6 ms·

Ask HN: Getting film developed cheap in the US

25 points by 999900000999 5y ago

Hi hacker News, so I recently got in a film photography. But then I realized all the labs around here, end up charging about 15 to $20 per roll if you want them to get developed and scanned. Assuming you shoot a roll of film every single weekend, you end up spending 1k per year to develop it all. Developing at home is not an option ( although I would be open to a magic machine that does it for me ).

HoyaSaxa 5y ago
Costco is $0.11 per print and it includes shipping: https://www.costcophotocenter.com/Prints https://www.costcophotocenter.com/Prints Note: I do believe you need a Costco membership
Implicated 5y ago
thedarkroom.com Have been a happy customer for years.
daneel_w 5y ago
I don't know the commercial situation in the US, but here in Europe it's still cheaper to set your own darkroom up - for black and white film, that is. Color (both negative and "slide") always was, and still is, costly and "messy". If you shoot b&w, perhaps you really should make developing at home an option.
throwanem 5y ago
Not that it won't be anathema to some folks, but have you considered just going with digital? For all that film has had something of a hipster renaissance lately - I mean, I grew up on the stuff, and there's a reason I bought my first digital camera in 1996 - and a reason I haven't shot my heirloom Nikkormat FTn since about that time, too. Granted, that first Mavica gave up a lot in quality compared with 35mm, but it's been a long time now since you had to make that tradeoff, and you can get a very nice APS-C body and lens kit for around $600. If you're primarily interested not in using film specifically so much as in in making photographs, that $600 kit can serve you just fine for a long time, at an incremental cost per shot of zero. (Depending on body and system, you can even still use lenses made for film bodies - I haven't shot Grandpa's Nikkormat since the 90s, but I have quite recently shot its 50mm f/2 prime manufactured in 1967, on my D5300 body. Honestly, to my mind the lenses are at least 90% of what's worth keeping around from the film days, and it's often quite straightforward to use them with digital bodies whose capabilities vastly exceed anything a lot of those lens designers probably ever even imagined.)
- woodruffw 5y ago
  I can try to produce both an objective and subjective justification, without leaning too heavily into camera hipsterism :-) In terms of objective qualities: digital sensors still haven’t fully caught up to film emulsions in terms of dynamic range. Digital sensors also tend to take “antiseptic” pictures, whereas half of the work of film was originally in developing emulsions that perform well at specific tasks and intentionally capture colors differently. Fuji in particular has done an incredible job replicating those emulsions in their digital cameras, but it’s not quite the same. On the more subjective side: I have more fun when I use my film cameras than I do when I use a modern mirrorless or DSLR. I don’t know if everybody enjoys it in the same way, but I like having to do the reciprocity triangle in my head, having to know the specific qualities of the film I’m using, etc. Those elements are a big part of what makes it a tinkering hobby for me, rather than just something I flush money into so that I can perform it with the greatest tékhnē. (All of this said, I take a mirrorless Fuji with me when I’m traveling. Digital is the best of both worlds for many, many occasions.)
  - gruez 5y ago
    >In terms of objective qualities: digital sensors still haven’t fully caught up to film emulsions in terms of dynamic range source? A search reveals: "A release by Kodak showcased that most film has around 13 stops of dynamic range. Today's modern digital cameras all average around 14 stops of dynamic range, " https://petapixel.com/2015/05/26/film-vs-digital-a-comparison-of-the-advantages-and-disadvantages/ https://petapixel.com/2015/05/26/film-vs-digital-a-compariso... >Digital sensors also tend to take “antiseptic” pictures, whereas half of the work of film was originally in developing emulsions that perform well at specific tasks and intentionally capture colors differently. This sounds a lot like taking the pictures in RAW format and then manually doing the adjustments yourself afterwards, rather than letting the camera's image processing algorithms do it for you.
    - throw0101a 5y ago
      The newly released, top-of-their-line, Nikon Z9: > Well, IMATEST confirms the observation from the waveform plot above: there are about 12.7 stops max. dynamic range, but nothing more. Also, in the middle graph above the blue “12.7” line (indicating SNR = 1), there is nothing. > If we look at the measured gamma curve (first graph in the IMATEST result above) – which is the used N-Log profile – it becomes obvious what is happening. N-Log as it is designed for now cannot hold more than 13 stops. If you look at the distribution of stops on the shadow side (to the left), there is a more or less horizontal line – meaning, that there is no code value differentiation between shadow stops anymore. * https://www.cined.com/nikon-z-9-lab-test-rolling-shutter-dynamic-range-and-latitude-test/ https://www.cined.com/nikon-z-9-lab-test-rolling-shutter-dyn... Sorting by Maximum PDR gives a top value of a hair over 13 with the Phase One IQ4 150MP (MSRP US$ 50K): * https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm
Aloha 5y ago
This is the largest reason I stopped shooting film, the processing infrastructure disappeared. I went out and bought a Canon Full Frame mirrorless, and that was that.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
While I agree that developing prints at home is a bit problematic, developing black and white films is not. Afterwards you can scan the negatives using an Epson Photo scanner etc. My workflow for 120mm films is to wait until I have more than 5-7 rolls and process them one by one: while the previous one is in the developer, the next one is in the fixer. In this way, you can process them all very fast. My biggest concern, though, is the environment. In the past you had special places where you could dispose used chemicals. But even then very few people cared, most just wouldn't care. Today even the last bath bothers me - it should be thorough to be effective, and I'd just prefer not to waste the water so much. It is real pity that a few decades after the digital revolution in photography we're very far from being able to obtain results close to film. All digital solutions such as Silver Efex are still very far from the real thing.
