Film: Buying a brick!

I was going to buy a “brick” of Ilford FP4+ in 35mm a few days ago. As some of you know, I have quite a large amount of out-of-date FP4+ to use up, but I’m going to be doing a few tests over the coming weeks and wanted to do it with fresh stock.

Rather than just order online from one of my regular suppliers, prompted by the recent post by Johnny Martyr, I did my research first! Assumed is that I’d be buying a “brick” of 10 rolls and making the order up to obtain free postage if offered. Below is the (UK) suppliers I checked out…

Mathers of Lancashire (remember their famous “film list”??) £7:49 a roll, free p+p over £100

AG Photographic £7:75 a roll +£4:94 p+p

Speedgraphic £7:63 a roll, free p+p over £100

Firstcall Photographic £8:99 a roll plus £7:99 p+p

Amazon (UK) £7:95 a roll, free p+p

Wex Photo Video (Sort of the B+H of the UK!) £6:70 a roll plus free p+p over £50!

All of the above was correct at 11th July 2023.

I’m going to add some thoughts here. First, I looked at Amazon, but would not have ordered from them whatever. They are not specialist, who knows how they store film, and they do nothing to support our film photography hobby. I placed the order with WEX. The price difference between the highest and lowest above is a whopping £30.89p – much more that I would have thought, it is after all, EXACTLY the same product! While I was there I also ordered a pack of ID11 and a Kenro Neg storage file. Their prices on these items also seemed best. In this same week WEX also opened up a new store in Nottingham, and I thought to myself that they are slowly growing into what Jessops Photo, used to be in the early 80’s – for those with a long enough memory! Good for them I say. Also, for the record I am nothing to do with WEX other than an occasional customer.

Another interesting note is that had I have been looking for a 30m bulk length, Mathers of Lancashire would have got the order, they won out for that.

So the order was placed with WEX, the free p+p option was far from slow, in fact it was with me almost exactly 48 hours later. My conclusion from all this is next time I want anything photographic, I’m going to make myself a cup of coffee and spend half an hour shopping about for the best deal, with an eye to supporting the specialists!