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Prices of raw chemicals

There is no monetary benefit to mixing your own unless you have a cheap source of sodium sulfite and sodium carbonate. These two chemicals are used in the largest amounts and you can save a bit here. You're not going to find any bargains with the developing agents. It has been my experience that the more of a chemical you buy the cheaper per unit the cost become.
 
Sodium carbonate can be bought for laundry purposes as washing soda / “soda crystals”. I paid £1 for a 1kg bag in Tesco.
 
Some exotic mixtures are worthy to mix at home namely, PC-TEA or developers based on Glycin or DD-23 (not so exotic) and so on.
 
josephchesshyre said:
100g of hydroquinone is now £28.80!!!
This is depressing!
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Fyi I bought 500g of HQ for about that amount from Disactis in France. Great service btw and the manager knows about photography.
 
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trendland said:
That looks more realistic to me. So the calculation from your dealer to 1kg metol is in the near of 80,- € - am I right?
And this should be a little more than 100% calculated profit for him - that shall be allowed todays.....

with regards
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Indeed, this is how today's song goes about.
 
zanxion72 said:
Indeed, this is how today's song goes about.
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The question is : Why are simular simple things you will need for tratitional photography priced with such havy increasements today?
Some say it is caused from less demand.
I would NOT state they are all wrong (people who see this as the main reason).
Obviously mass production is the best way to offer nice prices (and much profit in addition - we sometimes forget).
But in a market niche manufacturers hold on their profit marge and increased pricing. The effect is contraproductive because you start with heavy price increasements a self-reinforcing effect.
Mass production/less costs high profit - less demand/smaler production high costs smaler profit. Compensation from higher pricing/more profit BUT more less demand : effect smaler production/higher costs smaler profit. Compensation next step from higher pricing.
The result is NO DEMAND - NO PROFIT.
Some economics have other/different theorys - this here is mine...

with regards

PS : A respectabe form to argue is the cost of production in general within smal scales. That might be right. For example looking to GePe (slide mounts) they have doubled their pricing - after this obviously didn't help they doubled pricing again.
But plastic isn't that expensive - the machines are still there......strange.
 
I have my 25 kilograms of anhydrous sodium sulphite. I've listed it on my ebay page at competitive prices, but still, I'd like to offer a discount to Photrio members: 500g for £4, 1kg for £7, plus shipping. Send me a message if you're interested.

Hydroquinone and phenidone are on their way to me.
 
I now have hydroquinone in stock. As before, I've listed it on eBay but have a discount available for Photrio members - this time an even bigger discount: 50g for £4, 100g for £7, 250g for £15, 500g for £28, plus shipping. Send me a message if interested.

David
 

David - at last it is the holy true to get cheap raw chemicals : biggest amounds !
Therefore one has to calculate :" How great will be my personal demand to each chemical for the next xxx years? "
AND one have to inform about the shell life.
If ones decision is (for example) to develope 100% of all bw films with rodinal to the next 3 decades it is very simple.

with regards

PS : In most cases it will be much much more complicate to calculate. ...
(but it is possible ...generaly)

PPS : THE VERY BEST IS IF ONE HAS ALL BW FILMS TO THE NEXT YEARS AT HOME
(Freezed) ...in addition.
 

Of course - in pretty much every industry, stuff gets cheaper the more you buy.
 
DavidJRobertson said:
Of course - in pretty much every industry, stuff gets cheaper the more you buy.
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But you will have a very hard time to find
a simple example of higher difference in calculations.
As we noticed with photographic issues in the past 4 years.
What I mean is the spread of pricing.

with regards
 
trendland said:
But you will have a very hard time to find
a simple example of higher difference in calculations.
As we noticed with photographic issues in the past 4 years.
What I mean is the spread of pricing.

with regards
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Do you mean difference between suppliers or difference between increasing quantities from the same supplier?
 
DavidJRobertson said:
Do you mean difference between suppliers or difference between increasing quantities from the same supplier?
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The spread of lowest pricing and highest
pricing is meant in general.
One example (to make it more clear)
Batteries : IF you may find a good offer with Cr123 it will cost you ~ USD 2,85.
Then you may ask the dealer : "How is the pricing with 10 x Cr123 ?"
Mostly he will offer you a cheaper price :
USD 2,79 for example.
You have to order 100 or 500 x Cr123 - then you will probably have a price of
USD 2,65.
AND IF THE SAME DEALER IS TELLING YOU : "IT IS MY CHEAPEST OFFER - IF YOU WILL ORDER 10.000 X Cr 123 it is the same price - sorry about."
Then you might calculate the price from your dealer wich he paid from manufacturer should be in the near of
USD 2,58 - 2,60 the rest is his profit.
With some other stuff used in the small photographers niche today it is the complete opposite.
That indicates to me - that most dealers calculate in this way : "These analogue guys will pay every price because they need their stuff obviously most urgend"
There is a truth from thinking about - isn't it?
with regards
 


Ok, but there are fixed (or at least, nearly fixed) costs regardless of the size of the order. Rent & payroll for most businesses. Packaging materials. Time. Amortised cost of equipment. Etc.