rev_d 5y ago
I wonder if the high prices you're seeing are because you're looking at black & white film. B&W film is quite forgiving of under/over-exposure, and it allows for push processing. On the flip side, every type of film has its own developing time & some mild chemical preference. Color film isn't very DIY friendly, but it does have the benefit of being very consistent from a processing perspective. From what I've seen, it's usually a difference of 2x or 3x in price for black and white vs. color (C41).
- woodruffw 5y ago
  Most developing places here (NYC) charge the same for B&W and C-41; E-6 is definitely costlier (and harder to find).
opencl 5y ago
There have been a few 'magic machines' for developing film over the last few years, but they are not cheap. i.e. the Filmomat[1] costs 4K Euros. There are also some simpler products that just make the process a little easier, like the Lab Box[2] which basically just offers an easier way to load the film onto the spool. Developing B&W film with this type of machine is pretty easy and the chemicals are cheap. [1] https://www.filmomat.eu/ https://www.filmomat.eu/ [2] https://www.lab-box.it/ https://www.lab-box.it/
wiseleo 5y ago
Part of the film development process involves the lab applying artistic decisions to your film. These decisions cannot be undone. The same is true for artisan photo printing labs. You have complete control and infinite redo capability with digital process. I bought a Canon T2i with the EF 50-1.4 lens (far more expensive than the usual recommended EF-50 1.8) for $250 a few years ago. Although camera bodies do not deteriorate except when buying a heavily used camera with 20000+ shutter clicks, they still depreciate in value like all other consumer electronics. Consumer camera bodies have long since reached the "good enough" point for most users and now are just minor incremental evolutions. For Canon, that happened with the Canon XSi that introduced drastically improved autofocus and low light capabilities and especially the T2i that introduced full 1080p HD video support (T1i supported 1080 video but not at 30fps). This T2i replaced my previous Canon camera. My photography is effectively free. Let's just not talk about my lights and lenses... The magic machine is called the C-41 process and they exist. :)
giantg2 5y ago
"Developing at home is not an option" Why not?
dave333 5y ago
Doing film photography is a bit like going on vacation in a horse-drawn wagon. Even the look of film such as the grain of Tri-X or the artistic distortions of cheap cameras can be imitated digitally far more easily. You can simulate what it's like to do film photography by taking pictures without reviewing them, then waiting a week, then you can see which shots you got and which you missed or have awkward expressions etc.
- hotpotamus 5y ago
  Curious what you're using for film grain imitation?
  - dave333 5y ago
    https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Film_Grain/ https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Film_Grain/
grimjack00 5y ago
Not quite a magic machine, but take a look at Lab-Box: lab-box.it And maybe pair it with Ilford's pop-up darkroom: https://www.ilfordphoto.com/catalog/product/view/id/2071/s/popup-darkroom/category/70/ https://www.ilfordphoto.com/catalog/product/view/id/2071/s/p... (but there are probably better ways to get a sufficiently dark space). Once you have developed negatives, you can use a digital camera for scanning, if you don't have/want a flatbed or dedicated film scanner. Note I haven't used any of the above yet; I've just recently revived my own interest in film, so had the info handy.
elephanlemon 5y ago
You may find some cheap labs if you look around enough (particularly if you are okay with only getting 4x6s and no digital scans, or getting low resolution digital scans), but home developing is really the play for most people that shoot film. Why is it not an option for you? It’s quite easy (assuming you’re shooting black and white).
peruvian 5y ago
I mean, that's about the price any hobby costs you over a year. "Cheapest" way is to develop it yourself, but of course, that's a different set of skills and equipment you may not be into. There's online labs but I doubt they'll be cheaper either and are much slower. I shoot film too and had my best luck in an immigrant neighborhood. I develop my films in a family business and it's never over $6 per roll. This is in Brooklyn, NY.
cameron_b 5y ago
I’m an outlier, be warned, but I have a pair of Jobo machines, an ATL3 and an ATL2200 with the tanks and do-dads that go with them. I also have an Epson v850. I used these ( and earlier setups that led to this ) in college after a lot of figuring on the solution to your question. I decided that for my time/money math, and considering the quality and control I was after, this was the best fit. Now, I can’t keep up with scanning everything now that I have kids and a full time job and renovations to plan, and I consider selling the whole mess every other day ( the others, I consider buying a Contax 645 ) A solid halfway place is to get a great scanner ( not necessarily the one I have, unless you like big big film, see below for the counterpoint) and take the film to whatever drugstore nearby still has their Fuji stuff. Or, get a hand tank. Wait, it’s way simpler than you think. You somewhere dark, or a changing bag ( I put a towel under the door of a closet before getting a bag ) and then you need a sink. It isn’t super complicated for black and white, though medium format film is WAY easier to handle than 135. Making prints may come down to a yard sale or Craigslist score, but local college dark rooms likely aren’t full, and art kids are handy friends to have. That didn’t likely help unless your main takeaway is held very close to “film is about the love of the game” not economics.
- 999900000999 5y ago
  So I did a bit of research and it looks like developing film with coffee is a very cheap alternative. Would you suggest that, I'm mainly shooting black and white?
  - cameron_b 5y ago
