Anyone do any B&W Film Photography?

I'm unearthing this thread, any of you film enthusiasts still alive? :mrgreen:

I haven't touched my film camera for years, mostly because my chemicals were very expired, and I couldn't be bothered to do something about it. Well, today I went a bought Ilford developer (ilfosol 3 0.5L) and fixer (rapid fixer 1L), and got some HP5+ film while at it. And damn, this is getting expensive. The chem set me back about 30 euros, and one 36-frame roll was 8 euros.

Any way to get the price down? Looking on ebay, I can't really find HP5+ film any cheaper. Maybe some expired stock somewhere can be had for less, but I had no luck. The developer and fixer should be "good" for 1 year after opening, but I'm not too bothered about top quality, so I'll probably keep using it at least 2-3 times longer. There was an option of getting the developer in a powder form (ID-11), which would make more stuff for the same money, but as far as I understood one has to use it all up at once, so ready made ilfosol will actually last me longer.

Would the Kodak alternatives be any cheaper? At least if bought locally they seem more expensive. And yeah, I'm only developing the film with intent of digitizing it directly, actual analog printing requires too much space so I'm not too keen about doing that.
 
I bought a few rolls of B&W film but I don't have the means or the space to develop it myself. :|
Keep us posted how it went.
 
Well, I just developed a film that I had in camera for years with the new liquids, seems like it was successful. Next I'm trying to make a rig to film the frames with a DSLR, because I don't have easy access to a film scanner. And I never had much success with flatbed scanners which have film accessory.

But I couldn't wait for it to dry, so here's a handheld snap of the hanging film and the same after some photoshopping:





Exciting :D
 
Ok, the "scanner" accessory is done. The lens has macro, the film is at the focusing distance, a diffusive piece of plastic a few cm behind it (couldn't actually find a clean sheet of paper at home!). The cardboard tube was a lucky find, as it fits over the tip of the objective pretty firmly. I just load the film, point at a lamp and shoot with minimum ISO and aperture stopped a bit. The construction is fairly rigid, so long exposure doesn't matter.



After a few tests with an old film, I can say this is comparable to a cheap film scanner I used at school once (forgot which one it was). Much lower resolution, of course, but I don't have enough details on the film to show for it. And this is way faster!
 
That's quite a contraption! :lol:
 
looks interesting.. and would love to have space and gear to develop my own films (because developing at store is quite expensive, a bit over ? per picture). Apparently fujifilm stores do not have b&w development machine in finland anymore -> they go to germany for development :D
 
looks interesting.. and would love to have space and gear to develop my own films (because developing at store is quite expensive, a bit over ? per picture). Apparently fujifilm stores do not have b&w development machine in finland anymore -> they go to germany for development :D

You don't need much space or gear to develop B&W film, colour is a different story. One development tank (20-40eur used), a set of chemicals (I paid 30eur, as mentioned above), thermometer, timer and running water.

But of course, it's still fairly expensive in the end. If you do just one roll a year, and don't want to use chemicals past their expiration, it's going to be 1?/frame in running costs. Two rolls halve that amount, obviously. And you'll never be as consistent as the store, and there's a chance of damaging the film when loading into the tank. But none of this is very important, is it? ;)
 
Question about the adapter: if the focus is correct, then why would you be getting lower resolution than a cheap film scanner? Shouldn't you be getting close to the full resolution of your DSLR? I've been considering building a similar rig to digitize some old slides and if there's serious problems...
 
It's focused well enough, depends on your lens how close you can focus, really. I've been a bit conservative here, and built the "adapter" a bit long, so I get quite a lot of cropping, my effective resolution is about 3000x2000. This is plenty for my grainy B&W photos :), but dedicated film scanners can do well over 5000dpi. Also trying to digitize a colour negative, I've ran into some white balance issues: https://forums.finalgear.com/photoshopping/help-with-processing-colour-film-negative-59373, so I don't know how practical this is for colour film. B&W is really quick and easy.
 
Hmm. I see you're shooting HP5+ but it costs 8 euros/roll. That's about twice what it costs from the leading US photo supply company. Have you tried getting film online?
 
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mjk, 6.70eur is the cheapest I can get locally. I haven't found anything cheaper online, if delivery is included. Maybe in uncut 30m rolls, but I don't want to do that.

In other news, since my wave of excitement over film isn't over yet (just getting worse, really), I've acquired 10 rolls of 120-film for about 30% below store price. Although, I don't have a camera that takes it, yet :D I've been eyes a few different TLRs, a Minolta Autocord or a Yashica-Mat being top candidates atm.
 
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