOTRIO.

Our enthusiasm makes APUG a living, breathing reality. You're welcome to enter the APUG realm.

No thanks, I prefer the reality of PHOTRIO over the illusion of no-longer-existing APUG.

 

[Don_ih]

A

 

[Marcelo Paniagua]

Well, going down the road with high contrast microfilms and POTA etc developers can be awfully disappointing in terms of capturing highlights and deep shadow values properly. People do it; but it tends to engender the proverbial "soot and chalk" look.

Agree. Didnt get good results with most films. Aviphot 40 seems to be an exception (at least) for me. It is not exactly a microfilm/lytho film but an aerial film with contrast going to the high side. Probably Will test with a general use developer and see.

 

[Bronson Dugnutt]

Here's some 16mm FPP Sonic 25 in POTA, a singular combo

 

[Down Under]

In my experience, there are still many bargains out thee in film, if you look carefully for them.

Last week I lucked into some outdated (2005 but kept refrigerated) bulk rolls of Ilford Pan F from a reputable seller. I bought three rolls at AUD$85 each, about half the current asking price for this film. When they arrive I'll do some quick testing and if they are any good, I may buy three more. It's like, the early bird and the worm...

Now I will be spending some time test-shooting a few rolls and mixing up low contrast film developers to try and tame Pan F's legendary "soot and whitewash" high contrast...

 

[Down Under]

@momus if you think that it's possible to have a healthy film industry by paying $2.5 a roll, you are mistaken. A roll of film is a miracle of chemical engineering, yet you believe it's OK to pay half the price of a cup of coffee? That's not sustainable. Go to a local Starbucks, order a cup of espresso, a low-tech primitive product with zero R&D behind it, and make a note of how much you paid for that.

Then multiply that by 10 and that would be a fair price to pay for a roll of film. Feel blessed to enjoy 36 shots (!) for less than $100. Look around your house. Most objects surrounding your life can't hold a candle to a roll of film in terms of value they deliver. Ask yourself how much you paid for that crap at Home Depot? Even stupid shit like this is $18!! Your dumb mouse pad is probably $10.

I come from mountain biking, not the most expensive hobby in the world, yet I'm amazed by how ridiculously cheap film photography is. There's room to raise prices for everything 10x. If you're not willing to pay, you're not serious about it.

In fact, we all must experience a jolt of guilt every time we pay less than $20 per a roll of film. $20 per roll would actually a far better price. Every shot is a miracle. When it comes to film pricing, I welcome the normalcy.

Some years ago (I recall it was about 2012-2013) a Kodak Australia rep told me it cost the company about 18 US cents to manufacture a roll of color negative film and import it into this country. Sure, they have a huge infrastructure with high staff costs to cover, but if the guy was in any way accurate, the profit margins on film are (or were) super high, even if with the high inflation we are experiencing in these Covid times, the basic costs are surely now higher.

This said, I tend to agree with the poster who wrote that if film costs go through the roof, fewer people will be using it. This is not only common sense, it has also been happening, a lot in fact, in recent years.

I've tended to keep my costs down in recent years by (1) buying not-too-ancient expired stock in bulk when I can find it, (2) keeping all my films refrigerated and some of it frozen, and (3) shooting less and more carefully. Sadly, almost everyone I know who was shooting film a decade ago is now into digital. In a sense this has been good for me ,as I've "inherited" some good analog gear, but it's disappointing to see people who were dedicated film photographers in their time dropping out of it because of high film and processing costs, the fuss and the bother of processing and printing/scanning, or the passing of time - none of us are getting any younger and overall digital gear and image quality has improved so much in the last ten years.

All that and my growing hatred of spending valuable time scanning my gazillions of old negatives and slides...

Otherwise, the only other comment I will make on all this, related to the OP's comment (see #1) that "...It wasn't that long ago when I would shoot a roll of B&W film every day." To each his own and all that, but as I see it, that sort of activity is entirely too much and the risk of stagnation (by shooting and reshooting the same subjects day in, day out) would be much too high for my liking. Shooting less and being more selective would bring all his photo hobby costs down, massively so.

 

[MattKing]

Some years ago (I recall it was about 2012-2013) a Kodak Australia rep told me it cost the company about 18 US cents to manufacture a roll of color negative film and import it into this country. Sure, they have a huge infrastructure with high staff costs to cover, but if the guy was in any way accurate, the profit margins on film are (or were) super high, even if with the high inflation we are experiencing in these Covid times, the basic costs are surely now higher.

In 2012, Eastman Kodak went bankrupt.
And it wasn't because of high margins.
That sounds like material costs only.

 

[cmacd123]

Some years ago (I recall it was about 2012-2013) a Kodak Australia rep told me it cost the company about 18 US cents to manufacture a roll of color negative film and import it into this country.

of course at that time Kodak had several coating machines running 24/7 in Rochester and elsewhere (Harrow, France, Canada even China at times) JUST to make Kodacolor. the economics of scale of course have evaporated.

That of course is why the management was reluctant to jump into full digital cameras, as they correctly figured that they would never be able to come anywhere near those sorts of Margins.

ALSO in the good old days, Kodak made more money keeping your friendly Photo-finisher in chemicals and paper and Nice printing and processing machines. that business has basically evaporated

 

[fdonadio]

You worked fighting against auto-focus photographers? Somebody give this man an award, please.

Well done.

Flavios definitely have a great sense of humor. I thought about making a joke about it, but you did it in a way more brilliant way as I could’ve thought.

 

[fdonadio]

I've seen 70mm film, and backs, and even the cassetes.

But what's rare to see are the loaders, and the film development tanks.

You are right. Reminds me of why I never got into 70mm myself.

 

[NB23]

Phō trio

 

[flavio81]

You are right. Reminds me of why I never got into 70mm myself.

I'm suspecting that maybe the pro photographers who shot 70mm film, then handled the 70mm cartridge to the lab and then the lab did the development using a typical roller-transport machine (that can process any length of film).

 

[Paul Howell]

In days of yuor (sp?) when Photographers were Photographers professional labs had versiamates or a similar machine. One side in a dark room, 70mm and bulk load 35mm were loaded, the machine installed that one side was dark, a wall the other side in room light the film would emerge and wound on a take up reel to be cut for printing and storage.

 

[MattKing]

Days of Yore, and Versamats.
Versatol developer as well.
The big newspaper darkroom I worked in didn't have a Versamat, but it did have a skookum light trap that allowed us to fix a print and then send it through the light trap to the large print washer in the fully lighted outside workroom.
At deadline time, us darkroom technicians would be either doing the printing or outside rushing the print through the washer and into the dryer.