    Powder mix kits are far more bang for the buck even accounting for nearly free coffee. It’s not so a drop-in replacement but far and away an “alternative process” that bears its own look.
  - joshvm 5y ago
    The problem with coffee/caffenol as a developer is that you still need fixer, and while apparently salt works, it sounds hit and miss. So it's kind of hard to argue it as a sort of eco/cheap solution when you still need other chemicals. It's a curiosity/art developer more than anything else. Especially when you can buy very cheap concentrate like Rodinal (1:50+). Stop bath is less of an issue. Rodinal is about £20 a litre which will dilute to work for at least 25-50 films (probably more if you're doing single roll tanks).
fennecfoxen 5y ago
Welcome to film? It costs money? This is a key reason why everyone switched to digital... You can Google around and find mail order processing for ~$5 a roll, and scan it yourself (flatbed with film-adapter, or for more money, dedicated film-scanning hardware that's usually much higher quality). You can develop black-and-white in a dark room yourself and probably get it cheaper. Not sure HN is the best venue for film-specific info, though; perhaps a film forum somewhere?
- daneel_w 5y ago
  No, the cost for developing rolls (or the price per roll) wasn't why photographers switched to digital. It was about speed, convenience, and having the blessing of spending a lot of shots on a subject without running out of film.
  - ruined 5y ago
    that's the cost of developing rolls and price per roll. you're just describing the effects of it.
    - daneel_w 5y ago
      We're discussing economic costs. It's what the parent commented on. "Getting film developed CHEAP in the US".
- blackoil 5y ago
  If i am understanding correct, drugstore are pharmacy that sell medicines. How did that come to overlap with film development business?
  - xeromal 5y ago
    Drugstores in the US are a general store for the most part. They carry many things, but they are usually priced higher than a regular supermarket for convenience. You can buy food, drinks, condoms, makeup, medicine, photos, and other things. It's a good business because most people need something to do while they wait on the pharmacist so they can purchase anything they need while waiting.
prpl 5y ago
That’s the going price. I used to use Replicolor in Salt Lake City and I’ve used photoworks in SF. Both are quality places and cost about the same. You could save some money buy buying your own scanner ($500 for something high-ish quality, probably 250 used.
nopenopenopeno 5y ago
If you’re in Portland, try Citizen Photo. I don’t know if they’re still around because I bailed when the tech companies moved to town and caused a rent surge. I know Citizen Photo moved at the same time, I think to somewhere on Sandy Blvd. I miss those guys.
et-al 5y ago
#shootfilmstaybroke #shootdigitalstayfinanciallysolvent $15-20 is about right for develop + scan costs these days. You can try to save some money by having the lab develop only, then scan yourself. Though, in my experience scanning takes up an entire afternoon so the extra $8 for those Noritsu scans is worth it. If you're open to mailing film, it looks Citizens Photo in Portland is the least expensive: https://lenslurker.com/film-developing-by-mail/ https://lenslurker.com/film-developing-by-mail/
ynac 5y ago
From the time I was about 8 until I was 25 I probably shot 2000 photographs on film. The first year I had a digital camera I shot over 2000. I was happy with both, but now that I'm back on film, I'm VERY selective about my precious film. Look through your film photographs and ask yourself if it was worth shooting each one and why. What value are you getting from capturing that moment. There's a chance a roll of film may last two weeks - cutting your cost in half. For what it's worth, New Jersey Film Lab does good work. And if you want to try developing, find a high school or college that has a lab and see what options they have. Black and white is a couple of hours to learn and develop your first roll. And, just as creative as the image capture process.
woodruffw 5y ago
I haven’t used them, but Photo Life in Brooklyn (Crown Heights) apparently has very cheap mail-in dev-and-scan rates. That’s what I’ve heard from talking to other hobbyists here; I’m too lazy to walk over there and so I pay the slightly higher cost at my neighborhood lab instead.
gen3 5y ago
I’ve been really happy with Memphis film lab. It’s cheaper then all the labs around me and they are better quality. I’ve only shot 35, and I get it scanned at the “standard” tier so it comes out to about 10$ a roll. I think it’s something like 4$ to get your negatives mailed back. I develop in batches to save on shipping. https://www.memphisfilmlab.org/ https://www.memphisfilmlab.org/
hotpotamus 5y ago
My advice would be stick to digital for color and learn to develop black and white film at home. I don't know why you don't consider it an option, but film developing (black and white at least) just requires a few simple containers, chemicals, and a dark bag. From there you can either scan or look into an enlarger which does require more setup. And color is more difficult still.
vidanay 5y ago
Is developing the film yourself an option anymore? I admit it's been 30+ years since I developed any film (and that was B&W), but it wasn't that hard. A film reel and some canisters, a dark bag for loading the canister. All the rest can be done in ambient light once the canister is closed. I definitely remember the developing to be much easier than the printing. edit: To clarify, I believe home developing IS as good option these days. My opening question was rhetorical.
- jdefelice 5y ago
  Developing is still a good option. I develop then scan my photos. Color is arguably easier to develop than b&w, you need a constant temperature and time but you don’t have to worry about pushing or pulling.
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    I know nothing about developing film but I’m curious about the chemicals used and how you dispose of them afterwards? Does it require any special process?
    - joshvm 5y ago
      Realistically most people at home will dilute and flush down the sink. Ilford recommend this for small quantities (no definition of small though). https://www.ilfordphoto.com/health-and-safety/ https://www.ilfordphoto.com/health-and-safety/
