Slide 36p B&W 25p per shot

[lincoln_m]

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Hi,

I just got the 2011 price list for my pro lab. If I get only one film developed at a time it will cost 36p for Velvia 100 and 25p for TMAX 400 if I get 38 shots per film. If I develop more than 2 films then the cost will come down slightly as the postage will be a smaller part. But to go digital I would have to trade in my M7 and MP add £2000 to get an M9. That extra £2000 would buy me 5555 Velvia shots ( about 7-8 years of use for me) but I'd only have one camera.

 

So despite the increasing cost of film processing I think I'll stay with film for a while. It helps to do the sums to put it in perspective.

 

Regards, Lincoln

[andybarton]

Sounds like you got an email from Peak today...

 

Don't disagree with your maths though, if that's 36p PER FRAME

 

It's a hell of a lot less if you do your own processing.

[earleygallery]

Bloody cheap isn't it, especially if you make each frame count. Although my art isn't something I measure in terms of price like that, maybe for paid jobs.

[Marty]

Surely such calculations are academic today. If one thing worries me it is that more people start doing their own development and the pro labs stop it altogether.

[Xmas]

Hi

 

Invest in dev equipment, tanks, chemicals, light table, loupe, & scanner.

This reduces cost, turn around time and should increase quality.

Buy film past best before date, reduced cost.

Daylight loader, bulk film, p/e the MP and M7 for early M6s (or M2) to allow IXMOO. This reduces cost further.

But if you are only going to buy more beer...

Two film M are more available than one M9. I normally carry three or four film M bodies.

 

Noel

[lincoln_m]

Noel,

For E6 ( and Kodachrome in the past ) I have to use Pro Labs. For B&W I can and have used my own tanks in the kitchen etc and drain pipes to hang the film inside to dry. But for B&W I'd only do it occasionally so was always using new dev and worried about the air in the rest of the 1litre bottle making it go off. At 1 B&W film per month in peak times or 3 at once I realised it was easier to get Peak Imaging to do it for me.

 

If I post it Monday I'll get it back Thu/Fri ready for scanning at the weekend, the only time I have for photography as it is not my day job. Also Peak Imaging have soft water in Sheffield and the film comes back clean and flat (great for scanning).

 

I'm also helping keep them in business so they are around when I need them.

 

I'm just wingeing about the price of everything going up all the time but as I need the convenience then I guess I have to pay or develop it myself.

 

With the M9 it is as though you have pre-paid for 5 years of processing up front, so I can imagine users being snap happy. It doesn't mean your shots (or decisive moments) will be any better than your fellow film user who is on a pay as you go processing deal. Digital cameras are like phones with free minutes, they are not free because you pay up front for your free minutes but it makes you careless with your minutes (or snaps) because you think they are now free.

 

With Peak Imaging I often pay upfront so I'm in credit by £20 so I can send off a film and use my" free minutes" for processing without having to write a new cheque sure in the knowledge they'll process asap because they already had my money for a few months.

 

Perhaps I should send them a £2000 cheque to mimic the M9 experience of being poor after purchase but having free processing until the battery dies. Then I'd be rattling through films like anything because my processing would be "free" like a digital camera.

 

Weird how having free or prepaid processing for captured images makes me feel different about how I'd shoot, digital or film. Another reason why I'm still mainly a film photographer.

 

I made the mistake of taking slide, B&W, and digital shots on a trip to Iceland. My film was a little out of date which looks bad on velvia ( magenta cast hard to correct ), and my concentration was spread over 3 cameras instead of just one. I should have done 1 well instead of 3 averagely.

 

Lincoln

[qvsm]

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That said, there's still the cost of purchasing film.

[ndjambrose]

Hi,

I just got the 2011 price list for my pro lab. If I get only one film developed at a time it will cost 36p for Velvia 100 and 25p for TMAX 400 if I get 38 shots per film. If I develop more than 2 films then the cost will come down slightly as the postage will be a smaller part. But to go digital I would have to trade in my M7 and MP add £2000 to get an M9. That extra £2000 would buy me 5555 Velvia shots ( about 7-8 years of use for me) but I'd only have one camera.

 

So despite the increasing cost of film processing I think I'll stay with film for a while. It helps to do the sums to put it in perspective.

 

Regards, Lincoln

 

And what do you do with your frames - put the negative on the wall? :-)

 

 

Don't forget to add cost of the film, scanner, software, digital storage and your time.

 

For me the most expensive part of using film is what happens afterward. I process my own so my per frame cost is closer to 6p than 36p, but the real cost is the time it takes to scan, adjust, catalog, and store each frame. Once I add all that in at a commercial rate for my time, the cost per frame is around £1.15. And the material cost of a good scanner is similar to a new M8.2 (and no point not using a good scanner - after all, why work with film unless for the very best results you can get?)

