‘Long Live Film’ Documentary Explores Love for Analog Photography

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noisycheese

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This looks to be quite an interesting film! From PetaPixel:


Link: http://petapixel.com/2013/09/12/long-live-film-documentary-explores-love-analog-photography/
‘Long Live Film’ Documentary Explores Love for Analog Photography

By David Becker · September 12, 2013

Congratulations, new adopters of film photography — you’re now officially a subculture!

The defining point, of course, is having an independent documentary film about your movement, and that’s just what mail-order processor Indie Film Lab is doing with “Long Live Film.”

Teaming up with Kodak (however that might work now), folks from the Alabama-based company hit the road early this year, asking photographers across the United States why they still go to the considerable trouble of capturing their vision on emulsion rather than pixels.

Indie Lab hopes to have the feature finished in a few months. For now, enjoy the promising trailer, which elegantly makes the case for film as an artistic choice rather than a Luddite response to the modern world. “I like how it makes me shoot and why it makes me shoot as much as I like the look,” responds one photographer.

Indie Film Lab, founded in 2012 by photographer Josh Moates, does custom processing, scanning and printing of 35mm and medium-format film, along with considerable evangelism for keeping it old-school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdmozD2eBp8
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I have always been under the impression that the terms "analog photography" and "film based photography" were two terms referring to the same thing... :confused:
 
noisycheese said:
I have always been under the impression that the terms "analog photography" and "film based photography" were two terms referring to the same thing... :confused:
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It usually does, however, it isn't analog in the strictest sense. Calling it analog photography is not right, even if a lot of people do it to counterpoint digital. It, of course, is a slightly purist remark :cool:

Anyway, thanks for sharing!
 
Just to confuse the terminology further, silver gelatin photography could be said to be Boolean, in the sense that, once exposed to a sufficient number of photons, a silver halide crystal will develop out completely to oxidized silver metal. However, below the minimum threshold of exposure, the crystal will not develop at all, but will remain a silver halide, requiring chemical removal by means of the fixer bath. So that there is this Boolean function to silver halide exposure - the crystals in an emulsion are either fully transformed to metallic silver or not at all. (BTW, the various shades of gray are made up of the distribution of sizes of crystal grains in the emulsions, with larger crystals having more surface area, hence being sensitive more to the shadow detail, etc. Lithographic emulsions have crystals very even in size, so their tonal range becomes more Boolean.)

Meanwhile, a CCD or CMOS sensor site is an analog, light-sensitive semiconductor that builds up a charge analogous to the amount of photons it receives. So that, prior to the analog-to-digital converter, the signal is decidedly analog. All transistors are analog devices, BTW. It's the particular circuit application employed that makes them "digital."

So, there. Film is Boolean and digital is analog. I'm going to now drink more coffee.

~Joe
 
JoeV said:
the crystals in an emulsion are either fully transformed to metallic silver or not at all.
So, there. Film is Boolean and digital is analog. I'm going to now drink more coffee.

~Joe
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Not really true, certainly not for any more than a tiny subset of monodisperse films developed to completion.
Crystals once they have collected enough photons to become developable have a potential to develop from that inertia point up to the whole grain (and any point between).
Here is a quote from a photographic engineer

"When film develops, it can form anywhere from 3 silver metal atoms minimum up to the entire grain, and grains can be stacked, and therefore the dynamic range of density is analogue in nature and virtually infinite. For practical purposes, it ranges from 0.1 - 3.0 density units"

Furthermore different developers promote grain morphology; that is grains can change shape, state and even become light transmissive.

This is the case in colour film where dyes form during development around and inside the parent grain structure.
So grain is transformed to 'metallic silver or not' is true in the same way cars are 'moving or not' as a description of their velocity.
 
To bad Kodak quite making some of their most interesting films. I think there is and will be market for film (thank gawd). If I still had my darkroom I would still be shooting film.
 
hujev said:
Oh, I see the full 45 minute documentary is now on u-tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjtphPVchJI

/robert
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"I like how it makes me shoot and why it makes me shoot as much as the look".

Sounds like what people say about using a digital rangefinder as opposed to any of the other digital cameras with more advanced sensors.

There's no question that the ergonomic experience of using a camera is a major part of the creative process that gets really overlooked in the "upgrade frenzy" of the digital era.

Outside of Leica, what manufacturer other than Fuji really gets this aspect of the creative process and incorporates it into their camera designs?
 
I just finished watching the documentary - the photographers in the film did an outstanding job of answering the question, "Why film??"

There are ten thousand reasons why, but the most undeniable reason of all is this: Film just flat works.
 
noisycheese said:
I just finished watching the documentary - the photographers in the film did an outstanding job of answering the question, "Why film??"

There are ten thousand reasons why, but the most undeniable reason of all is this: Film just flat works.
Click to expand...

Or, more often than not, just curley works.
 
Sorry for coming in late.

The term "analogue" photography as opposed to "digital" photography was most likely coined by someone who thought the two terms are opposites. I remember the time when quartz watches first came to the popular market, consumer magazines ran articles about them: there're the "digital" ones where time were displayed as numerals, and "analogue" ones where the display simulated that of a mechanical watch - a "mechanical watch analogue", so to speak. It's from there that the idea of "digital" and "analogue" are thought to be words having opposite meanings. Nowadays, if it's not digital photography, it's analogue photography. If it's not digital music, it's analogue music. And so on.
 
A bit repetitive but I'd rather watch it on a constant loop than any more adverts for Nikon, Canon, Sony, Pentax, Panasonic (etec, etc.) latest digital wonder-cameras.

I have nothing against digital, I might add, as I have a Nikon D800, D700 and Panasonic LX7. However, I get bored and frustrated by the lack of respect and promotion given to film and non-digital / analogue media.
 
Its a nice watch especially for the hipsters:D

I have nothing against digital, I might add, as I have a Nikon D800, D700 and Panasonic LX7. However, I get bored and frustrated by the lack of respect and promotion given to film and non-digital / analogue media.[/QUOTE]

I don't think there is a lack of respect, half these guys never had to shoot film when there was no digital choice.
 
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