photojim

Film Rescue International (which is just down the highway from me here in Saskatchewan) will process any kind of film and you only pay if they get images. They will only develop old colour film as black and white, though - the odds of success are a lot higher.

 

You can google them. They will do film from anywhere in the world.

AF 85/1.8D?

 

I like to get close when taking portraits. An 85 is a good portrait lens on 35mm film and it'd be a little tighter on digital.

 

I also like to make backgrounds blurry to isolate portrait subjects. f/1.8 will help you do this. You won't get as blurry a background as I'd get using a lens that gives the same perspective on 35mm (I'd be using a 135, roughly), but it will still help a lot. You will also be able to shoot in a lot dimmer light at a lower ISO rating, which will help your image quality.

 

Buy used. I paid $75 for mine (non-D, mind). That was cheap but you should be able to get one for a couple of hundred used.

Freestyle (http://www.freestylephoto.biz) has 100' spools of Arista 50 (which is Pan-F Plus) for about $12 US each. Even with shipping, it would be cheap to get 3 or 4 of these and have enough film to shoot for a few years. :) It will keep well frozen.

Ohaus makes a small digital scale with 0.1 gram accuracy to 50 grams and 0.2 gram accuracy to 100 grams. I wish it could weigh heavier amounts but I find it pretty useful nonetheless. I got mine off eBay in 2003 for about $40. They should be easy to find.

 

The triple-beam Ohaus scales are excellent but slow to use. You can weigh any reasonable quantity with them with high precision.

Another possibility to give you more options is the AF 85/1.8 (D or non-D). It has good manual-focus feel and it's extremely sharp. I've not shot the manual-focus lens but the AF is well worth considering.

 

The MF lenses are all non-AI (many were converted to AI but the lens was discontinued in 1977 with the shift to AI; the replacement lens was the 85/2).

Another option is to use any mechanically-timed SLR you like and use a handheld selenium meter. You can even buy them new.

 

If you want a cheap camera with a selenium meter, the Fed 5c is pretty cheap. It's a Soviet rangefinder camera that takes Leica screw mount lenses. Figure about $30 US including an Industar 61LD lens, which is a dandy little 55/2.8.

Don's Photo (in most of the decent-sized cities in AB/SK/MB) can get 4x5 film including Polaroid. They don't always have it in stock but it is usually in the Winnipeg warehouse so it doesn't take too long to get to the store. They got it in about 3-4 days for me the last time I got some. The prices are really good too.

One more thought. Why is it "questionable" to "continue investing in analog gear"? Film gear is cheaper now than it has ever been. Goodness, you can get an F3HP in good usable shape for under $200. This was a four-figure camera just a few years ago. And don't get me started on FE2s and such. And an F90x is only $150-200.

 

Film is becoming less viable, I concede, but it is still easily available and at good prices. Velvia is $5 US a roll at B&H. Superia 100 is $1.79. Not expensive.

 

I've taken advantage of the move to digital to get the film gear I always wanted. My pictures are better than they have ever been, and I'm having more fun.

I was going to suggest you buy another loader from ebay (they are cheap now) but your idea worked out much better!

Professional films as sold by film manufacturers are colour films that are pre-aged to be ready to use immediately. Immature, unripe colour films have a slightly skewed colour balance that amateurs don't mind but pros usually prefer to avoid.

 

With blank and white film, colour balance is not an issue so there is no need for a segregated product.

 

As for Foma, Efke, etc., these films are definitely suitable for professional usage. The quality is not quite as consistent as Kodak, Ilford and Fuji's quality but the films are very good.

One other option: if you are consistent about rolling your rolls with the same length, you can intentionally roll enough to permit 35 (or 36 or whatever) exposures and just stop shooting after that number. In other words, don't shoot past the usable end of the film.

 

Loading in the dark is not hard, but it is a bit tedious. I know many who do it and they all say that it's quite manageable. Another option is to use a traditional bulk loader in the dark. Loading the cartridges is not that hard, no harder than loading a tank with film.

Roll it off and freeze the rolls... it'll keep.

 

I agree that you should have been provided fresher film, but at least the expiry date has not yet passed.

My F100 is a sample of one, but it has proved to be very robust and reliable for me since I bought my camera new about three years ago. I shoot a lot of film through it and it has never acted peculiarly in any way.

 

I did scratch the prism though. Guess I can't sell it now. :)

Ilford's tests with the TSA revealed that black and white film of any speed will get fogged to some degree by airport x-rays. It would seem that perhaps you've had accumulated x-ray exposure (more than one x-ray). You didn't check your film with your checked bags, did you? That will almost guarantee fogging. Carry-on baggage x-rays will eventually cause damage too; even one x-ray can cause fogging according to those tests, but it oughtn't be that bad.

There should be no need to compensate. C41 films can easily take a stop of overexposure. I know many people who intentionally do this to get slightly finer grain.

If trying other developers or changing dilutions or adjusting EI and development time won't do the trick, consider mail ordering some film. There are a lot of other films available on the market.

To answer Gabriel's original question, the /1.8 is better than the /1.4 (a little) from about f/2.8 to minimum aperture. (The /1.8 has f/22 and the /1.4 does not, but f/22 isn't that useful due to diffraction reducing sharpness.)

 

Wider than f/2.8, the /1.4 is better than the /1.8.

 

The /1.4 may not be the best f/1.4 lens ever made, but it's decent. I own one and I am not unhappy with it.

