Cheap Film
What is the cheapest film on the market? From what I can find, Kentmere black and White pan 100 and 400 seen to be the cheapest. I'm looking for something to practice with.
Quote from Anthony Grizanti on April 25, 2024, 2:52 amWhat is the cheapest film on the market? From what I can find, Kentmere black and White pan 100 and 400 seen to be the cheapest. I'm looking for something to practice with.
Yep, that's about the cheapest I know of, and it's actually not bad stuff either, more than good enough to practice with.
I’m finding it for about $5.50 a roll, Kodak Gold 200 and Fuji 200 or Superia 400 for about $7-9 a roll. Seems with varying development costs they’re all about the same per roll. Any other C-41s to check out that are a few bucks cheaper?
You'll be hard-pressed to find film for too much cheaper than ~$5 a roll. Assuming you're in the States, Midwest Photo generally has very nice film prices and free shipping above a threshold. Dirt Cheap Film has some good prices (for some things, stale prices for other things) and reasonable shipping.
Fomapan & Kentmere are the two lowest budget B&W films, and I am rather fond of them both. Midwest has Fomapan 100 under the Arista brand for ~4.89 for 36 exp/35mm, which is pretty good. No DX codes, though. You'd also be hardpressed to do better than ~$18 for a three-pack of Fujicolor 200 (which is Kodak Gold) since it manages to be about $6 a roll.
And that's about as good as it gets. (As far as I know.)
Generally, bigger savings come from:
- Scanning film yourself
- Developing film yourself
- Bulk rolling film from larger spools yourself
B&W film development is really lovely, and I wish I started on it a lil earlier in my film journey than I did, since local labs are a little pricy where I live. But, I did not expect myself to go as film crazy as I have.
I think it's a good deal if I can find something for under $9/roll. Buying in bulk can help, or like @wheress
mentioned bulk rolling. You could try looking at a local camera shop (if one exists). But personally I've just accepted it's kind of expensive. However, I think that it's actually cheaper than shooting digital. I noticed with my film gear, GAS doesn't really exist. I have the body and some lenses and I don't feel particularly compelled to more gear because there isn't really any improvement to be had, unlike when I think about my digital stuff.
