3 ms·

The reason I've heard why it is more expensive is that color development has been completely standardized. You put the rolls in the machine and the negatives co

by regus 4y ago

The reason I've heard why it is more expensive is that color development has been completely standardized. You put the rolls in the machine and the negatives come out the other end with little interaction from a person. They never standardized black and white photography development so it all has to be done by hand, which is more time consuming. As for 35mm, yes it's true that it is cheaper, but I got into this for the larger negative, so this is a self imposed financial hit.

dietrichepp 4y ago
You can do the same thing with B&W--buy a standard high-volume film processor and load it up with B&W film chemistry. If you look at the data sheets for XTOL, you'll see instructions for high-volume processing. B&W processing is not standardized (in the sense that there are standards for it, but nobody uses them) but that doesn't mean you have to do it by hand. I think the reason why it is more expensive is just because it is a specialty service. Even in a large city, the amount of B&W film processed per day is not going to be very large, in 2022. On top of that, it's easy enough to process B&W yourself--it's not prohibitively expensive and can even be done in a small apartment without too much fuss. (One reason that there are standards for B&W film processing is because it's necessary in order to have standards for film speed. The "ISO speed" of a film is tested by exposing the film to certain amounts of light, developing in a standardized way using a standardized developer, and then measuring some certain part of the resulting density curve.)
throw0101a 4y ago
> They never standardized black and white photography development so it all has to be done by hand, which is more time consuming. The 'default' process for processing colour film is C-41: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-41_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-41_process You can get B&W film that uses the same process: * https://www.ilfordphoto.com/xp2-super-35mm https://www.ilfordphoto.com/xp2-super-35mm One of the hard things about colour film processing in the past was that the chemicals had to be in a narrow temperature range: nowadays that is relatively easy to do by 'simply' keeping them in a warm bath kept in the correct range via sous vide equipment. Generally if you're doing analog B&W photography at any non-small volumes, it's probably cheaper to get the gear to have your own darkroom and at least process the negatives yourself. Once you see the shots, you can then perhaps take them to a printer if you don't want to do that yourself.

by regus 4y ago

dietrichepp 4y ago

You can do the same thing with B&W--buy a standard high-volume film processor and load it up with B&W film chemistry. If you look at the data sheets for XTOL, you'll see instructions for high-volume processing. B&W processing is not standardized (in the sense that there are standards for it, but nobody uses them) but that doesn't mean you have to do it by hand. I think the reason why it is more expensive is just because it is a specialty service. Even in a large city, the amount of B&W film processed per day is not going to be very large, in 2022. On top of that, it's easy enough to process B&W yourself--it's not prohibitively expensive and can even be done in a small apartment without too much fuss. (One reason that there are standards for B&W film processing is because it's necessary in order to have standards for film speed. The "ISO speed" of a film is tested by exposing the film to certain amounts of light, developing in a standardized way using a standardized developer, and then measuring some certain part of the resulting density curve.)

throw0101a 4y ago

> They never standardized black and white photography development so it all has to be done by hand, which is more time consuming. The 'default' process for processing colour film is C-41: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-41_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-41_process You can get B&W film that uses the same process: * https://www.ilfordphoto.com/xp2-super-35mm https://www.ilfordphoto.com/xp2-super-35mm One of the hard things about colour film processing in the past was that the chemicals had to be in a narrow temperature range: nowadays that is relatively easy to do by 'simply' keeping them in a warm bath kept in the correct range via sous vide equipment. Generally if you're doing analog B&W photography at any non-small volumes, it's probably cheaper to get the gear to have your own darkroom and at least process the negatives yourself. Once you see the shots, you can then perhaps take them to a printer if you don't want to do that yourself.