Now everything is archived in the "cloud", nebulously. At least discs are good for skeet shooting, once people realize there's nothing on them besides stupid selfies. You call that progress? I'd rather look at tintypes; at least they're tangible.
Now everything is archived in the "cloud", nebulously. At least discs are good for skeet shooting, once people realize there's nothing on them besides stupid selfies. You call that progress? I'd rather look at tintypes; at least they're tangible.
Downtown Camera in Toronto just invested over 100k in a brand new dedicated BW dip and dunk processor, plus square ft to house in in very pricy digs.... this tells me something.
yes... it tells that they plan to develop perhaps 100k bw rolls in two or three years...Originally Posted by bob carnie
https://web.archive.org/web/20180503...ack-and-white/
I guess price is in CAD...
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I found this interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkHGb07XeKs
A bit this is explaining what new generations find in film.
Making it more available at good prices, will encourage people to take up film photography adding to their sales. They'll also make money on printing, scanning etc beside developing. This is all very encouraging for us film shooters. I wish them a lot of success.
Flickr Home Page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums
Lets not kid ourselves film is and will remain a niche market. Attractive to some but a curiosity to most.
I just returned from a week long Iceland vacation. I got a dozen shots of the northern lights on the only two night when they were just visible. They looked like a grey cloud to the naked eye but a 30 second exposure at 6400 ISO with a f4.0 lens did the trick. Still how many rolls of film or digital shots for that matter would it have taken to find that sweet spot? The answer, a lot.
Returning home, I down loaded over 400 pictures, the vast majority were of course snap shots, mementos of the trip. A few however were serious photographs intended for framing. Waterfall in particular make great photos but shooting in subdued winter light, at various shutter and aperture exposures, takes more that an click or two to get right. With digital you can shoot till you get it "exactly" how you want it. Electrons are cheap.
All that said, after down loading the SD card onto my computer this morning, the day turned sunny so I set up my 1910 Seneca view camera for a few 4x5 black and white photos. Why? Because it is fun also. The popularity of film may ebb and flow but it will always be there.
Digital will only continue to grow, it is where the research and development is taking place, it is where "camera art" flourishes for the next generation.
Fortunately we can choose which ever suits are fancy at the moment.
A curiosity to some until they see what well-made large format prints actually look like. Most people today are shut up in a digital jail simply unaware of what lies in the outside world beyond a computer or cell phone screen. It's visual illiteracy that's on the rise.
+1
Skilled film astrophotographers took magnificent color shots with advanced techniques, but clearly for low light digital has an amazing advantage. In the other side film is able to record nuclears explosions in the first stages with 20 stops dymanic range (POTA)...
The film age is over, no doubt, and because of devastating reasons. But for some people film it's way more than a "Attactive". If by Dec 2019 you go to a movie theater and watch Star Wars 9 nobody will tell you there that it has been shot in film, but at Disney they know why they shot that in film, they have a legion of top notch technicians that have no doubt about the medium they have to use because of technical reasons.
Also we have another legion of top notch wedding photographers charging high $hundreds per hour that are using exclusively or mostly film. Customers often do not understand why, and some are even not remembering what film was... but those photographers are in the top rankings in that industry.
Finally film crafting treasured a refined imaging culture: artists, industry and market have shaped what film is, that took more than a century. That vault of aesthetic resources has an inmense cultural value, and an artist or an amateur may want to take that way.
Last edited by Pere Casals; 13-Dec-2018 at 03:40.
For many, if not most, of those wedding and portrait shooters the use of film is called marketing. It separates the Uncle Charley attendees. We used the same marketing techniques in the dark ages of the 50s, 60s and 70s with MF cameras and multiple flash. The customer that receive professionally made prints, film or digital, won’t know the difference!
Back in the mid 80s we sold Boeing a truckload of Linhof TK 45 cameras. A bean counter there wanted to know what was the minimal quality print that would satisfy quality requirements of the majority of photo users at Boeing.
So they undertook a study that included photographing commonly requested subjects with all format cameras from 810 to 110 Instamatic, including then available Rollei and Leaf digital medium format backs.
Each series of prints were produced as 8x10 prints, put in albums and circulated to all departments; advertising, engineering, marketing, etc. each department indicated the print quality that met their needs.
The winner? 110 instamatic!
Its funny Downtown Camera is the only place where I see lineups of young people , and they are lined up to drop off or pick up film.. the Hostert Dip and Dunk machine allows the technicians to easily load any film and it is a very consistent machine, therefore they can keep the price low for the developing as they are selling the used film camera,film, develop,contact or scans, small proofs, and minilab prints, instore they have ready made frames to go... I think they are perfectly situated to do this business well, I believe they will be a huge success as this company is family owned and are running 7 days a week and deeply committed to photographers. not to mention they sell Leicas high end..
I personally buy all my photo paper, chemistry, alternative supplies that they stock as I want them to be successful and I support small business.
I see a lot of low light sky images these days, though impressive I am already bored to tears, that is also true of drone photos, At some point we have to unleash ourselves from the technical wonders and create images that tell stories or are visually impact full , anyone can learn a program to set the sensor to high ISO and shoot the skys and trees , what is unique is someone who can move us with their vision
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