I’ve recently been getting into photography, thanks to my girlfriend, Willow, and a couple of mutual friends of ours. At the moment, I’m shooting with a film camera, and as you can probably imagine, this isn’t the most cost-effective of approaches. As such, I’ve been looking into how to make it cheaper for me to enjoy this hobby (especially as I’m a student with limited funds).
Obviously, the cheapest option in the long-term would be to buy a DSLR (Digital SLR) camera, however, I want to carry on shooting with a film camera for the time being (although I do have plans to buy a DSLR towards the end of the summer). Due to this, I’ve been focusing on how to make it as cheap as possible to do film photography. I have been taking my film to Jessops to get them processed, printed, and scanned, but the quality of the scans were, at best, mediocre. Jessops also used cold developer when developing my roll of Ilford HP5, which resulted in unacceptably high levels of grain. They also scan colour images with a green/blue cast to them, which in some cases, can completely ruin a good photo. A friend on IRC has recommended (on numerous occasions) that I use Peak Imaging for photo processing, then to scan the photos myself at home. Peak Imaging offers a discount when many rolls of film are sent in to be developed at once. The main expenditure in this plan would be forking out for a film scanner: a decent model would set me back about £200-odd. But after so many rolls of film, it would start paying for itself: after doing the maths, it would take approximately 20 rolls of film until the scanner started paying for itself (assuming mid/high-resolution scans). In addition, having your own film scanner allows you to scan only particular frames from the negatives – or particular slides – and at higher resolutions.
So, although I do plan to get a DSLR, it seems to be well worth buying a flim scanner, especially as I plan to continue using film throughout my experiments with photography. The £200 expenditure quickly pays for itself, and allows me to worry much less about how much I’m spending whilst taking photos. I’ll also start buying film in bulk once I’ve identified my favourites, and store them in fridges so that they don’t go out of date so fast: every little helps…