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    > Color is arguably easier to develop than b&w, you need a constant temperature and time but you don’t have to worry about pushing or pulling. Color may be easier nowadays because sous vide cooking gear is fairly inexpensive, and lets you keep temperatures constant. It was much harder to do this in the past, so B&W was easier (chemical-wise). "Worrying" about pushing and pulling with B&W is an advantage to some because it lets you tweak your final print compared to what your exposure is. Per Bruce Barnbaum, put your shadows in Zone IV so you don't lose information, and then print it down to Zone III: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlnt5yFArWo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlnt5yFArWo * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_System
Hizonner 5y ago
It would be interesting to know why you think that developing film yourself isn't an option. People think that it's harder than it is, even for color. I mean, a "magic machine" would cost more than many years of lab services. It would use more expensive supplies than doing it by hand, especially because you wouldn't be doing the volume its designers expected. It would require a bunch of maintenance that's at least as hard as developing film. It would take up more space than any reasonable darkroom. It's hard to see why that would be an option when developing with tanks wouldn't be. Also, digital is in fact a superior medium in 99.99999 percent of cases...
- KuiN 5y ago
  > Also, digital is in fact a superior medium in 99.99999 percent of cases... Citation needed.
Apreche 5y ago
Sad to say, that's what it costs. You might be able to save a few bucks shopping around or using mail-in photo labs, but not much. Also, prices are going up these days for both film and developing. It's only gotten more expensive since I started last decade due to both decreases in supply and increases in demand. If you're willing to stick with black and white you can get sort-of close to "magic machine that does it for you" using something like Cinestill monobath. That will do several rolls for $20. Then you have to scan yourself. Think about it this way. A brand new high quality full frame digital camera will cost thousands of dollars. Film camera prices are going up, but you can still get a very nice 35mm film SLR for just a few hundred depending on which one you want. The lenses for the film camera are almost definitely going to be dramatically less expensive as well. Then you add the cost of film and developing over time and now you're pretty much just coming into the same price range as the digital camera. TL;DR: digital and analog are about the same price over time, assuming you are buying a brand new digital camera. The only way to do photography on the cheap is to use your phone (that you were going to buy anyway) or to buy an older/used digital camera. And if you are strapped for cash, that is exactly what I recommend. Why buy a new camera that is a low-end model when you can buy an older camera that was the top-tier professional camera of its day? For example, the Canon 5D Mark II can be had for just a few hundred bucks, and that's just one option of many.
goblin89 5y ago
As a photography enthusiast myself, I recommend one treasure trove of information—the Photography StackExchange[0]—and to not be too averse to googling things around in general. [0] https://photo.stackexchange.com/q/60895 https://photo.stackexchange.com/q/60895
- tasha0663 5y ago
  > $14 dollar roll of fuji pro purchased a local store and $16 development at same store. That results in 4x6 prints that I later scan and retouch to remove dust which proves to be a time consuming process. Might as well just shoot digital if that's the end result anyway.
  - strogonoff 5y ago
    There is one big difference that makes shooting film incomparable to shooting digital even if you print and scan: highlight rolloff. Think of each of your digital camera sensor pixels as a cell containing an integer value, between 0 and let’s say 16383. During exposure time, it collects photons and accumulates its value based on how much light hits this particular pixel. While it’s close to zero, it’s strongly affected by noise floor (which is subject to numerous factors, including e.g. sensor heating up, and can affect pixels unevenly across the sensor). However, once it reaches 16383, it clips—which is a binary threshold after which the pixel is pure color (green, blue or red) and basically contains no useful information at all. By contrast, as light hits your negative film it more or less chemically “burns” it into black, with no such binary threshold. (Paradoxically, on very low level, negative film is in some ways more “binary” than digital sensor—in that it consists of tiny halide crystals, each of which is either activated or not—but since they are layered, smaller, and as more crystals are activated each subsequent photon is less likely to hit an unactivated crystal, statistics play out such that thinking of it as burning light into shades of varying darkness is a useful mental shortcut.) When you develop film, it gets inverted and you get highlights smoothly fading into white, and it matters even after you print and scan. A scene of any contrast becomes a tricky balancing act with digital—you really don’t want to blow out the bright parts, which are often small yet attention-grabbing (hence the most important advice for digital photographers is “underexpose to be safe and pull up as you convert to display-referred space”), but you also don’t want to keep the majority of the scene too close to noise floor. In this sense, film is much more forgiving and better suited for aesthetically pleasing yet casual in-the-moment shots.
qbasic_forever 5y ago
Heck, you can't even get digital stuff printed locally anymore in my experience. Five to ten years ago every drug store had a good quality photo printer with results in an hour, but now I can barely find them. I used to use Costco but all of them dropped their photo printers in the last year.
- ericpauley 5y ago
  Walmart still does photo printing in an hour at many locations. I recently got a single 4x6 photo printed for 9 cents.
- baking 5y ago
  Walgreens has 8000 same-day locations in the US.

