Checking the Pulse of Film Photography

Interesting 70mm is mentioned again. I virtually ran into a gentleman on IG while browsing B&W IR pictures. Pointed him at the 70mm thread in forum and to check the bulk rolls from Maco. Made his day as that film is his favorite.

IIRC he has the A70 back and only needed the canisters, bulk loading by hand in darkroom. Cheap MF envy.

I came from experimenting with a single roll of Aerochrome Color IR, that'll be gone real soon and it was quite an interesting material. B&W is essentially quite plenty and rather simple to manufacture. Color's where the suffering is at.

(OT)
Dave mentioning the 2020 recession rumors had me browsing bad stuff late at night and a bit of a suboptimal sleep the other day. I'm alert as over here there's another real estate bubble paired with bottom wages inherited from '08. Got an Econ PhD friend in NY so I'll be tuned, told me there's quite a bit of talk about it. (/OT)

Thinking that over summer to fall, whenever color becomes apathic and the weather gives no grief for staying indoors, I'll get into B&W and HP5+ seems a great well balanced material... Kodak film has had quite a hike and Ilford has a balanced distribution and pricing.


I'm curious about the Fomapan, cheapest B&W around and seemingly decent. GP3 coming back is good news but even china sources prices it at Ilford levels...


Also the trend I recognized over the past year is that mucho 120 cameras are being sold for no money. It is almost like when you could buy a user Nikon F3 for $75.00 or a F5 for $250.00, but this time it is 120 cameras.
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That's interesting. Too bad the cash flow and credit is slow for the upcoming period. Medium to Large format it's where's at.


I've seen P645, RB67, Bronica, etc quite cheap. I even recall Ken Rockwell (gasp) recommend the P645 last decade as a great 120 option, over the Yashica 124. That TLR I see quite hyped lately but don't know if it hiked prices a lot.
 
Calzone said:
Jorde,



On the other hand Pentax 67 II's with the AE metered prism are not available. Here in the U.S. there is no supply and the ones on EBAY are from Japan.



Cal
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Yeah, the good stuff went or soared. P67 and 105mm, Mamiya 6&7; to less extent Rolleiflex 2.8 and Hasselblad. These all appreciated quite a bit!
Forget about the wedding Contax 645 and 80 f2.

On 35mm the unsexy midrange AF SLRs are great value IMO. Nikon N90 for $20 in the US... Though I'd appreciate, I have no need for a MF heavy F4. OTOH it doesn't have the finesse of a Manual classic of course.

BTW it was funny as the F4 got quite a few youtube reviews clustered in a short period last year. Hype up...
 
Prest_400 said:
Interesting 70mm is mentioned again. I virtually ran into a gentleman on IG while browsing B&W IR pictures. Pointed him at the 70mm thread in forum and to check the bulk rolls from Maco. Made his day as that film is his favorite.

IIRC he has the A70 back and only needed the canisters, bulk loading by hand in darkroom. Cheap MF envy.

I came from experimenting with a single roll of Aerochrome Color IR, that'll be gone real soon and it was quite an interesting material. B&W is essentially quite plenty and rather simple to manufacture. Color's where the suffering is at.
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Yeah it's definitely cheaper to go the 70mm route. I've got most of the materials but haven't shot nor developed yet... the Vision3 65mm (movie stock) film was pretty popular in China (while I was working there for 2 years)... I got a hand of one canister on ebay... probably comes down to almost $2-2.50 a roll (once I cut it down to 62mm and hand roll it to a 120 spool). Results in my opinion are better than cinestill. And prefer the colors and tonality compared to portra film. Lots of work in the process of rolling up the film though... May be the only color film I'll play around with now...

​
 
DKimg said:
Yeah it's definitely cheaper to go the 70mm route. I've got most of the materials but haven't shot nor developed yet... the Vision3 65mm (movie stock) film was pretty popular in China (while I was working there for 2 years)... I got a hand of one canister on ebay... probably comes down to almost $2-2.50 a roll (once I cut it down to 62mm and hand roll it to a 120 spool). Results in my opinion are better than cinestill. And prefer the colors and tonality compared to portra film. Lots of work in the process of rolling up the film though... May be the only color film I'll play around with now...

​
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Dom, how do you cut your 70mm film down to 62mm?🙂
 
FWIW, I'm a hobbyist, and "back to film" from digital over the past 15 months. Much of the help has come from this website and Photrio (APUG) through which I've gotten into Leica M's and Rolleiflex. I also have a MF Rolleiflex SLR but my daily shooter is now the Rolleiflex TLR 3.5E. I bulk load 35mm, but shoot mostly 120. I've standarized on Ilford Delta 400 for B&W and Kodak Portra 400 for color, and develop both on a Jobo CPE2+ which has settled a lot of minor quality issues. I shoot very little digital though I haven't sold off my Sony yet. I think about it.

