What film manufacturers can do to bring back film

[wgerrard]

Um... so the film process, print and produce a CD copy service as per the offerings from various labs isn't up to snuff?.

The CD's from the drug store aren't that bad. They're machine produced, just like the prints.

The local lab that will drum scan negatives or slides has prices that range from $40 for the initial scan to a file below 50 megs, and $125 for something over 150 megs. They'll also do scans on a Noritsu machine for $2-5 per scan.

 

[Tuolumne]

I think the reason we can have a digital camera that snaps pictures of "reality" almost instantaneously but not a film scanner is because a film scanner is not a digital camera. I don't want digital camera shots of my negatives, because a real film scanner does a better job. Probably because it takes longer to scan the frame.

Obviously we'd all prefer a film scanner to work faster. My current scanner can work faster, I just need to be willing to tolerate lower quaity scans. And after giving it a shot, I'm not willing to tolerate it. "Such is life," I think the saying goes 🙂

Ok, lets be clear here: You are saying the technology does not currently exist to make my dream scanner. As far as a film scanner being better than a digital camera, I think your opinion is in the minority from what I've read here on RFF. Besides, wouldn't you trade off "a little better" for 1,000,000 x faster?

/T

 

[Tuolumne]

The CD's from the drug store aren't that bad. They're machine produced, just like the prints.

The local lab that will drum scan negatives or slides has prices that range from $40 for the initial scan to a file below 50 megs, and $125 for something over 150 megs. They'll also do scans on a Noritsu machine for $2-5 per scan.

I have never been happy with drug store scans, or even scans from Dwaynes. You deffinitely cannot make large high quality prints from them, which is what I want out of the box. If all you want is to email them or share them on the web, they're fine. But why go through the encumbrance of film for that?

/T

 

[wgerrard]

And digital cameras take the shots in the same 'milliseconds' film cameras do... 🙂

What he's asking for is most likely something like this: a sensor like in a digicam, a light source, some optics, and a little hardware/software to support it. Stick in a neg/slide, push a button, the sensor 'takes a picture' of the neg/slide and you're done.

Right, because it's still a bazillion photons striking that sensor.

You've described a device to copy the data on a sensor. But, an image stored as data on a chip doesn't do us any good. It's not a picture. You have to throw software at the data to get an image. That's the time-consuming part.

 

[Tuolumne]

Nikon Bob,
I don't know how true it is that "If it could be made it would be made". I just don't lend that much credence to technological determinism. As far as scan times go, I use the same scanner and SW as you. Yes, the scan time is shorter without ICE, but many times I do use it, or pixel poslish and the scan times are ridiculous. Heck, just the focus times are ridiculous on the Minolta. If your camera took that long to focus you'd throw it in the trash. New negative scanners continue to me made, so there is a market. I think the designers are just stuck in a rut.

/T

 

[amateriat]

Sigh...

Ray and sitemistic are onto a point, and I'll merely amplify it a bit.

When I got my first film scanner, about 8-9 years ago (a used Nikon LS-10), and made my first-ever scan, I felt like I'd captured lightning in a jar. When I made my first print from that scan (a handful of minutes later), I was doing the Moonwalk. I don't exactly get that giddy over the process now, but the one thing I don't do is get irritated over the time the process takes (so long as everything is running as it should). I now have a much better and faster scanner, computer, and printer than I did back then, but I'm thankful for the process altogether. It's fast enough, but, more important, it's also good enough. I can output scans to make beautiful 17x22" prints (or 20x30" if I listen to the people who keep tellling me 240ppi is "more than enough" for great prints) without interpolation. I can make great black-and-white or color prints, worthy of exhibition ("suitable for hanging" sounds like a punchline to a Sergio Leone movie-title joke), also in reasonable time. Yes, besides a little time (and, really it's only a little), it's taken a learning curve, but what in photography doesn't?

The above workflow is more than fast enough for my personal projects, and even fast enough for the occasional shooting gig (a few clients still ask, "how do shoot film and turn stuff around like that?").

If I absolutely needed things to go faster than this, I'd be staring down the barrel of something like a Canon 5D. Nothing's faster than that, period. Fortunately for me, I don't need to, and not too interested otherwise.

Sometimes I think we've become spoiled by all this tech. Fast Enough last year is No Longer Fast Enough now. Why? Are we all Reuters/AP/Corbis/Getty stringers now? Where's the qualitative percentage? Where's the satisfaction percentage? Where's the cosmic percentage? Where's Ghandi when we need him for a pithy quote on all this?

(Where's a Mod to slowly leak the helium outta my balloon here with a one-liner?)

Good scanners abound, new and used. Hook one up to a reasonably fast computer (doesn't have to be this week's, or even last week's). Maybe a better-than-average flatbed that you can batch-scan with. Massage the scan settings a bit: even high-end dSLRs don't spit out the image exactly as you'd want it (I've shot enough with a Canon 1D in the past to know this). If shooting film means something to you, getting the scan right should mean something too. And, as sitemistic puts it, this is so much easier than the wet-darkroom route (and, to make things clear, I'm largely referring to color here) that it's silly to compare. And a goodly amount of this can be automated, if desired.

