Originally Posted by
StuartR
Thank you all for the thoughtful responses. Drew -- I think you might need to have another look at prices. Tmax 400 is currently 210 dollars for 10 sheets at B&H before tax and shipping. In certain cases special orders can be a bit cheaper, or if you can find short dated films, but in general Kodak around twenty dollars a sheet for black and white now (Tri-X is 18). Ilford is just under 9 dollars a sheet for Delta 100, and I recently bought a box of that to work with. This is my second box. The first one I bought in 2018 had a large visible coating error (a drop shape) on every sheet. It was my first box of 8x10 and not very visible in photos, so I decided not to exchange it and just use the film for experiments. It did not instill me with much confidence in Ilford, however, and was one of the factors behind me sticking with Tmax.
Like many of you I did buy a number of boxes and froze them and am finishing up now. I think I bought ten or fifteen boxes. I only have three left, however, so time is running short. I have also never wanted to be much of a hoarder, as even frozen film is fogged eventually from cosmic radiation, especially faster film like Tmax 400. This is not going to be a factor over four or five years, I would imagine, but I am still in my forties and buying enough film to last the rest of my life is not really practical like it might be for those of my colleagues who are a bit older than I am. I can and do shoot other formats as well, and have scaled back somewhat on 8x10, but I find it very sad, as it is such a beautiful format with a lot of possibilities precluded by smaller formats (such as beautiful contact prints...4x5 is just a bit too small for me in that context).
As for processing, I run an exhibition printing service and used to offer processing for clients, but as Drew hinted at, E6 is not practical to offer here. I do it myself with the Tetenal kits with good results, but no one in Iceland offers it commercially because there is no volume at all and the costs are huge here. It is a labor of love that I am ok to do, though I am jealous of those of you who can walk or drive to a pro lab with a process controlled dip and dunk setup.
In any case, I will soldier along, but it seems to me that as the bar of entry gets higher and higher, I think eventually there is not really going to be anyone left to buy it. I already know some 8x10 shooters from my MFA group that quit using it because the costs were not manageable, particularly in color. I think we are ok for awhile with black and white, but for color? 10 photos for 300 dollars plus processing and scanning? Maybe for certain high end fashion shoots, but harder to see for artists, even very talented ones who sell work.
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