What film manufacturers can do to bring back film

[Pherdinand]

Another thing I want is a film processing service that produces high res, high quality scans at the same price point as prints. Why is that so hard/impossible to find.
/T

Because of just what YOU are complaining.
To make goo quality scans there has to be a person looking and tweaking This means either lot of your time or a lot of somebody else's time i.e. expensive.

When i look at my epson v700 working, i always have the feeling that the main issue is with the software, not the hardware. It just does not work as it should to make things easy and fast with a good output.
But i don't know how i could make it better.

 

[Tuolumne]

Except what the customer really wants is a digital camera. 🙂

The manufacturer is simply trying to humor those of us stuck in a rut along a back road of technology. 😉

SM,
I am rapidly coming to that conclusion, too. Wow, do I have a lot of film to sell. :bang:

/T

 

[RayPA]

Sigh...

...

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.

...


- Barrett

Great post, Barret! It's all true. Folks who enjoy shooting film should be ecstatic at the options and capabilities available right_now.


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[Tuolumne]

Because of just what YOU are complaining.
To make goo quality scans there has to be a person looking and tweaking This means either lot of your time or a lot of somebody else's time i.e. expensive.

When i look at my epson v700 working, i always have the feeling that the main issue is with the software, not the hardware. It just does not work as it should to make things easy and fast with a good output.
But i don't know how i could make it better.

Pherdinand,
Taking a picture of the always changing world is very challenging. Yet, (digital) camera manufacturers have made it a no-brainer, even for a 90 year old great-grand mother. Get out of the box. There is no reason a scanner has to operate that way, anymore than a camera does. Scanners are stuck in about 1950 user modalities. Everything needs to be done in the box - HW/SW I/O - Yes, just like a camera. Why not?

/T

 

[Tuolumne]

Great post, Barret! It's all true. Folks who enjoy shooting film should be ecstatic at the options and capabilities available right_now.


.

Would someone please help me hit my hand again with that hammer? I don't think I got it quite right last time. 🙂

/T

 

[40oz]

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

/T

🙂

All I'm saying is that what you are saying you want is already available. The cost might be an obstruction for you, but hey, that's the world we live in.

And let's not forget that "large, high quality prints" require large, high quality printers. The image source is less of an issue if you don't have a machine capable of outputting the prints you want.

If time spent scanning is a deal-breaker, wet print. You spend a few minutes per print until they are in the wash. An hour spent printing with an enlarger can net you 15-20 "large, high quality prints." But the reality is you will spend more than an hour, and the value of your time will stop being measured and the value of your prints will start to be the operative value. IOW, you won't begrudge the time it took to produce the prints because the end product will be more than worth it. And you will consider it "easy," and "anyone can do it."

Or, buy a DSLR, a large format printer, and a fast, powerful computer, and pretend you won't spend any time tweaking RAW files 🙂

If you didn't want what you want you wouldn't be human - it's what makes existing things better. But reality always imposes a trade-off. You either put time in working at some other task for the money to pay someone/something else to do it for you, or you put in the time yourself. Spend thousands on a DSLR, lenses, printer, computer, and still spend hours working with them to get it right; or use what you have, and spend hours working with it to get what you want. There really is never going to be an easy way out of time spent getting results.

 

[Tuolumne]

"Everything needs to be done in the box - HW/SW I/O - Yes, just like a camera. Why not?"

Ummm, they call that a digital camera. 🙂

Well, I want one that scans slides/negs. :bang:

/T

 

[Pherdinand]

Tolumne
I really think it is not made because not enough people would buy it to make it profitable at $2000. This includes all the costs of the r&d, the production, the advertisments, marketing, AND, the possible losses on other products of the company.

Really... Not that many people would buy it, believe us.
Look at current $2000 scanners. What can they offer? Nothing for you, it seems. Thenm why do you think they could make a much better one for the same price, and make a profit on it? Because YOU would buy it? nah...

 

[RayPA]

Would someone please help me hit my hand again with that hammer? I don't think I got it quite right last time. 🙂

/T

Well, I wasn't really addressing you, T. You're a lost cause. 🙂 I'm just trying to keep all this angst from scaring off any newbies from potentially enjoying the pleasures of shooting and working with film. 😀 Don't you have some film to scan? 😀 Great thread, btw. Good fun for a lazy post-Holiday kick-back.


🙂

 

[Tuolumne]

Look, guys, I get 10 rolls of film back from the photo processor and I'm overwhelmed. I'm going to spend a huge amount of time scanning them. Anywhere from 3-30+ minutes per image - SCANNING TIME ALONE. That is time wasted. Why do I have to waste that time when there must be a better way to do it.

Well, ok, what you're saying is the better way is a digital camera. Why capitulate that easily? I still want to use my film cameras, but I don't want to spend forever digitizing the result. If the best answer you can come up with is, It's good enough as is, or Be grateful for what you've got, then film is dead. You aren't even willing to entertain better and faster ways to use film. :bang::bang::bang::bang::bang::bang::bang::bang:

There is something so retrograde and atavistic about this that I'm feeling embarassed to call myself a film shooter.

/T

Oh, I almost forgot: 🙂:angel:😀:angel:🙂😱

 

[BillP]

Let me take this thread back to first principles. You said:

If I were a film manufacturer I would be investing some of my money in making a film scanner as good as the cameras out there. I, and perhaps many others, would start shooting a lot more film if such a device were available.

/T

1. As a sound business decision, it would rank alongside Canute holding back the waves.

2. We are not the target market. Accept it.

Regards,

Bill

 

[Tuolumne]

Tolumne
I really think it is not made because not enough people would buy it to make it profitable at $2000. This includes all the costs of the r&d, the production, the advertisments, marketing, AND, the possible losses on other products of the company.

