120 film questions...

Martyn

Martyn

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Hello,

I've tried searching for some answers, but I'm not coming up with much.

I got a Diana F+ 120 camera for my birthday, which looks rather cool and a lot of fun, but I don't know a great deal about 120 film and processing and stuff, so I need some advice. I'm going to the Goodwood Revival in a couple of weeks and it seems like an ideal place to give it a run.

I'm thinking I can buy some out of date film quite cheaply, I guess the date really doesn't matter when I'm putting it in a plastic box and probably just taking some rough-as-badgers pictures... any recommendations for suppliers? Are there certain types of film that would work better than others, or be cheaper/easier to process?

Now on to processing... I worked in Jessops around 7 years ago and seem to remember 120 being quite awkward to process back then, so I'd imagine that's still the case? How much is processing likely to be? Again, is there certain film that's easier to process? I seem to remember some Ilford stuff that would go through a colour processor which was quicker and cheaper... am I making that up?

Cheers!
 
Lomography is keeping the price of outdated film up. Look in the classifieds on here as they pop up now and again, or try ebay for some lomo film.

There's a sticky at the top of this section on where to get 120 film processed with links to their sites.

Yes Ilford XP2 is C41 process (y)

Price wise, around £10 with P+P.
 
You can pick up 120 film fairly cheaply on eBay. It is getting harder to find it in shops.

There are places advertising in the back of Amateur Photographer where you can get film developed via mail order that aren't too expensive.

The Ilford film you are thinking about might be XP2 which is black & white but is developed in colour chemistry.

Have fun with it!

Mike
 
Jessops still do 120 processing, even as a 1-hr process. I use my local Jessops a lot for thie. There is an independent that's slightly cheaper and can scan, but they tend to wait to bulk up film for developing before they turn on the machine.

I'd personally leave the cheapest film and go for Kodak Portra 400. It's got enough exposure latitude that even if you're a few stops off perfect you'll still get a usable scan from the negative. The usual suppliers for me are 7 Day Shop, Amazon and Ebay.
 
Martyn said:
Again, is there certain film that's easier to process? I seem to remember some Ilford stuff that would go through a colour processor which was quicker and cheaper... am I making that up?
Click to expand...

No, you're thinking of Ilford XP2 monochrome film, which is C41-process, the same as most colour negative film.

See the sticky at the top of the forum for places for processing.
 
I don't suppose jessops got an awful lot of 120 film in to process compared to 35mm, maybe that was why it was awkward, they were set up to batch process tons of 135, not half a dozen rolls of 120..:shrug:
 
Wierdly outdated film seems to sell for more than in-date film sometimes. We have a customer who sold 10 rolls of Tri-X dated 1997 on Ebay for the same price as we sell 10 fresh rolls!

We do have some short dated Fuji reversal at the moment - you could use something like this and either process it conventionally E6 or have it processed in C41 for crazy colours.
 
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