Saturday, June 1, 2013

Supplies!

I am trying to cut back on the gear buying and concentrate on buying the raw materials I need for my photography, film, paper and chemistry.

Today I did a bigger buy:

- Kodak D-76 21 packages.
- Kodak Fixer  13 packages.
- Kodak Hypo Clear 4 packages.
- Dektol 18 packages.
- Ilford Rapid fix 5L 1 bottle.
The grand total with tax was $482.58 CAD.

I managed to clean out my  local photo supplier, with Kodak playing fast and loose with their pricing I thought I better buy as much as I could now locally before the prices went up 30% or more.

I also picked up some stuff from my Winnipeg supplier, some Ilford film was returned from a school back to the store and was now selling at a discount, outdated in 2014.

- Ilford HP5 HP5 100 foot roll, 5 boxes $45 dollars a box.

I wanted to play with a smaller quantity of HP5 before changing over from Tri-x to save money. The cheapest place I found to buy fresh HP5 was at B&H at $60.43 USD the Tri-x is listed at $78.20 USD. I would save almost $20 a box if I switch films, its worth thinking about. I bought this slightly dated cheaper HP5 to test to see how it compares to Tri-x. Most of the costs (3.5 rolls) were covered by the darkroom lesson and the Alberta open artist fee, anytime I can get free film its a good deal.

Most film is shot and forgotten, bad exposures, bad composition, a bad decisive moment but then there are some pieces of  film that record a great photograph, then the neg is treasured, cared for and in a sense never dies. I hope some of today's free film falls into that latter category and captures something important. Here is my weird thought of the day, I feel the photographer owes the film, almost like its alive, he owes it a chance to record and remember something great.