Digital Mainstream

cliveh · Dec 25, 2019

I suppose my point is that film photography is becoming a lost form of media and in that sense it is encased in about 150 years of practice in time. It has a chronological footprint which not all picture making media have. This probably has parallels with the way oil paints were made and used in the 15th century for example (but possibly not the best example).

jtk · Dec 25, 2019

rayonline_nz said:
Another angle is that if digital tools were available to them, would they had used it? Or even as a hybrid method.

Given that the vast majority of film photographers still use crappy drugstore delopment maybe we could argue that they have very low standards but still pay too much for those services. What would that say about "value" ?

John Koehrer · Dec 25, 2019

jtk said:
IMO y Same with Ansel Adams...most of the prints in circulation were made by a big photolab that specialized in top tier work.

Nope, The ansel Adams gallery still handprints their finer prints.
The "replicas" are the digital series.

The digital prints if they're good may compete with an original in your opinion but I'd rather have one the
artist has handled. Don't forget, Adams would change a given print as he decided it could be improved.

rayonline_nz · Dec 26, 2019

jtk said:
Given that the vast majority of film photographers still use crappy drugstore delopment maybe we could argue that they have very low standards but still pay too much for those services. What would that say about "value" ?

Well FWIW, here in New Zealand I am fortunate to have one guy who services medium format and large format gear. The other chap only does 35mm. Thing is the former guy 50min flight away has been doing it for 50yrs who eventually no one will repair them here. There used to be 3 or 4 guys locally here but all of them have retired or gone into a rest home. I actually visited the one guy who said he was doing repair work on special request in retirement at his home but he has gone to a retirement home 3yrs ago.

pocketshaver · Dec 26, 2019

jtk said:
Given that the vast majority of film photographers still use crappy drugstore delopment maybe we could argue that they have very low standards but still pay too much for those services. What would that say about "value" ?

Using chemicals still inside their use by date, and correctly stored. Even a bargain basement "drug store lab" has better processing then what was possible before 1920 by ANYONE outside of the COMPANIES that made photographic film or cameras.

Developing your own film can be fun, it CAN be affordable. However MOST of us do not shoot enough film to make the purchase of a Noritsu or Frontier scanner feasible or the purchase of a professional grade mini lab developing system. Nor does shooting say 2 rolls of film a month or even per week make the cost of those 130 dollar develop at home kits, the purchase of heater equipment for color film, or the purchase of chemicals worth while

jtk · Dec 27, 2019

pocketshaver said:
Using chemicals still inside their use by date, and correctly stored. Even a bargain basement "drug store lab" has better processing then what was possible before 1920 by ANYONE outside of the COMPANIES that made photographic film or cameras.

Developing your own film can be fun, it CAN be affordable. However MOST of us do not shoot enough film to make the purchase of a Noritsu or Frontier scanner feasible or the purchase of a professional grade mini lab developing system. Nor does shooting say 2 rolls of film a month or even per week make the cost of those 130 dollar develop at home kits, the purchase of heater equipment for color film, or the purchase of chemicals worth while

You've just made the perfect case for digital photography.

removed account4 · Dec 27, 2019

jtk said:
Given that the vast majority of film photographers still use crappy drugstore delopment maybe we could argue that they have very low standards but still pay too much for those services. What would that say about "value" ?

none of the drug stores near me do any development, they all send out once every 2 weeks to fuji. fuji only has 1 consumer mail in lab left. IDK when we'd drop off all our color film ( this was 19-16 years ago ) a few days later it came back from fuji. if it was black and whiteor E6 it would go to dwaynes in kansas and take an extra few days, but the c41 and movie film stayed at fuji. film and negatives were returned the prints looked perfectly fine, nothing crappy about it, and it cost $3.98 for double prints (4x6), $4.88 for 100 feet of motion film.
currently i give film to the person down the street, she's the last mini lab in a 60-70mile radius. value ? keeps my neighbor in business and im able to have my film processed.
no one i know of around here drops anything off at a drug store they just use the lady down the street.

removedacct1 · Dec 27, 2019

cliveh said:
Good point. Can you name me a few digital artistic photographers? I can't think of any.

Clyde Butcher.

pocketshaver · Dec 27, 2019

jtk said:
You've just made the perfect case for digital photography.

