Another entry in the film vs. digital debate.

For the early years of digital cameras, there was much debate about how long it would take for digital to "catch up" with film.

I haven't seen that question much lately, but I happened across a "First Look" comparing Kodak and Fuji disk films that suggests to me that the race was over before it was run.

Popular Photography July 1983

One way to measure a commercial concept

is to count its competitors, and just a

year after the introduction of Kodak's

revolutionary Disc-camera system, three

other film manufacturers have announced

that their very own I5-shot

8x 10-mm frame size color-print film

disks will begin to roll some time in 1983.

Joining the lists will be 3M, Sakura (selling

here as Konica), and Fuji.

When one looks at the report, it's got to be with some skepticism that one even accepts their modest conclusion:

Both films work well with 11X walletsize

prints, begin to show wear and tear at

15X, and demonstrate the argument

against all subminiature formats when

they reach 20- or 25X, the magnifications

needed for medium-sized display

prints. If Kodak is sharper and truer,

Fuji is more pleasingly colorful.

IMHO, the film results shown are not really better than the early 3MP digitals, and certainly less adequate than the 6MP pioneers in digital. Kodak quit selling disc film at the end of 1999.

Taken together with the evidence from 110 film (1972 to effectively 2009 or so), this may be another argument for Kodak's (and not them alone) failure to read the future.

Here is a 20X enlargement from a disk picture (full negative 10 mm by 8 mm,)

The author describes this as

Note sharply defined, tightly packed Kodak grain structure combined with excellent sharpness

Well, not as I see it, anyhow.

Or am I just insufficiently impressed?

What do you think about the disk format? Although I have a disk camera, I confess I've never shot a single disk of this format.

It’s a slippery concept because film is analogue. How much actual data is there in a 35mm (or a 120) negative? And it’s not just the negative, it’s the scanner that grabs the data. On a practical basis, even when I had the Canon 5D mk I, I wondered if the results were already better than film. I still don’t know, but it’s hard to believe that the massive MP sensors here today haven’t surpassed the information capacity that film is capable of. I’m not saying it’s better, and I’m not even sure how you’d measure it or what standards you’d use.

Plus I wonder if we were still trying to innovate with film, whether film could get better to compete with modern sensors?

How much actual data is there in a 35mm (or a 120) negative? And it’s not just the negative, it’s the scanner that grabs the data.

Also, AFAIK, film resolution depends on contrast (which is arguably a very good thing). The first digital camera that truly matched film in several areas was the Nikon D3. People forget (and still don't know) that film was very, very capable. Now, digital has the edge in resolution per square mm, and also has the edge in sensitivity. Rendering is another topic altogether.

I like the idea of Disc film but I think it really would have been better as a professional format. Imagine Tech Pan 25 or a fictional Ektar 12 in a disc camera with manual controls. That would have been somewhat useful. These days, perhaps a 16mm stills camera would be fun.

Confession: I bought a Disk 2000 in 83 as my 1st camera. - Results: unhappy. 9x13 or 10x15 cm prints look as grainy as I might accept in a 8x10" small format low light shot. Other flaws: It was apparently constructed like an undermotorized double action revolver; i.e. the built in motor had to advance & cock before the shutter went off which resulted in some occasionally annoying lag. While film processing did cost the same you got only 15 frames and printing was more expensive. - Really bad choice! - I am very(!) proud to have sold it. A while later after going up to a hand me down 6x6 and acquiring my 1st pair of 35mm SLRs I gave grandpa's Minox C a go. At least some manual controls and a chance to shoot APP25.

While they do capture memory crutches, sub miniatures aren't really for me.

There is one exception, I'd be lusting after: Something like the Echo 8 lighter camera in "Roman Holiday". I'd be fine with a digital variant, but there seems to be none.

There was more subminiature crap attempted to get marketed when I was young. The AGFA Family 8mm movie camera with a stills capturing mode, for example.

Or am I just insufficiently impressed? [With sharpness and grain structure of disk film]

 

What do you think about the disk format? Although I have a disk camera, I confess I've never shot a single disk of this format.

I think you're just trying to make disk film be something it was not intended to be. I was at the SPSE (Society of Photographic Scientists and Engineers) conference where Kodak presented a paper on the design criteria for the disk camera, so I had an idea where it was going.

I personally never had any interest in them myself; I didn't even consider 35 mm film to have adequate quality, aside from newspaper/magazine and sports work.

The technical paper, by Rice and Faulkner of Kodak described a study of amateur photographers' color prints. Basically, something like 1/3 to 1/2 of them had significantly degraded quality. Largely these were due to insufficient light and out-of-focus images. Several key design goals were set to overcome the problems, using a concept they called "photographic space," graphed on a chart with distance vs light levels. The goal was to increase the area of the graph where acceptable photos would result, when enlarged about 11.5 x times, roughly a 3 1/2 inch by 5 inch print (this was a more or less standard amateur print size of the day).

