Film revival?

On the other hand I am also reminded of an article that The Onion has presented a couple of times:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/17yearold-thinks-shes-getting-into-photography,6756/

I hang around and shoot with a lot of younger people and periodically one of them gets "into" film. They fool around with it for awhile and then usually get back in the digital groove. I can only speak for what I see around me but there is no significant movement back to film in the Milwaukee area. I know a couple of guys that teach photography at local universities and they confirm my anecdotal observations. Shooting with a film camera is a hip and trendy thing to do but the novelty wears off rather quickly for most people that give it a whirl. A few will really get the film thing going and use it to distinguish themselves from the hordes of cell phone and digital camera users. One guy here in Milwaukee has a wedding package of shooting medium format and charges accordingly (starts at $8,000/wedding). He is really good and caters to a crowd that is impressed with the novelty of film and has some money to spend. Most of his weddings are digital and his fees for those are less expensive. I like film and still shoot some with my Pentax 67 and just bought a scanner to scan some of the thousands of 35 and 120 film I have stored in notebooks. The only way to conclusively see if there is a film resurgence is to see how much film is being sold world wide. It does increase every year by some decent percentages but doesn't amount to much when you look at the total volume. Film was and is fun for me but digital is just as fun if not more fun. I would bet that the couple in these videos are not doing videos of shooting film next year because the novelty wore off, got bored with it and moved on. Just my opinion.

Who knows what the future holds?

I certainly do not. But I am enjoying film right now.

Who knows what the future holds?

I certainly do not. But I am enjoying film right now.

 

So what do you do with film?

;)

Expose it

PN needs an icon for that

 

It does have :p

;)

Expose it

Simply expose it give you no picture. What do you do with it after you expose it? And this is a serious question. I would like to know what a person using film does today?

Edited February 3, 2018 by BeBu Lamar

I just got back (via download) some color 35mm pics I shot a couple of weeks ago. I made three ink-jet prints to send off to my mother-in-law.

 

I'll have the negs back by mid-week. If they were really good, I would have posted some here.

 

It has been years since I made any prints in the darkroom, though I still process B&W negs

Simply expose it give you no picture. What do you do with it after you expose it? And this is a serious question. I would like to know what a person using film does today?

• You develop it, or have it developed
  
• Make prints the traditional way or have somebody else make prints
  

If you scan the negatives or have them scanned, you now have a digital representation of your photographs and you can do with them whatever you'd do with a digital image.

 

There are fewer places that will process film today but many of the places that used to do it will send it off to be done if nothing else. The downside is that they probably won't give you your negatives back. Specialty places are still around though and will return the negatives if you want them.

 

It is actually not hard to process the film yourself and if you're not so pure as to insist that prints be made the traditional way, then you don't need to worry about having a darkroom. You can scan the negatives or slides and do with them as you will. Just developing the film doesn't require much specialized equipment. You'll need a reel plus a tank and a changing bag is really nice. Tanks and reels can be found cheap. Changing bags aren't expensive either.

Simply expose it give you no picture. What do you do with it after you expose it? And this is a serious question. I would like to know what a person using film does today?

 

I thought you were pulling my leg......

 

I have a stack of Dwayne's mailers I use for E-6 but when I use them up I plan to start simply mailing them the slide film in multiples.

A trusted name in photo processing for over 50 years - Dwayne's Photo

 

I have an old slow Konica Minolta DiMAGE Scan Dual IV Film Scanner that I use to scan negatives and slides.

Then I print them myself.

Just accumulated enough stuff to start developing black & white myself so that will be new for me.

Probably update the old scanner at some point.

Right now I am scanning piles of old photos to distribute to family members.

Since I no longer have my darkroom I think I will shoot some E6 off and on. May be I will get some mailers from Dwayne.

Whatever rocks your boat.

 

Does it matter one iota methinks not.

Since I no longer have my darkroom I think I will shoot some E6 off and on. May be I will get some mailers from Dwayne.

That Dwayne’s reference in my post is a link, not sure if that was clear, FWIW.

Whatever rocks your boat.

 

Does it matter one iota methinks not.

It doesn’t even matter one iota that it doesn’t matter one iota.....

Not one to go back to film but just thought I'ld mention the added complexity of digital and its unintended consequences in that those who are concerned with privacy issues especially with their iPhones should turn off the GPS recording feature that embeds one's location their photo is taken at.

 

A retired elderly lady that used to be my mom's supervisor at a hardware store she worked had her son take a picture of a pastel portrait I'ld drawn of her son about 30 years ago that she had hanging on her wall. The son emailed the photo to me and I read the EXIF data and the GPS coordinates embedded and located the woman's house through Google maps.