Its just the truth. I doubt you would even make the claim to be able to process 100 rolls of film at a time without a mini lab.

Even the professionals who use film, I doubt youll find more then 30% who even develop film anymore. And those who DO are doing small amounts and simply send in the 50 rolls from a wedding or car event off to say darkroom for processing

removed account4 · Dec 27, 2019

pocketshaver said:
Its just the truth. I doubt you would even make the claim to be able to process 100 rolls of film at a time without a mini lab.

Even the professionals who use film, I doubt youll find more then 30% who even develop film anymore. And those who DO are doing small amounts and simply send in the 50 rolls from a wedding or car event off to say darkroom for processing

very few professionals processed their own film to begin with. i worked for a portrait photographer 30+ years ago and she was the only person i ever came across who did her own hand processing of film. i would process hundreds of sheets of 5x7 film between 7am and about 10, then contact print the negatives and then make the enlargements.
then again she was only shooting b/w and every pro and their cousin was shooting color ( mainly e6 ) .. not to mention very few labs at that time would process anything bigger than maybe 4x5. these days there are very few ( maybe 1 in 10000 if that ) professionals who shoot film, state archives ( for habs / haer / hals type work ) don't want film or silver prints, just digital files and ink jet prints. sadly they are going to be sorry when the next solar flare happens and their hard drives filled with their "archival" images all vanish. there was one in montreal a few years ago that did a number, and in the 1880s and 1860s ... i'll be pretty happy when that happens except that money won't exist, and i don't have a chicken an ostrich and a goat to trade with my doctor for him to treat me for small pox

Pieter12 · Dec 27, 2019

cliveh said:
Now digital is used by 99% of photographers, does this mean prints from film have a special place as an artistic media?

Prints from film can be either analog/wet or digital from scans. What are you considering here? Analog prints have a richness that I don't see much in inkjet prints. At least for black and white, I would posit the other way around--analog prints from digital media--might be of more artistic significance (of course if the original is sh_t, it doesn't matter what kind of print is made).

Arklatexian · Dec 27, 2019

jtk said:
See Photrio's "Photographers" ... you've apparently been homebound for a decade or three.

I would mention Salgado but there's a lot of jealousy on Photrio around him.

If I "just don't like" some of Salgado's (or some of any other person's work), is it because I am jealous? I think not. There a few that I have never liked "any" of their work, that I have seen (copies of) and I am certainly not jealous of their work. If I "admire" someone's work (and there are many), I am not jealous (envious, maybe, but not jealous). Being "jealous" of something like that is a complete waste of energy. But then, so is "envious"...........Regards!

jtk · Dec 27, 2019

pocketshaver said:
Its just the truth. I doubt you would even make the claim to be able to process 100 rolls of film at a time without a mini lab.

Even the professionals who use film, I doubt youll find more then 30% who when develop film anymore. And those who DO are doing small amounts and simply send in the 50 rolls from a wedding or car event off to say darkroom for processing

Many amateur labs have begun to return DVDs , discarding the film they process unless that's requested.
Most wedding and event photographers just send their files to some massive digital printer in some other timezone ...few under 40 have ever shot film seriously. Time marches on.

A good friend and fine photog is nearly able to stop making photos, just orders huge, beautiful inkjet prints on demand for her customers ...by local Costco...work she did locally over a year or two. 24x36 often, sometimes same day. If you're able to accept 3 day service Staples is great for people who can't print their own, tho I'd only use them for canvas mounted banners/murals because I do print my own (scanning my own b&w if I've shot it...easy-peasy ).

Why all the resistance to learning digital skills?

jtk · Dec 27, 2019

pocketshaver said:
Its just the truth. I doubt you would even make the claim to be able to process 100 rolls of film at a time without a mini lab.

Even the professionals who use film, I doubt youll find more then 30% who even develop film anymore. And those who DO are doing small amounts and simply send in the 50 rolls from a wedding or car event off to say darkroom for processing

I've never processed 100 rolls of film at a time, but I did routinely process 30-60 rolls of Ektachrome at a time, virtually every work day. There were emergency situations when we had to process a lot more than 100 same day. Nikor reels, Calumet nitrogen burst tank line, Ektachrome E4. We could just as easily have processed dozens of sheets of LF Ektachrome or color neg every day if we had sought that business and wanted to do the plumbing...One guy who processed dozens of sheets of chrome every week night for at least 20 years, also in San Francisco, restricted himself to Ektachrome E3 sheet film.

