Re: Kodak Announcement: All Surviving Films subject to 15% Price Hike
Quote:
Originally Posted by
John NYC
Film, especially LF film, is going to become a luxury item. Best get used to it.
Well, on APUG the ADOX rep said that they can make 35mm for $5/roll, so I don't think it will become that much of a luxury item. For 8x10 Portra, heck yes, I expect $20/sheet. It's possible that there's an uptick in general consumer demand (Freestyle's announcement), and it's also possible that it's a "dead cat bounce."
From Freestyle, 8x10, ASA 100, per sheet:
Adox: 3.54
Efke: 3.32
Arista: 2.40
Foma: 3.60
Ilford: 4.50
(Kodak Tri-X: 5.50, in my fridge from Glazer's)
Of course for slide film, it isn't a luxury item, it's a "bye bye now" item. I bought Provia from B&H, and it's fresh, but I wonder how long the imports from Japan will last.
Ah, well, it's hard to watch things wind down like this.
Re: Kodak Announcement: All Surviving Films subject to 15% Price Hike
Take up flying. 100 octane low lead gasoline is now $6.25 a gallon at my home field. Nearby field has it for $5.49, self service. The 172s I learned to fly in and occasionally rent will burn about 8 gallons per hour. In the case of us rental pilots though the rental rate is "wet" meaning fuel and all included. I started doing a check out in a Cherokee 180 (got one flight done, needed one more to rent it solo when winter, early darkness and hectic personal life intervened, will go back and finish this soon) rents for $129/hour, $124 if you pre-pay for a ten hour block, both plus sales tax so the $129 becomes $136.74 per hour all totaled, tax included.
I am not rich. I'm a middle class professional with a mortgage (two of 'em, in fact - when I bought my house no one was paying PMI, you paid your 5% down and got a 2nd mortgage for 15% of the purchase price and a primary mortgage for 80% of the price) on a now financially underwater house and a car loan. I just happen to love to fly enough to be a little compulsive about it and spend what some folks would consider a laughably large amount on what amounts to a hobby. Photography may be similar but isn't in the same league price wise. It's downright cheap in comparison.
Re: Kodak Announcement: All Surviving Films subject to 15% Price Hike
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Roger Cole
Take up flying. 100 octane low lead gasoline is now $6.25 a gallon at my home field. Nearby field has it for $5.49, self service. The 172s I learned to fly in and occasionally rent will burn about 8 gallons per hour.
Or take up boating, my little express cruiser gets 1.68 mpg @ 2,500 rpm and uses 26.6 gallons per hour at wot. Those are manufacturer published test results, my boat is not that easy on fuel.
So yeah, photography is relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things.
Re: Kodak Announcement: All Surviving Films subject to 15% Price Hike
Depends what you're doing. Just printed a very long scale brightly-lit subject on 8X10 TMY,
with lots of critical sprarkly highlight as well as important deep shadow values. Basically a
hole-in-one as far as enlargement went. With HP5 the same scene would have required an
additional sheet of LF film to act as a contrast mask to get even marginally equivalent results, even with a premium VC paper. So which is cheaper? EU film would have required
maybe several sheets because at least one of them would have had a scratch on it. Now
I really like Ilford films like FP4 and HP5, and use quite a bit of them too, so therefore know
their pros and cons quite well, and when TMY has real advantages, even cost-wise.
Re: Kodak Announcement: All Surviving Films subject to 15% Price Hike
TMX got a bad rap since some TMX sheet film had a uv blocker in it, making it less suitable for contact printing in alt processes. TMY2 is different and never had the uv blocker. It is indeed a special and worthwhile film.
I was reading in Vieira's book on hurrell how tri-x 8x10 film's price from hurrell's time till 1997-ish was $5-something a sheet equivalent cost. I paid that much last year (13 years later) for B&H's remaining inventory. I really don't like paying several bucks a sheet for film, but it's cheaper than other hobbies like Roger describes. Shooting a few sheets is cheaper than a visit to the gas station. However Kodak selling it only ten sheets at a time doesn't make me feel like I'm getting a good deal nor does it promote consumption. if there were some quantity discount like for 50-100 sheets, I'd get a bigger pack and think to myself I'm getting it cheaper than most people and can use more than most people.
I'm saving money by getting serious with photography instead of sports cars or boats (or planes). I love to fly too and a short local hired flight once in a while is a cheap fix compared to getting into the hobby myself. I also have an old Jaguar sports car and it's easy to spend a $1k on repairs or upgrades. Not that I or many people would, but options are priced where the sky is the limit. $10k for a new performance oriented carburettor/intake setup. The truly wealthy hire teams of people to prepare vintage racing cars and the teams and bigrigs and cars travel the country for vintage racing. They give the yachting crowd a run for their money. I grew up working on Penobscot bay and have seen many crazy expensive yachting/sailing activities take place that also make photography cheap. I know people who have spent more than a year doing woodwork inside of yacht projects for customers.