I recently brought out my RB67 from storage thanks to my kid's new-found interest in film photography. We purchased a few 120mm rolls of the new Kodak Gold 200 and took a few test shots.
Because of the larger frame size on the RB67, I was only able to get 10 frames per roll. I knew this beforehand, so no complaints there. My shock came after developing one roll of film.
The price I paid for developing + scanning was around $28.00 (not including the prints). When I picked up the developed roll, I was charged an extra $6.00 for the 10 small (4"×5") prints. The rolls of film were about $8.00 each, so the grand total I paid for these 10 pictures was $42.00.
Yes, that's $42.00 for 10 pictures. One single roll of 120mm color film developed and printed costs $42.00. That equals roughly $4.20 per image. I still have 8 rolls of color film in my fridge, but I am reluctant to shoot them. It will cost me $336 to shoot these rolls of film.
I know I can save a bunch of money if I developed my own film. I also know that instead of shooting with my RB67, I can shoot with one of my smaller Mamiya 645's which will give me 20 images per 120mm roll instead of 10.
At this rate I can't afford to shoot with 120mm film anymore. In the "old film days", I remember 120mm film costing less to develop than 35mm film. Obviously that's not the case anymore. So, where can I get the remaining 8 rolls of color 120mm developed that will cost me less than $28.00 per roll?
Because of the insanely expensive cost of color film developing, these will be the last 8 rolls of 120mm color film I'll be shooting. I might try B&W in the future with the intent of developing and scanning it myself, but color film is prohibitive for me at this time.
It does not cost you $336 to shoot film. After you buy the roll, the only things that cost money are developing, scanning, and printing. So,
-Don't buy a print of every frame
-Buy a scanner*, digitize all frames, only buy prints of the real keepers
-Develop your own B/W film (my math comes out to <$1 per roll of B/W film)
*I bought my V850 for $800, so it paid for itself after ~80 rolls of film.
I pay $16/roll for develop and scan ( premium scan ) for 120.
You may have to look for other labs or let the labs develop and scan on your own or develop and scan on your own like most of the people are doing here.
It does not cost you $336 to shoot film. After you buy the roll, the only things that cost money are developing, scanning, and printing. So,
-Don't buy a print of every frame
-Buy a scanner*, digitize all frames, only buy prints of the real keepers
-Develop your own B/W film (my math comes out to <$1 per roll of B/W film)
*I bought my V850 for $800, so it paid for itself after ~80 rolls of film.
The 10 prints were only around $6.00. The expensive part was the developing. As for scanning, I currently have a Canon flatbed scanner for medium format negatives, and for 35mm negatives I "scan" using my Nikon ES-1 Copying Adapter on one of my macro lenses.
I didn't use my flatbed scanner thus time simply for the convenience of saving time. Plus, in the past it was never that expensive to have film developed and scanned. It caught me off guard when I dropped off the roll of film.
I honestly don't want to invest any more money on purchasing equipment to develop my own color film. Plus, I don't want to spend even more money during yet another "trial and error" stage of going through several dozen rolls of film until I "get it right".
I currently have a stainless steel film developing tank for 120, plus a few containers for chemicals. All I need is a changing bag and the actual chemicals to develop my own B&W film. So, I can see myself developing my own B&W film in the near future. For now I'd like to find a lab with more reasonable prices for those 8 unexposed rolls of film I have in the fridge.
I’m working with film again after many years and also had sticker shock when buying 120 rolls again.
So now instead of buying a brick of film I buy one or two rolls at a time. Kodachrome 200 120 size seems to have gone up a bit to $9 and change and developing is still about $7. And I’m either using my 6x17 which gives me 4 exposures or my 6x9 with 8 exposures. I am scanning on my Epson V700 because I know who ever else might scan my film will not do as good a job as I can.
And the whole process of photographing, taking film in to be developed, and then scanning makes photography seem more meaninful than going out with a digital camera and coming back with a few hundred images to edit.
