The longest Survivor: 120 or 135 format?

The longest Survivor: 120 or 135 format?

  • 120 will outlast 135

    Votes: 65 39.2%

  • 135 will be the survivor (for a while)

    Votes: 101 60.8%
  • Total voters
    166
  • Poll closed .
It's really cold today, and I haven't been able to get a good pair of gloves that balance keeping my hands warm enough vs allowing enough dexterity to manipulate controls :-/. A poor excuse, I know...
 
unixrevolution said:
35mm, 120, and large format (up to 8x10, maybe larger) will be readily available in black and white pretty much forever.
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The rising cost of silver could have some impact on forever.

However, 100 years from now, all the digital cameras I ever bought will have died and been recycled. My film cameras will still be shooting. My Leica M2 will have probably had 3 more CLA's at the reccomended quarter century interval.
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You've discovered the secret to immortality? ;)

That said, why are we sitting here with our doom and gloom predictions, instead of going outside and shooting some film to keep it alive?

Well, I mean, I'm sitting here because I'm at work. What's your excuse?
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Work... and the fact that I don;t shoot every minute in every day.
 
I voted for 120, but I was hesitant.

120 can outlive 135 because large sensors are still far too expensive to be practical, whereas full-frame 35mm sensors are already pretty popular. However, 135 equipment is more common.

So it's either 120 because people want quality, or 135 because people want the equipment.

And then there's the whole discussion of having different types of films and whether digital will ever match that.
 
I keep seeing references to "wet plate" photography, assume they are referring to dry glass plates?

Have a friend who has coated his own glass plates for years, he buys up old ones, cleans them up, and coats with liquid emulsion, drys them for use. There are lots of plate holders for LF, many have been converted to flexible base film with inserts, and can easily be converted back to glass.

I have a box of 13x18cm glass plates made in the 70's from Foma.

In the age of cheap transport and the internet, as long as some plant somewhere makes film, you can find it.

Artists still buy oil paints, etc.

However, when you can no longer find films of a variety you prefer, it may as well be gone.

Regards, John
 
I voted for 120. As we all know that attention spans are much smaller these days, what with the internets and all that, so a roll of 36 exposures is really an example of utter lunacy. 120 you can choose your poison.:angel:
 
The past few weeks I have been contemplating if I would bring my 35mm camera on our 2 week trip to Burma. After reviewing others and my images i remain to my previous point of opinion. If I go through the effort of shooing film I might as well get best quality possible.
 
Well, I mean, I'm sitting here because I'm at work. What's your excuse?
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Aren't you worried someone will check the logs and find out you're using office time to post on RFF?

Oh, wait - are you the chap who's supposed to be checking the logs? ;)
 
These facts are from Fuji: 80% of 35mm film goes to movie industry. When the digital movie cameras ( DSLR or the ones of RED and ARRI etc) are perfected and digityal storing media becomes still cheaper, that is the "Doom day" for 35mm film. My prediction is that TRI-X will disappear in 3-4 years Now one movie will use 2000 metres or more of 35mm stock, that is more than 1000 rolls of still camera film. Still film will be more expensive every day and amateur shooters use less and less of it. The big question is "who uses 120 film" ?? One or two rolls per month seems to be the amount amateurs are using. How long that will keep the machines running in the few film plants now in operation? There are not that many left. The "eastern block" manufacturers are stopping any day, if not already stopped while writing this. The big question mark is Harmann/Ilford. it looks like we will everybody be using their products in the near future, be it branded Kentmere, Maco/Rollei Freestyle, Adox etc...
 
Rangefinderfreak said:
These facts are from Fuji: 80% of 35mm film goes to movie industry.
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But 99% of that is theatrical print film (there are thousands of copies of each major motion picture around), and another 0.9% is edit and duplication process film. The amount of taking film is absolutely negligible on that scale. But taking film is the only MP film that is somewhat related to photographic film - and even that uses a different base, different perforation, different emulsion, different process and special back coating.

Rangefinderfreak said:
My prediction is that TRI-X will disappear in 3-4 years Now one movie will use 2000 metres or more of 35mm stock, that is more than 1000 rolls of still camera film.
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Which is not that much considering the (tiny) total number of motion picture productions (around 1200 per year across North America and Europe, maybe 3000 if we include China, India and Nigeria - and a majority of the former at least shot digital). A mid size capital like Berlin might use more 35mm film than all motion picture productions worldwide - a mere two pros, ten heavy enthusiasts, fifty Lomo nerds or 10000 pedestrian consumers (assuming that one in ten still uses a disposable a year or has a p'n's for the kids) account for one Hollywood production (or two-three lower budget productions).

Besides, Tri-X is entirely unaffected. It is no motion picture stock, and black and white as a whole is so rarely used as a taking film as to be entirely irrelevant - the single time the one black and white stock Kodak still has, Double-X, was used on a feature length 35mm production in recent times made it to the Academy Awards just for that fact...