I find the digital aesthetic is crisp and unnaturally sharp. Maybe it's my aging eyes... but it's so sharp it hurts. Seriously. There's a line on sharpness where it's good, but beyond that, like any substance, it becomes toxic and unnatural. I think it's just me. So as long as my eyes can handle it (for focusing) and my body can stand to develop my own negatives, I'm sticking with film for creative work. Snaps in digital are fine if I have to... and sometimes there's no choice. But if it's for keeps even setting aside all the above snobism, film is more fun. So my car wears a Catlabs "Shoot more film!" bumper sticker... and I'll never be a hipster.

I don't resent Kodak or Ilford or anyone, and while I may worry about price increases a little, I'm okay if prices continue to rise. Price increases likely will not change my preferences.... much, but simply call on me to do some long term planning. So far, I've had to figure out what I like and what I don't and I've had my hands full with that over the last year and solving the technical challenges inherent to that process. But with that behind me, the wide open country is settling down to a few real keepers.

Film isn't a wave and won't be. But one-by-one, I think folks are beginning to engage with it and give it a chance, and some (like me) might find it becomes a preference. So for all that, it's not better... it's just more fun... and gets me out of the house..
 
I figure that B&W while be the last film type standing (which is why I'm surprised that Fuji is dumping their B&W films). By the same token, I fear that color slide film will be the first type to disappear.


I'm an old slide shooter (35mm and now mostly 120), so I dread Fuji dropping their color transparency films.


- Murray
 
DKimg said:
I haven't cut 70mm down to 62mm.. it's something I can do but only if it spools to 120 roll. The Vision film is 65mm so I just measure it down to 120 format and then cut 1.5 mm on both sides to reel up properly.
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Ah, my mistake...certainly, I was thinking of my own ambition to cut film down to which ever format I am working with. I was wondering how you actually slit the film with a slitter like the HolgaMod slitter or do you have a nice setup in a darkroom? Charles has the best slitter so far, just wondering about a tabletop setup.

I am looking for some method that is easily repeatable.🙂
 
dave lackey said:
Ah, my mistake...certainly, I was thinking of my own ambition to cut film down to which ever format I am working with. I was wondering how you actually slit the film with a slitter like the HoldaMod slitter or do you have a nice setup in a darkroom?

I am looking for some method that is easily repeatable.🙂
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I have a cutting board that is slightly longer than a length of a 120 film. Don't hold me to it but I think you need a minimum of 800-850mm of film negative length to reel onto a 120 spool. I've setup tape guidelines to measure the length and the width of the film negative so I can cut it down. It's not an easy process to do in complete darkness. And honestly haven't found another method that works. Seems like most people want to keep this process on the hush hush... I know there's an easier method..
 
dave lackey said:
I guess perforated film requires trimming both sides...
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Yes Dave that's right. Perforated requires cutting both sides, and it's not quite wide enough to cover the full 6cm. You get sprocket holes on both sides.

I have 70mm respooled 120 film I have bought on Ebay, Kodak High Speed Infared, and Kodak Aerographic 2405. Used to be about $8 a roll.

But you can get unperfed 70mm. That's fairly easy to get. Rollei has fresh Maco 25 70mm unperfed.

https://www.macodirect.de/en/film/black-white-films/1833/rollei-ortho-25-70mm-x-15m-unperforated
 
dave lackey said:
Maybe it is good for the financial health of Kodak and Ilford that the market shares will shift to those left. Maybe not.
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This thought is only partially correct. Ilford can be helped by Fuji's cancellation of Acros, but not Kodak. Ilford is a financially stable firm, that is reliant upon film sales to grow their business.



Kodak, in contrast, is a financially sick company, whose primary business is commercial printing. Upon emergence from bankruptcy, Kodak realigned their business away from film and towards commercial printing. Yes, they still produce film, but it was declared by their CEO to be a non core business and even tried to sell their film production infrastructure to the big Hollywood studios. Smartly, they declined to make this purchase and instead signed a 5 year deal to buy a certain amount of motion picture film. I believe that contract will be expiring in the near future.


Reading Kodak's financial reports each quarter shows a company that has not reached stabilization. Further, the impact of still photography film on Kodak's finances is virtually nil. They need hundreds of millions of dollars in new sales by 2019 due to the expiration of their class A shares of stock, which they are contractually obligated to re-buy at $17.50/share (it's barely $5 today).



What should have happened is that Kodak should have exited film production, thus making Fuji's film business more profitable, enticing them to stay in the business. Since Fuji is a fully profitable company, their long term future is not in doubt. Kodak's future is very much in doubt and you can see by the short holding of Kodak's stock (over 30% of all their shares are held short). Millions of dollars are betting that Kodak's future is very very dim. Kodak has survived long enough to kill off Fujifilm. A Pyrrhic victory to be sure.


Personally, I'd like to replace my Acros shooting with TMAX 100, but I will never again buy any 120 film from Kodak due to backing paper issue. Such a shame.
 
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