Slide Film

[Papa Smurf]

Enjoy the day!

Enjoy the day!

The film you buy today, slow speed & properly stored, will be useable 2-4-6-8-maybe more years from now. Faster speed film goes off sooner, still several years if kept frozen. Rodinol lasts almost forever.

Don't worry. Be happy. The end is not near.

I agree whole heartedly with venchka! A few months back I purchased a Watson bulk film loader off e-bay. It came with what I have identified as Tri-X manufactured in the eighties. So far I've only developed a few rolls, but they seem to be just fine. I am exposing at 320. On the other hand, the way I take pictures, maybe I wouldn't be able to tell if the film had gone bad! It seems to me that too many people (I was one!) worry about what might be instead of enjoying what is. My Contax G1 goes with me almost everywhere and my digital SLR wonder camera sits in it bag on the shelf. The G1 is way more fun to shoot. 🙂

Life is uncertain, eat dessert first! :bang:

 

[Papa Smurf]

All I really need is for Wal-Mart to keep developing C-41 film in 1-hour. The truth is, once they stop doing that, all my film equipment that I have bought will sit somewhere and gather dust. I am worrying about this every day.

Jeremy, I just noticed your age. If you are like my grand-daughter (age 18), you do not like old codgers giving you advise, but here goes anyway. When I was your age (actually sixteen), I had just purchased my first camera, an Argus C-3 Matchmatic. Polaroid Land cameras were all the rage and the salesman tried to talk me out of purchasing the Argus. "Film was dead", he said and in a few years the Argus would be useless. Correct me if my math is wrong, but forty-seven years later we are still debating if film is dead? Just use your hard earned equipment (excellent choice on the SRT-101, by the way) and next year, if film or processing isn't available any longer, worry about it then. In the mean time you would have had a ball and gained invaluable amounts of experience to apply to your new equipment!😀

Life is uncertain, eat dessert first! :bang:

 

[minoltist7]

1-hour processing in convenience stores will die eventually. Whole such industry was built to satisfy needs of huge crowd of "snapshooters" (Level 4 by Ken Rockwell's classification). These are people not interested in photography itself, but in quick result. This demand grew with abundance of automatic P&S cameras, and cheap film. Now most of camera users (I can't call them photographers ) switched to digital P&S and cameraphones, and many of them don't print at all... showing pics on the monitor is enough, since many people have computers. So why to keep huge industry of printing labs? Same with film suppliers. I live in the city with 1 million population, and we have only one specialized photo store which sells B&W film. 2 rolls of PanF+ 120 was lying on the shelf for 5 months, because nobody interested. I bought it finally with huge discount when it expired 🙂 but this store will probably not stock B&W becouse it's not profitable. Things getting worse. There is only one lab in the city which develops 120 film (C-41), and one place where can develop E-6. Nobody in commercial photo labs do B&W anymore - only amateurs like me , in their bathrooms and kitchens.

I think film will remain for a long time as sort of nostalgic thing, but it will be expensive as any niche market product.

 

[JeremyLangford]

I really have no idea what Im gonna do once I can't find a C-41 lab. Right now I am just trying to take as many pictures as possible while I can. I guess I can try developing C-41 on my own one day.

But if there are so many people on this forum and elsewhere, with some very nice and expensive 35mm film equipment, won't somebody realize that they can use us as a market? Maybe there could be a website that sells C-41 and E-6 developing tools as well as various types of slide and negative color film.

Maybe people will start seeing more and more crappy digital pictures and realize that most good "serious" photography is done with film, and film will rise back up again.

Maybe someone can sell film rolls with digital film inside that is just a big roll up of a digital sensor and a USB cable pops out when you rewind the digital film back into the canister.

Maybe..............

 

[bmattock]

I really have no idea what Im gonna do once I can't find a C-41 lab. Right now I am just trying to take as many pictures as possible while I can. I guess I can try developing C-41 on my own one day.

Sounds like a good idea.

But if there are so many people on this forum and elsewhere, with some very nice and expensive 35mm film equipment, won't somebody realize that they can use us as a market? Maybe there could be a website that sells C-41 and E-6 developing tools as well as various types of slide and negative color film.

