So what's the deal with film?

So how come having the audacity to actually change a lens after painstakingly cleaning the sensor results in finding oneself back at square one? (And why are there always bits that stick on so well that only a wet clean gets them off?)
 
Chris101 said:
Actually they don't. It takes kilovolts to be able to polarize dust to the point of attracting it electrostatically. The highest potential used in a digital sensor is maybe 12v tops.

Barring that minor exception however, I agree with your argument.
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I'm pretty sure that film does not have a 12v differential from the surroundings. Ever. And, if you have ever used film you would know that FILM attracts dust. It, however, is typically not embedded in the image. (Exception: sheet film loaded in a dusty environment).
 
Cause dust is sticky. It's nearly everywhere, and it often sticks so hard that you need to work at getting it dislodged. I don't know how many times I have been unable to remove a tiny spot from a negative with canned air alone, and had to either pick at it, endangering the negative, or just go at it with spotone after printing.

With digital, you don't need to physically spot negatives, but man-o-man, does that get tedious! By the way, does anyone else find the new Marshall's spotting ink inferior to the old spotone?
 
Chris101 said:
With digital, you don't need to physically spot negatives, but man-o-man, does that get tedious! By the way, does anyone else find the new Marshall's spotting ink inferior to the old spotone?
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no disagreement with the first part. Second part: no information. I am using spot pens. They suck, mostly, but they are easy to use.
 
I don't know spot pens - I use a #0000 brush, special archival ink and distilled water, to stipple the ink onto a wet print covering the little white spots I inevitably end up with, no matter how scrupulously I clean the negative. I usually blame the inside of the enlarger.
 
justsayda said:
Why do I still use film?

Because of the quality. I think with digital photography (as with many things digital), we've convinced ourselves we have a superior technology when what we've really only got is convenience.
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I do find the control digital brings to color fantastically superior to that I had with color film. The RAW workflow with an excellent camera exposure really does deliver what I see as better results on paper. And it is easier.
 
sepiareverb said:
I do find the control digital brings to color fantastically superior to that I had with color film. The RAW workflow with an excellent camera exposure really does deliver what I see as better results on paper. And it is easier.
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I agree and tend to use digital for most of the color photography I do. Since I am colorblind, I can do color by the numbers on a computer, which I was never able to do in the darkroom. I always needed a second opinion to get the color balance correct when printing color film.
 
sepiareverb said:
The RAW workflow with an excellent camera exposure really does deliver what I see as better results on paper. And it is easier.
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For color, I work in a hybrid mode with e-6. No regrets: you get what you see. I detest scanning color negatives.

I agree: the reproducibility of digital color printing is wonderful, and I never got this good with color optical printing. Not so with B&W (silver / iron-silver / palladium etc.)
 
degruyl said:
I'm pretty sure that film does not have a 12v differential from the surroundings. Ever. And, if you have ever used film you would know that FILM attracts dust. It, however, is typically not embedded in the image. (Exception: sheet film loaded in a dusty environment).
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Rewinding film in hold can produce static discharge which exposes the film. I was always careful to rewind slowly in cold and dry weather. A famous "oops, did not think that plan through" was the use of glass pressure plates on the early M3's. Oops. Leica replaced them. Okay, I'll put a quarter in the almost useless trivia jar.
 
Brian Sweeney said:
It takes much longer for something to be obsolete than people may think. Difference between "Obsolete" means "Unusable". There is also "Improved" and "New for Newness Sake". The M9 improves on the M8. The KAF-18500 used in my newest digital camera improves on the KAF-1600 used in my oldest digital camera, 1992. The KAF-1600 series is still in production, and gets use in the scientific industry.

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/business/ISS/Products/Fullframe/KAF-1603/support.jhtml

So it's been in production for almost 20 years.

Today I was telling my co-worker that the M9 could produce a 36MByte Raw file and that was the same file size as the Digital Images that I used a VAX 11/780 to process in 1982. The LANDSAT 4 images were 6000x6000, 8-bits per pixel, and 7 spectral bands.. So it had more resolution, and more colors. No Photoshop, I used FORTRAN to process it.

http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/about/landsat4.html

I first used Photoshop 3.0 in the early 90s. I still have it, and still run it. It works with the first Digital camera that I bought, which still works.
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Fortran is the manliest programming language ever! (Wow, that was an oxymoron).
 