There are of course issues as the volume of theatrical prints plummets, even though the connections are rather indirect. Coating plants cannot survive on film only and will turn to other coating applications, which might cause their management to get out of photography entirely (though mixed operations are perfectly possible - see the ex-Agfa Inoviscoat). And the theatrical polyester base makers will sit on unused stock or capacities, and might flood the photographic market, destroying some of the remaining acetate makers (35mm photographic film is almost entirely acetate) before they drop the photo market themselves. But "motion pictures are keeping the photographic film market afloat" is way too simplistic.
 
Rangefinderfreak said:
These facts are from Fuji: 80% of 35mm film goes to movie industry. When the digital movie cameras ( DSLR or the ones of RED and ARRI etc) are perfected and digityal storing media becomes still cheaper, that is the "Doom day" for 35mm film.
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No, absolutely not true.
That is a myth circling around in photo forums for years. Lots of people copy that without critical thinking about.
It is so easy to see that it is wrong:
Just look at the different film manufacturers and see what type of films they are producing. And then you see that most of them do not manufacture motion picture film at all!
Nevertheless they are producing photo film!
Only Kodak is more dependent on that market. But not the others, which either have never produced movie film, or have already stopped production of it some time ago, but continue to produce other types of film, or only have a very small percentage of movie film products in their portfolio.

Fujifilm has clearly said this autumn at Photokina, that the production stop of most of their motion picture films will not affect the production of photo films.
They even re-introduced Neopan 400.
And they introduced a new Instax camera for their growing Instax instant film business.
And they introduced new RA-4 papers.

Rangefinderfreak said:
The "eastern block" manufacturers are stopping any day, if not already stopped while writing this. The big question mark is Harmann/Ilford. it looks like we will everybody be using their products in the near future, be it branded Kentmere, Maco/Rollei Freestyle, Adox etc...
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Besides Kodak and Fujifilm there are enough Western European film manufacturers:
- Agfa-Gevaert, Belgium ( www.agfa.com ) which is the third biggest film manufacturer worldwide behind Kodak and Fuji, and also producing color film

- IlfordPhoto / Harman

- Impossible Project in Enschede, Netherlands

- InovisCoat in Monheim, Germany www.inoviscoat.de ; they are also producing color film, e.g. the color negative film base for the Impossible films, see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw4rttFGHiM


InovisCoat is the successor company of Agfa Leverkusen. They have the staff and machinery from Agfa Leverkusen.


- FilmoTec in Wolfen, Germany www.filmotec.de

- Ilford Suisse; they produce a color microfilm

And then we have also Foma (Czech) and Tasma (Russia).
And Lucky and Shanghai in China.
AFAIK the number of sensor manufacturers is less than the number of film manufacturers worldwide.
 
Muggins said:
Probably not - their predecessor, wet collodion, is having a bit of a revival at the moment.

Have a look at the linked video - I can't promise it will play as Youtube won't work here: http://youtu.be/iM2aKze_DAY



Adrian
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I would yet hazard that the terms get mixed. The video is interesting, I had not thought of tin types for awhile. Having not researched how many folks are doing the whole old time wet plate process, I don't know how much a revival there is, I do know people personally who do coat liquid emulsions made to be shot once dry.

I have friends in Seattle, I was nicely surprised at how much photography was alive there. My former model/friend/colleague moved there and took her place on the other side, getting a degree in photography.

I have done photograms of her on linen, and larger photo papers. Fun but no easy.

Am not too sure of his chemistry, I got the feeling he was using terms a bit loosely, but am sure he knows what works. I do think you want to be very careful with a number of the ones he mentions.

I have stockpiled a number of the chemicals that may be hard or expensive to find.

Future projects.

Thanks for an interesting link, Google brought up far more than I had imagined.

Regards, John
 
Skiff: The re-introducing of neopan 400 is news to me, definitely good news, all the rest that you listed is facts I know. I checked with Maco, the neopan is not available yet, nor japan camera hunter was not aware of it, from where is your info coming of re-introducing neopan 400 ?
 
JohnTF said:
I do know people personally who do coat liquid emulsions made to be shot once dry.
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Interesting in itself - I suspect you get similar effects to wet plate, but with less exposure time needed. You've now educated me! I've never got beyond using a few sheets of paper in a No 3 Kodak, but if the chance ever came along to do it... I believe there are a few people doing Daguerrotypes* as well, but I hope they've found a way to do it without using mercury!

Adrian

*these are really magical to see in the flesh.
 
Rob-F said:
Glad to hear that Neopan 400 has been reinstated. Now how about Neopan 1600?
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What about it? At most 1/3 stop faster than HP5 Plus in the right developer, but with inferior tonality. At least, that's how I saw it. Your opinion presumably differs (which doesn't mean that either of us is right). In my book, though, it was one of the least significant losses than B+W users have endured recently.

Cheers,

R
 
Well, my results were consistent with an ISO of 640 to 800. I'd say that is more than +1/3 stop. Personally, I liked the stuff.
 
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