25 points by 999900000999 5y ago

HoyaSaxa 5y ago

Costco is $0.11 per print and it includes shipping: https://www.costcophotocenter.com/Prints https://www.costcophotocenter.com/Prints Note: I do believe you need a Costco membership

Implicated 5y ago

thedarkroom.com Have been a happy customer for years.

daneel_w 5y ago

I don't know the commercial situation in the US, but here in Europe it's still cheaper to set your own darkroom up - for black and white film, that is. Color (both negative and "slide") always was, and still is, costly and "messy". If you shoot b&w, perhaps you really should make developing at home an option.

throwanem 5y ago

Not that it won't be anathema to some folks, but have you considered just going with digital? For all that film has had something of a hipster renaissance lately - I mean, I grew up on the stuff, and there's a reason I bought my first digital camera in 1996 - and a reason I haven't shot my heirloom Nikkormat FTn since about that time, too. Granted, that first Mavica gave up a lot in quality compared with 35mm, but it's been a long time now since you had to make that tradeoff, and you can get a very nice APS-C body and lens kit for around $600. If you're primarily interested not in using film specifically so much as in in making photographs, that $600 kit can serve you just fine for a long time, at an incremental cost per shot of zero. (Depending on body and system, you can even still use lenses made for film bodies - I haven't shot Grandpa's Nikkormat since the 90s, but I have quite recently shot its 50mm f/2 prime manufactured in 1967, on my D5300 body. Honestly, to my mind the lenses are at least 90% of what's worth keeping around from the film days, and it's often quite straightforward to use them with digital bodies whose capabilities vastly exceed anything a lot of those lens designers probably ever even imagined.)

woodruffw 5y ago
I can try to produce both an objective and subjective justification, without leaning too heavily into camera hipsterism :-) In terms of objective qualities: digital sensors still haven’t fully caught up to film emulsions in terms of dynamic range. Digital sensors also tend to take “antiseptic” pictures, whereas half of the work of film was originally in developing emulsions that perform well at specific tasks and intentionally capture colors differently. Fuji in particular has done an incredible job replicating those emulsions in their digital cameras, but it’s not quite the same. On the more subjective side: I have more fun when I use my film cameras than I do when I use a modern mirrorless or DSLR. I don’t know if everybody enjoys it in the same way, but I like having to do the reciprocity triangle in my head, having to know the specific qualities of the film I’m using, etc. Those elements are a big part of what makes it a tinkering hobby for me, rather than just something I flush money into so that I can perform it with the greatest tékhnē. (All of this said, I take a mirrorless Fuji with me when I’m traveling. Digital is the best of both worlds for many, many occasions.)
- gruez 5y ago
  >In terms of objective qualities: digital sensors still haven’t fully caught up to film emulsions in terms of dynamic range source? A search reveals: "A release by Kodak showcased that most film has around 13 stops of dynamic range. Today's modern digital cameras all average around 14 stops of dynamic range, " https://petapixel.com/2015/05/26/film-vs-digital-a-comparison-of-the-advantages-and-disadvantages/ https://petapixel.com/2015/05/26/film-vs-digital-a-compariso... >Digital sensors also tend to take “antiseptic” pictures, whereas half of the work of film was originally in developing emulsions that perform well at specific tasks and intentionally capture colors differently. This sounds a lot like taking the pictures in RAW format and then manually doing the adjustments yourself afterwards, rather than letting the camera's image processing algorithms do it for you.
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    The newly released, top-of-their-line, Nikon Z9: > Well, IMATEST confirms the observation from the waveform plot above: there are about 12.7 stops max. dynamic range, but nothing more. Also, in the middle graph above the blue “12.7” line (indicating SNR = 1), there is nothing. > If we look at the measured gamma curve (first graph in the IMATEST result above) – which is the used N-Log profile – it becomes obvious what is happening. N-Log as it is designed for now cannot hold more than 13 stops. If you look at the distribution of stops on the shadow side (to the left), there is a more or less horizontal line – meaning, that there is no code value differentiation between shadow stops anymore. * https://www.cined.com/nikon-z-9-lab-test-rolling-shutter-dynamic-range-and-latitude-test/ https://www.cined.com/nikon-z-9-lab-test-rolling-shutter-dyn... Sorting by Maximum PDR gives a top value of a hair over 13 with the Phase One IQ4 150MP (MSRP US$ 50K): * https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm

Aloha 5y ago

This is the largest reason I stopped shooting film, the processing infrastructure disappeared. I went out and bought a Canon Full Frame mirrorless, and that was that.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

While I agree that developing prints at home is a bit problematic, developing black and white films is not. Afterwards you can scan the negatives using an Epson Photo scanner etc. My workflow for 120mm films is to wait until I have more than 5-7 rolls and process them one by one: while the previous one is in the developer, the next one is in the fixer. In this way, you can process them all very fast. My biggest concern, though, is the environment. In the past you had special places where you could dispose used chemicals. But even then very few people cared, most just wouldn't care. Today even the last bath bothers me - it should be thorough to be effective, and I'd just prefer not to waste the water so much. It is real pity that a few decades after the digital revolution in photography we're very far from being able to obtain results close to film. All digital solutions such as Silver Efex are still very far from the real thing.

