jsrockit
Moderator
I'd say a few years ago it was a lot more (a lot more). I was going to say it appears to be on a decline here. Your experience is different though.
Seeing Film Everywhere
- Thread starter JChrome
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I'd say a few years ago it was a lot more (a lot more). I was going to say it appears to be on a decline here. Your experience is different though.
dmr
Registered Abuser
SaveKodak
Well-known
This isn't really why people still shoot film but...
Digital still isn't archival, AT ALL. Nobody from this generation is going to have baby pictures in 20 years unless some miracle saves them off the drive of their current smart phone or cloud storage account. Lets be honest even photographers don't always follow best practices when it comes to DAM.
I have a 'no fun digitals' rule. I like digital and I shoot digital a ton for pro gigs. Weddings, portraits, editorial jobs, sure...my Nikon's get me there. But I won't (anymore) buy any RX1RIIs, Leica Ms, X100s, anything like that. I don't want to own a digital body that I'm tempted to shoot for personal work or when I travel. That keeps me dedicated to making better photos with my Rolleiflex and M4, on a medium that doesn't require electricity to be 'read' by human eyes. That said, i'm still a hybrid shooter. I don't have a darkroom at the moment and everything gets scanned. But since I still have the film original which can be wet printed at any time, or rescanned with better equipment, I feel it's the best of both worlds!
The only 'fun' digital that has me tempted is the GFX, but I'd still use that for work mostly. I doubt I want to take that thing even landscape shooting over my Pentax 6x7.
Digital still isn't archival, AT ALL. Nobody from this generation is going to have baby pictures in 20 years unless some miracle saves them off the drive of their current smart phone or cloud storage account. Lets be honest even photographers don't always follow best practices when it comes to DAM.
I have a 'no fun digitals' rule. I like digital and I shoot digital a ton for pro gigs. Weddings, portraits, editorial jobs, sure...my Nikon's get me there. But I won't (anymore) buy any RX1RIIs, Leica Ms, X100s, anything like that. I don't want to own a digital body that I'm tempted to shoot for personal work or when I travel. That keeps me dedicated to making better photos with my Rolleiflex and M4, on a medium that doesn't require electricity to be 'read' by human eyes. That said, i'm still a hybrid shooter. I don't have a darkroom at the moment and everything gets scanned. But since I still have the film original which can be wet printed at any time, or rescanned with better equipment, I feel it's the best of both worlds!
The only 'fun' digital that has me tempted is the GFX, but I'd still use that for work mostly. I doubt I want to take that thing even landscape shooting over my Pentax 6x7.
Dante_Stella
Rex canum cattorumque
Let me know when the nuclear war is going to be so that I can get it on my Outlook calendar.
That digital is somehow not "archival" because it requires electricity is a casuistic argument that ignores what you have to do to make most film viewable. Film requires electricity to convert into any usable format, unless you like solar powered viewers and slide film. The event that magically destroys the cloud and all locally stored copies of digital files will also likely wipe out the power grid, running water, and everything else that would affect viewing things on screen or allow them to be printed with an optical enlarger. As to individual carelessness, it happens with analogue materials too. People pitch printed photos and lose/destroy/dispose of negatives all the time. And there is generational rot where I get, for example, my grandparents' blurry and poorly exposed travel slides, scan all of them, and then don't have any place to put 200 Bell & Howell slide cubes.
I have TIFFs from 22+ years ago that are still readable. But I am more worried about the following, all of which have been happening in that timeframe:
- That maintenance support for film cameras is no longer convenient, fast, or cheap
- That the last good enlargers were made several years ago now.
- That few really good film scanners are still being made at a price point that is even remotely affordable.
- That environmental concerns are driving up the cost of the silver process.
- That the creeping war on incandescent lighting will eliminate the halogen bulbs needed for multicontrast printing.
The only thing that is actually safe is dark-stored, printed copies. That's the miracle that saves things, and you can get that from any source, digital or film.
Dante
robert blu
quiet photographer
What is important is to print, digital or wet, file or negative, but print.
one print each ten shots or one print each hundred shots depending on your shooting style but print, small or large, print! Select and print 🙂
robert
one print each ten shots or one print each hundred shots depending on your shooting style but print, small or large, print! Select and print 🙂
robert
______
Well-known
And with everyone living in apartments and condos, there won't be any attics to store all those shoe boxes of fond and fading memories.
JP Owens
Well-known
For every shoebox full of family photos discovered in an old attic or dresser drawer, thousands of shoeboxes of family photos have been thrown in the trash by family members clearing out a home after the owners death. Many more thousands destroyed by floods, hurricanes, fires and other natural disasters.