 

I emailed the son about this and indicated any other of his iPhone images posted online are going to tell a lot of people where his elderly mother lives which didn't sit well with him. He did not know about his iPhone doing this and so I assumed he turned this feature off.

 

At least with film no one had to deal with such complexity.

Tim ever seen One Hour Photo where the character played by Robin Williams gets obsessed by a family he develops the pictures for. When everyone's pictures and family snaps were brought in and developed by labs imagine all these labworkers being able to look into everyone's life like that when developing and printing all these rolls of film. Not exactly much privacy there either.

I saw the movie, Phil, but I think it's a stretch to say that's the same as broadcasting the GPS coordinates of one's home to millions of possible internet lurkers from around the world.

The tag line in the trailer for it is "He knows your name. He knows your life. He knows where you live." In those days it wasn't some lurker from the other side of the world we had to (more likely not) worry about but rather that friendly and slightly off-beat technician from the photo lab near by : /. If privacy was a concern using Polaroid was a safer bet. Now anyone can take a picture of that too and it's online.

Guess I never realized how many nut jobs run a one hour photo. It's a movie based on fiction, right?

 

Or have you found anything in the news that supports this can happen. I mean my GPS example was me being a possible nut job and going to my mom's former boss's current residence over 100 miles away and doing what happened in the movie.

Phil, could you show me which particular words in your previous posts suggests your points were said in jest? I've yet to detect humor in normal discussions on photography where I bust out laughing. The "One Hour Photo" movie you referenced was a very dark thriller and so I didn't see that has humorous.

 

I was a cartoonist in high school and was told I was quite talented by peers and some faculty members. I know how to write stuff that comes across humorous, but in all the years I've posted here it's rare I can sense humor on technical discussions on photography.

 

And I'll have to disagree with you and insist GPS embedded in an image's EXIF for the unsuspecting and non-technical is a far more serious issue than what folks had to deal with in the film days.

 

It was so serious that after my ID theft incident with the IRS I complained to Adobe about how complicated, cumbersome and convoluted navigating both Bridge and Photoshop's application of IPTC EXIF data that I unknowingly embedded my phone number and home address on a one off image I wanted to copyright but now found is embedded on all my images.

 

Adobe's answer was to complain to the programmers who came up with IPTC/EXIF metadata format which is an organization not connected to Adobe. I finally figured it out on my own with quite a bit of reading on where to enter and remove such data within a metadata template. It seems Bridge and Photoshop have separate ways that slightly differ when and where to apply it and when and what image it shows up. And then there are the apps that can read it and some that can't. Flickr is pretty good at being thorough about showing all metadata.

Exactly.:rolleyes:

My new Iphone 8 shoots 4K video at 60FPS and 1080p at 120 FPS. The features of are everyday tools IMOP far outshine film for today's needs. I still have some film cameras, but just don't ever see myself going back to the horrible fumes of developer, fix, wash, drying agents etc. I think the oceans are better without people flush those chemicals down the toilet. Just my 2 cents.

 

PS - If I want a film look I just use an amazing tool called Exposure by Alien Skin.

I think the oceans are better without people flush those chemicals down the toilet.

I'm sure they are, though iPhones and electronic gadgets of all kinds come with their own environmental impact we should also be aware of . . . Seems like Apple is doing better than it used to on the environmental score, but it's something worth paying attention to and keeping on top of them about.

PS - If I want a film look I just use an amazing tool called Exposure by Alien Skin.

 

Thanks for the heads up on that. One more non-Adobe stand alone non-destructive Raw converter option. And you're right, the film presets are amazing, especially Polaroid and Slide emulations. Pretty good price as well.

 

Only I'll have to upgrade my entire Mac OS to Yosemite and most likely my processor as well to handle it.

local camera shop ( last one in the area ) said

been selling 300 rolls of film a week ..

manager has been in the photo business a long time

and was happy and surprised ..

I was in Oaxaca Mex the first week of February and in that time I observed four different young (in their 20's maybe 30's, young compared to me) tourist folks with old 35mm film cameras around their necks. So different from all the others of that demographic with their cell phones in hand. I was pleasantly surprised especially since on this trip I had brought along my Mamiya 645 and a few rolls of Kodak Portra. This was the first time out with my film stuff in at least 4 years. The portra expired in 2013. Happily the film developed nicely.

I'm sure they are, though iPhones and electronic gadgets of all kinds come with their own environmental impact we should also be aware of . . . Seems like Apple is doing better than it used to on the environmental score, but it's something worth paying attention to and keeping on top of them about.

plus getting the tight wads to pay their taxes which, according to various reports, is enough to pay for the all environment agencies of the northern hemisphere.