The solution was essentially a very small negative; large depth-of-depth of field was a consequence. Because of the substantial enlargement needed (~11 X) a high quality lens was used. Along with this, precise location of the film plane was needed; the set of flat pieces of film mounted on the disk were a key part of this. The issues of inadequate light were dealt with via a built-in electronic flash that could keeping up with the shooting rate.

There were also a handful of photofinishing enhancements built in. One of these was the ability to ID each neg (by its placement on the disk), allowing a neg number to be printed on the back of each print. So if someone wanted to reorder prints no need to go through the negs. Also, print data could be magnetically written onto the disk, something not possible on the conventional films.

So it seemed to be a cleverly thought out system; just not one that I had any interest in. But for the intended customer, possibly a good thing; I dunno.

Another thing I saw at the same conference was a presentation on the first Sony Mavica, predigital. A prototype was demonstrated, taking some snapshots of the audience and displaying a few seconds later on a large TV screen. Essentially it was the standard television image of the day, but capturing a single "frame" with both interlaced "fields" in a single image; it was stored in analog form on a small disk, and could be displayed on any standard TV. It was another system I had little interest in, but we all know what that eventually turned into, right?

I am not sure if

The reduction in consumer film sizes was a process the industry went through many times, ... All no doubt to increase profits.

The reduction in film size was grasping at digital......

A small easy to use consumer oriented camera.

I think you're just trying to make disk film be something it was not intended to be.

I rather felt that there was pretty much nothing that it (disk film) WAS intended to be.

I simply saw this article while browsing old photo magazines, and was struck by what a low standard was accepted as "sharp" etc. I was struck by the inconsistency of the standards then applied to the developing digital technology and that accepted for some kinds of film.

I have shot 110 film-- here is a picture of me and my cat :rolleyes:

I will stipulate that 8x10" film has wonderful qualities- 8x10mm, not so much.

I think that the alternative film sizes that showed up in the 60's through the 90's were almost all the result of trying to cater to the desires/needs of armatures. Let's face it, Kodak and Fuji never made the money on pros. I can remember reading studies from multiple sources showing that few people were having anything larger then 3.5x5 printed. Maybe some 5x7's. These studies also, as is noted above, looked the problem prints of the average user. Too dark, out of focus, etc. I also remember reading that Kodak saturated the reds in the film because people "remembered" scenes as much more saturated than the actually where and then preferred prints with the greater saturation over more realistic prints. Studies also showed that people often failed to order reprints because keeping track of and locating negatives was difficult.

So . . . If people prefer saturated images, give them saturated film. If they only make small prints, give them less film surface. If they can't keep track of their negatives, keep them in a cartridge (126, 110, disk, APS) and allow for the negative or other tracking numbers to be printed on the back AND give them index prints that can be kept with the negatives. Even the idea of "double prints" comes from the fact that people don't keep track of their negatives.

None of this was planned with the future digital revolution in mind. It came from looking at the past, not the future.

By the way . . . film is only "analog" in a limited sense. How many silver grains are there in the frame? Each grain is a "bit" every much as a pixel is a discreet register of information. At the same time, digital images are effectively translated to analog data stream in print and even screen display.

.

I'm sure those last statements are going to generate some discussion . . . That will not alter their truth . .

Both 110 format and disk film suffered horribly due to their absurdly small image area along with Kodak marketing. The formats were simply incapable of producing even a 4x5 size print of consumer quality unless everything was in perfect alignment, and that was rarely the case. Because of the small size of 110/disk film it required perfect calibration of machine based optics with any slight drift producing mushy grain. Print film as we know also has no tolerance for under-exposure the effects of which produce rapid 'grain-up' and deterioration of the image due to lack of energy given to the dye couplers during exposure. Net result of the two is some pretty bad prints from consumer labs. The actual disk cameras themselves were of reasonably decent quality and kodak did a respectable job on the mini optics.

I had more than my share of customers bring my shop disk film to see if there was anything I could do with the stuff in terms of custom printing and try to get a decent ~5x7 or bigger from the medium (consumer labs rarely had lens boards to enlarge the format to anything bigger than 4x5). Easy enough to finagle the things in a commercial caliber enlarger with some creativity, but unless the film was over exposed it still looked bad. I had a few tricks to reduce the grain a bit like a purposely diffused enlarging lens element (learned that trick to tame the gamma increase in papers going from EP-2 to RA-4), but it was still garbage in garbage out.

Try drum scanning that crap. You want grain? I got grain for you :-)

I knew the engineers who came up with the APS format and had workshops with them. Good crew, really good engineers, and more importantly could point out the best Beer / Pizza joints in Rochester. They also knew digital was going to change everything and weren't confident of the direction kodak was going to embrace the changing technology. They literally gave away that space to Fuji and Noritsu.

I think there were SOME 110 and 126 cameras that kept the film flatter and had much better lenses.

Hi, could be, but I think that any time roll film is involved there is a tendency for the film plane to move a bit, bowing out slightly or whatever.