 

In the long term I'm not convinced that film is any cheaper than digital. The costs of digital are front loaded, so more visible, but I suspect the real costs of using both mediums work out very similar. For me the compelling reason to use film is based on the process and the result, but definitely not as a perceived economy.

 

Film is cheap in very small quantities only. If you shoot 40 rolls a month you feel differently.

[wattsy]

Once I add all that in at a commercial rate for my time, the cost per frame is around £1.15.

 

You must have your scanning and associated processes down to a fine art. £5+ per frame seems more realistic to me if you apply anything like a commercial rate to the time involved.

 

Maybe I just have a slow scanner?

[ndjambrose]

Ian, my scanner is probably as slow as yours. I don't sit there watching it though: I scan 12 frames at a time using fixed settings and maximum frame size, and then keep it going while I do something else. I pop-back time to time to reload, and aim to get several rolls scanned at once.

 

I drop the folder of scanned frames on a Photoshop droplet which applies auto levels and curves to each image on new layers and saves the file and a thumbnail copy. That gets me close enough to a decent contact sheet.... I then blitz through each thumbnail using Bridge and highlight the keepers.

 

I then process the keepers only - flattening the file, dodge/burn for tonality, spotting and final crop, and export to the finished job folder. I have one click actions for some of these. Spotting is never too arduous as the quality of my processed negatives is better than I get from a lab, and dust and marks are minimal.

 

The aim of the workflow is to keep me off the computer for as long as possible. Pointless really, since I spend too much spare time here ...

 

Also, beyond a certain volume I just outsource the processing and scanning. If a pro lab can do it at £40 per roll, not much point in me doing if it will work out more expensive.

[lincoln_m]

Ok my costings did include the cost of the film for the quantities this amateur uses, about 12 Velvia and 6 TMAX per year. Of the slides I probably scan about 50% of the frames, having first filtered out the bad ones on the light table while making the slide show selection.

 

Yes my £500 Minolta scanner is the weak link. Elite 5400. I'm not sure if the Nikons(14bit?) will be better as the Minolta(16bit ADC) came out tops in LFI magazine review for this price range. The Minolta is quick to scan even at 5400dpi so I can scan a slide film over a weekend while doing other things.

 

Any post-processing on the computer would have to be done if the source was a RAW file so I don't count that in my costs.

 

Any printing or framing of the very few images that are worth it would have to be done for film or digital.

 

The most expensive part of a print is the framing. A £10 print cost £90 to frame/mount a few years ago.

 

I'm not aiming to make a cost analysis for film v digital for a pro-photographer's business here. I was just a little surprised when I worked out the "cost" of firing the shutter, not having done that before now.

 

For me Aperture really helps manage / compare the images film or digital. Until Aperture 3 spotting the dust on film shots was really slow in previous versions (PS7 was better) but it is much improved in version 3.0 onwards with the new improved brushes.

 

I can't afford or justify the expense of PS CS4 for MAC so I make do with Aperture which meets my needs and the quantity of images I handle.

 

I can't imagine shooting 40 rolls per week, that is a big outlay and perhaps RSI in the hand too? But then that makes the camera cost seem smaller in comparison. It is interesting to understand how other users work with their cameras, lenses, film etc and what is important to one is not so for another.

 

Regards, Lincoln

[lincoln_m]

Neil,

BTW your B&W work is inspirational. I especially like your landscape work but you also have an expert eye for street photography too. Quite how you can keep tone in the sky while having snow pure white is amazing as I find it very tricky to do.

 

I must get out into the woods to shoot some B&W this Christmas holiday.

 

Thanks for the much needed kick up the backside as I find it difficult to find subjects to shoot this time of the year, now I have some new ideas.

 

Cheers, Merry Christmas,

Lincoln

[ndjambrose]

...I'm not aiming to make a cost analysis for film v digital for a pro-photographer's business here. ..

 

In the numbers you're talking about film makes perfect sense. Since your shooting rate amounts to less than 650 frames a year there's no economic justification for a digital M, and no basis by which you could expect to recoup the expenditure.

 

You're also at the point where you could reasonably avoid any of the associated costs of using film. In low volume it's much cheaper and more effective to outsource everything. If I were shooting 18 rolls a year I'd make every shot count, sell the scanner and get the best lab production I could find.

 

But, either way... the important thing is investing time in photography. How anyone gets there doesn't really matter.

 

Merry Christmas!

[chris_livsey]

I've had a quick look at Peak following this thread and got totally lost in the multiplicity of options. D&P D&Scan etc etc.

My local pharmacy does me C41 D&P 36/8 exp. 6x4 for £7 plus £1 for scan if I have say three done all scans go on one disc = £1 total. They open to 8Mb and they are consistent and of good quality. It is an independent outlet who look after their equipment and know how to use it.

