What film manufacturers can do to bring back film

[Tuolumne]

It seems to me that the biggest problem most film photographers face today is getting their images digitized. I know there are still people who have an all analogue work flow, but they are fewer and fewer. Most film users still digitize their output to share it, print it, or whatever. And therein lies the rub. I just got 10 rolls of processed film back and now I have to deal with all this "stuff". Plus, I will have to digitize it to do anything useful, a long and painful process. I think that if the digitization of film were easier more people woul use it.

Why is it that I can shoot a fully detailed, correctly exposed, correclty colored photo of reality in a millisecond, but to get a similar image digitized takes many painful minutes or more? Why can't I take a picture of a picture just as fast and just as accurately as I can take a picture of reality? The only reason I can think of is that digitizing images has always been and continues to be an afterthought, not considered a mainstream picture taking activity. If I were a film manufactureer 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 alot more film if such a device were available.

/T

 

[BillP]

Sheer wishful fantasy.

Regards,

Bill

 

[Tuolumne]

Investing R&D in a rapidly declining market probably isn't in the plans of many companies. It's not completely a scanner issue, as speed also depends on the computer driving it and the throughput of the pipeline between the scanner and the computer.

SM,
That's the kind of thinking that has given us 30 minute scan times for a negative. What if I told you that your everyday camera's shutter speed depended on what kind of computer it was tehthred to? You'd laugh in my face. All scanning and image creation has to be done onboard the scanner in hardware/firmware. Just like a camera! Every market goes through vissicitudes until the killer product comes along to ignite it. If my future were in film, and for some companies it just is (Illford, for example) I'd be working with some camera/scanner manufacturer to bring out this ultimate "film" product. Else my future is going to be pretty bleak. What we need is the film world equivalent of Steve Jobs. Of course, there is one, but he's working on digital cameras, no doubt. 🙂

/T

 

[Tuolumne]

Sheer wishful fantasy.

Regards,

Bill

That's what people said about digital cameras 10 years ago. Why is it a fantasy?

/T

 

[wgerrard]

With sufficient hardware horsepower, it's probably possible to make your dream scanner. I know I'd like one.

Whether or not such a machine would be commercially viable is a different matter. Scanner companies know what kind of profit, if any, they make from scanners. If any of them see that market as expanding, I'd be very surprised.

Personally, I spend a lot longer noodling around in Photoshop than I do waiting for my scanner to do its job. I hate tweaking images. Taking pictures is fun. Photoshop is pain.

I'd love a piece of software that had default settings I liked, and that would process all the image files in a directory in one nice swoop.

 

[Tuolumne]

I'd like to stay on topic here: Is there any technical reason such a scanner cannot be brough to market for a price of $2,000?

/T

 

[kully]

Why would Ilford, for whom wet darkroom photographic paper is a big part of their business, want to help someone develop a scanner that would obsolete that paper?

Diversity. Why keep an egg basket empty?

It was their support department (/bloke) that sent me an email a couple of years ago when I knew nothing about film, telling me to use XP2 with my scanner. He could have told me to ditch the scanner and get a darkroom sorted.

 

[Tuolumne]

I'd love a piece of software that had default settings I liked, and that would process all the image files in a directory in one nice swoop.

Try Google's Picasa. It does just that, and for many RAW formats. I only use CS3 or PSE for tweaking files to print large. And that's just if I want an "art" print. I can process hundreds of photos an hour in Picasa.

/T

 

[cmedin]

Wonder what the technological hurdles would be to create something akin to the old 'slide copiers' -- basically a device where you stick the neg in, attach to the front of a digital camera, and have a decent light source behind to illuminate the neg. Then it'd just be a matter of fixing the orange mask and invert in PS, more or less...

edit: I suppose like this. 🙂 http://specialtyphotographic.stores.yahoo.net/necaallslcom.html

 

[RayPA]

It seems to me that the biggest problem most film photographers face today is getting their images digitized. I know there are still people who have an all analogue work flow, but they are fewer and fewer. Most film users still digitize their output to share it, print it, or whatever. And therein lies the rub. I just got 10 rolls of processed film back and now I have to deal with all this "stuff". Plus, I will have to digitize it to do anything useful, a long and painful process. I think that if the digitization of film were easier more people woul use it.

Why is it that I can shoot a fully detailed, correctly exposed, correclty colored photo of reality in a millisecond, but to get a similar image digitized takes many painful minutes or more? Why can't I take a picture of a picture just as fast and just as accurately as I can take a picture of reality? The only reason I can think of is that digitizing images has always been and continues to be an afterthought, not considered a mainstream picture taking activity. If I were a film manufactureer 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 alot more film if such a device were available.