I think there have been cameras made that used vacuum backs, but for the most part the complexity was more costly than simply using a slightly larger film.

Let's face it, Kodak and Fuji never made the money on pros.

Hi, maybe depends on what one calls a pro. I spent quite a few years with a chain studio outfit in the US, and I have to say that Kodak, Fuji, and Konica sold quite a lot of product, primarily color paper, to us. In turn we primarily sold it to the general public, mostly in the form of nominal 8 X 10" print "units," which can be either actual 8 X 10" prints or various "package" units, such as two 5X7" prints on a sheet, or a single 5 X 7 surrounded by a handful of wallet-size prints. For many years we printed well over a million 8 X 10" units per week, which most people would see as an astounding quantity, in our main facility.

In the US there were several other companies doing similar volume. On top of this there were school photography outfits also doing tremendous volumes.

So if you consider these operators as "pros," then Kodak, Konica, and Fuji brought in a tremendous amount of revenue from them. Many of the technological innovations in photofinishing came about as ways to improve production efficiency for such companies.

Operations like this were mostly invisible to what we typically call "pros," such as wedding specialists or commercial photographers. Not so in the photo industry, where they were some of the most desired customers. But those days are gone; the one-time need for prints replaced by digital images on phones, and the like.

By the way . . . film is only "analog" in a limited sense.

If that's true, nothing is analog. Analog tape, audio or video, is fundamentally very small particles, which you might call 'bits', although that's highly misleading. Analog refers to the fact that the image is not recorded as numbers.

Bill C . . . You were still small change when you add up all of the consumer print houses both mail order and store fronts.

Karim . . . Audio and video are not great comparisons to film until, yes, you start to look at the subatomic level. If you want to get to the level of quantum physics then everything does come in discreet sized packages. However, the comparison of silver content to pixel density is a very apt one.

Both 110 format and disk film suffered horribly due to their absurdly small image area along with Kodak marketing. The formats were simply incapable of producing even a 4x5 size print of consumer quality unless everything was in perfect alignment, and that was rarely the case. Because of the small size of 110/disk film it required perfect calibration of machine based optics with any slight drift producing mushy grain. Print film as we know also has no tolerance for under-exposure the effects of which produce rapid 'grain-up' and deterioration of the image due to lack of energy given to the dye couplers during exposure. Net result of the two is some pretty bad prints from consumer labs. The actual disk cameras themselves were of reasonably decent quality and kodak did a respectable job on the mini optics.

 

I had more than my share of customers bring my shop disk film to see if there was anything I could do with the stuff in terms of custom printing and try to get a decent ~5x7 or bigger from the medium (consumer labs rarely had lens boards to enlarge the format to anything bigger than 4x5). Easy enough to finagle the things in a commercial caliber enlarger with some creativity, but unless the film was over exposed it still looked bad. I had a few tricks to reduce the grain a bit like a purposely diffused enlarging lens element (learned that trick to tame the gamma increase in papers going from EP-2 to RA-4), but it was still garbage in garbage out.

 

Try drum scanning that crap. You want grain? I got grain for you :)

 

I knew the engineers who came up with the APS format and had workshops with them. Good crew, really good engineers, and more importantly could point out the best Beer / Pizza joints in Rochester. They also knew digital was going to change everything and weren't confident of the direction kodak was going to embrace the changing technology. They literally gave away that space to Fuji and Noritsu.

"Both 110 format and disk film suffered horribly due to their absurdly small image area along with Kodak marketing"

Movie film didn't seem to suffer wonder why that is ?

Movie film didn't seem to suffer wonder why that is ?

If you look at single frames from movie film, the image is usually really awful. It's the ability of the eye/brain to integrate the images that makes it seem sharp.

I think there were SOME 110 and 126 cameras that kept the film flatter and had much better lenses. Even then, that film size would be a challenge, but it could be with better lenses and better film flattening, it was possible? I'm thinking of the little 110 Pentax camera maybe?

One of the big issues with 126 and 110 was the fact that the cartridge contained the pressure plate. While Kodak's manufacturing standards were pretty high for this, between the smaller film size and greater tolerances that a plastic cartridge has even pricier cameras and lenses were still pretty limited in their results.

"Both 110 format and disk film suffered horribly due to their absurdly small image area along with Kodak marketing"

 

Movie film didn't seem to suffer wonder why that is ?

JDM is right--I've blown up frames from 16 and 35 mm frames shot with professional movie cameras for clients and they look pretty poor. Images look good in the theater because the audience is only seeing each frame very briefly and mostly at a considerable distance which helps a lot to make the image look good.

One of the big issues with 126 and 110 was the fact that the cartridge contained the pressure plate.

Same about Super 8 movie film cartridges

Movie film didn't seem to suffer wonder why that is ?

Are you referring to 8 mm, Super-8 or 16?

For about a dozen years all cinema shot on film has been edited digitally, the printed on film or distributed as digital files. You would be hard pressed to find a non-digital theater these days, other than oldy moldy theaters resurrected for art films.