In the last installment, we covered Bruh’s reasons for not shooting film anymore. The main reason being that it’s too expensive. Given that Bruh was spending nearly $3.75 per image, I could totally understand that sentiment.

There are ways you can cut down your expenses associated with shooting film. The first and most obvious is to do the developing and scanning yourself. With most labs charging an average of $20 per roll for standard developing, postage, and scanning, the biggest cost of shooting film is actually the developing and scanning – not the film itself.

I’m not going to go into HOW to develop your film at home, as there are plenty of good YouTube videos you can watch to learn all about that.

That said, below is a rather generic breakdown of what you need to develop film, at prices currently on Amazon. I used Amazon as a benchmark as its easily accessible for most people and cuts down the need to search around on the internet. However, I do recommend that you shop around as you may be able to find things cheaper while supporting smaller companies that sell film processing supplies.

COLOR (C-41)

We’ll start with color since Bruh was shooting Portra 800 color film. At right is the breakdown for the necessities and costs. Note that this does not include some of the items you need that you may already have that are just laying around the house: Timer (you can use your phone), rubber gloves, paper towels, squeegee, liquid soap, funnels, stir sticks (chop sticks work great!), scissors, 3-ring binder for film sleeve storage, and some way to hang the film to dry (clothes pins).

BLACK & WHITE

There are many different B&W developers out there, and everyone has their favorite. For the purpose of this article, I will recommend Adox Rodinal developer and Ilford Rapid Fixer. Why? Because both are easy to mix and are usually always available thru various retailers. And they produce great results. Rodinal is currently out of stock in many places including Amazon, but Freestyle shows it will be back in stock on 2/28.

Same note as before in regard to what else is also needed that you may have laying around your house already: Timer (you can use your phone), rubber gloves, paper towels, squeegee, liquid soap, funnels, stir sticks (chop sticks work great!), scissors, 3-ring binder for film sleeve storage, and some way to hang the film to dry (clothes pins).

SCANNING

Whether you choose Color or B&W, you’re looking at right around $200 for an initial investment for tools and chemicals. But once your film is developed, dried, cut, and sleeved – what next? You’ll more-than-likely want to scan the film to have a digital file to work with in Lightroom or Photoshop. This is what most of us call a “Hybrid” workflow.

There are many ways to scan film – ranging from taking an image of the negative with a digital camera, to flatbed scanning, to a dedicated film scanner like a CoolScan or PaKon. Since flatbed scanners are relatively cheap and widely available, I’ll add an Epson V600 to the list. You can usually pick one up for $300 new on Amazon, but if you look around you can find deals for less than $200.

CONCLUSIONS

Let’s assume you pay full price for the scanner. That means all in you are at about $500 in starting costs. At the current cost of $20 per roll at the lab, you’d break even somewhere around 25 rolls. I know that doesn’t include your own time you spend doing the developing and scanning, but isn’t that what hobbies are all about?

If we use some fuzzy math, after you’ve paid for your initial investment at your 25 roll mark, then the cost per roll gets really cheap.

Color works out to be about $1.60 per roll, assuming you stretch your color chems to develop about 25 rolls instead of the 8 rolls that it states on the kit. You can do this by adding about 2% additional time per each roll developed. Once you hit about 25 rolls and/or more than about 60 days since you mixed it fresh, its time to mix up a new batch. Most of the time when the chems start going bad, I notice a dramatic shift in the blues.

B&W gets a little harder to calculate, and because it’s a once & done developer you aren’t extending it like the color developer. And to confuse things, 500ml of developer will be good for 1 roll of 120 or 2 rolls of 35mm. So the cost per roll is different slightly per 35mm and 120, assuming that every time you develop 35mm you develop 2 rolls at once in the Paterson tank. For 120 it works out to about $0.75 per roll to develop B&W, while 35mm works out to about $0.40 per roll.

Again, that doesn’t include your time standing at the sink developing, cutting, sleeving, and scanning. If your time is super valuable to you and/or you just don’t have any spare time, by all means send your film to the lab. I completely get that – I used to do all of my own work on my cars, but as I’ve become older my time is more valuable, so I pay others to do it. But developing film and scanning is relaxing to me - I feel more “connected” to the process while at the same time I am doing other things like listening to a podcast or some great music that I haven’t listened to in a while.

To circle back to Bruh and his Portra 800 he likes to shoot in his Pentax 67. If Bruh spent some of that money he spent on his new Fuji digital camera to buy what he needs to develop color film, after his initial 25 roll recoup cost, his cost just dropped from $37.50 per roll including developing, to $19.10 per roll. Or, in other words – his cost drops from $3.75 per shot to $1.91 per shot.

That’s quite a drop in cost, but still expensive. A lot of that is due to film choice and camera choice. There are still ways to bring the cost down, and we’ll get to that in my next installment.

Stay tuned,

Jeremy

DISCLAIMER: I know that there are plenty of other developer choices/methods for color and B&W, but I’ve chosen some proven, easy to use products for the sake of this argument. Your numbers may vary, but the point here is that if you can develop at home, there are savings to be had over and above paying a lab to do it for you. And, developing is part of the artistic process and another area for you to control the look of your final work.