Tuesday 29 November 2011

Photography update

A few weeks ago I blogged about my intent to try some good old fashioned wet film black and white work. At the time I said that I reckoned I could do the job for less than $200.

So far, sourcing via ebay, I'm well on track as this spreadsheet shows - just under $115 for the hardware. I'm assuming that I won't have access to a dark room, and as a consequence the change bag is a necessity for getting the film out of the cassette and into the developing tank.

That's why I went for a small format developing tank, and a film puller - while in the old days I just used to pop the end off the film cassette by brute force (or occasionally with the aid of a bottle opener) but I had the luxury of a dark room then with enough space to spread out.

Given that a change bag is kind of cramped inside I reckon that being able to retrieve the leader and then feed the film into the tank spool might be a better approach under the circumstances.

I obviously still need to source some developer and fixer plus a couple of measuring cylinders but I don't see that breaking the $200 budget. All costs are in Australian dollars, but at the moment costs are near enough 1:1 with the US dollar to make currency fluctuations irrelevant. If you'd prefer to see pounds just multiply all costs by 0.6 or 0.75 for euros.

The other interesting thing is that there is obviously a trade out there in wet film technology and film cameras ....


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