Really... Not that many people would buy it, believe us.
Look at current $2000 scanners. What can they offer? Nothing for you, it seems. Thenm why do you think they could make a much better one for the same price, and make a profit on it? Because YOU would buy it? nah...

I use scanners. I use a Minolta Dimage 5400 and an Epson 4990. They work well. They just work too damn slow.

/T

 

[Tuolumne]

1. As a sound business decision, it would rank alongside Canute holding back the waves.
Better have your bankruptcy attorney selected.

2. We are not the target market. Accept it.
For makers of film we are.

/T

 

[Pherdinand]

Get out of the box. There is no reason a scanner has to operate that way, anymore than a camera does. Scanners are stuck in about 1950 user modalities. Everything needs to be done in the box - HW/SW I/O - Yes, just like a camera. Why not?

/T

How about this:
Point 1: resolution. Digital cameras make very small copies of a very big world. Scanners usually make very big copies of a very small piece of film. Use large format film, scan to a size that prints smaller than the original, and any ****ty scanner will produce extremely good results.

Point 2: Contrast, tonality. Digital cameras make an image of the reality directly. They still choke on a contrast level higher than 6 stops. Film scanners make an image out of a piece of film, that has an image on it made by a camera. One extra step included. One extra step where information gets thrown away, gets clipped, gets lost in contrast, when light gets diffused in film base and so on. Some large format cameras use "scanning back" - basically a scanner that has alot of "megapixels" and it is slapped on the camera back. These scanners make direct images of the rowld projected by the camera lens. Obviously the result is much better. Is it faster? well, maybe a bit yes, but certainly not 1/125th of a second exposures!

Point 3: Expose every frame on a film exactly the same way, and all the frames with the correct exposure for that film. Process correctly. Once you scan one frame with some settings, the rest should be nice and reproducible, i.e. the whole shebang would cost much less time. Same holds for postprocessing, less dust spotting if that is needed.
However in real life one never exposes film in the same way all the time, first of all because of the different light that comes from the scene.

Point 3: The only realistic advice i can give u: Shoot medium or large format. Much less frames to scan, trust me! 🙂

As to the box: I am trying, T, i am trying. Every single workday. But today i'm on holiday.

 

[RayPA]

...:bang::bang::bang::bang::bang::bang::bang::bang:

There is something so retrograde and atavistic about this that I'm feeling embarassed to call myself a film shooter.

/T

😕 nothing embarassing about the process. it is what it is. this is the state of film. how quick it goes is entirely up to you and your process. I decided a while ago that I was not going to shoot and scan ten rolls of a soccer match, and that I'd use digital for that. It's planning and knowing your process. If you don't want to scan them yourself, have a lab do it. If you're looking for shortcuts then try making some contact sheets and picking the shots you want to scan.


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[MickH]

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.

Thanks. There are a couple of semi-pro shops over here I will try out first, keeping away from Wal-Mart & the like.

 

[RayPA]

Thanks. There are a couple of semi-pro shops over here I will try out first, keeping away from Wal-Mart & the like.

keep in mind there's a place for the one-hour scan-to-CD (or print) process. I run my camera/exposure tests, and the kids snapshots (my kids love disposable cameras) through the full process. It's also great for troubleshooting problems. It's just that if you're going to use expensive cameras and lenses, you might as well see some of those benefits.


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[wgerrard]

Pherdinand,
Taking a picture of the always changing world is very challenging. Yet, (digital) camera manufacturers have made it a no-brainer,

/T

Well... it isn't the digital sensor that makes using some cameras a no-brainer. It's the digital technology that automates all the rest of it, and that's been around for a long time. The F-6, for example, uses film and is just as automated as anything else. Put it on automatic and go to town.

And...cameras and scanners are two different creatures. It is an inappropriate analogy to argue that a scanner ought to be able to convert megabytes of analog data to digital form in milliseconds simply because a digital sensor can capture all those photons and generate the corresponding data in seconds. Different things are going on.

 

[Nikon Bob]

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

Maybe that should read, If it could be made and sold for a reasonable profit then they would produce it. Film users are a small and ever shrinking market to cater too especially at the $2000 price point. When using ICE and PP on the 5400 I would think the average scan time for me is 10 minutes and the only time it approached 30 was when I only had 512 Ram install on my PC. I would still sooner do it this way than in a traditional darkroom, I also would think it is a faster way. You are right in that scanners continue to be made but very few new high end dedicated to film models are among them. The main reason that I use film is that I love the cameras that use it and will put up with post processing taking some time. When they make a digital camera that I really like to use at a reasonable price I will move to it and speed the process up some more.

Bob

 

[amateriat]

I use scanners. I use a Minolta Dimage 5400 and an Epson 4990. They work well. They just work too damn slow.

/T

Hold up a sec...(you might call this a technical time-out) 🙂

We both use the same film scanner (Minolta 5400...mine's the original version; is yours the original or the 5400 II?). My full-on color neg scans (5400dpi, 16-bit, dICE on), at most, would take about 15 minutes a crack, more often a little under ten. This was with a "slow" Power Mac G4 (466Mhz/1.5GB RAM and a few 7200RPM internal HDs). This Mac was just replaced by a new(er) G4 (1.25Ghz DP/2GB RAM, same HDs as before, plus one) and the scan times are a little faster still. One difference might be the scanning software: I'm using VueScan most of the time, and only use Minolta's SW occasionally. VS offers me more control, faster throughput, and at least somewhat less overhead.

I'm also using FireWire to connect the scanner. Might you possibly be using USB 1.1 on that PC?

Just askin'.


- Barrett