rev_d 5y ago

I wonder if the high prices you're seeing are because you're looking at black & white film. B&W film is quite forgiving of under/over-exposure, and it allows for push processing. On the flip side, every type of film has its own developing time & some mild chemical preference. Color film isn't very DIY friendly, but it does have the benefit of being very consistent from a processing perspective. From what I've seen, it's usually a difference of 2x or 3x in price for black and white vs. color (C41).

woodruffw 5y ago
Most developing places here (NYC) charge the same for B&W and C-41; E-6 is definitely costlier (and harder to find).

opencl 5y ago

There have been a few 'magic machines' for developing film over the last few years, but they are not cheap. i.e. the Filmomat[1] costs 4K Euros. There are also some simpler products that just make the process a little easier, like the Lab Box[2] which basically just offers an easier way to load the film onto the spool. Developing B&W film with this type of machine is pretty easy and the chemicals are cheap. [1] https://www.filmomat.eu/ https://www.filmomat.eu/ [2] https://www.lab-box.it/ https://www.lab-box.it/

wiseleo 5y ago

Part of the film development process involves the lab applying artistic decisions to your film. These decisions cannot be undone. The same is true for artisan photo printing labs. You have complete control and infinite redo capability with digital process. I bought a Canon T2i with the EF 50-1.4 lens (far more expensive than the usual recommended EF-50 1.8) for $250 a few years ago. Although camera bodies do not deteriorate except when buying a heavily used camera with 20000+ shutter clicks, they still depreciate in value like all other consumer electronics. Consumer camera bodies have long since reached the "good enough" point for most users and now are just minor incremental evolutions. For Canon, that happened with the Canon XSi that introduced drastically improved autofocus and low light capabilities and especially the T2i that introduced full 1080p HD video support (T1i supported 1080 video but not at 30fps). This T2i replaced my previous Canon camera. My photography is effectively free. Let's just not talk about my lights and lenses... The magic machine is called the C-41 process and they exist. :)

giantg2 5y ago

"Developing at home is not an option" Why not?

dave333 5y ago

Doing film photography is a bit like going on vacation in a horse-drawn wagon. Even the look of film such as the grain of Tri-X or the artistic distortions of cheap cameras can be imitated digitally far more easily. You can simulate what it's like to do film photography by taking pictures without reviewing them, then waiting a week, then you can see which shots you got and which you missed or have awkward expressions etc.

hotpotamus 5y ago
Curious what you're using for film grain imitation?
- dave333 5y ago
  https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Film_Grain/ https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Film_Grain/

grimjack00 5y ago

Not quite a magic machine, but take a look at Lab-Box: lab-box.it And maybe pair it with Ilford's pop-up darkroom: https://www.ilfordphoto.com/catalog/product/view/id/2071/s/popup-darkroom/category/70/ https://www.ilfordphoto.com/catalog/product/view/id/2071/s/p... (but there are probably better ways to get a sufficiently dark space). Once you have developed negatives, you can use a digital camera for scanning, if you don't have/want a flatbed or dedicated film scanner. Note I haven't used any of the above yet; I've just recently revived my own interest in film, so had the info handy.

elephanlemon 5y ago

You may find some cheap labs if you look around enough (particularly if you are okay with only getting 4x6s and no digital scans, or getting low resolution digital scans), but home developing is really the play for most people that shoot film. Why is it not an option for you? It’s quite easy (assuming you’re shooting black and white).

peruvian 5y ago

I mean, that's about the price any hobby costs you over a year. "Cheapest" way is to develop it yourself, but of course, that's a different set of skills and equipment you may not be into. There's online labs but I doubt they'll be cheaper either and are much slower. I shoot film too and had my best luck in an immigrant neighborhood. I develop my films in a family business and it's never over $6 per roll. This is in Brooklyn, NY.

cameron_b 5y ago

I’m an outlier, be warned, but I have a pair of Jobo machines, an ATL3 and an ATL2200 with the tanks and do-dads that go with them. I also have an Epson v850. I used these ( and earlier setups that led to this ) in college after a lot of figuring on the solution to your question. I decided that for my time/money math, and considering the quality and control I was after, this was the best fit. Now, I can’t keep up with scanning everything now that I have kids and a full time job and renovations to plan, and I consider selling the whole mess every other day ( the others, I consider buying a Contax 645 ) A solid halfway place is to get a great scanner ( not necessarily the one I have, unless you like big big film, see below for the counterpoint) and take the film to whatever drugstore nearby still has their Fuji stuff. Or, get a hand tank. Wait, it’s way simpler than you think. You somewhere dark, or a changing bag ( I put a towel under the door of a closet before getting a bag ) and then you need a sink. It isn’t super complicated for black and white, though medium format film is WAY easier to handle than 135. Making prints may come down to a yard sale or Craigslist score, but local college dark rooms likely aren’t full, and art kids are handy friends to have. That didn’t likely help unless your main takeaway is held very close to “film is about the love of the game” not economics.