Not really a rant, folks, just a reminder of all the great stuff we really do have at our disposal, if only we'd get out hands on the controls and take a crack at it.

(Edit/Addendum: What can the film manufacturers do to "bring back" film? For the most part, they've been doing it, with improved emulsions that, among other thngs, are "scanner-friendly" already. The best thing they can do, IMO, is build a realistic business model that allows them to keep on keepin' on in a smaller market without pricing the stuff up the yin/yang. Ilford and Fuji seem to have gotten their act together on this, and Great Yellow Father appears to be trying harder. Cross your fingers, then buy another brick or two.)


- Barrett

 

[danwilly]

take your film to Walgreen's for processing and ask for a disk of digitized images. Problem solved.

 

[wgerrard]

Have you tried an Epson R-D1? Or as a more expensive alternative, just the M8? At a processing+ film price point of $30/roll (avg film cost+avg processing+scanning+cd), that's just 180 rolls. What many serious photographers will shoot in a year or less. Sometimes much less! Hmmm...maybe I do want that new M8. 🙂

/T

I won't pay $5500 for a camera, period. Since R-D1 prices seem to be pretty low, I might take a look.

 

[Tuolumne]

Right, because it's still a bazillion photons striking that sensor.

You've described a device to copy the data on a sensor. But, an image stored as data on a chip doesn't do us any good. It's not a picture. You have to throw software at the data to get an image. That's the time-consuming part.

Well, your camera can create and store a jpg faster than you can press the "play" button. It create and write a 12 MB RAW file in only slightly more time. There's plenty of horsepower and bandwidth to handle this problem with today's custom image processors.

/T

 

[Juancho]

Has anyone of you tried a slide duplicator and DSLR as scan method?

 

[Tuolumne]

I won't pay $5500 for a camera, period. Since R-D1 prices seem to be pretty low, I might take a look.

But you will spend that on film and film processing for where maybe on a good day 20% of the images are worth keeping? (Usually 10% is more like it) That means you are willing to spend almost $4-$8 per picture for a keeper negative/slide. In the old days, no one had a choice, so such a calculation was moot. But now you do. Think about it.

/T

 

[dmr]

I didn't know about that service. Sounds great. But there you see, as soon as the film processing guys hit on a good idea they abandon it rather than enhance it. I just don't get it.

The big problem was that you could not access the "Photos On Line" until you picked up the prints and got the little card with the cryptic code for your roll.

My hunch is that if a lab offered some kind of photos on line NOW without any prepayment, they would get a whole bunch of abandoned prints and negs from those who never picked them up.

I don't know if Wally World offers any kind of "Photos On Line" anymore, but at the time it was before you could get a decent scan with their one hour service. Back then (2003 or so) you had two options for scans, a floppy with crummy-res blurry mini prints or full-res on line.

The "Photos On Line" were an add-on to prints. They would not do them without a print order. In fact, they would not do them with the smallest (3.5x5 IIRC) prints, but only if you ordered 4.6 or larger. This was also with their second-day send-out service and not with their current mini-lab.

As I said, they quit letting you download a whole roll of full-res scans, which was a huge multi-megabyte file, and made you click on that image and download the full res images separately!

When Wally World started doing one-hour CDs, they would not do it without prints. It was actually cheaper to do this and throw away the prints than do a DO/CD at an independent lab here.

When Target' started doing one-hour DO/CD, I took my business there until the one guy who knew what he was doing quit (or maybe got transferred to the paint department or something) and their scans turned totally 144!

Lately I've been using Walgreens one hour DO/CD most of the time, but it's still C41 Roulette!

If somebody did offer a quick scan to net now and negs/prints later, I might just use it!

 

[wgerrard]

Well, your camera can create and store a jpg faster than you can press the "play" button. It create and write a 12 MB RAW file in only slightly more time. There's plenty of horsepower and bandwidth to handle this problem with today's custom image processors.

/T

Yes, but, again, the data are already in digital form. Scanners convert analog to digital. It seems apparent that the process of converting a pixel's worth of analog data to a real pixel takes longer than just duplicating an existing pixel.

 

[wgerrard]

But you will spend that on film and film processing...
/T

Not me. I don't shoot $5500 a year. I'm not sure what I spend. Sometimes I buy "pro" film, sometimes I buy drug store film. I drop it at a lab that charges me about $8 buck for 36 slides and $2 for 36 C41 negatives.

Since I don't do prints, it's occurred to me that that I'm probably wasting a lot of cash embodied in my film cameras. Hence, I'm pondering going entirely digital or chucking most everything and getting a nice cheap old SLR.

 

[Tuolumne]

Let's see...the answers range from:

1) The technology doesn't exist becuase if it did the product would exist. The Ontological Argument.

2) The technology does exist but there is no market for it. The Deist argument.

3) It's fine the way it is, be grateful you have anything to eat at all, you ingrate. The Why Bad Things Happen to Good Photographers argument.

