Mike996

Well, based on my income now vs my income then, pretty much everything is more affordable to me now than it was back in the old days...including a pint of beer! 😆

The price of film doesn't seem all that bad to me, but I'm not shooting a huge number of shots. I recently got back into film after 20 years of digital-only, diving into MF. With the exception of my Leica M6/one lens, I sold all my film-related gear in 2002. In my film days I shot 35mm, never owned a MF camera. Now I own two! life is strange.🤔 As far as a film revival, companies are certainly producing more film now than 10 years ago. There are several brands available that I had never heard of in the "old days." I agree that TriX - which was the only BW film I typically used back then, is too expensive but Ilford HP5 is a couple of bucks a roll cheaper and I've been happy with it. Foma, Kentmere, Arista, etc are pretty close to the price of film back in the day (adjusted for inflation). They are said to be "student films" which implies they suffer in comparison to, say TriX or HP5. That may be the case when compared side by side today but I suspect they are as good as the name brands were 40 years ago. "I suppose that a bunch of decades ago, folks using LF and MF complained about those young "whippersnappers" using 35mm and just blasting through 36 exposures" I agree that years ago, 35mm was the "same" as digital today; lots of pictures taken/very few keepers. I've found that I've always had about the same number of keepers per/hour, regardless of the number of photos taken! IOW, if in one hour I take 12 MF photos, I have two, maybe three, that I consider worth keeping - I toss the other negatives. In my 35mm days in that hour I shot 36 (or more) pics...same number of keepers - two or three, toss the rest. Digital, in that hour - a hundred + pics...same number of keepers only this time I don't seem to toss the rest, they just stay on the drive, taking up space!

"I have seen several examples offered for sale online but not so many examples actually sold." You can search for anything on Ebay and select "sold" in the filters and it will show you the actual "selling" price for recent sales of that item. No idea about the demand for such a camera but the search will also give you an idea of how "popular" they are based on how many have sold in, say, the last couple of months.

Thanks! Good point re the B22! 6x6 is the largest format I will enlarge and the B22 is a good size for what is going to be a rather small darkroom. "Many of us use film scanners now-a-days for convenience and low carbon footprint." I understand the convenience of scanning as opposed to a darkroom but I must admit I've never understood the concept of shooting film, developing it and then scanning it to make a print. It's a lot easier to do that with a digital camera. But hey, that's just me. 🤔

Hi all, I've been a digital camera user since around 2001, when I sold all my film gear/darkroom stuff except for my Leica M6 (my favorite camera of all the various cameras I owned used). I hadn't used the M6 for 20 years until about a month ago when I got casually interested in shooting some film and dragged it out. Turned out I thoroughly enjoyed it - much more than I ever enjoyed digital - and decided to get back into film/darkroom but, for the first time, to venture into medium format. So I purchased a Bronica SQAi with the 80mm PS lens and have found it to be even more fun than the M6 was. So I went nuts - I'm setting up my first darkroom since '01. Probably crazy but the camera was not particularly expensive nor was a "new" still in the box Omega B22 enlarger I came across. I know that many folks, myself included back in the day, consider(ed) the B22 to be a "student" enlarger but I figured that since I got it for nearly nothing, it would be a good one to start with to see if I really want to deal with the darkroom again! Anyway, I was pleased to find this forum! 😃