After months of deliberation, analysis, thinking, and planning, and despite recently purchasing a new high-end digital camera and using it extensively, I recently made a modest investment that I view as a demonstration of my commitment to film photography: I bought a 400-foot (122m) roll of 35mm Kodak Vision3 50D, or what I prefer to call by the name exposed onto the film rebate itself: Eastman 5203. The equivalent of 74 rolls of 36-exposure film, it means I’m going to have a lot of 35mm color photography ahead of me for months, certainly, but likely years to come.
There’s little question that film continues to increase in price, and the grumblings of the film photography community reached a fever pitch even before the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to worsen supply chains and price trends across every industry. Kodak, as the dominant (and functionally speaking, sole) supplier of color photographic films, has been everyone’s favorite punching bag as rolls of Ektar 100 have now exceeded US$15, and rolls of Ektachrome E100 are in excess of US$25 a piece. It was admittedly price that largely governed my decision to buy 400 feet of film.
I’m going to digress for a moment here; I think film is cheaper than people really make it out to be, especially when viewed through the lens of a concept called opportunity cost. (I’ll leave it up to you, dear reader, to look that up.) But to provide some examples here, when you compare film shooting to digital, sure, it’s insanely expensive on a per-image basis, not even considering things like gear costs. When you compare film photography to other hobbies, or other forms of entertainment, I actually find it to be quite cheap. A decent meal out at a nice restaurant is over within a couple of hours, at a price that far exceeds a roll of film and its processing. And shooting a roll of film, then enjoying the results, lasts far longer. You can compare the cost of film photography to that; or to going out for a movie night; or to sewing or knitting or crafting; or to collecting and restoring classic cars; or to fine art painting with oils or acrylics on canvas; or to anything you wish. All of these things cost money, all of us have choices to make, and most of us can’t afford to choose everything.
The bottom line is that if someone prefers doing something else, or finds it more affordable, then they should go do it, instead of bitching about the price of film. If someone wants to shoot film, then sort of how a lot of people seem to find the money for cigarettes, booze, or other vices, they will find a way to pay for it if they try, I suspect. I certainly do.
The truth is, none of us want to spend any more money than we must, which brings me back to a 400-foot roll of Vision3 film. The roll (in October 2023) was US$327.50 at B&H in New York — US$353.37 with sales tax. (Shipping was free.)
Here’s the math, and non-US visitors, please forgive the imperial measurements, but it’s the cost I’m emphasizing here, not the measurements:
- One roll of bulk-loaded, 36-exposure 135 film requires 64.5 inches of film. This includes enough for the images, plus the necessary leader and trailer.
- 400 feet of film is 4,800 inches.
- 4,800 inches divided by 64.5 inches is therefore approximately 74.4 rolls of 36-exposure 135 film.
- The US$353.37 total cost, with tax, divided by 74 rolls is US$4.78 per 36-exposure roll.
Considering that you can’t even get a single roll of the cheapest black-and-white film on the market* for that price, it makes a color film advertised as the world’s finest grain film** an absolute bargain.
I was not, and am not happy about spending that much money on that much film in one transaction; as one comparison, I paid US$300 for my mint condition Nikon F5. But the economics are quite difficult to ignore; I want to shoot film. I want to shoot color film. I have two cameras (a Nikon F4S and that Nikon F5) which, with my beautiful Nikon lenses, take stunning quality 35mm photographs — some of the best 35mm color images I’ve ever taken in my decades of shooting film. (Check both of the camera reviews for examples.) So, what better way to feed those cameras, and feed my photography habit, than getting one of the best film stocks available at a fraction of the cost of any other approach? So, I did.
While I’ve shot both 5203 (50D) and 5207 (250D) in the past, and I had originally intended to buy a large roll of the latter, I ended-up picking the former due to its slightly better grain qualities and results. I assumed that I could always just push the 5203 a couple of stops to ISO 200 if I needed to. And to test that theory ahead of time, I shot a short, bulk-loaded roll of 5203 in my Nikon FE at ISO 200, then processed the film in C-41 chemistry, adjusting the development time (per instructions) by 1.75x. I was pleased with the outcome; here’s a sample photo:
With the push issue settled, I made the final decision. I’d point-out that I did this even after investing in a new Nikon D850 DSLR just a couple of months ago, bringing digital photography back into my stable after several years of rejecting it completely. If this was purely about image quality, I’d never shoot anything but the D850; its images are so good, it feels like I could crawl into them when I have them displayed full screen on my iMac. Alas, digital is not better — it’s different. Plus, I still want the flexibility, the beauty, and the enjoyment of film photography in my life.
So, with a multi-year supply of color film in my film fridge, I look forward to a lot of color film photography still to come. I hope those Nikons are ready for a workout.
My only questions are how long it’s going to take me to shoot this much film, and what the price of film is going to look like once I have. Could it be the very last color film I’ll ever shoot? Check back in a couple of years, and I’ll let you know.
One More Note
For those who have found this article but are unfamiliar with Kodak Vision3 film stocks, it’s worth noting here that these films have a remjet coating, and cannot be processed by the vast majority of photo labs who process film for still photographers. I have several articles that talk about remjet, notably this one, and I have more in the works. Do a search on this website for “remjet” and read more as needed.
Footnotes
* The cheapest, fresh, new, 36-exposure roll of black-and-white 135 film that I can find as I write this article in October 2023 is Arista 100, the house brand of Freestyle Photo and Imaging, which is relabeled Fomapan 100, and it’s US$5.89 per roll from Freestyle itself.
** Kodak claims that Vision3 50D / Eastman 5203 is “the world’s finest grain film.” They make this same claim, with the same words, about Ektar 100. I’d argue that Adox CMS 20 II is actually the film that can rightly make that claim, but it appears that Kodak is likely referring to color film specifically. In any case, it’s quite fine grained in both cases. Refer to: https://www.kodak.com/en/motion/product/camera-films/50d-5203-7203/