4) Let someone else do it for you, even if they don't do it very well. The Outsorucing argument.

Edit:
5) I don't give a damn about what you want. The Ayn Rand Argument.

Hmmmm...I still don't see why I can't have my scanner....🙂

/T

 

[40oz]

Ok, lets be clear here: You are saying the technology does not currently exist to make my dream scanner. As far as a film scanner being better than a digital camera, I think your opinion is in the minority from what I've read here on RFF. Besides, wouldn't you trade off "a little better" for 1,000,000 x faster?

/T

No, I'm not saying the technology doesn't exist. What I am saying is a SCANNER is NOT a DIGITAL CAMERA.

A scanner and a digital SLR do NOT have the same sensors, and do NOT make an image in the same way. Yes, you can fit a slide into a holder and snap a pic of it with a DSLR. But a scanner operates in a different manner and the image is captured using a different technique. It effectively takes hundreds or thousands of shots of your negative instead of one single one, and assembles them into the larger image. Conditions are controlled and repeatable.

I'm not sure what the opposition is to a slide duplicater if a DSLR shot is all you want, but a DSLR purchased just for negative "scanning" isn't going to save any money.

I could give two craps if a slide shot with a DSLR and blown up gives "megapixel resolution." I also don't give one whit if "the majority here" think a digital camera is somehow better than a scanner. I have film cameras, a scanner, and an enlarger. I have no use for scanning images except to share them over the internet and for a digital form of contact sheet. And most never get shared. Or even wet-printed. So why would I care if a 10 megapixel DSLR is somehow better for sharing over the internet? I'd still have to buy one, wouldn't I? And I might as well just take the pictures with it since I dropped a thousand plus $$$ on the DSLR kit.

And no, I wouldn't trade "a LOT better" for 1,00,000 times faster. If I would give up quality for speed, I'd just use my compact digital in the first place, and brag about how fast I can share images because I'm shooting them at 800x600 in the first place :/

 

[Tuolumne]

Yes, but, again, the data are already in digital form. Scanners convert analog to digital. It seems apparent that the process of converting a pixel's worth of analog data to a real pixel takes longer than just duplicating an existing pixel.

Last time I checked we lived in an analogue world, at least those of us who aren't Heisenberg's Cat.

/T

 

[Tuolumne]

No, I'm not saying the technology doesn't exist. What I am saying is a SCANNER is NOT a DIGITAL CAMERA.

A scanner and a digital SLR do NOT have the same sensors, and do NOT make an image in the same way. Yes, you can fit a slide into a holder and snap a pic of it with a DSLR. But a scanner operates in a different manner and the image is captured using a different technique. It effectively takes hundreds or thousands of shots of your negative instead of one single one, and assembles them into the larger image. Conditions are controlled and repeatable.

I'm not sure what the opposition is to a slide duplicater if a DSLR shot is all you want, but a DSLR purchased just for negative "scanning" isn't going to save any money.

I could give two craps if a slide shot with a DSLR and blown up gives "megapixel resolution." I also don't give one whit if "the majority here" think a digital camera is somehow better than a scanner. I have film cameras, a scanner, and an enlarger. I have no use for scanning images except to share them over the internet and for a digital form of contact sheet. And most never get shared. Or even wet-printed. So why would I care if a 10 megapixel DSLR is somehow better for sharing over the internet? I'd still have to buy one, wouldn't I? And I might as well just take the pictures with it since I dropped a thousand plus $$$ on the DSLR kit.

And no, I wouldn't trade "a LOT better" for 1,00,000 times faster. If I would give up quality for speed, I'd just use my compact digital in the first place, and brag about how fast I can share images because I'm shooting them at 800x600 in the first place :/

Ok..Ok..I'm taking you off my contact sheet for when my scanner is announced. 🙂

/T

 

[RayPA]

Um... so the film process, print and produce a CD copy service as per the offerings from various labs isn't up to snuff? I only ask as I have yet to use this facility, only recently having returned to film (like today!).

It's fine for getting you up on the web and some small size prints. (speaking of the one-hour photo process here) What I initially found was that when I went to scan the same negs, I wasn't getting the same results. I found that their scans were not really depicting the reality of my equipment, everything looked the same. It's a bit of a shock when you first see a "staight" scan of your negatives. The one hour lab scans were often were contrasty, overstaturated and over sharpened, and they were lower quality scans.

Most one-hour processing also has the tendency to produce scratched negs, usually because some grumpy kid is dragging the negs through a dirty film gate (that's the other shock when you re-scan your negs). This will probably drive you to digital, or cause you to buy a scanner and DIY. The latter option is a whole new world, which I find to be a LOT like the enlarging/wet process...only better. It takes time, practice and skill. I get my C41 processed only, uncut, and sleeved. Way fewer scratches and pretty cheap too.


.

 

[Tuolumne]

Well, this is exactly my complaint. What kind of business can you have when everyone else in the chain is just messing up what the customer wants. I'd think that you, as a manufacturer, would want to fix that problem or risk loosing your customers!

/T