Brian Sweeney said:
Rewinding film in hold can produce static discharge which exposes the film. I was always careful to rewind slowly in cold and dry weather. A famous "oops, did not think that plan through" was the use of glass pressure plates on the early M3's. Oops. Leica replaced them. Okay, I'll put a quarter in the almost useless trivia jar.
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Also one of the compelling reasons for the development of safety film, as I understand it.
 
I went into Jessops today (large UK chain of camera stores). I bought their entire stock of Kodak b/w film, which happened to be two rolls of Tri-X. Their entire stock of film, apart from Fuji 200 which seems to be the standard replacement stuff given away after film processing, consisted of about 50 rolls.

Jessops have almost gone bust and have closed a lot of stores. There isn't much money to be made from digital cameras, which are made and sold like mobile phones or laptops. People don't buy lots of prime lenses for them, don't need filters, don't come back for film and processing etc. Meanwhile, the film and chemistry specialists on the Internet seem to be doing just fine.

In the UK at least, the snapshot market for film has totally vanished but it doesn't actually make any difference to the availability of the stuff as long as you are happy to buy online. It's sad to see some good films like HIE go out of production (I don't actually miss K64 much) but there are as many new ones appearing from manufacturers like EFKE.

The camera manufacturers have turned their product into a consumer disposable (who wants a five-year old digital camera?) and I suspect that, one day, the rapid replacement cycle will come back to bite them as new entrants beat them at their own game.
 
Read this today, it's very close to why I shoot film. Perhaps not so literal, but I don't really like the vibe of digital.

"Photography has the selfsame problem when we undertake to multi-mediatize it by adding to it all the resources of montage, collage, the digital and CGI, etc. This opening-up to the infinite, this deregulation, is, literally, the death of photography by its elevation to the stage of performance."

http://insomnia.ac/essays/contemporary_art/
 
rogerzilla said:
I went into Jessops today (large UK chain of camera stores). I bought their entire stock of Kodak b/w film, which happened to be two rolls of Tri-X. Their entire stock of film..........
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This has happened to me a number of times when I have been caught out without enough film. Over the top prices & storage of the film that leaves a lot to be desired!

I buy my film in bulk from internet stores - I just have to remember to bring plenty of spare rolls with me when I got shooting :)
 
Ranchu said:
Read this today, it's very close to why I shoot film. Perhaps not so literal, but I don't really like the vibe of digital.

"Photography has the selfsame problem when we undertake to multi-mediatize it by adding to it all the resources of montage, collage, the digital and CGI, etc. This opening-up to the infinite, this deregulation, is, literally, the death of photography by its elevation to the stage of performance."

http://insomnia.ac/essays/contemporary_art/
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Wow.

I worked for 6 hours straight - on my feet, in the darkroom - on a large film based montage of 30 individual frames. I had to deal with chemistry, composition, aesthetics, "The Print", and keeping a communal darkroom orderly, as I was the only one in it.

And it gets lumped in with cgi.

I feel rooked.
 
LKeithR said:
Having successfully and comfortably made the transition from film to digital I'm wondering what it is about film that has some people holding on so doggedly? I mean, the world has changed, technology has changed dramatically and most of us have moved on but I know there are a number of people here who still shoot "only" film so there must be some very real attraction.

To bring a bit of perspective to the discussion I wonder how many people who shoot only film still only have black and white TVs? How many of you still drive cars from the 70s? How many don't have computers?...don't have cell phones?

My point is that I suspect in virtually every other aspect of their lives, even determined film shooters have embraced the new technologies with open arms. I'm sure that few of you are Luddites so what is it about film that transcends the impacts of technology in the field of photography?
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In order to "move on," as you say, wouldn't I have to spend a ton of money to buy new digital equipment? Why, when I have film cameras that work just fine?

And here's another point: Film has higher resolution than digital. It may not be true in the future but it's true now.
 
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