A thrift-store lens came attached to a Canon Rebel Ti, so I ended up with both. It looks like a hideous lump of early 2000s plastic, but it's functional and I remember how much I wanted an SLR of that type back when I was a kid.

Anyway, that's all to say that I picked up a roll of Fujifilm 400 color yesterday, started shooting, and am having a great time. The only thing stopping me from going out and buying a whole stack of different film types is thinking about the cost of getting anything developed.

My local camera store charges ~$6 per roll to develop negatives, and ~$22 per roll for prints. Doable for me, but I'm also a cheapskate.

I like the idea of learning darkroom development, and developing negatives seems relatively straightforward, but actually making prints with an enlarger seems like something else. I'm not sure I have the space or the money for one. My local camera store includes free scans with every set of negatives, so for $6 I could at least have something, but only ending up with digitals feels like a "why bother" case.

Maybe I should just accept that this is a hobby that will cost me, but I'm curious what other people do.

I loved working in the darkroom making prints back in high-school. The learning curve wasn't too rough from what I remember, so if you have the room and money to make a space for it I say go for it. I enjoyed darkroom work way more than digital editing it felt a lot more creative for me personally.

We also had film developing bags that we used if the blackroom was occupied that I remember being fairly simple as well.

Most if not all prints you get from film these days are just printed digitally from scans.

$6 to develop and scan seems pretty cheap to me. You can always get prints of just the ones you like from the scans.

And you'll have the negatives as a backup, if you ever lose the digital files.

If you're going to develop your own film it's easier to start with black and white first.