Material Cost Discussion - Global markets vs the humble print maker

cirwin2010 · 2026-01-14T16:10:47-0500

Hopefully this isn't an inflammatory topic and that this is the most appropriate place for it. Raw material costs for precious metals have gotten outrageous! I can't help but wonder about future cost sustainabiliy for the purposes of art and how the community is adapting.

To those that have been doing this longer than I, how have you adapted to the price increases? Have you had to change what you make or how you work? Any cost saving tips worth sharing? Have folks switched to non precious metal type processes like carbon transfer?

I had hoped to one day get into platinum palladium printing, but that not longer seems feasible. I'm getting amazing results with my Pt and Pd toned kallitypes so I'm likely going to be sticking with that for now. Per my math a toned kallitype uses about 20-25% as much Pt/Pd solution as a true Pt/Pd print. But even then the cost of the solution for the toner isn't insignificant. My precious silver gelatin paper also hasn't been safe from global ecconomics

retina_restoration · 2026-01-14T16:46:04-0500

This has been discussed before: the silver in film and paper is just one of many costs involved in the manufacture of these materials, and the prices of metals alone does not significantly affect the prices of film and paper. What pushes prices up is the cost of manufacture more than anything, especially now that companies like Ilford and Kodak are working on a scale that is so much smaller than how they once were.

Alan Townsend · 2026-01-14T16:52:13-0500

cirwin2010 said:
Hopefully this isn't an inflammatory topic and that this is the most appropriate place for it. Raw material costs for precious metals have gotten outrageous! I can't help but wonder about future cost sustainabiliy for the purposes of art and how the community is adapting.

I would say it's more inflationary than inflammatory, but verging on political due to trade restrictions and tariffs. Gold and silver way up, both greatly incresing cost of film photography.

cirwin2010 said:
To those that have been doing this longer than I, how have you adapted to the price increases? Have you had to change what you make or how you work? Any cost saving tips worth sharing? Have folks switched to non precious metal type processes like carbon transfer?

I've always been on the cost conscious side, but that's because it's more fun to do things on the cheap. Just the last two years, my camera film cost has risen 67%. I will be more careful with clicking the shutter, a good plan anyway. Also planning to use more xray film in my future. Been working on using sulfide sepia toner for vandyke brown printing. Still a work in progress, but sulfide is cheaper and likely a better toner than gold, but may not quite be for platinum/palladium. Print less and study negs on computer more is another tip. Learn to visualize better and work on compositional skills instead of printing. Carbon printing (more correctly known as pigment printing) gives the best of all quality results in photography anyway, so not a bad idea.

cirwin2010 said:
I had hoped to one day get into platinum palladium printing, but that not longer seems feasible. I'm getting amazing results with my Pt and Pd toned kallitypes so I'm likely going to be sticking with that for now. Per my math a toned kallitype uses about 20-25% as much Pt/Pd solution as a true Pt/Pd print. But even then the cost of the solution for the toner isn't insignificant.

So you can change toner, make smaller prints, and/or fewer prints. There are many options. Platinum/Palladium printing was never appealing to me due to the cost and my reverse snob mentaility, so I always though pigment printing was the best one anyway. So take up pigment printing but don't use noble metal pigments for that. Also don't overdo it be use floor sweepings or dirts either. Go the middle ground with traditional art pigments.

cirwin2010 said:
My precious silver gelatin paper also hasn't been safe from global ecconomics

This one can also be reduced greatly or eliminated if necessary.

cirwin2010 said:

cirwin2010 · 2026-01-14T17:00:13-0500

retina_restoration said:
This has been discussed before: the silver in film and paper is just one of many costs involved in the manufacture of these materials, and the prices of metals alone does not significantly affect the prices of film and paper. What pushes prices up is the cost of manufacture more than anything, especially now that companies like Ilford and Kodak are working on a scale that is so much smaller than how they once were.

My comment on silver gelatin invited this, so that's on me. Yes, this was discussed before and, yes, you are correct that much of it comes down to the cost of manufacturing.

My intent was to discuss the impact of global supply and demand on the raw materials needed to create the sensitizers (and toners) for processes like platinum palladium, chrysotype, kallitype, van dyke, etc. While chemical manufacturing costs definitely are a factor, the global supply and demand for the raw materials is far greater.

cirwin2010 · 2026-01-14T17:09:35-0500

Alan Townsend said:
I would say it's more inflationary than inflammatory, but verging on political due to trade restrictions and tariffs. Gold and silver way up, both greatly incresing cost of film photography.

I've always been on the cost conscious side, but that's because it's more fun to do things on the cheap. Just the last two years, my camera film cost has risen 67%. I will be more careful with clicking the shutter, a good plan anyway. Also planning to use more xray film in my future. Been working on using sulfide sepia toner for vandyke brown printing. Still a work in progress, but sulfide is cheaper and likely a better toner than gold, but may not quite be for platinum/palladium. Print less and study negs on computer more is another tip. Learn to visualize better and work on compositional skills instead of printing. Carbon printing (more correctly known as pigment printing) gives the best of all quality results in photography anyway, so not a bad idea.

So you can change toner, make smaller prints, and/or fewer prints. There are many options. Platinum/Palladium printing was never appealing to me due to the cost and my reverse snob mentaility, so I always though pigment printing was the best one anyway. So take up pigment printing but don't use noble metal pigments for that. Also don't overdo it be use floor sweepings or dirts either. Go the middle ground with traditional art pigments.

This one can also be reduced greatly or eliminated if necessary.

"Inflationary"

Well I'm already incredibly picky when it comes to clicking the shutter, especially with anything using film. Been using digital more to print digital negatives for alt process as my largest film format is 4x5. Not saying you can't make good 4x5 contact prints, but I like things a touch bigger. Also gives me the advantage to front load all my testing and calibration so that when I want to make an alt process print, I know what I am getting on the first attempt. Though front loading all that testing and calibration also front loaded a lot of costs....

I haven't looked much into the cost requirements of carbon, but I know I'll eventually go that way. Biggest problem is I don't want to deal with dichromates and DAS has its own challenges. There is a paper written by Halvor Bjoerngard about using FAC as a sensitizer that I haven't read yet.

Regarding toners for vandyke (and by extension kallitype) what have you been exploring exactly for sepia? I tried my typical bleach and sepia sulfide toner out of curiosity once, but most of the image did not return on redevelopment. I imagine a direct toner would have better success. I also think many of the gold toners for alt processes are gold sulfide toners.

koraks · 2026-01-14T17:49:18-0500

Of course, it's frustrating. Then again...

Explore printing processes that use modest materials. The realm of alt. process is so large. Only a small part of it relies on noble metals. There are plenty of ways to express yourself. This summer I made some prints using bits of charcoal that didn't entirely burn up in the barbeque.

Don't forget Pt/Pd printing goes back to days when platinum didn't have much of an application and was therefore relatively cheap. People just used what worked well and was accessible. We can do the same. There's no obligation for us to limit ourselves to an optimum that once was, but now has ceased to be.

Material Cost Discussion - Global markets vs the humble print maker

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