Thinking about Super 16mm (k-3 modded)

JAWflyer3

JAWflyer3

Well-known member
I'm considering trying out some film shooting, currently I found a k-3 for relatively cheap and the mod for it doesn't cost much. But I'm really concerned about the price of film. I can't seem to find any good sites online to figure out what film is best/most cost effective and what to stay away from, and where is the best place to buy it. So if you can, please help!

Cheers!
 
There's not a whole lot of choices. I mean, you either buy Kodak or Fuji. Fuji costs a little less. Join a society that offers a discount and you can save a little (the Film Arts Foundation in San Francisco used to have discounts, don't know if they still do... the IFP probably does, etc).

Film costs money. To buy it, to process it, and to transfer it to video to edit it. You're probably going to spend somewhere around $20 to $30 per minute of footage you shoot, when it's all said and done.
 
I almost bought a film camera a few weeks ago - but then I remembered how much film stock and processing cost 40 years ago. Today, I can't even imagine :smile:
 
Here's the Kodak catalog. In general, a 400' roll is about $146 (plus tax and shipping, so let's call it $165). That gets you 11 minutes of footage.

Processing, at a cheap lab, might cost 13 cents per foot, at a regular lab it might cost 20 cents a foot. So that's $50 to $80 added on.

Then there's transfer, which (at a 3:1 ratio for *minimal* color correction), is going to take a half hour in a transfer bay. Cheapo standard-def transfers are, last I checked, about $175/hour. Fully color-corrected, even at student rates, would be $300/hr.

So, assuming you wanted to go the cheap route and qualified for student rates, you'd get 10% off the film cost, and 13 cents processing, and about $90 for transfer, per roll. Or about $290 per roll. Each roll of film is 11 minutes, so figure on about $26 per minute of footage, transferred with a "best light" transfer.

CineLab has student rates that include HD transfer. That'd total $158 for processing and transfer to HD, so ... add your student-discounted film purchase of $150, and you're at about $308 per roll (plus shipping and media and "HDD recording fee", whatever that is). Round it all up to maybe $330 per roll, so a total of $30/minute for an HD master of the source footage.
 
Thanks barry! Good to know some baseline prices. I'll probably only shoot 400' max to test stuff out (on a k3, so 4 100' rolls) and see how I like it, so I think I can manage $350.
 
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