Freestyle in Los Angeles, CA, US sells the Efke films under the Efke name, so if J&C doesn't have them in stock, you can check there. I got some Efke 50 from Freestyle a few weeks ago without difficulty. (I still plan to support J&C, but I was already ordering some stuff from Freestyle anyway and shipping to Canada is expensive if you don't buy quite a lot of stuff.)

I used some Rodinal from a half-empty 500 mL bottle yesterday... the bottle was first opened probably four years ago. The activity was just fine.

 

I've used old Rodinal before with similar results.

 

It's one of the longest-lasting developers. The only one that may be better is PMK.

Seems a lot simpler, not to mention exponentially cheaper, to buy some colour negative film and an F100. You lose the instant gratification, mind... but the latitude of colour negative film is impressive. Sometimes I wonder if those who have never shot film have any clue about colour negative film latitude.

It sounds like you're new to 4x5. You might prefer to start with normal sheet film and the double-sided sheet film holders to keep the cost down initially. Quickload holders are very convenient but essentially double the cost of your film. They are, however, much handier when you are travelling in the field and don't have a lot of space to store film and holders.

 

Fuji Quickload film will work in a Polaroid holder but it works best in a Quickload holder. If you are going to shoot Polaroid film as well, you could start with a single Polaroid holder to use both films.

 

I don't find the normal dual sheet film holders to be too awful to use, so I'm using them exclusively right now. If I find that I want to hike with the camera, I am definitely going to check out Quickloads, but the cost is a lot higher, so I'm not in a rush.

It's possible the foam in your mirror chamber is getting sticky and the mirror adhered to the foam. The foam tends to fail after about 20 to 25 years.

I find the 100 film to be a beautiful film. It has a very pleasing tonality. It is probably the grainiest 100 speed film I have ever used, but it is worth experimenting with. I got some of it in 4x5 to try, since grain is a non-issue with large format.

 

The 200 I find I have more trouble with. I have more difficulty controlling the highlights. I haven't dialled in the proper EI/development combination yet, but I don't know if I'll bother when I have so many other films that I do like.

 

Definitely try the 100. It is a good enough film to warrant the effort.

I don't think this is a stupid argument, although it isn't exactly an ethical issue.

 

Wide angle lenses for 35mm SLRs are designed to work around the mirror chamber. If you've ever seen a wide angle lens for a rangefinder camera (or even a point-and-shoot camera like the Olympus Stylus Epic/MJU II), notice that the rear element is very close to the film plane. The 35/2.8 I have for my Soviet rangefinder cameras has a huge bulbous element that goes into the camera chamber behind the lens mount. Over 1/3 of the depth of the lens is inside the camera. With an SLR this is impossible.

 

SLR wide angle lenses use a so-called inverted telephoto design that gets around this problem. Thus, they have more optical complexity than would be needed if not for the existence of the mirror.

 

It would be easy to design a 28mm-ish lens for an APS-sized camera (whether film or digital) without needing this optical complexity, but few have done so. (The Sigma 30/1.4 probably is designed like this; I've never played with one.) So yes, a 28 or 30mm lens designed for digital is going to have less distortion than one designed for 35mm film, because it doesn't have to do the same optical trickery that the film camera requires. (A digital SLR will still require it to have a lens that covers like a 28mm covers on 35mm film... there is no getting around that. It won't need this done, however, at 28mm... but perhaps instead at 24 or 20mm. Similarly, a 6x6 SLR will need it for a 50mm lens because, for it, that *is* a wide angle lens.)

 

Using a 35mm-intended 28mm lens on a sub-24x36 digital is a compromise. The lens was designed for something else. Of course it could be made with less distortion, but not easily. That inverted telephoto design is absolutely required to make that lens work with 35mm film... but it isn't required to work with sub-24x36 digital. That's why a specific "digital" design would be better to use on the digital body in this case.

 

This has nothing to do with morality or ethics or anything else... it's just a rule of optics. Digital SLRs are designed to use 35mm lenses, but that is a compromise. 35mm cameras would shoot images of lower quality than they could if they had to use adapted medium format lenses, too.

We could use angle of view as the constant way to measure lenses... I don't know why people don't do that... but that would be consistent at least. Large format photographers often talk about angle of view because a lens' coverage depends on the format of film the photographer is shooting, and in large format, you only use a part of the coverage so that you have room to make movements for perspective and plane-of-focus control.

 

35mm lens descriptions are used so universally because... well, they are universal. A 28 mm lens covers the same on almost any 35mm camera. (Yes, I know there are some half-frame cameras but they are rare. Yes, I know the oldest Nikon rangefinders shot 24x32 or 24x34 and not 24x36 but they are exceptionally rare and horribly expensive.) Digital sensors are just too different and the mm markings start to become meaningless unless you use that one camera for awhile... but you still can't compare to what others are experiencing with different cameras, unless you have precisely the same sensor size and proportion.

 

I agree that people misuse the terminology... saying that a 70 is a 105 on digital is misleading. a 70 on 35mm acts like a 105 on digital (well, some digital... and ignoring depth of field), so in this case it is to some degree a 105mm equivalent lens. If you know 35mm lens focal lengths, this is meaningful. It's a short telephoto lens... a portrait lens. (Okay... I assumed it was a telephoto. It could have been a long focus. It's easy to be pedantic in photography.)

 

Luckily I only shoot film so my "sensors" are consistent size compared to the rest of the world that uses the same formats that I do. The 50 on 35mm acts about like my 75 on 6x6 and similar to a 150 on 4x5". They aren't identical but it gives me an idea. Half again for 6x6, triple for 4x5. The viewfinder or ground glass will answer the rest of the question for me.