Sounds like you already have the tools to scan, using them and skipping prints for every frame will save you a lot.
I pay $10/roll for 120 color negative develop only. There are slightly cheaper options where I live, but they take a week instead of a day or two and I like to support the family owned shop I use.
If your local lab is charging a lot more that $10/roll for develop only, there are mail in options that should keep cost in that range.
OregonSun wrote:
Sounds like you already have the tools to scan, using them and skipping prints for every frame will save you a lot.
I pay $10/roll for 120 color negative develop only. There are slightly cheaper options where I live, but they take a week instead of a day or two and I like to support the family owned shop I use.
If you're local lab is charging a lot more that $10/roll for develop only, there are mail in options that should keep cost in that range.
I love my local shop, but I can't afford to develop any more film there. I'm searching for online alternatives now unfortunately. Also, the turnaround time is a week at my local lab, so I won't be losing much in terms of time.
I'm assuming that shipping costs have to be factored in with online developing prices. I've been debating the idea of finding a decent, affordable lab in either Tampa or Miami as I live 3 hours away from each of these cities. I wouldn't mind taking two daytrips to these cities (nicer restaurants and better things to take pictures than in my city).
snegron7 wrote:
For now I'd like to find a lab with more reasonable prices for those 8 unexposed rolls of film I have in the fridge.
I took the first 6 results from Google for "film lab," and the average cost for their various options for 120 color development with high res scans is $26.50. That's without shipping, memberships, etc.
$28 for your lab doesn't sound pleasant, but it also doesn't sound unreasonable either given the online options.
I was spending about $2 per image for 6x9 ~30 years ago. In 2025 I don't think $4-5 is surprising.
Shooting 220 is usually a bit less and also much less of a hassle to carry so many rolls.
Your local lab is expensive. $28 for develop and scan is far too high, and I would be displeased just like you if I got a bill like that.
My local lab is $16 for a develop and scan. Their scans leave much to be desired. What I typically do is accumulate several rolls and mail them to Northeast Photographic. Their price is $14 for the same thing.
Northeast's scans is the reason I go back to them. They scan everything at the equipment's maximum resolution. Their Noritsu outputs my Fuji 6x9 at 7100 px on the long edge, and it does my Mamiya 645 at 4800 px on the long edge. The jpegs are pretty darn good, so I don't upgrade to tiffs very often. Other labs will nickel and dime you for low/med/high resolution scans, so Northeast is a breath of fresh air.
Oscarsmadness wrote:
Your local lab is expensive. $28 for develop and scan is far too high, and I would be displeased just like you if I got a bill like that.
My local lab is $16 for a develop and scan. Their scans leave much to be desired. What I typically do is accumulate several rolls and mail them to Northeast Photographic. Their price is $14 for the same thing.
Northeast's scans is the reason I go back to them. They scan everything at the equipment's maximum resolution. Their Noritsu outputs my Fuji 6x9 at 7100 px on the long edge, and it does my Mamiya 645 at 4800 px on the long edge. The jpegs are pretty darn good, so I don't upgrade to tiffs very often. Other labs will nickel and dime you for low/med/high resolution scans, so Northeast is a breath of fresh air.
Thanks!! Their website is a bit confusing, but their prices seem reasonable. I'll send them a couple of rolls to test them out. Do you know if they return the spools?
I find shooting film whether 35mm or 120, camera scanning is the way to go, that way you can just pay for development. I develop as well so that really brings the cost down, but not everyone wants to do that. If you develop yourself, color film can be like 1-2 dollars a roll, black and white can be less then a dollar. Of course if you’re just shooting a few rolls it’s not worth it. That’s the main issue, shooting few rolls it cost a lot, shooting a lot of rolls, much cheaper
snegron7 wrote:
Thanks!! Their website is a bit confusing, but their prices seem reasonable. I'll send them a couple of rolls to test them out. Do you know if they return the spools?
