Sadly Pertinent

RBruceCR said:
I still have two bulk rolls of TMax 100 and 400. Now the issue is going to be when will they stop selling chemicals to develop!
Click to expand...

Bruce,

The chemistry isn't out of the realm of making it yourself. Also some developers have extended very long shelf lives if not mixed in sealed packages.

Film remains the critical component.

Cal
 
robklurfield said:
Cal, with the MM arriving, you it to yourself to begin posting in the gallery. Don't worry about whether images are "finished;" just put 'em up. We'll all be waiting. Enjoy!
Click to expand...

Rob,

This is easy to do, but impossible in the past because all these years I did not scan. Remember that I'm really a lazy slacker. LOL.

Cal
 
I think the back stock of most chemicals will outlast most of us. And, for those of you who can read a recipe, there are plenty around for home brews. As Cal says, some of these soup mixes have half lives longer than the stuff he mixes up in the cyclotrons at work. I heard that Cal's teeth emit enough gamma radiation to expose film. A human pinhole x-ray camera.😉

Cal, if you're a lazy slacker, then I am a lazy, sloppy slacker.😀 Just ask my wife.😱
 
Amen to that, Brother.

I shot some 4x5 two days ago. (When I stepped into a snow covered, water-filled drainage ditch up to my crotch.😱)

(Anyone got a good tip for sealing the top of my leaky Unicolor tank? And, no, please don't suggest I buy a new tank, especially not a $400+ Jobo or a one of those nifty tilt-to-agitate do-dads Roger recommends. Budget for this is $10. I read that a plastic coffee can lid works. Or some polyurethane foam from Michael's.)

Bill Clark said:
I'm getting old.

Let me off of the spinning top.

Going back to my roots, with film.

Long last film & the quiet and peace of my darkroom.
Click to expand...
 
The demise of large box film manufacturers does not spell the end of film. Assuming there continues to be a demand for film (and I believe there will be), there will be some boutique company producing film and/or chemicals. Will the price go up? Probably, but not so drastic as to make it unaffordable. I, for one, have no anxiety over Kodak's demise. It merely spells an adjustment. Digital will rule, but film will still be available.
 
To civilian laypeople like me, everything that goes on in a physics lab sounds vaguely dangerous. Hell, just making coffee in a place like that scares me. Were you flooded out of your lab?
Calzone said:
Being a lazy slacker is fun. 🙂

Also know that working in physics labs is boring unless you are doing something dangerous.

Cal
Click to expand...
 
dmc said:
The demise of large box film manufacturers does not spell the end of film. Assuming there continues to be a demand for film (and I believe there will be), there will be some boutique company producing film and/or chemicals. Will the price go up? Probably, but not so drastic as to make it unaffordable.
Click to expand...

While this is most likely true, I worry about quality over time. The impossible project may have produced polaroid like film, but from what I have seen, the quality is lacking.
 
Wow... Great article.

I was amazed they have a 'master roll' of 50 inches by 2 miles. That's 5,000,000 rolls of film. Just imagine. That's about 10-15 million $$$ depending on which film... Crazy thought.

Film can never die!
 
I cannot imagine film will ever stop being produced - somewhere, somehow.
But in the end there will probably only be viable space in that market for only 2 or 3 players maximum, not more. Ilford will be the last to go (if ever) as they are investing and betting on being the last man standing, and offer a lot of choices.

When you look at all those beautiful cameras out there, 20, 30 40, 50 years old, that still function with a roll of film, and compare that to digital - it means something. I seriously doubt that there will be any M8's still functioning 25 years from now. One day, something snaps or breaks, and that's it. - game over. For the new digital cameras" they will just become more and more like each other as they borrow from each other.

Already the difference between rangefinders and DLSR are closing - the M240 can even do video, the crappy LCD screens will get better and in 10 years all we will have left is a DSLR Leica that is just cloaked in an old fashioned rangefinder body.

And imagine another awful fantasy - god forbid - that Leica M digital just peters out of the market slowly because of the cost and the ageing of their high end digital clients in the course of 20 years….I think there are plenty of photographers who would even return to rangefinders and film, just to be able to use all that Leica glass after their sensors have broken or can't be remapped anymore and there are no replacements.

The Monochrom is the first digital camera that I can find capable of producing 'emotive' images….I am sorely tempted. But then I think about the other M bodies I could buy with that cash and the film I could store away, I get real doublets...

We still have long way to go - certainly with a postdate after the lifetime of most of the people writing here, to see how this song really will play out in the final aria of film.
 
Tijmendal said:
I guess what he means to say is that it's the digital camera that comes closest to mimicking film, thereby evoking emotion like film does.
Click to expand...

Yes, indeed, simply put that sums it up…

The files produced in the Monochrom have a good leeway for further work in Lightroom/Photoshop without starting in colour, and have a certain 'film-like' quality, but with better high ISO results than the M9 for instance, thus opening up lots of possibilities (imagine the Leica 21mm 3.4 ASPH in combo with higher ASA's on the MM).

You can kinda treat it like a film camera with B/W, use filters and keep the mood of working with film, before using the sliders to compensate this or that ;-0)

I have only used one a couple of times, but have been inspired by some really magnificent work browsed on the net by lucky MM owners.

I still just loathe the idea of even more hours in front of the computer though.
 
Tadeyev said:
I still just loathe the idea of even more hours in front of the computer though.
Click to expand...

This is a real problem. As a computer programmer, I already spend 8-12 hours a day in front of a computer screen. Now, modern photography requires that I spend even more time in front of the screen.

This is why contact sheets and negatives are such a relief. Sure, I have to scan, but at least I can admire the results without sitting in front of a computer.

Larry
 
Pinhole lenses for pin-headed politicians, my dear friend, Roger.

Most of our pols contribute to atmospheric disruptions and global climate change by merely opening their mouths and emitting sulfurous emanations and ejaculating great clouds of methane. These folks who are certain that Moses was around just in time to ride dinosaurs (and why didn't Noah bring any of those dinosaurs on the ark?).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom