Large Format Photography Australia

Listing the film suppliers I know and have used:

• Blanco Negro - Redfern, NSW
• Foto Riesel - Sydney CBD
• Vanbar - Camberdown, NSW / Fitzroy, VIC

Not sure if I can post ebay vendors, but I've had luck with:

cheapshotsau
pbarcelon

both in Aus, seemingly good prices and good product range

Cheapshots is my number one supplier these days.

Vanbar was good for the T-Max films in 4x5 but an enquiry last week revealed that one the supply of 50 sheet boxes for $88 are gone the new importer will be setting prices as high as $280 or more.

In a word: stuff 'em!

I can also vouch for cheapshotsau on eBay - I've dealt with Steven quite a few times buying both 120 and 4x5 and have never had a problem. Like Walter I used to buy my 4x5 Tmax from Vanbar but won't anymore as the price is obscene, I still have a few boxes of 50 sheets left but once those are gone who knows...

I thought TMax was the only film you should use until I tried Ilford.

Don't think I'll be going back to Kodak anytime soon.

I had one issue with cheapshots, I ordered a cpl of boxes and they took about a month to arrive. dunno what happened, but apparently every now and again there's a glitch in the matrix, even so, I've never not received an order.

I've been having a play with (4x5) Fomapan400 and so far it seem quite a respectable film.

I wrongly dismissed foma 100 as a crappy film until I did a roll myself in 1:100 r09.
I used that roll for the "bad" reciprocity characteristics in medium format and not having to stop down as much to make a long exposure. I can't remember but I think this was metered at like 8 seconds which turns into a 56 second exposure (thankyou iphone app!)

I got one shot out of it that I was really pleased with. I know this isn't LF (it's 120) but I was really impressed at how it came out, was expecting it to be really washed out. this is scanned, no editing except a couple of dust spots cleaned up


I have no 'experience' to really base my beliefs off, I just dismissed foma because it was so cheap, thought it would be like that shanghai gp3 stuff. I'm still a noob, just finding my feet. But shouldn't be so quick to dismiss things without lots of trial.

Now after that roll of Foma, I keep meaning to buy some in sheet film, winner on a budget as well as a great tool for long exposures, which I love, but need more practice at. Especially when you have your lens on a LF stopped right down, less of a need to stack a heap of ND filters over it..


The only thing I don't like about ilford roll film is how hard it is to load onto a spindle, but 4x5 ilford, to me, is a lot easier to handle than tmax, which is a bitch to load IMO

It'll be hard to find someone with a bad word against Delta 100, my only issue with it is the price - at Vanbar it's $64 for 25 sheets with Tmax 100 $88 for 50 sheets. I personally preferred using Tmax as it seemed to produce better results with more apparent contrast, especially with filter combinations such as polariser + red (I think Walter once told me it was more red sensitive?). For those interested Vanbar is still selling the Tmax 100 at the old price. For now...

vanbarphoto has a good feedback.

alex.otter wrote:vanbarphoto has a good feedback.

Purchases from Vanbar are now interstate, though. They closed their Sydney operation a couple of years ago.