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Thread: The hopeful future of film photography

  1. #21
    Jim Ewins
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    The hopeful future of film photography

    "...people will stop buying them for their lack of limitations..." Too true, why else the craze for pin-hole and the Helga?? Jim Ewins

  2. #22

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    The hopeful future of film photography

    "...people will stop buying them for their lack of limitations..." Too true, why else the craze for pin-hole and the Holga?? Jim Ewins

    I agree with that. My "point & shoot" is a Yashica Mat. I can see scan backs becoming affordable for 4X5, possibly at a resolution that will make colour film in 4X5 and 8X10 sizes obsolete. B&W on the other hand has always been a sort of alchemy. It also has a wonderful history. There are many pictures that were made in the late 1800s and early 1900s that rival those made today.

  3. #23

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    The hopeful future of film photography

    I don't see anything digital becoming affordable if it's targeted at 4x5. The market is very small. Worse we're already reaching the point that the big middle is moving towards cellphone type cameras. The real question in my mind is how long until stand alone cameras are considered quaint? Or only used by niche market pros?

    I also don't believe in the digital darkroom bubble. Sooner or later we will see a shake out. People that never felt the need to have a darkroom are going to start wondering why they're running a digital darkroom. When that happens you can expect the remaining group to start wondering about supplies the same way we worry now. OTOH it's possible to mix your own print developer. Trying making your own printer supplies.

  4. #24

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    The hopeful future of film photography

    Film will survive for years due to strong demand in China and Japan. Analogue photography is booming there, they are enthusiasts of high quality mechanical equipment. The more affluent Chinese are currently buying legendary German lenses and cameras and especially 4x5 format more then anyone else. Owning a Leica in Japan is a must for any adult photo enthusiast. When it comes to photography as a hobby it is rare to see Japanese shoot a digital camera or any Japanese made camera. They are believers in the "process" and the" feel" of the equipment . Their electronic stuff is just a reminder to them of the "sameness" and lack of personality in their own society. To them, electronic equipment, including digital is just commercial junk to be replaced like a microwave and something they push to foreign masses. Fuji film sales are booming in China and Japan. There are currently numerous new films that you guys dont even know about. There is even a new direction that film is currently taking with enthusiasts in Japan. Specially designed films with unique and exagerated color characteristics that is funky and creates a different look altogether. Fortia is one of them, there are many more coming. There is even new professional films like Pro 160 series that supposed to be super for scanning and with incredible granularity of 3 rms. Dont think that current film has reached its limit The quality envelope can be pushed beyond what we think is even possible. In Japan digital is delegated only to newsman, housewives, and skirt girls in Shibuya. Fuji will only laugh when Kodak will sink because of America's infatuation with digital .

  5. #25

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    The hopeful future of film photography

    I am a newcomer to this site and forum, having found both quite by accident. The site is wonderful; ain't serendipity serendipitous!? I hope this comment doesn't come so late in the conversation that adding it makes the thread a zombie.

    The premise of this thread offers hope for those who prefer film, with steam trains used as an example of technology surviving despite all odds. But as a steam-loco enthusiast and onetime press photographer (the industries' parallels are striking), I must reluctantly agree with the argument that film, for all formats, is doomed. Large-format is the last redoubt.

    I am old enough to remember the hue and cry against dieselization. The city where I lived was the location of vast tracts of brick railshops, and in that city the battle against the end of steam appeared to those most directly involved — as it does for professional and advanced-amateur photographers — to be more relevant than it was to the rest of the world. Those people fought a rearguard action, and here and there they slowed the loss of some peripheral jobs in the shops, but in the end the noise they made signified nothing.

    Revolution — albeit within the realm of steam — was nothing new to the railroads, so dieselization in the late '50s was merely an extension of those preceding revolutions, but the most visible. And like dieselization, digitalization is but the latest of the preceding revolutions in photography. In many respects, the industry — within the digital realm — has moved on to other revolutions, smaller, perhaps, but lesser known only because they are not as visible and receive less publicity.

    When I started in the news biz in the early '60s, one old hand still waxed poetic about Graflexes. He had a Crown, I think, that he kept "just in case," and he refused to use anything smaller than 120 Rolleiflexes to the day he retired in the mid-'80s after semi-retiring earlier, even as everyone else's first- and second-generation Nikon motor drives were falling apart from heavy use and old age. He resisted the small-camera revolution and stayed with his Rolleis, since it was still possible to walk into any camera store and buy one in seconds.

