Wayback Machine: Vintage darkroom and film prices - 60 years ago

[chip j]

In the 1970s, film and paper prices skyrocketed when the Hunt Brothers began their speculation into silver bullion and the resulting spike in silver prices. Costs never fully recovered from that debacle. I was a wedding photographer then, and I remember it well!

!!!!!

 

[Roger Cole]

$2.95 for the 100ft Kodak roll would be around $28 dollars today. That the film now cost over $100 is not due to inflation.

No, that's mostly because Kodak apparently wants to stop selling 100' bulk rolls so they price it higher than buying pre-loaded.

But your point is well taken. I plugged several of those values into this inflation calculator and they all still come up way cheaper then, even adjusted for inflation, than now:

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

But Kodak is just out of proportion on bulk film prices (and sheet film) even though their pre-rolled prices are competitive. HP5+ is $57.95, Delta 400 $64.95. Kentmere 400 $39.95 and Arista (weird that B&H sells Freestyle house brand) rebranded Foma $44.09, all at B&H from their web site right now. OTOH both Tri-X and TMY-2 are over $100.

 

[Roger Cole]

Thus the name resembled the impression that shop once gave?
I always wondered where that name originated from.

60years... I always thought Freestyle was at most 20 years old.

Oh no, I well remember their ads in Pop Photo, and buying from them, in the mid 1970s. There was a disclaimer pointing out that anything that did not specifically SAY "Fresh" was in fact expired but cold stored and guaranteed. They used to have some really good and CHEAP compared to the competition stuff. Especially back when their house brand was really Ilford!

 

[Roger Cole]

So $1.98 for Kodabromide in say 1955 would equal $17.70 in 2015. 33cents/roll for Tri-x in 1955, $2.95 in 2015. This is just taking inflation into consideration. Today at the evil B&H TriX 36 exp goes for $4.95/roll.

The average American household income in 2015 was $52,250 according to census data. What cost $52,250 in 2015 would cost $5843.43 in 1955. One roll of TriX would account for .006% of annual income in 1955, whereas in 2015 a roll of TriX accounts for .01%. This is worse than it looks because in 1955 the household income would be earned by one wage earner where in 2015 a vast majority of households have at least 2 wage earners.

What makes it even worse than that is all the stuff we spend money on today that we consider necessary, or at least want it enough that we won't do without it, that didn't even exist then. Smart phone data plans, Internet service, cable TV for many folks, computers, tablets... I don't have or want cable TV but I have all that other stuff and I'm not about to give it up.

 

[nworth]

I was just getting serious about photography in the mid 50s. At that time, Freestyle (same company as now) was mostly a surplus dealer, getting stock from both government surplus and Hollywood, plus some industrial surplus. Their low prices were a godsend for a college student. I got many a hundred foot roll of Background-X (a lovely film) and Plus-X negative from them to run through my Kodak Signet 35.

 

[OptiKen]

As cheap as things appear now when looking in the mirror, I also remember having to save and save just to get my film developed and printed.
I didn't have a darkroom back then.

 

[Roger Cole]

Well the thing is, though prices tend to increase with time (and in this case even when taking inflation into account - though it's worth noting that Freestyle WAS the supreme discount store, inflation adjusted prices might look pretty different if we compared regular retail of the day) so does ones income. There may be other things that take from it - mortgages, kids, whatever - but most of us move up in our careers and earn more as we get older. So even though prices increase we can usually better afford them in time.

Another factor is that with the coming of digital the film gear I used to want is much, much cheaper now. Same, I find, as I'm getting back into ham radio - modern gear is supremely capable but to me rather soul-less, too small and complex to work on yourself, mostly digitally controlled etc, while the radio gear I lusted after in the 70s and 80s is quite inexpensive by comparison on the used market.

 

[Theo Sulphate]

... as I'm getting back into ham radio - modern gear is supremely capable but to me rather soul-less, too small and complex to work on yourself, mostly digitally controlled etc, while the radio gear I lusted after in the 70s and 80s is quite inexpensive by comparison on the used market.

Right. A Kenwood TS-520 or Yaesu FT-101 hybrid transceiver is far more satisfying to operate than a modern one. Similarly, an FT-208 handheld from the early 1980's has about 18 keys and buttons total and you know the function of each one. A 1994-era FT-530 has so many overloaded buttons I dare anyone to try to use it without the operators manual. Today, a Chinese Baofeng may only cost $50 and have the latest features, but where is the satisfaction of actually operating it as a device? It's an appliance.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I have enough to keep me busy with a Kenwood TM-281A.