999900000999 5y ago
So I did a bit of research and it looks like developing film with coffee is a very cheap alternative. Would you suggest that, I'm mainly shooting black and white?
- cameron_b 5y ago
  Powder mix kits are far more bang for the buck even accounting for nearly free coffee. It’s not so a drop-in replacement but far and away an “alternative process” that bears its own look.
- joshvm 5y ago
  The problem with coffee/caffenol as a developer is that you still need fixer, and while apparently salt works, it sounds hit and miss. So it's kind of hard to argue it as a sort of eco/cheap solution when you still need other chemicals. It's a curiosity/art developer more than anything else. Especially when you can buy very cheap concentrate like Rodinal (1:50+). Stop bath is less of an issue. Rodinal is about £20 a litre which will dilute to work for at least 25-50 films (probably more if you're doing single roll tanks).

fennecfoxen 5y ago

Welcome to film? It costs money? This is a key reason why everyone switched to digital... You can Google around and find mail order processing for ~$5 a roll, and scan it yourself (flatbed with film-adapter, or for more money, dedicated film-scanning hardware that's usually much higher quality). You can develop black-and-white in a dark room yourself and probably get it cheaper. Not sure HN is the best venue for film-specific info, though; perhaps a film forum somewhere?

daneel_w 5y ago
No, the cost for developing rolls (or the price per roll) wasn't why photographers switched to digital. It was about speed, convenience, and having the blessing of spending a lot of shots on a subject without running out of film.
- ruined 5y ago
  that's the cost of developing rolls and price per roll. you're just describing the effects of it.
  - daneel_w 5y ago
    We're discussing economic costs. It's what the parent commented on. "Getting film developed CHEAP in the US".
blackoil 5y ago
If i am understanding correct, drugstore are pharmacy that sell medicines. How did that come to overlap with film development business?
- xeromal 5y ago
  Drugstores in the US are a general store for the most part. They carry many things, but they are usually priced higher than a regular supermarket for convenience. You can buy food, drinks, condoms, makeup, medicine, photos, and other things. It's a good business because most people need something to do while they wait on the pharmacist so they can purchase anything they need while waiting.

prpl 5y ago

That’s the going price. I used to use Replicolor in Salt Lake City and I’ve used photoworks in SF. Both are quality places and cost about the same. You could save some money buy buying your own scanner ($500 for something high-ish quality, probably 250 used.

nopenopenopeno 5y ago

If you’re in Portland, try Citizen Photo. I don’t know if they’re still around because I bailed when the tech companies moved to town and caused a rent surge. I know Citizen Photo moved at the same time, I think to somewhere on Sandy Blvd. I miss those guys.

et-al 5y ago

#shootfilmstaybroke #shootdigitalstayfinanciallysolvent $15-20 is about right for develop + scan costs these days. You can try to save some money by having the lab develop only, then scan yourself. Though, in my experience scanning takes up an entire afternoon so the extra $8 for those Noritsu scans is worth it. If you're open to mailing film, it looks Citizens Photo in Portland is the least expensive: https://lenslurker.com/film-developing-by-mail/ https://lenslurker.com/film-developing-by-mail/

ynac 5y ago

From the time I was about 8 until I was 25 I probably shot 2000 photographs on film. The first year I had a digital camera I shot over 2000. I was happy with both, but now that I'm back on film, I'm VERY selective about my precious film. Look through your film photographs and ask yourself if it was worth shooting each one and why. What value are you getting from capturing that moment. There's a chance a roll of film may last two weeks - cutting your cost in half. For what it's worth, New Jersey Film Lab does good work. And if you want to try developing, find a high school or college that has a lab and see what options they have. Black and white is a couple of hours to learn and develop your first roll. And, just as creative as the image capture process.

woodruffw 5y ago

I haven’t used them, but Photo Life in Brooklyn (Crown Heights) apparently has very cheap mail-in dev-and-scan rates. That’s what I’ve heard from talking to other hobbyists here; I’m too lazy to walk over there and so I pay the slightly higher cost at my neighborhood lab instead.

gen3 5y ago

I’ve been really happy with Memphis film lab. It’s cheaper then all the labs around me and they are better quality. I’ve only shot 35, and I get it scanned at the “standard” tier so it comes out to about 10$ a roll. I think it’s something like 4$ to get your negatives mailed back. I develop in batches to save on shipping. https://www.memphisfilmlab.org/ https://www.memphisfilmlab.org/

hotpotamus 5y ago

My advice would be stick to digital for color and learn to develop black and white film at home. I don't know why you don't consider it an option, but film developing (black and white at least) just requires a few simple containers, chemicals, and a dark bag. From there you can either scan or look into an enlarger which does require more setup. And color is more difficult still.

vidanay 5y ago

Is developing the film yourself an option anymore? I admit it's been 30+ years since I developed any film (and that was B&W), but it wasn't that hard. A film reel and some canisters, a dark bag for loading the canister. All the rest can be done in ambient light once the canister is closed. I definitely remember the developing to be much easier than the printing. edit: To clarify, I believe home developing IS as good option these days. My opening question was rhetorical.