    But his Crown, if that's what it was, gathered dust, then disappeared from the office, and the photos that he took with his Rolleis couldn't match what was possible to capture — news, remember — with 35s. The 2 1/4 medium-format full-frame quality was better than a 35 full-frame, of course, but that didn't matter by the time his images hit the paper; 35s had reached the point where Rolleis couldn't cut it, as Rolleis had reached the point where Graflexes couldn't cut it.

    He was a dinosaur as regards the business we were in, and even he must have recognized that in regard to his 4X5 , since he never used it. And probably, in his heart, he recognized it in regard to his Rolleis. (There was a very old ground-glass wooden camera, with bellows that stretched at least six feet, and that focused using wooden rails nailed to the floor. We used it for copy shots. That thing would be worth a fortune, now. It shot 4X5s, though it probably was built for 11X14s.)

    With the Rolleis, though, the veteran's objections to 35s were more philosophical — and understandable — than practical, because in practical terms I believe the Crown simply wasn't worth the effort for him, even in situations where he wouldn't have been laughed off the scene. But likewise, using a Rollei simply wasn't worth the effort for me -- although I did once in a while, sometimes out of my respect for him (being equipped with a Rollei brought no laughs). Now film is not worth the effort for anyone who doesn't appreciate large format for its own sake, for those shooting commercial work in the ever-decreasing areas it is necessary and for those who don't want to shuck their investments. It is one with woodcuts. Ask the National Geographic.

    In my newspaper salad days, Nikon — the revolutionary standard — blew the doors off the old standard, Rollei, and the interloper Yashica, that twin-lens-telephoto neck-breaking boat anchor. ( I shot a hockey game from the rafters, using at 4X5 swing-and-tilt on a rail, complete with black cloth and air bulb, so this is no anti-large-format rant. Never a 5X7, though.) It is not hard to imagine that when my friend the veteran's world was young, his old-timers tsk-tsked Super Double-X, D76, any lens capable of an aperture bigger than F8 because they would too easily wreck the depth-of-field-focus guarantee of a grab shot through the wire-frame finder -- and the end of gunpowder flash.

    He could recite a laundry list of Graflex strengths, far beyond the obvious of its large format and most Graflex models' swings and tilts. But what relevance did those strengths have for newspaper photography with its lousy letter-press reproduction, night-fire pix and one-column-wide head shots, and blurred-action sports shots because of slow shutter speeds, no telephotos worth mentioning -- especially at night football games in snowstorms -- and no dumptruck full of sheet film and holders?

    Now the same objections — and many more — are used justifiably against film cameras in general, and soon enough valid arguments supporting film will be heard only by a select few, as I was one of the select few to hear the esoteric praises of the Graflex for news, most of which I don't remember and none of which I care about because their attributes don't hold water in news photography. Fewer people as each day passes could reel off such a list, so whatever is lost, soon will be lost forever. But who would want to make a cam-focus Graflex their shooter of choice to pay the rent and rediscover the joys of 1930 photography just to resurrect the list?

    But is losing such a list a loss in practical terms? Not for me, because I didn't believe the list was meaningful even then; now it would be out-and-out nonsense. Anything from the past of which we know nothing is no more a loss than anything yet to be invented. And that is the ultimate end of the film vs. digital, celluloid vs. glass, Daguerreotypes vs. prints and steam vs. diesel conundrums.

    Do you worry, even a little, that Kodak's color-film revolution doomed Autochrome? Do you know or care why a camera using Autochrome had to be built to accept backwards-loading film holders? Do you worry, even a little, about the subtle shades of color and the pointilist effect that are forever lost because Kodak's dyes replaced Autochrome's potato starch? Did you even know of this loss? If not, was it a loss when you didn't know of it? Is it a loss worth contemplation whether you knew of it or not?

    Who cares that film has grain but Daguerreotypes, even quarter-plate, did not? Do you? Did you ever? What does that new-found knowledge (if, indeed, it is) mean to you? Is it such a great loss that you will open a Daguerreotype salon so it will be lost no more? What's quarter-plate? And if you care to re-experience Autochrome's pointilism, complete with muted colors, you can do it with Photoshop and the click of a mouse. When 11X14 digital equals 11X14 film, will the differences be apparent only to Zen masters?

    Does Joe Sixpack care that an 11X14 digital print may have more grain than an old-school print? Did he ever care? Would he even want a bigger print than a 4X6 or 8X10? Do I, should I, care that Joe Sixpack doesn't care?

    When I was a child, a railroad branchline about two miles from our house ran to a cement plant. On winter mornings, the steam-locomotive engineer would pull the whistle, which would be blocked by ice. The whistle's frequency would be at a glass-shattering screech, then in about three seconds as the ice melted, the frequency would drop, then drop again until the whistle made the usual sound now heard only in old movies, for the most part.