Processing 100 rolls of color negative in a day would be a lot easier than Ektachrome because color neg doesn't require slide mounts and clients are (probably) less demanding.

removed account4 · Dec 27, 2019

jtk said:
Why all the resistance to learning digital skills?

people don't like "the other" for a lot of people digital or digital skills = the other.

jtk said:
Staples is great for people who can't print their own

they make me digital negatives sometimes, kink0s / fed exoffice makes them for me 2, if i don't ink print them myself
10¢ / 8x10 sheet, 2x that for 8x20 super easy for transparency film or paper. way cheeper than pictorico and pigment

rayonline_nz · Dec 27, 2019

Yes, over in NZ drugstores also don't develop film anymore nor send them away. Neither do stores like Kmart and stores similar to Walmart like you guys have. Here, we need to use camera store photo labs or specialise labs the few that remain. Or the 2 or so home DIY business mail in and mail out or else they will discard your negatives after 6 months. Some labs that offer services tend to provide a film processing and then scans so maybe those here that shoot film is for that cool online social media factor. Like they would have at least 2 scan options, social scans and archival scans at diff resolutions.

Having been with different groups. You clearly have those maybe on this forum that shoot maybe 100 or more rolls a year but a lot others the standard might just be 1 or 2 rolls per month. Also here in NZ we cannot get color chemistry but 1 or 2 people I know import 3 packets of color chemistry over and pay the $60US (for delivery), hahaha. Many also likely to have a period where they shoot film and then might not shoot it for 6 or 12 months. I gather if you are doing general photography, you are to shoot something it's one or the other, if you have shot it in film why shoot it with digital. With a larger population in larger countries you might still get decent amount of people that shoot film but in a place like ours with just 4.7million people it's a lot harder and I think for all countries the vast majority of the population would think film is too expensive and difficult.

100 rolls of C41 here for processing prob be $600US + the 100 rolls of films. Without scans / prints.

Pieter12 · Dec 27, 2019

rayonline_nz said:
Another angle is that if digital tools were available to them, would they had used it? Or even as a hybrid method.

Artists have always experimented with media, be it pigment or other materials. Sometimes it is the achieve a certain effect, sometimes it is budgetary restraints. Many artworks have deteriorated of the years because of the materials. The artistic merit of a piece has little to do with what is used, much less its value--witness the duct-taped banana recently sold (and later eaten as rogue performance art) in Miami.

In my opinion, those who insist on digital or analog as the grail in photography should get the broomstick removed from their recta.

jtk · Dec 28, 2019

[QUOTE="pocketshaver,
Developing your own film can be fun, it CAN be affordable. However MOST of us do not shoot enough film to make the purchase of a Noritsu or Frontier scanner feasible or the purchase of a professional grade mini lab developing system. Nor does shooting say 2 rolls of film a month or even per week make the cost of those 130 dollar develop at home kits, the purchase of heater equipment for color film, or the purchase of chemicals worth while[/QUOTE]

I don't know who that "us" is.

"Worth while" is entirely subjective ...what's far too expensive for a child or homeless person isn't expensive for somebody further along in life. A stainless Nikor tank and Nikor reel (mine are ancient) is enough to process any color negative or color slide film...no need for heater equipment if you're not living on the street. Many of us have printed color of various types in temporary bathroom darkrooms, some for years (I did Kodak color neg, Kodak color pos,, Agfacolor, Cibachrome, and B&W) .

When I moved from CA to NM I had been used to same day processing of chrome (even Kodachrome from the fine regional EK lab). I was used to very fine quality CA lab work. Under pressure from family, when I got here, I shot a wedding and discovered that prints took forever and were terrible at best (later I discovered that we actually had a good lab). That SNAFU led me immediately to purchase an inexpensive Epson flatbed scanner and excellent Epson 2200 printer in order to make reasonable prints for the now-divorced bride...I still relied on a lab for color film processing but had to learn how to inkjet print letter size and 13X19 to reasonable standard (to my taste, as well). Epson's new archival pigments had just arrived on the scene, a historic blessing for color photography. Bought and still use a Nikon scanner, replaced Epson printer with Canon, putting an end to clogs.

Digital Mainstream

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