"So many" translates into a few thousand. Not a market - not even a niche. A veritable drop in the bucket. People who associate with others like themselves have a hard time realizing that they're not a majority, they're not a force to be reckoned with, they're not even a blip on the radar. We are not the market. The millions upon millions of people who buy cheap digital point-and-shoots and single-use film cameras are.

Maybe people will start seeing more and more crappy digital pictures and realize that most good "serious" photography is done with film, and film will rise back up again.

I'm sorry, it's not likely. "People" don't have much interest in the quality of their photos. If they did, they would not take photos with cell phone cameras and post them on their MySpace pages with anything resembling pride.

Maybe someone can sell film rolls with digital film inside that is just a big roll up of a digital sensor and a USB cable pops out when you rewind the digital film back into the canister.

There was a company that tried that. They went bankrupt.

Hey, it's not the end of the world. Photography never stands still, it always changes. Before digital it was film; before film it was glass plates. If you ever read old camera magazines, you can find that the same fights, the same hand-wringing and woe-is-me went on when medium format started losing out to 35mm - considered a 'toy' format at the time. There were people who screamed and yelled that photography was being killed when color started to get popular. Life goes on, ya know?

Film is what it is. Superior to digital in many ways, and does things that digital still can't do for some things, but that doesn't matter, really. The market (which is not us) has spoken and the gears are turning. Whether the last commercial roll of 35mm color print film is sold next year or 15 years from now, doesn't matter much - the die is cast. That's not me being 'anti-film', because I love and use film. But I also use digital, and I refuse to make a certain type of photography into a religion.

What you're hoping for is a renaissance, and in my opinion, it ain't gonna happen. But that does not mean you cannot enjoy what you enjoy while you have it. Use it, enjoy it. It might surprise all of us with a long drawn-out curtain call. But when the music is over, move on.

 

[mackigator]

The horse is dead. Get out and shoot.

Then drop it off at Walmart and they'll mail it to Kansas for you and it'll be back in a week for $4.88 a roll.

 

[amateriat]

It also depends on where you live, I suppose. At the local Rite-Aid a few blocks from me (only opened up a few years back), I recently asked at the minilab what their film-developing traffic was like. I was told that the volume was healthy, and steady. For myself, I'll say that rare is the time I don't see film pouring out of the Noritsu there (including a few rolls of mine from time to time...often they'll run a few rolls through while I wait, spool them up uncut, and hand them to me, usually about 15-20 minutes, for about $2.50 a pop). For E6, it means making a run to Manhattan, but it can be done.



At least over here, you could say it's the worst of times, and the best of times.


May, 2001. Many say I'm still not getting the message.

- Barrett

 

[Ade-oh]

My local branch of Boots - Britain's leading high street drug store - has a reasonable stock of film, including FP4, HP5, XP2, Velvia, Sensia, Ektachrome and various different brands of colour print film, including some 120, so I don't recognise this bleak picture of non-availability of film. They will also process all of these (colour print on site, other stuff gets sent to a lab).

The thing is that we've all got used to convenience. When I first started 'serious' photography in the 1970s, a roll of colour print film was expensive (maybe £3.50 for 36 exposures) and the processing even more so: it might cost £8 a roll for the express 48 hour service. I couldn't ever afford that so I got into the habit of sending my film away for cheaper processing. Nowadays, film is relatively cheap and there are many, many more places where I can get it developed than there were 20 years ago. A lot of these will go, but we won't be in any worse a situation than we were back then.

Will film eventually disappear? Maybe, but it won't be any time soon.

 

[venchka]

Believe it or Don't

Believe it or Don't

The year is 1964. The place is the U.S.A. and Canada. Film is abundantly available almost everywhere. As long as you want film in yellow boxes. Kodachrome II, Extachrome, Kodacolor, Panatomic-X, Plus-X and Tri-X. That's all folks. Fuji and Ilford where unkown at the time.

Fast forward. 2008. There are too many films available today. A bewildering choice. Sure, you have to order much of it online and have it mailed to you. What's wrong with that? Postage is cheaper than fuel. My local supermarket, Kroger, has a large selection of Italian made house brand C-41 film. They also have a good selection of Kodak & Fuji C-41 film. Go figure. A supermarket. 😱

Fisrt camera I ever took a picture with: 1950 vintage 35mm Konica rangefinder.
First camera that was mine: 1956 vintage Brownie Hawkeye.
I still have both cameras. I can still get film for both cameras.