    That glass-shattering screech dropping into the lower registers is lost forever. No one cares but me. It is a small loss, but one I regret and one I have never heard anyone else express in all the volumes written about the steam era. So it is no loss to anyone but me -- and life is short. So it will be with film. And so it will be to someone else when digital photography is old-school, even 8X10, and to someone else when the successor to the successor to digital photography is old-school — perhaps holodecks rediscovering battlefield wet-plate photography — and mercury-vapor madness.

    There are losses because of digital, but most can be reclaimed — and on your desktop, miracle of miracles. And without the loss of being chained to a darkroom, the opening of new vistas themselves, some yet undreamt, would be lost.

    Big Yellow cares, but only for the money lost in outmoded, unsold, onetime assets and film sales by the trainload, steam or otherwise; nostalgia ain't what it used to be in Rochester. Except for the ersatz memories created by an ad firm, Big Yellow doesn't have a nostalgic bone in its executive penthouse. Really, we shouldn't, either.

  6. #26

    Re: The hopeful future of film photography

    RK,
    I don't know whether the thread is a zombie but I should like you to know that I read every word of your long posting and enjoyed it so much that I have copied it into a word document on my computer for [just my own personal] reference in future. I hope you don't mind.
    I particularly enjoyed this particular thread taken as a whole most of the postings on which I have read. They are cogently argued and certainly provide food for thought. Nevertheless I felt that your posting helped to put the others in perspective for me.

    It seems to me that nostalgia and antiquarian interest apart there are two salient considerations which weigh in favour of large format [not denying that there are others which carry weight the other way] as against small format film but do they necessarily carry over to digital formats, large or small?
    1) It is much more feasible to retouch large negatives than small ones.
    2) Use of lens tilts requires critical examination of every part of the image and this is hard to provide for with small formats.

    As regards 2) many digital cameras already provide a nominal manual focussing facility of a sort. In the [rather modest] models I have been able to try out this facility has not been something to take seriously and I think this is because the monitor screen has very poor resolution. There is no intrinsic reason why digital camera models should not in time come to be designed with monitoring screens with the same resolution as the image that will actually be recorded and if photographers want this feature enough to be prepared to pay for it the industry will no doubt supply it in due course. If, initially, these models are not very compact they need at any rate not be bulkier than present day large format cameras. My point is that it is the viewing screen, not the recording format, that needs either to be of adequate size for naked eye viewing or supplemented by optical aids to critical viewing to make lens tilts viable. Provision for lens tilts in digital camera models is purely a matter of design and will be supplied if users are prepared to pay for it.

    As regards 1) I think digital technology has already drawn level with large format film and plate photography. I recently came across a roll of 35mm film exposed some thirty-odd years ago and home-processed. I scanned the negatives and viewed them on my computer monitor. I was astonished to find that I recognised not a single one of them. The explanation was not far to seek. I had never thought it worth printing them because the negatives were too grubby. Spotting each print would have aggregated to a prohibitive total work-load. I have now been able to get Photo-shop Elements to work on the digitised data-files. It has still been a lot of work but worth it as I can now get as many clean prints as might be required at the touch of a few keys.
    Last edited by Kendrick Pereira; 28-Jul-2006 at 07:20.

  7. #27

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    Re: The hopeful future of film photography

    This thread is really plenty of insightful thoughts and it is hard to add any good thing on it. Anyway I would like to comment the situation in emergent countries because from Brazil I have a very different perspective compared to Picscity when he says “Film will survive for years due to strong demand in China and Japan. Analogue photography is booming there, they are enthusiasts of high quality mechanical equipment.”

    Film photography has become luxury photography everywhere. Professionals looking for productivity and amateurs looking for convenience are all happily shifting to digital. In Brazil it is even faster because productivity here is critical due to lack of resources and to compromise with quality is part of daily life.

    I hardly can find stores to buy B&W film over here as a hobbyist. I work in marketing for cosmetics and it is also really hard to find a professional photographer still doing film. It is ironic but emergent markets feel more pressure to be updated than rich ones.
    Enthusiasts of film photography and mechanical cameras exist everywhere but bulk of them is in USA, Europe and Japan. So do not count with the few who can afford it in the BRIC market or places alike to fuel the market specially in LF.

    Nevertheless I see an important role of emergent markets for the future of film photography and that is not on the demand but in the supply side. Someone said before and I totally agree that the key driver now for that industry is the fact that what has become a small and not profitable market for giants like Kodak and Fuji is a good business for companies in places like China and Eastern Europe. Brands like EFKE and Foma are taking advantage from the situation and maybe others more will come. The future will be probably worldwide suppliers located far from where the demand is.