/T

I don't understand. What are you asking for? You want to shoot analogue, but you want the instant gratification of digital. I think the best thing to do is shoot both, if you really want to continue to shoot film. I shoot digital for events that generate a lot of snaps, especially stuff that I know will bore the hell outta me at the scanner.

I shoot film for the smaller more personal stuff, and I treat/think-of the process as I would if I were enlarging. So, I'm always trying to tune the process and get better at scanning and using photoshop (get better=get quicker)

The reality is that if you want to shoot film and digitize you've got a bottle-neck, plain and simple, but that bottle neck is still an improvement (IMO) over an all analog setup, and it is worth the effort. YOU have to find the ways to speed up that process. That's part of the reality. What kind of contraption do you want a company to make for you, a M mount camera that loads and exposes film AND generates a 12 mp image saved on a flash card? Sheer fantasy is probably right!

\You like shooting film. Most of here do, and we are a dying breed. We have to make the process work for us, because I think scanner R&D is probably shutting down or scaling way back for a lot of companies, and one has to wonder how much further scanner development we'll actually see going forward. So yeah, we are old school and shoot film cameras with high-quality lenses and the dark side masses don't know what they're missing, blah, blah blah.

Now stop whining and go scan your film, everyone's waiting. 🙂 🙂

(make digital contact sheets, get a roll film adapter for your high-end scanner, have a drink and remember why you do this)

OH - to answer the question, What can film manufacturers do to bring back film? Advertise more. Whether it be all out new film advertising or those subtly placed stories about how pros still use film, or about how a guy shoting film saved the world, etc.

 

[chikne]

Why would Ilford, for whom wet darkroom photographic paper is a big part of their business, want to help someone develop a scanner that would obsolete that paper?

Oh but they also produce paper to be fed to printers as well...

How about a film designed to be scanned?

 

[wgerrard]

Try Google's Picasa.
/T

Doesn't do Macs. Alas.

 

[cmedin]

But the old slide copiers didn't do a very good job. A dupe made this way was fine for sending out, for example, a slide for spec on publication. But, the publisher always wanted the original to publish or print from because the dupe usually ended up contrasty and less sharp than the original. It was a real compromise.

I just poked around pnet a bit and somebody claimed that using his *ist DS with a slide copier somehow tamed the contrast issue.

I wonder if the results from using that approach with slides/negs would at least produce images decent enough for web publishing. I prefer to wet print, hate scanning, but like to throw some pics online for sharing.

 

[Tuolumne]

Ray,
I'm going to the dentist today and you have just inspired me to refuse novocaine. The pain will be good for me, go with the old-fashioned process, get into it. No use for this new fangled instant, pain-free gratification. Thanks for the idea. Keep 'em coming. 🙂

/T

 

[Tuolumne]

Doesn't do Macs. Alas.

It's worth getting a PC just to use it.

/T

 

[Tuolumne]

Oh but they also produce paper to be fed to printers as well...

How about a film designed to be scanned?

Doesn't Kodak claim that for its Portra family?

/T

 

[wgerrard]

What kind of contraption do you want a company to make for you, a M mount camera that loads and exposes film AND generates a 12 mp image saved on a flash card? Sheer fantasy is probably right!

Couldn't you build that kind of contraption by stuffing a film transport into a digital design and making adept use of mirrors and/or prisms? Not that I'd want one.

 

[RayPA]

Ray,
I'm going to the dentist today and you have just inspired me to refuse novocaine. The pain will be good for me, go with the old-fashioned process, get into it. No use for this new fangled instant, pain-free gratification...

/T

good luck with that. 🙂 when it's the only process you've got, does that make it obsolete and useless? novocaine is state-of-the-art numbification. 🙂 refusing IT would be going back to the dark ages.

p.s. learn to love your scanner

 

[navilluspm]

The answer is not with film companies. . .

The answer is not with film companies. . .

but with the companies that make Digital Point and shoot cameras.

If P&S camera manufactures keep on cramming megapixels after megapixels into these little sensors, film might make a come back. Soon somebody will look at their 400iso pics from film and compare them to their $300 12 megapixel P&S camera which will have much more noise and say: hmm, maybe I should shoot film. 😉

 

[RayPA]

Couldn't you build that kind of contraption by stuffing a film transport into a digital design and making adept use of mirrors and/or prisms? Not that I'd want one.

the only company that would try that would be Sony, and they'd f* it up and use some useless lens mount, and it would as big as a pay phone. 🙂


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