My generation managed to survive the Cold War and the threat of The Bomb. I wish Kodachrome II and Panatomic-X had survived as well. I miss both products. I moved on and learned to like other films.

You're young. You'll survive. You will be using film for quite awhile. Despite Al Gore's preaching to the contrary, the world and film will not end tomorrow.

Enjoy! You cup is half full. Not half empty.

 

[JeremyLangford]

Yea. Im trying to be optimistic about this. But the fact that Im young just scares me even more. It makes me think that I will have be shooting digital when Im your guys' age. But oh well. Hopefully Ill have a few years to get a pretty decent amount of film pictures.

The year is 1964. The place is the U.S.A. and Canada. Film is abundantly available almost everywhere. As long as you want film in yellow boxes. Kodachrome II, Extachrome, Kodacolor, Panatomic-X, Plus-X and Tri-X. That's all folks. Fuji and Ilford where unkown at the time.

Fast forward. 2008. There are too many films available today. A bewildering choice. Sure, you have to order much of it online and have it mailed to you. What's wrong with that? Postage is cheaper than fuel. My local supermarket, Kroger, has a large selection of Italian made house brand C-41 film. They also have a good selection of Kodak & Fuji C-41 film. Go figure. A supermarket. 😱

Fisrt camera I ever took a picture with: 1950 vintage 35mm Konica rangefinder.
First camera that was mine: 1956 vintage Brownie Hawkeye.
I still have both cameras. I can still get film for both cameras.

My generation managed to survive the Cold War and the threat of The Bomb. I wish Kodachrome II and Panatomic-X had survived as well. I miss both products. I moved on and learned to like other films.

You're young. You'll survive. You will be using film for quite awhile. Despite Al Gore's preaching to the contrary, the world and film will not end tomorrow.

Enjoy! You cup is half full. Not half empty.

 

[hans voralberg]

Dude you're just looking at things the wrong way around, you're 17 and pessimistic ? That's just weird, you should be happy that you have choice of film and able to scan it, and no film wont die that quick.

P.S. Worrying about random things like that has detrimental effects on your health as well (in case you're wondering yeah i study psychology)

 

[photophorous]

What about motion picture film? Isn't it going to be a while before digital takes over in the movie business? And even when it becomes mainstream, won't there still be independent film makers using film because it will still be better? Yeah, I know it's not exactly the same, but making one will help keep costs down on the other, which will help keep the niche market alive.

My optimism is not so much about the future of film, but the future of digital. Digital is still in it's infancy. By the time this wonderful world of film photography is dealt it's final death blow, maybe digital will be so good that even APUG members don't care.

Paul

 

[bmattock]

The year is 1964. The place is the U.S.A. and Canada. Film is abundantly available almost everywhere. As long as you want film in yellow boxes. Kodachrome II, Extachrome, Kodacolor, Panatomic-X, Plus-X and Tri-X. That's all folks. Fuji and Ilford where unkown at the time.

I don't know what you've been smoking in your darkroom, but apparently, you were nodding off during 1964. I've got dozens, no hundreds, of old photo magazines that did yearly film comparisons and listings. Kodak and Ilford, yes. Also Dynacolor, Gavaert, Dufay Color, Agfa, Ansco (not always the same as Agfa), 3M, Ferrania, Perutz, Orwo, Sakura Color, and on and on. Oh, yes, and Ilford. HP3 was a hot seller in 1964, say my magazines (I was 3, so don't recall). Ilford has apparently been available in the USA for decades before that.

Film companies that remain in business have much better quality products now. But there were dozens of companies making film then, and hundreds of offerings.

And Fuji Film began selling film in the US in 1965, a year after your odd dream of no film companies but Kodak in the USA - at least from their first direct office in NYC. They may have imported film before that, I don't know.

 

[Socke]

If you are so unlucky and have to buy film on an airport it'd better not be Vienna 🙂

Vienna Airport April 2008

 

[venchka]

Ok, maybe I am one of those folks who "if you remember the 60s you weren't there."

I lived in a small town. Bought film where I found it. Bought film in tourist traps on vacation. By and large, my film buying opportunites were limited to Kodak.