    About cameras and optics the situation is more complicated. There are probably more professionals giving away their gear to the second hand market than enthusiasts being born. There won’t be demand to pay for high R&D and production costs and still be competitive with good old lenses and virtually indestructible cameras already produced. For instance, I bought a Linhof Tech V with four lenses, acessories, etc for as low as 1000 UDS in Sao Paulo. So I think that as far as equipment is concerned, we will be in the future living on the good scrap from the heyday of film photography and will be nicely served. I prefer an old Linhof than a brand new Holga and for sure many, many enthusiasts of film photography, will agree with me on that.


    Wagner Lungov

  8. #28

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    Re: The hopeful future of film photography

    Quote Originally Posted by RK
    There are losses because of digital, but most can be reclaimed — and on your desktop, miracle of miracles. And without the loss of being chained to a darkroom, the opening of new vistas themselves, some yet undreamt, would be lost.
    I don't want to be tied to a computer. I don't even carry a laptop when I travel, and it suits me fine.

  9. #29

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    Re: The hopeful future of film photography

    Like many threads on this forum, this is a good one. This topic comes up frequently, and no wonder. I, for one, realize that am going through a long period of grieving that started about a year ago, after I bought my DSLR and started using it. I soon realized how the DSLR quickly would replace my 35mm gear and even medium format gear. 35mm for me has always been the machine of choice when photographing people in natural settings. You've got the fast lenses, mobility, no need for tripod, quick shooting, etc. So, I began to grieve for all my "friends" that worked with me over some 35 years of film photography: developing tanks, chemicals, thermometers, trays, enlargers, etc. All these things were a important part of my life for my entire adult life. They now sit unused in the basement, and will likely never be used again, unless I do some 4x5 work. I still have the 4x5. That's because you can't do a decent landscape with a 6 mp DSLR. But, I have little interest in doing landscapes right now. I am more interested in photographing people at this point, and the DSLR is the perfect tool for that.

    I just wanted to make the point that it is hard to "let go" of things that have been part of you for so long. But, you can't reject the new just because its hard to let go of the past. For me the important thing is to be creative and produce images that are fresh and artistic. I'm doing that more than ever now with digital technology, and I cannot imagine going back to film for the things I am doing now. I can see that some people use film precisely because it gets them away from the computer, and I respect that too. We all have our own preferences and should do what allows us to do our best work. Anyway, I still have definite feelings of grief and loss over film and processing, and expect to for some time.

  10. #30

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    Re: The hopeful future of film photography

    Quote Originally Posted by Steve J Murray
    I soon realized how the DSLR quickly would replace my 35mm gear and even medium format gear. 35mm for me has always been the machine of choice when photographing people in natural settings.

    I just wanted to make the point that it is hard to "let go" of things that have been part of you for so long. But, you can't reject the new just because its hard to let go of the past.
    You raised some interesting point, something I've been working at the last few years, first moving to 4x5, and now considering adding a full-frame DSLR for some film-based photography, mostly events and general use. I intend to keep using my film camera system because I'm most familar and comfortable with it, and intend to let it help me move to LF work as well as the work it does best for me.

    But the point that few proponents keep forgetting with digital photography is the cost, not just the capital investment of the sytem, but the consistent requirement for maintanence and upgrade, if not replacement because the camera isn't supported by the company for the want of selling new cameras. At least film cameras were supported for many years if not decades past the discontinuation of the model, if only for the simple fact of numbers of cameras for parts. With the advances in technology, it's not profitable to keep making old chips and parts.

    The key that I see is with the new(er) DSLR's is that may last a long time, but that companies, from the camera to the computer/software companies, will drop their support to make it work with newer technology. What good is a DSLR if you can't fix it or upgrade the software or can't get photo import conversion software? And with all this the price of digital cameras start to compare with film cameras if you have to keep replacing your camera equipment and computer hardware/software.

    I don't see this changing the plans to get a DSLR, but it makes the decision harder when you realize it's lifetime won't match the film cameras I have. In short, I have to just drive the DSLR into the ground and replace it than fixing it because it won't be fixable. Yet I can still get my 1969 SRT-101 fixed, even it it's cannibalized parts for the shops supply if not getting lucky to find a shop with an inventory of new parts they've collected over the decades.

    Just a personal observation. It's an interesting disucussion.
    --Scott--

    Scott M. Knowles, MS-Geography
    scott@wsrphoto.com

    "All things merge into one, and a river flows through it."
    - Norman MacLean

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