Physical prints are no more archival than digital files unless they are carefully curated and protected. Put prints in a shoebox or hard disk in a forgotten drawer, and it is only luck that either survive.
Physical prints are no more archival than digital files unless they are carefully curated and protected. Put prints in a shoebox or hard disk in a forgotten drawer, and it is only luck that either survive.
jsrockit
Moderator
I'm a big fan of, at the very least, making books of my photos... and I do it every single month. I have my digital files backed up and I have the paper version. Not very hard if you are not lazy and value what you create.
robert blu
quiet photographer
Yes, you are right, this is a problem! Really is my actual problem therefore I stay first select, than select and than select again 😀
robert
telenous
Well-known
Quite agree with this. The only photographs that will survive are the ones curated/archived by museums/galleries, be they prints or negatives or backlit projections or digital files or whatever. The rest will slowly weather away from neglect. Or, worse, it will be summarily dispatched to the closest bin by surviving relatives.
Mackinaw
Think Different
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You’re right, and it’s too bad folks do this. When my parents passed away several years back, I made sure to grab all of the old family photos. Some of these pics I had seen when I was a kid, but the majority were all new to me and my sister. What a treasure chest of photos! We found pics going back to 1915 (4X5 glass plate negatives), and countless pics of my folks when they were growing up in the 1930’s. I’ve scanned most of them and put them on my website.
Jim B.
fdarnell
Well-known
San Jacinto Tram Ride - that is a really fun ride, especially when it's 80-85F in the valley and you can cross country ski up top. Did that ride back when there were only film cameras.
Love to see some pics from that ride.
SaveKodak
Well-known
-Repairing my Leica or my Rolleiflex is generally only a few hundred dollars. If I get 3 more decades that's more than enough for me.
-The many enlargers we have now still work, and if maintained will keep working. Only the ultra high-end ones are overly complicated. Larger formats don't need enlargers.
-My Primefilm XA was less than $500 dollars new and delivers quality at basically the same level of the Coolscans which cost much more than that when new. My Primfilm PF120 was $1300 dollars and has similar performance to a CS 9000. So there are two scanners that are as good as old high end Nikon scanners and much cheaper new. Hasselblad still sells their X line, Phase One just introduced a new high end scanning solution. Even Pentax makes their multi-format copy system, they just upgraded it to 4x5. The Epsons aren't THAT expensive. My 10 year old V700 still works without any hickups. Frankly that even surprises me!
-Can't comment on environmental factors as don't know enough about it. Ilford and Kodak haven't voiced any concerns...
-If Kodak can resurrect Super 8 with a brand new motion picture camera we can find a factory in China to make a few specialty light bulbs. It can't be THAT hard. You can still find working flash bulbs on ebay right now. If in 10 years you can still buy old stock of an enlarger bulb we'll be ok.
I would say that given the overall interest in B&W photography it won't die just like painting or sculpting haven't died. Things will be more expensive yes, but if there is a market, and there is, select brands will support it. I still shoot Super 8 (for paying clients no less), 20+ years after the format lost it's relevance, with cameras older than that. All my cameras can still be repaired by select technicians.
The power grid isn't likely going anywhere, but .cr2s might. Your hard drives will certainly fail. If you find a box full of 20 year old hard drives, even if you find a machine to run them, the data will likely be corrected. Maybe a similar negative I find won't be in the best shape, but I can still look at it and get some information off it. It's not a total loss. Plus as I've been saying, there likely will be some way to print or scan that image. Corrupted data or failed drives mean the images are just gone. Only printing leads to archival digital images. But having a print is not as good as having the original when it comes to making further reproductions.
jsrockit
Moderator
But that is why we have back-ups. And each time I update drives, I keep bringing the files to the next drive. Storage keeps getting bigger and I keep moving it every year or two. It takes work, but so does analog. Nothing is fool proof. You don't have back-ups of your negatives. You could lose them to a flood, fire, theft, negligence etc. too.
SaveKodak
Well-known
Ah ha ha! But the thing is I do have a back up for my negative, and it's my 5000ppi TIFF. 🙂
If the argument is that you could lose one or the other, or that with best practices you should be ok...best practices then must include both physical and digital versions. I personally am careful with both, but I've lost negatives due to some problems it's true. But I've lost far more digital images over the years due to user error or hardware failure.
Jake Mongey
Well-known
I started shooting film at 13 where i started shooting a load of Legacy pro 100 (rebadged Acros) simply because I god given a film camera and it actually preformed better than my DLSR at the time (AF and AE was far better - hadnt learned manual yet)
After this it took off from there and I found myself inheriting my canon 7 where I shot it nonstop, it was fun. I loved making my images as apposed to just importing them onto a computer, It also helped me learn manual as I was doing everything myself.
