Hi,
I shot a couple more rolls of film and got them developed. I think I’m a little over zealous with my 645 that I’m shooting away my money and thinning my wallet at a tremendous rate. I don’t earn much. For all my film developing, I always go to the same shop at Peninsula Plaza. For my first roll the previous time I decided to try scanning it to a CD-rom, thinking it would be cheaper. Not…
Developing a roll of 120 negative film with prints costs:
Development: $6
Prints: $0.70 per frame
Works out to be: $6+($0.70 x 15frames [645 format]) = $16.50
Sometimes it would be cheaper because i might screw up a few frames or do stupid things like accidentally opening the film compartment and burn up my frames. Thats how i ruined my 3rd roll… lost some 5-6 shots which i had some expectations on but turn out blank.
But scanning straight into a cd costs i think $16 for normal quality scans per cd plus $6 developing the film. I feel stupid already. I still ask for high quality scans but never take that (siao!). Those were for people who wanna make large poster prints, regular poor people like me would be overkill. Then i just pay acting like i know everything but the auntie probably saw through my farce, smiling brilliantly at me. Because I didn’t wanna admit to her that its a little too expensive and ask for prints instead. I must’ve look so stupid, amateur wanna act pro. Zzz…
I didn’t ask whether can I scan multiple rolls in one cd would it be the same price? But heck lah I will just ask for prints liao. I do prefer prints anyway but if I wanna use them online i gotta scan the prints with my regular scanner. Troublesome, maybe. But I still like have the prints in my hands. I usually take matt paper too, glossy looks too.. erm.. slick? Lol.
Scans of my top picks from 2 rolls.. (I ruined the 3rd roll so they’re mostly from 2nd roll.)
Anyways the films are not cheap also. Popular ones like Kodak Portra series cost close to 10 bucks a roll, depending on the ISO value I think, and Kodak Ekta 100 happens to be one of the cheaper, nicer option imo. Fuji’s Velvia Slides cost almost twice an Ekta 100 maybe because they are slide films, and Fuji’s Provia series (slide films) are over 10 bucks. I only tried Kodak films till now and I liked how versatile the Portra 400 and 800 are. Imagine if you shoot like shooting digital its like easily 150 shots in one session? Convert that to film terms, that would be 10 rolls x 10 bucks, 100 bucks. Developing 10 rolls of film? I dare not think.
The great thing about films is that each type of film have their own ‘character’. Sure you can replicate the look on digital, but its the deprivation of the digital post processing that makes me fully appreciate the importance of achieving the perfect exposure you wanted. Feels more like I’m really ‘creating’ an image. Once you know you got that right when you see your final image, the sense of achievement is so much better than editing on a computer all day for a single image and knowing that you had like 5000 more to go. Lol!
But if I ever do a photo job i think I will still go digital though, safer that way. So to me film can only be a hobby. Zzz.
And thats it for me this time.. I’ll stop shooting film for awhile now for my wallet to recover…
Simon
Update: i just bought 5rolls of 120 Kodak Portra 400 for 50bucks. I got a shock that one roll now sells for $11.50, up from $9.50!! Thats why i buy it in 5s as it will be cheaper that way. Zzzzz.. Please leh go easy on my wallet, don’t keep raise the price leh… Even the prints are now 80cents per piece…