I am not clear with Peak about this standard v pro. service. which are you using ? They say use pro for all pro films. Surely the settings (profiles) in these machines cover pro as well as "other" films (my pharmacy produce stunning results from my Fuji Pro 400H) why do they ask more for running on a different setting which the machine will no doubt select automatically from the film coding.

I'm not knocking them, you are obviously happy and I respect your opinion, just trying to understand the structure of their service offering. It does seem perverse to offer a service which is marketed in effect as being cheap and cheerful and not the best we can do. I would have thought a pro lab would pride itself on only putting out work of a consistent and high standard.

I would be interested in what you priced against and what you normally ask for, you here BTW means those using Peak.

 

Seasons greetings

ChrisL

[lincoln_m]

Chris,

I just use the develop only option for both B&W neg ( returned in sleeves 6 shot sections ) and Slide (Mounted) with no printing. The Pro option you are talking about is for the individual assessment of each image before colour correction and printing. I think the Standard option just uses a basic correction setting for all prints without individual assessment. Developing would be the same, or as advised by the film manufacturer whether the customer uses Std or Pro.

 

I haven't used colour print film for years now, mainly slide 80% B&W neg 20%.

 

Negs come back clean and flat(very important for scanning), slides are clean and mounted. The water in Sheffield is soft so it seems easy to keep the film free of water, lime, stains/specs.

 

The last time I used my local Jessops in Swindon they do that thing with old tongs where they score the film wiping down to remove water/dust. As I use 16bit scanning none of the dust/scratch removal tools work on the Minolta scanner so tidying up colour negs for a 7500x5000 pixel scan is a nightmare. Slides are ready to project and easy to preview on a light box.

 

I used to use Fujilab but now they have moved to an independent and the process vouchers seem to be no more. The processing takes a few weeks now at Fuji so I prefer to use Peak Imaging who will get it back to you within the week. Oh and Peak use freepost boxes where you can post 3 films at once.

 

Regards, Lincoln

[Xmas]

...For B&W I can and have used my own tanks in the kitchen etc and drain pipes to hang the film inside to dry. But for B&W I'd only do it occasionally so was always using new dev and worried about the air in the rest of the 1litre bottle making it go off...

I could not afford a lab and I dont like the delay, or postal risk. Though now I only do C41 or monochrome.

 

I use expired bulk 30m loads or cine - cheaper.

 

Rodinal in 3/4 empty corked bottle lasts 25 years or more, fixer if it does not clear in expected time mix up some more fresh.

 

The quality is just as good, or better.

 

Noel

[chris_livsey]

Lincoln

 

That is much clearer, thank you. For my digital purposes, web flickr etc, the minilab scan is "good enough" I have resisted getting into scanning with another learning curve.

I am still not convinced over the pro level machine prints. The machines are very clever now and adjust for each frame. i can see an operator could visually assess and compensate but is it wort that for a machine print. If you wanted a hand print to best standards then the expert eye comes in. It may be interesting to shoot two rolls in controlled conditions and put them through the two offerings but I have better things to do with my time and film.

 

If you watch the video on this page, in French but it doesn't matter, this is what I mean by hand printing

 

http://www.laboratoire-tirages-argentiques.com/prestation-eng.html

[lincoln_m]

Chris,

Yes nice film about Nathalie's print room. She has some big kit and does extra things that I didn't do in my dark room. I think I didn't wash or fix my prints enough because they would fade after about 5 years when they should last 100 years. Nathalie was also doing something with a hose and a brush to clean and keep the white parts white somehow. Perhaps going over with a cotton bud helps remove any spare developer?

 

I think 12x10 is the biggest I could print if I setup the darkroom again. Her prints look to be about 24x20 inches? I remember the hardest part was getting the correct exposure, and development time so needing many test runs/strips before doing a final print. A lot of work for just one print but then for the good ones it always is even with a digital darkroom.

 

One day perhaps I'll do it again. Nowadays scanning and computer printing seems easier although my MAC + Aperture looks best for colour while B+W doesn't look right until I print then it looks as expected. It must be something about the B+W gamma on screen does not match the printing while it does for colour printing? The Grey proof settings don't change the image on screen so I leave it on the Adobe1998 settings for colour work.

 

Regards, Lincoln

[qvsm]

I had medium resolution scans done at Peak (they've 4-5 graded scanning services) and they came back with what appears to be brush marks on all of them. At the price paid, I decided immediately not to request the same service again.

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[ndjambrose]

...Natalie was also doing something with a hose and a brush to clean and keep the white parts white somehow. Perhaps going over with a cotton bud helps remove any spare developer?...

 

She's bleaching the highlights with ferric-cyanide to accentuate the white tones. The water is to rinse the solution before it burns away the image.