jdefelice 5y ago
Developing is still a good option. I develop then scan my photos. Color is arguably easier to develop than b&w, you need a constant temperature and time but you don’t have to worry about pushing or pulling.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  I know nothing about developing film but I’m curious about the chemicals used and how you dispose of them afterwards? Does it require any special process?
  - joshvm 5y ago
    Realistically most people at home will dilute and flush down the sink. Ilford recommend this for small quantities (no definition of small though). https://www.ilfordphoto.com/health-and-safety/ https://www.ilfordphoto.com/health-and-safety/
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > Color is arguably easier to develop than b&w, you need a constant temperature and time but you don’t have to worry about pushing or pulling. Color may be easier nowadays because sous vide cooking gear is fairly inexpensive, and lets you keep temperatures constant. It was much harder to do this in the past, so B&W was easier (chemical-wise). "Worrying" about pushing and pulling with B&W is an advantage to some because it lets you tweak your final print compared to what your exposure is. Per Bruce Barnbaum, put your shadows in Zone IV so you don't lose information, and then print it down to Zone III: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlnt5yFArWo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlnt5yFArWo * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_System

Hizonner 5y ago

It would be interesting to know why you think that developing film yourself isn't an option. People think that it's harder than it is, even for color. I mean, a "magic machine" would cost more than many years of lab services. It would use more expensive supplies than doing it by hand, especially because you wouldn't be doing the volume its designers expected. It would require a bunch of maintenance that's at least as hard as developing film. It would take up more space than any reasonable darkroom. It's hard to see why that would be an option when developing with tanks wouldn't be. Also, digital is in fact a superior medium in 99.99999 percent of cases...

KuiN 5y ago
> Also, digital is in fact a superior medium in 99.99999 percent of cases... Citation needed.

Apreche 5y ago

Sad to say, that's what it costs. You might be able to save a few bucks shopping around or using mail-in photo labs, but not much. Also, prices are going up these days for both film and developing. It's only gotten more expensive since I started last decade due to both decreases in supply and increases in demand. If you're willing to stick with black and white you can get sort-of close to "magic machine that does it for you" using something like Cinestill monobath. That will do several rolls for $20. Then you have to scan yourself. Think about it this way. A brand new high quality full frame digital camera will cost thousands of dollars. Film camera prices are going up, but you can still get a very nice 35mm film SLR for just a few hundred depending on which one you want. The lenses for the film camera are almost definitely going to be dramatically less expensive as well. Then you add the cost of film and developing over time and now you're pretty much just coming into the same price range as the digital camera. TL;DR: digital and analog are about the same price over time, assuming you are buying a brand new digital camera. The only way to do photography on the cheap is to use your phone (that you were going to buy anyway) or to buy an older/used digital camera. And if you are strapped for cash, that is exactly what I recommend. Why buy a new camera that is a low-end model when you can buy an older camera that was the top-tier professional camera of its day? For example, the Canon 5D Mark II can be had for just a few hundred bucks, and that's just one option of many.

goblin89 5y ago

As a photography enthusiast myself, I recommend one treasure trove of information—the Photography StackExchange[0]—and to not be too averse to googling things around in general. [0] https://photo.stackexchange.com/q/60895 https://photo.stackexchange.com/q/60895

tasha0663 5y ago
> $14 dollar roll of fuji pro purchased a local store and $16 development at same store. That results in 4x6 prints that I later scan and retouch to remove dust which proves to be a time consuming process. Might as well just shoot digital if that's the end result anyway.
- strogonoff 5y ago
  There is one big difference that makes shooting film incomparable to shooting digital even if you print and scan: highlight rolloff. Think of each of your digital camera sensor pixels as a cell containing an integer value, between 0 and let’s say 16383. During exposure time, it collects photons and accumulates its value based on how much light hits this particular pixel. While it’s close to zero, it’s strongly affected by noise floor (which is subject to numerous factors, including e.g. sensor heating up, and can affect pixels unevenly across the sensor). However, once it reaches 16383, it clips—which is a binary threshold after which the pixel is pure color (green, blue or red) and basically contains no useful information at all. By contrast, as light hits your negative film it more or less chemically “burns” it into black, with no such binary threshold. (Paradoxically, on very low level, negative film is in some ways more “binary” than digital sensor—in that it consists of tiny halide crystals, each of which is either activated or not—but since they are layered, smaller, and as more crystals are activated each subsequent photon is less likely to hit an unactivated crystal, statistics play out such that thinking of it as burning light into shades of varying darkness is a useful mental shortcut.) When you develop film, it gets inverted and you get highlights smoothly fading into white, and it matters even after you print and scan. A scene of any contrast becomes a tricky balancing act with digital—you really don’t want to blow out the bright parts, which are often small yet attention-grabbing (hence the most important advice for digital photographers is “underexpose to be safe and pull up as you convert to display-referred space”), but you also don’t want to keep the majority of the scene too close to noise floor. In this sense, film is much more forgiving and better suited for aesthetically pleasing yet casual in-the-moment shots.

qbasic_forever 5y ago

Heck, you can't even get digital stuff printed locally anymore in my experience. Five to ten years ago every drug store had a good quality photo printer with results in an hour, but now I can barely find them. I used to use Costco but all of them dropped their photo printers in the last year.

ericpauley 5y ago
Walmart still does photo printing in an hour at many locations. I recently got a single 4x6 photo printed for 9 cents.
baking 5y ago
Walgreens has 8000 same-day locations in the US.