>>2694622Allegro, chuju.
Monitor auctions (probably ebay these days, there's hardly any good offers left on allegro).
Buy expired rolls for $1 a piece, or bulk 17m and 30m rolls (if expired and reduced in price it's even better).
Load your own rolls from the bulk in a darkroom, keep the leader almost all the way in.
Cock the shutter before loading your camera, also load the camera in a darkroom too to save the 1 or 2 extra frames.
Buy Fomadon R09, it's Foma's equivalent to Rodinal and you can use it in 1:100 or 1:200 dilutions. I didn't shoot too much (4 rolls per month at most), but a single bottle (0.33l iirc) lasted me nearly 10 years (the concentrate keeps literally forever too).
Get a cheap bottle of Fomafix and of course reuse, 500ml of fixer solution would fix a tank with 2 films at least 6 times (a typical tank needs about 650-700ml to cover two roll when it's upright, so you just need to put it sideways and keep turning it in your hands for 7-8 minutes to get even fixing, it actually helps the process because it's being agitated, but watch out for leaks). Store in a Grolsch or any other swing-top bottle, keep note of a date of making the working solution and a number of uses.
Don't rinse with running water if you pay for water, instead fill the tank, agitate (turn upside down) about 30 times, drain, and repeat about 30 times.
Splurge on a Paterson tank with teflon coated spools, this is the only element you shouldn't be stingy about. The clunky leaky piece of shit Krokus tank will make you want to kill yourself faster than you can say "Zjawisko Schwarzschilda".
Be lucky enough to have access to a pro film scanner so you can cut the printing expenses, though I guess darkroom printing is great fun on its own.
Such was life of a NEET film photog in Poorland.