Even now - when i work professionally I use digital but always have a 35mm SLR on me in case and when i have had to use it the clients tend to like the film images better even on cheap drugstore film.
After this it took off from there and I found myself inheriting my canon 7 where I shot it nonstop, it was fun. I loved making my images as apposed to just importing them onto a computer, It also helped me learn manual as I was doing everything myself.
Even now - when i work professionally I use digital but always have a 35mm SLR on me in case and when i have had to use it the clients tend to like the film images better even on cheap drugstore film.
jsrockit
Moderator
SaveKodak
Well-known
I was more trying to channel the image of an old british man yelling "I have you now!!!" 😀
farlymac
PF McFarland
One thing I have noticed is an uptick in bid prices on certain film cameras, in particular the Canon AE-1. Then I saw a video of someone singing the praises of the AE-1 as the film camera to own, which explains the renewed interest in a model that wasn't as popular as the AE-1 Program.
My local lab has begun better stocking of their film shelves, but still haven't gotten in any 120, so there might not be as much interest around here for medium format.
With my style of shooting, it's not often I even run into another photographer, much less someone dragging around film equipment. I gave up on the camera club because they all switched to digital.
Not that I haven't dipped my toes into the waters of the medium, but my issue with digital is the cost in equipment. Not only do you need the camera and lenses, but a good computer with enough hard drive and memory space to be able to store and work on images, with the necessary software. Then online storage adds to the cost of keeping your images, and being able to display them for others to see. Include in this the monthly bill for online access, and it mounts up pretty fast.
And yes, it all has an environmental footprint, whether in the manufacturing processes for the cameras, lenses, and memory cards, or all the electricity required to keep the server farms up and running, along with charging camera batteries, and post-processing images. It all adds up to a large expenditure for someone on a budget.
But I think I keep shooting film because it's what I know best. It also gives me great satisfaction when I get the scans back from a roll where I guessed the exposures myself, and most of them are spot on. I still can't get my Nikon P7700 to perform that bit of magic.
PF
My local lab has begun better stocking of their film shelves, but still haven't gotten in any 120, so there might not be as much interest around here for medium format.
With my style of shooting, it's not often I even run into another photographer, much less someone dragging around film equipment. I gave up on the camera club because they all switched to digital.
Not that I haven't dipped my toes into the waters of the medium, but my issue with digital is the cost in equipment. Not only do you need the camera and lenses, but a good computer with enough hard drive and memory space to be able to store and work on images, with the necessary software. Then online storage adds to the cost of keeping your images, and being able to display them for others to see. Include in this the monthly bill for online access, and it mounts up pretty fast.
And yes, it all has an environmental footprint, whether in the manufacturing processes for the cameras, lenses, and memory cards, or all the electricity required to keep the server farms up and running, along with charging camera batteries, and post-processing images. It all adds up to a large expenditure for someone on a budget.
But I think I keep shooting film because it's what I know best. It also gives me great satisfaction when I get the scans back from a roll where I guessed the exposures myself, and most of them are spot on. I still can't get my Nikon P7700 to perform that bit of magic.
PF
tunalegs
Pretended Artist
I've written it before, and I'll write it again, one of the attractions of film is that it possesses an authenticity that doesn't exist in digital.
I have some Kodachrome slides taken in Japan in 1948. What's neat is that when I hold those slides, I'm holding the same film that actually was shot in Japan, in 1948. The slides actually were there. That's a direct connection to the time and location one can never really have with a print from digital or viewing a photo online.
To most people who don't really care a whole lot about photography or history, that doesn't mean much, and it's not very interesting. But to me there is something really amazing about holding negatives or slides that you know had actually been in the hands of the photographer, and had actually been to some important or beautiful location. When I look at my own travel slides, it's something that brings those places close again. When I handle negatives or slides from somebody else, maybe somebody long dead even, it provides a connection that just can't exist with digital.
I have some Kodachrome slides taken in Japan in 1948. What's neat is that when I hold those slides, I'm holding the same film that actually was shot in Japan, in 1948. The slides actually were there. That's a direct connection to the time and location one can never really have with a print from digital or viewing a photo online.
To most people who don't really care a whole lot about photography or history, that doesn't mean much, and it's not very interesting. But to me there is something really amazing about holding negatives or slides that you know had actually been in the hands of the photographer, and had actually been to some important or beautiful location. When I look at my own travel slides, it's something that brings those places close again. When I handle negatives or slides from somebody else, maybe somebody long dead even, it provides a connection that just can't exist with digital.
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