They do return your negatives. I don't know about the spools. They never returned mine, and I never asked for them back. Their website is confusing, mainly because there are so many add ons for scans (these add ons can drive your cost up quickly). It was bad a year or two ago, and then they added more upgrades and it's worse now.
The way to get the $14 price point is to do all your purchasing in "Simple Services" and avoid selecting the upgrades.
Even before digital, about $10-15 a roll (35mm, sometimes more, could be less) prohibitive. 60 cents per print and $8 a roll not bad i think a lot of it might be the scans. Just getting film developed no prints used to be cheap (<$3?) doesn't sound like it is today
Just would like to point out the irony that this is the exact same math that drove Kodak to develop a digital sensor and camera that pretty much killed a lot of their business. They saw it coming in the 1970s. The film cost is the entrance fee, develop, scan and printing yourself is the most economical path. Third parties have a huge entrance fee easily six figures for processors, scanning equipment, training, supplies etc - to put that 4x5 to 8x10 in your hand.
snegron7 wrote:
I recently brought out my RB67 from storage thanks to my kid's new-found interest in film photography. We purchased a few 120mm rolls of the new Kodak Gold 200 and took a few test shots.
Because of the larger frame size on the RB67, I was only able to get 10 frames per roll. I knew this beforehand, so no complaints there. My shock came after developing one roll of film.
The price I paid for developing + scanning was around $28.00 (not including the prints). When I picked up the developed roll, I was charged an extra $6.00 for the 10 small (4"×5") prints. The rolls of film were about $8.00 each, so the grand total I paid for these 10 pictures was $42.00.
Yes, that's $42.00 for 10 pictures. One single roll of 120mm color film developed and printed costs $42.00. That equals roughly $4.20 per image. I still have 8 rolls of color film in my fridge, but I am reluctant to shoot them. It will cost me $336 to shoot these rolls of film.
I know I can save a bunch of money if I developed my own film. I also know that instead of shooting with my RB67, I can shoot with one of my smaller Mamiya 645's which will give me 20 images per 120mm roll instead of 10.
At this rate I can't afford to shoot with 120mm film anymore. In the "old film days", I remember 120mm film costing less to develop than 35mm film. Obviously that's not the case anymore. So, where can I get the remaining 8 rolls of color 120mm developed that will cost me less than $28.00 per roll?
Because of the insanely expensive cost of color film developing, these will be the last 8 rolls of 120mm color film I'll be shooting. I might try B&W in the future with the intent of developing and scanning it myself, but color film is prohibitive for me at this time....Show more →
Surprised it was that much, the local lab that I use only runs $18 for dev/print/scan. For dev/scan only it's $15, and there's similar pricing at the other labs in the area.
As others said find a lab that is cheaper and wait till you have enough film to pay for the postage.
My lab charges 14-21euro/roll for 120 depending on size, I find the 17euro option more than enough. Another 1.50 for the contact sheet. So say 19euro/$22 for dev+scan of C41 film. BW is more expensive but BW film is cheaper so it balances out.
Personally, after trying quite a few labs, I find that any lab worth using will be around the $15-20/roll for dev+scan mark, less than that and it is likely a waste of money. I also used to scan with an Epson flatbed. Yes, that was obviously a lot cheaper, but the results were sub-standard compared to the lab and for the amount of time and effort spent, it makes no sense to me.
Not saying home scanning is not worth it, just saying that personally I find that if I'm doing this the expensive way (ie shooting film) I might as well pay to get it professionally scanned too. Others get very good result with scanners and/or digital camera scanning.
Regardless, film is just not cheap today, the lab costs stayed pretty much the same for the last 10-15 years but the cost of the film itself is just silly now. Also...$4.20/shot? HA HA HA. It costs me the best part of $50 for a single 4x5 photo. So no complaining!
A meaningful image could be priceless
6x7 with 10 images per roll is not the only option for film-based photography
Not very image should be taken on film. There is "pre-paid per image" digital that offers more flexibility and convenience when the circumstances are right for it