I forgot to add Agfa to the list of the dearly departed. I discovered Agfa film & Brovira paper when my Uncle Sam sent me to Germany in 1969.

Anyway, there are still WAY more film choices today.

 

[bmattock]

Anyway, there are still WAY more film choices today.

I have to continue to disagree. There are far fewer companies, and far fewer offerings from each that remain.

Ilford even used to sell color print and reversal films, as an example.

 

[venchka]

Ok.

How about Kodak's Portra family, Extachrome offerings, T-max offerings, BW400CN?
Fuji isn't far behind: Velvia (x2), Sensia, Astia, Provia, Neopan 100, 400, 1600, NPS, NPC, NPZ
Ilford Delta 100, Delta 400, 50, 125 & 400 conventional, XP2 Super
Efke and ADOX in various speeds

And...just because stuff was made way back when and reviewed in NYC magazines and on sale in NYC, Chicago and LA, didn't mean that you could find the same stuff in Lafayette, LA or Rawlins, WY or the Hamilton Stores in Yellowstone. Sure, there was mail order for the most complete selection. Just like today. Not much has changed.

More then? More now? Who knows. There is plenty to satisfy or confuse most everyone.

 

[bmattock]

Ok.

How about Kodak's Portra family, Extachrome offerings, T-max offerings, BW400CN?
Fuji isn't far behind: Velvia (x2), Sensia, Astia, Provia, Neopan 100, 400, 1600, NPS, NPC, NPZ
Ilford Delta 100, Delta 400, 50, 125 & 400 conventional, XP2 Super
Efke and ADOX in various speeds

And...just because stuff was made way back when and reviewed in NYC magazines and on sale in NYC, Chicago and LA, didn't mean that you could find the same stuff in Lafayette, LA or Rawlins, WY or the Hamilton Stores in Yellowstone. Sure, there was mail order for the most complete selection. Just like today. Not much has changed.

More then? More now? Who knows. There is plenty to satisfy or confuse most everyone.

I agree that there is plenty of film of all types to go around now.

But let's be clear. When I was growing up, every medium-sized town had one or more camera shops, so having a large selection in the local grocer's was not really an issue. I know that there were several camera shops in towns I lived in such as Pekin, Morton, and Peoria, Illinois. Then later, Denver and Golden, Colorado. With the exception of Denver, these were not big towns. And in Denver, we had Waxman's, which was a veritable department store devoted to photography - five floors, huge building!

About the only place I ever lived growing up that had no camera shop with a gazillion film offerings was San Jose, Illinois, population 400. When I lived there, my dad had to drive me into Pekin (population 16,000) to buy film.

You could get any of the dozens of offerings from any of the dozens of manufacturers - and what is more, you could still get 127, 126, 110, 120, 220, 35mm, 16mm, Super 8, 8mm, Minox, and all the various sheet film permutations, including the Euro sizes like 6.5 x 9.

The camera magazines did yearly comparisons precisely because there was so much choice! And mail order really wasn't as prevalent as internet buying is today. Yes, all the magazines listed the big mail-order dealers, but most people bought locally - because they could.

Yes, there is enough film today to satisfy about every interest in terms of type - color print, slide, and B&W. But the variety is sadly lacking.

 

[Ade-oh]

But let's be clear. When I was growing up, every medium-sized town had one or more camera shops, so having a large selection in the local grocer's was not really an issue. I know that there were several camera shops in towns I lived in such as Pekin, Morton, and Peoria, Illinois. Then later, Denver and Golden, Colorado. With the exception of Denver, these were not big towns. And in Denver, we had Waxman's, which was a veritable department store devoted to photography - five floors, huge building!

But I would suggest that that is a different issue entirely. I doubt I'm unusual in that I buy almost all of my photographic needs, whether film based or digital, online. The death of the local photographic store has come about largely because of discounted online retailing, rather than anything to do with the pre-eminence of digital imaging.

 

[Dibber]

Film will live

Film will live

Just shot a roll of ektachrome 64 120 film that expired in 1987. Bought it at the Black Hole in Los Alamos NM as surplus from the Los Alamos National Labratory.

Colors are a bit faded but hey- this stuff was stored around A-Bombs. So I'm confident that, god forbid there is a nuclear apocolypse, the survivors can shoot film with their mechanical RFs.

I have some Reagan era Velvia too.