If you believe that photo paper is overpriced by the manufacturers, please offer some reasonable explanations why so many have either gone out of business or forced to reorganize. I doubt it is as profitable as some posters here believe.
If you believe that photo paper is overpriced by the manufacturers, please offer some reasonable explanations why so many have either gone out of business or forced to reorganize. I doubt it is as profitable as some posters here believe.
I don't know all the details, but the fact that Ilford paper is made in a country where wages are reasonably high, and the cost of running a business is reasonably high probably has a lot to do with it. I expect you could have it made a lot cheaper if you're OK with poor working conditions etc.
I started taking flying lessons in 2006 and got my private pilot certificate in 2007. One odd "advantage" is that, after being into flying, all my other hobbies look ridiculously cheap!
I rented planes to fly semi-regularly but due to circumstances I now haven't flown in a bit over a year. I still miss it and WILL get back to it.
I'm ok with poor working conditions as long as I get my product.
Paper is still cheap compared to a film scanner, computer, storage devices and an ink jet printer.
Anyone who doesn't like the price of silver gelatin papers can simply switch to inkjet printing - that way you pay just as much or even more
for a sized sheet of paper with no silver or gelatin on it at all, plus the cost of the inks!
I asssume those 2014 prices are the 1952 prices adjusted for 62 years worth of inflation. The D76 price is roughly what I would pay today in the UK as is the nearest I could find to the Kodabromide paper (Ilford RC gloss 8x10)From Montgomery Ward Catalog from 1952:
100 sheets of Kodabromide for $6.42 or in 2014 $59.70
100 sheets Ansco Helibormide in 1952 was $8.93 or in 2014 $66.33
25 sgets Dupont was $2.56 or in 2014 $22.34
A roll of 120 Verichrome Pan was $138 or in 2014 $12.23
A gallon of D76 was $1.84 or in 2014 $16.00
An Argus C4 was $99.40 or in 2014 $880.60
It's worth every penny. Also, I don't waste paper nor water. Also, my enlarger is over 30 years old and I never upgrade to a better one every 4 years either. I like spending money on silver gelatin paper because it's my part to keep the paper factory humming keeping analog photography alive. I do use inkjet printers, but rarely. Mostly to make inkjet negs for alt processes.
I asssume those 2014 prices are the 1952 prices adjusted for 62 years worth of inflation. The D76 price is roughly what I would pay today in the UK as is the nearest I could find to the Kodabromide paper (Ilford RC gloss 8x10)
A bit shocked by Verichrome Pan costing $138 in 1952.
The impression I got from the OP's thread was his feeling, I think, that something had happened to paper prices fairly recently and hence his question. I have to say this recent rise in paper price is the part we need to concentrate on
I am a relatively newcomer to darkroom work, starting in 2003. At that point prices were say X pence per sheet and there they remained for a couple of years then if anything they went down but from about 2006/7 there was a very large increase in price which thankfully appears to have levelled off. Had we continued with the price rise trend then I seriously wonder at what point even serious enthusiasts would have had to curtail their paper use appreciably. I know I don't print as much now as I did in 2005-7 period. I used to have no problem in taking 36 frames and printing most of those negs as 5x7 and the better ones as 8x10. Not any longer sadly
This topic was raised a few years ago and the reply from Simon Galley centred around the massive rise in silver's price which was true. However as BMBikerider has pointed out silver has fallen considerably since then.
The period I have described above i.e. before the large price rises, was well into the digital and inkjet period and a lot if not most of the digital inroads into the silver gelatin paper market had already been made so the key question is this:
If Ilford( I use Ilford simply as the major producer of silver gelatin paper) were able to sell and make a profit on its paper in 2005/6 then given the price increases we have seen, it is either making much more profit now or its former price was earning no profit at all. Yet in 2006 when I went on the Ilford tour it was employing more personnel and not giving any indication that the consumer-price honeymoon had soon to come to an end
The best example of the chnage in prices occurred in the mid part of the first decade of this century with Ilford Postcard paper which was selling at about £15-17 per box of 100. There is nowhere now in the U.K. I can obtain this paper for less than about £44 per box!
So an increase of close to 300% in say 7 years. I certainly look forward to an explanation as to the economic forces that have justified this.I have yet to see such an explanation
Finally and without wishing to to introduce a combative note into the thread I have to say that frankly the arguments that revolve around the cost of paper to the enjoyment one gets from printing or how printing as a hobby compares to other hobbies in terms of cost or using smaller paper etc are not really relevant to the question asked by the OP, in my opinion.
pentaxuser
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