If I plot the prices I gave for sodium sulphite, you'll see that it is in fact a straight line. I.e. the gradient is constant, so price per unit weight is constant. However, the y-intercept is non-zero, to represent the fixed costs regardless of the size of the order.

 
I currently get Hydrochinon at 8.21Euro for 50g and Metol at 10.59 also for 50g from Suvatlar in Hamburg, Germany but, prices have gone up significantly here too.
 
There are some formulas that are fun to mix at home. For example, PC-TEA. Apart from that nothing can be beat the prices of ready available chemicals from photo stores.
 
A chemical is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. A housewife buying washing soda is unlikely to be willing to pay the same as a photographer buying sodium carbonate decahydrate.
 
I presume I spend more on house hold chemicals, including soaps, shampoos, conditioners (my girl want to have that), detergents (liquids & crystals), glass cleaners, floor cleaners, bleach and this clear and that cleaner. ufff...I hate those stuff....

I have forgotten about the hair dyes...
 


Ralph that's interesting that the prices have shot up similarly in Germany. It occurred to me that it might be the result of some change in EU legislation regarding taxes on such chemicals, or something...

It's fine buying ready-mixed chemicals unless you want to make developers that aren't available ready-mixed, as I do.
 
Generic and widely used chemicals can be had for pretty low prices. Sodium Sulfite is quite cheap, for example. The problem is with Metol, Hydroquinnone, Phenidone and a few others. The photo specific chems are difficult to find and priced high. As Ralph wrote above he is buying it in 50g lots. That doesn't really get you very far. Hydroquinnone increased in price while I was ordering it.

I will want to try out quite a few interesting recipes and realised that small quantities won't get me very far. That is why have stocked up various ingredients over the last year. Phenidon and Glycin weren't available, except those 50g micro lots at Suvatlar. Hydroquinnon, as mentioned, was an expensive buy. But there is a polish company which is selling compounds like that at a more reasonable price. And it's great that they are offering it in the first place. I might try an order there at some point.

Suvatlar is still very useful and should be supported. CD3 (and CD4) is ok in 50g lots and priced reasonably. Boric acid, Borax and metaborate are difficult to find at other suppliers. Suvatlars price and lot size (around 500g) for those is good as well. I will order them together with more Ammoniumthiosulfate solution. 5L of it are 50% (€15) more expensive than 5L of Rollei neutral fix. But you can make any rapid fixer you want, in any quantity and the Thiosulfate solution itself has indefinite shelf life. So I consider that stuff a great deal.

Looking at various developer recipes I think that b/w photochemistry mixed from raw chems can be a pretty inefficient in a home users darkroom. The absolute use of the active agents in development is probably not even that high, after all it is only some film with a thin photo layer. And most of that layer is gelatin. But the concentrations to get the reaction going the way you want it are often quite high. D23 at 100g/L Sodium Sulfite and 7.5g/L Metol is quite insane when using it one shot. Even though sulfite is cheap you'll be going through your 1kg bottle quite quickly when trying out those b/w recipes.

Theoretically if you packed that film into a long, tight plastic sleeve you'd hardly need any volume to bath the film in the required concentration. It would require a recirculation pump and just wouldn't be very practical for home users. When you settled down and simply go with one process then replenishment regimes can be a big help, of course. The cheapest way is still with commercial products. The manufacturers buy at large scale. Rodinal is dirt cheap. D76 one shot is ok. I just tried out one litre of Fomadon Excel (XTOL). Using it stock with the time extension factors given by Kodak I used it for 14 rolls so far. That's one more to go. I mixed it at the end of October and it's still good. Probably would be good for quite a while if it wasn't at its capacity limit now. I think that's even cheaper than Rodinal.

Colour chemistry is relatively efficient. Especially ECN-II, which is what initially got me into buying raw chemistry. I want to go the replenishment route now. For colour dev and neutral fix my original 1kg of sulfite hasn't suffered very much. But in view of my plans to play around with some b/w stuff I added a 2.5kg bottle with my recent order. Ideally I don't want to have buy raw chemicals every year once I have everything.
 
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RalphLambrecht said:
I currently get Hydrochinon at 8.21Euro for 50g and Metol at 10.59 also for 50g from Suvatlar in Hamburg, Germany but, prices have gone up significantly here too.
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Interesting prices there Ralph. Normally I expect prices in Australia to be enormous compared to Germany, but for once things seem to be cheaper here.

Photographic chemicals in Australia have certainly gotten more expensive recently, say the last year or so. But currently, your price of Hydroquinone converted to AUD prices is $25.12 for 100g while the same product in downtown Melbourne is $14.30 for 100g.
http://www.vanbar.com.au/catalogue/product.php?id=95046

I found that buying in bulk can sometimes be advantageous, but one has to be careful. Around 2 years ago I needed to replenish some chemistry I was starting to run out of, among them was Hydroquinone, I ended up purchasing a 1,000g amount for a 25% difference over their 250g amount; couldn't believe my luck.

At the same time I was investigating some of my more used chemicals and ended up getting some of it in 25kg bags, the price difference was enormous.

Mick.


 
Last time I bought hydroquinone locally, the price was 40€/kg. I bought 500g of clean looking hydroquinone for 20€, that put a smile on my face.
 
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