73

 

[Roger Cole]

Right. A Kenwood TS-520 or Yaesu FT-101 hybrid transceiver is far more satisfying to operate than a modern one. Similarly, an FT-208 handheld from the early 1980's has about 18 keys and buttons total and you know the function of each one. A 1994-era FT-530 has so many overloaded buttons I dare anyone to try to use it without the operators manual. Today, a Chinese Baofeng may only cost $50 and have the latest features, but where is the satisfaction of actually operating it as a device? It's an appliance.

One of my possible future projects is to start collecting old copies of the Radio Amateur's Handbook, maybe starting with my year of birth (1963) and build old gear that would still be useful.

 

[markjwyatt]

So Google has a lot of magazines from the 50s and they have old Pop Photo issues in there.

This is a 60 year old Freestyle ad from the back of the magazine.

Tri-X 135-36 were $3.95 a dozen.
The 100' roles of 35mm are even more dirt cheap!
100 sheet box of 11x14 for $2.95.

View attachment 151742

Hey, if you have any great ads like this, share em.

Let's put this in perspective. TriX 135-36 in 1950s, say $0.50/roll as you approach 1 roll. Two quarters. Quarters were silver. Today, a silver quarter (1964 and previous) is worth about $5.70 in silver value (Google junk silver, $1000 face). So Tri-X in the 1950s was > $11/roll in today's money. At Freestyle, today, it is about $9, so actually a little cheaper.

 

[wiltw]

And the yearly income back then was???

In 1960 median household income in US was $5600, and a gallon of gas was $0.31 and a gallon of milk was $1

 

[Down Under]

All these prices made me want to cry - until I sat down with my morning coffee and remembered in 1965, sure, I paid CDN$0.50 a roll for Verichrome Pan 120 for my Yashica D, but I was also earning all of $35.00 for a 50-hour week as a cadet news reporter...

Do army surplus stores still exist in North America?? In the 1960s and 1970s I paid absurdly low prices for all sorts of great photo gear in those in Canada and the USA. It seemed every store had several aerial cameras, huge things they were with lenses like astronomy telescopes, for next to nothing.

In 1979 I drove across the USA from California to eastern Canada and back again, visiting almost every Civil War battlefield in the country - according to my travel diary, Kodachrome film (without processing) cost me $3.79 a roll. I had a hundred rolls souped and mounted in a prolab in Arizona for $2.98 a roll. I drove a 1970 Ford Maverick I bought in LA for $500; in June that year there was a gasoline crisis and the stuff hit $1.14 for a GALLON at the pumps. I wasn't into B&W bulk film then, but I recall it was dirt cheap to buy as well as the bulk loaders - now on Australian Ebay the sellers want AUD$200+ for a loader but then it's Ebay, let's not forget that. A parallel universe to ours.

All that nostalgia, sign. I was gobsmacked when I moved to Australia in the mid-'70s and found high prices for anything photographic, the ozbuck was artificially pegged above the US$ worth more then but we got slugged with duty and sales tax for everything imported.

Film, paper and darkroom chemicals are still expensive now but the rest of the world appears to have caught up with us in the notion that in this day and age nothing is really cheap. Que sera sera, as one Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff said, or rather sang.

Pawn shops were full of interesting things. Speed and Crown Graphic kits, probably ex-newspaper, for <US$100, enlargers at $20 each. The list was seemingly endless. Truly those were the golden years for us. We still live in interesting times but the days of huge bargains in all things photographic are now well and truly past, though I still laugh when I see someone wanting AUD$300 for a clapped-out Nikkormat FTN without a lens on Ebay.

As for used Leica prices, let's not go there, or we will all be bawling our eyes out...

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Candy bars were a dime when I was 10 (1973). Now they're a buck 50. I could buy candy for a penny. The only difference was no tax on candy bars then... And they were bigger

 

[drmoss_ca]

Candy bars were a dime when I was 10 (1973). Now they're a buck 50. I could buy candy for a penny. The only difference was no tax on candy bars then... And they were bigger

Cheapest candy (or sweets as we called them in the UK) when I was a kid was Fruit Chews (rainbow coloured) or Black Jacks (licorice flavoured with an unfortunate picture of a blackface minstrel on the wrapper) - wait for it, both were eight for 1d, one old penny.
Cheapest film of my youth was from a mail-in photo lab called Paragon in Brighton. Send them your B&W film in their mailer and a postal order for about ten shillings, and they'd send back the negatives, 4x5 prints, a new roll of film and a new mailing envelope. When I graduated to slide film - by mis-spending my student grant - it was always outdated Fujichrome or Orwochrom and that too was process-paid.