Why does this keep happening to my photos? 35mm

Why not bash people who paint with paints, brushes, canvases, etc... when they can make digital paintings on the computer? Maybe traditional painting is a step back. If you do not like film then why in a film forum? Too each their own. Hipsters are part of the market. The lab I go to, much film is purchased and processed. And they still teach it in most colleges I know of. The Film Photographyproject podacst is known all over the world and it is nothing but a film podcast. So many more people are shooting film then you think.

"Why not bash people who paint with paints, brushes, canvases, etc... "

 

- I'm not 'bashing' anyone. Try reading more carefully.

 

If anything, I'm on the receiving end of the bashing.

 

I'm questioning the motives of beginners that suddenly decide to take up film. To what purpose?

 

The number of people using film has no bearing on the matter. It's the indisputable fact that film is unreliable in a beginner's hands, and has a far greater number of variables to go wrong. All of which are a total distraction from, what is hopefully, the desired end of producing pictures.

 

BTW, the words 'step back' have never appeared in my posts here. Those words were attributed to me by someone who's taken no trouble to see my point of view.

Edited May 20, 2018 by rodeo_joe|1

i wouldnt say film is unreliable in a beginners hands, but its got a steep learning curve compared to digital.

 

i once worked as a lab technologest in the day when we made reagents n standards. everything took an imence amount of study n learning to preform diagnostic tests.

 

over the years, reagents came premade, just add water. standards were certified premade as well. all that was left was pippete the seras in tiny cups, hit the button on the front panel and the machine preformed several tests simultaneously on just one sip.. all the tech had to know was how to service the machine... techs became auto mechanics. any kid fresh out of highschool could run those tests. you dont have to know anything anymore, the computer replaced brains.

 

so the reason beginners seem to experiance so many problems??? they are learning, deveoping experiance. im sure no one in here was a natrual born photographer and everyone of us had tge same problems. but as experianced people, we dont mind sharing our experiance n helping those beginners just like the old guys that helped me n you.

 

yes the end result is tge same regardless but to achieve tge level of almost no variables through experiance is the greatest and most satisfying end result. to have almost total control is a skill you dont fully get when the computer does all the thinking for you. skills have been redefined by people who probably have no real skills and would have given up long ago.

 

so thank technology for a new opportunity to achieve convincing skills to produce top quality pictures on a level you would never have dreamed possable without the technology at hand.

 

fim unreliable or just another bull to tame?

 

 

.

Edited May 21, 2018 by paul ron

i once worked as a lab technologest in the day when we made reagents n standards. everything took an imence amount of study n learning to preform diagnostic tests.

 

over the years, reagents came premade, just add water. standards were certified premade as well. all that was left was pippete the seras in tiny cups, hit the button on the front panel and the machine preformed several tests simultaneously on just one sip.. all the tech had to know was how to service the machine... techs became auto mechanics. any kid fresh out of highschool could run those tests. you dont have to know anything anymore, the computer replaced brains.

 

In my "day job", treating instruments as a black box has become something of the bane of my existence.

 

First of all, I don't know how many times I've had to teach someone how to make a calibration curve...something that my department still teaches in general chemistry but apparently gets lost by the time you get to graduate school.

 

Aside from that, I get requests all the time asking-"Can I use your(insert instrument) to determine(something)." My conversation often is-yes you can use it, but WHY do you want to do it that way? Often the reason is that I see a better and/or easier way to do what they're trying to do. When I really dig about why they want to do it a certain way, the answer often is "because so and so had access to (insert instrument) and he/she did it on there." That can really be a nightmare when so-and-so didn't leave enough information to figure out how they did what they did...

Everything is "an unreliable medium for a beginner". That is why you keep doing it. Eventually you will learn to make it a reliable medium. Anything worthwhile doing is worth taking the time to learn to do it right. I don't think that making a good digital print is any easier than making a good print from film. It is just a different process.

12 years ago, when I had a good, reliable local pro lab, I considered shooting film the easy route(albeit I didn't have a huge amount of digital experience).

 

If I did an event, I'd have an envelope prepped with my usual instructions in it along with an order form for the lab. As I shot, the exposed film went in that envelope. At the end of the evening, I'd seal the clasp and then drop it in the night drop on my way home. The next Monday(or the next day if it was in the middle of the week) I'd pay my money and get a stack of 4x6s along with my negatives already cut and filed in Printfile pages. Then, it was just a matter of sorting the good from the bad(there was a lot less bad then, regardless of how careful I try to be with digital), coding them for orders, and delivering. Once I had a few print orders, I'd drop the negatives back off along with a printed out spreadsheet, and pick them up again the next day.

 

Of course, a lot of the infrastructure to make that possible is gone now. I have a good lab locally, but they're not as good as "The Film Lab"(yes, that was the name of the lab I used for years).

BTW, the words 'step back' have never appeared in my posts here. Those words were attributed to me by someone who's taken no trouble to see my point of view.

I asked “What does that mean?”....

No reply. Taking the trouble appears to be a waste of time....

I was using a little Kodak instamatic when I was 6. Not so steep a learning curve.

“Do not point at sun. Hold steady and follow through pressing the shutter button.”

Edited May 21, 2018 by Moving On

I don't think there is anything wrong in using film. Its a different medium than digital with it's own challenges, excitements, character. Its a microcosm of it's own. I am not in favor of convenient practical technologies eating up traditional techniques. At the same time, I don't believe the argument of image quality alone justifies using one over the other. I wish film shooters try more creative processing, multiple exposures, 'photograms' like Man Ray did to utilize more of the film character. As an example, one of the unique characters of film is the film grain which is more aesthetically pleasing than digital noise. Cross processing is another technique that works differently depending on the film type producing complex color alterations with beautiful continuous tones. These are some of the things that can keep the film medium alive, in my opinion.

 

When I was a child, I experimented with cyanotypes, painting the chemicals on paper with paintbrushes and projecting the film on the paper under direct sun. The result was photographic image overlaid on uneven brush strokes making it a blend of photography and painting. Doing the same on old newspaper would give cyan colored photographic images overlaid on printed letters and halftone images, which could be interesting, not sure how it will turn out. Have to try in order to see.

 

What I don't like is people fruitlessly claiming superiority of one medium over the other. I think, not understanding the strengths and weaknesses of one another is naive and alienation doesn't enrich one's learning. In our art class, we were introduced to many different media such as charcoal, pastel, water color and even linocut printing and wood carving, although the focus was on mainstream color painting. Likewise, youngsters can be introduced to both film (and processing) and digital cameras (and Digital editing) and they can choose their path from there. This is something, I as an amateur never had the opportunity of.

Going back to the OP's original question. I would take a roll of unexposed film to the processor and have him develop it to see if the film is bad. Cost you a little money, but not that much for just processing not printing.