Film is not dead: Demand soars for vintage cameras in developing trend

[Brendan Quirk]

Unlike others here, seeing a print appear in the developer holds no magic for me. But having a GOOD print hanging on the wall, ah, that's a different story. It's a lot harder than one would think, so when it happens it's something special.

I don't see the pictures appear in the developer - I keep the safelight so low, it would be pointless. I develop by strict timing, anyway. I used to do a lot of Panalure (panchromatic paper) - pure darkness, so I am used to not looking. Of course, I remember "The Magic" from the early days, and am not in any way disparaging it!

 

[Pieter12]

For me the magic that happens in the darkroom is in the whole process before the paper is submerged in the developer. Cropping, the amount of contrast, dodging and burning to reveal and obscure, invisibly molding the image to my own personal vision. It only becomes apparent when the white light is turned on.

 

[albada]

For me the magic that happens in the darkroom is in the whole process before the paper is submerged in the developer. Cropping, the amount of contrast, dodging and burning to reveal and obscure, invisibly molding the image to my own personal vision. It only becomes apparent when the white light is turned on.

Well put!
Turning on the room light often slaps me in the face.

 

[jimjm]

I'm still amazed when I pull the film out of the developing tank and see that there's a viable image there. Even better after I determine if my exposure and composition worked as I had hoped. After thousands of negatives, that feeling of accomplishment never gets old.

 

[markjwyatt]

Well put!
Turning on the room light often slaps me in the face.

Yes, this is the final judgement (unless you do spotting also).

 

[Roger Cole]

Nothing wrong with shooting wet plates, but most people moved onto dry plates and then film. If a fully analogue way floats your boat, that's great. There's nothing wrong with that. it's laudable even. But you're now in a minority even in the hobby of film shooting.

Fine with me. I'm in a minority of many things. I not only collect wrist watches (not expensive ones, the most expensive ones I own were a few hundred dollars and some down to <$50, I collect what I like and will wear) and wear one almost everywhere. Yeah, sure, I have a phone in my pocket. But taking out my phone to see the time ends up taking ten minutes by the time I check messages "as long as I have it out.." not to mention that even if I resist that a glance at my wrist is still much quicker and easier and much less obtrusive. I own two cars, and both have manual transmissions. I own a nice turntable and still buy vinyl records. I love my home theater set up but, while I do have the usual streaming services, I'm a big advocate of physical media for movies (and some favorite TV shows where I own the series) and have about 450 movies, and growing weekly, on Blu-ray and 4K UHD. Even in film photography I don't shoot much 35mm anymore, mostly medium and large (4x5) format. I've been into ham radio since 1977 and I still am, another one where people ask, if they even know what it is, if it still exists. I'm sure I could go on and think of more.

 

[Roger Cole]

Well, the cable company's charge for cable usually includes a connection to the internet. My Comcast charge which includes a 200MB bandwidth, TV stations, and landline ISOP telephone runs around $225 a month about $75 more than they charged two years ago. The problem is there is no competition for us. We're stuck with Comcast if we want cable. Then you add Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other services, communication services really starts to add up. Oh, then cell phone service, XM Serius for two cars, etc. I guess it's better than trying to get rid of the snow on TV's from rabbit ears antennas.

You can save a lot of money if you ditch the regular RF cable and just get the Internet service.

Where I live I could also get AT&T fiber, up to 1 Gbps if I wanted to pay for it (something that, as a single guy never streaming more than one stream and not gaming I have absolutely zero use for) or could get similar speeds to my Comcast for less money. But a work colleague has AT&T fiber and hates it, unreliable here still, though in his case he has it as a backup to his Comcast so he has both. Plus I'm lazy. My Comcast connection works, it ain't broke, don't fix it. I don't even KNOW what I pay for the streaming services I have, but I'd bet it's less than $80 a month. That doesn't include Prime, which I'd have even without the streaming because I buy so much from Amazon.

 

[Roger Cole]

Ha! It's fun looking at those old Kodak Dye Transfer technique ads and brochures, stating how simple the process was for amateur home users. Well, it was, at least compared to Carbro color. It's all relative. Some people probably complain how inconvenient it is to flip a light switch. Where there's a will, there's a way.

The biggest problem in this area, which is arguably the richest per capita in the world, even given those many of us like me who are not in fact rich, is the sheer expense of real estate itself. "Low income" and perhaps even homelessness, is legally defined as anyone making under $160 per yr in certain cities. And a techie couple making over 300K between them might not even be able to furnish a house they recently purcased. I bought my own property here over 45 years ago, which was a different story. So even though I encounter quite a few young techies who would sincerely like to have a home darkroom, even at their seemingly high incomes they might not be able to afford that kind of remodel, at least as any kind of realistic priority. Some of them have to turn their digs into a flop house filled with all their friends sharing expenses, just to make ends meet. Welcome to the new Industrial Revolution sweatshop reality. If Steinbeck were still around, he'd write a novel about it called the Chips of Wrath.

I'd say that if you make less than $160 a year you really ARE low income! (I know you meant 160k.)

Does it not occur to them to move away? Especially with so many tech jobs being remote these days. I've been working fully remotely since March 2020. My position was just eliminated (after 18 years with this company) as of Dec. 31, and I'm talking to another company about what I hope is my next gig (looks very promising, fingers crossed) which is also completely remote. They made a point of telling me I can live anywhere I want and work that job, as long as I have reliable high speed Internet. The cost of living here in the suburbs of Atlanta is way lower than out in your area, but I've still toyed with the idea of moving back to the mountains I came from in east TN where it's still lower yet, by a considerable amount. I probably won't - I'm in the process of remodeling my downstairs here with some outdoor improvements also planned anyway, and all my friends are now in the Atlanta area. The north Georgia mountains are a different matter; I could see myself moving up there in several years, or perhaps just getting some weekend getaway property up there. If I could duplicate the now almost fully customized to my taste house I have here I'd really consider it - and I probably could for what I could get out of this house, with money left over. It'd just be a right royal pain.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

You can save a lot of money if you ditch the regular RF cable and just get the Internet service.

Where I live I could also get AT&T fiber, up to 1 Gbps if I wanted to pay for it (something that, as a single guy never streaming more than one stream and not gaming I have absolutely zero use for) or could get similar speeds to my Comcast for less money. But a work colleague has AT&T fiber and hates it, unreliable here still, though in his case he has it as a backup to his Comcast so he has both. Plus I'm lazy. My Comcast connection works, it ain't broke, don't fix it. I don't even KNOW what I pay for the streaming services I have, but I'd bet it's less than $80 a month. That doesn't include Prime, which I'd have even without the streaming because I buy so much from Amazon.

Internet service here by itself without TV cable and land line phone is around $83 a month for 400MBS. My wife insists we must keep landline phone service so with the Internet but no TV cable it;s $125 month. So currently I'm paying another $90 a month for approxmately 200 channels on three TV's with remotes. Comcast got you coming and going.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Hi Roger. "Tech" is a very complex thing. Not everything can be done remotely. Consumer electronics is just the tip of the iceberg. In this area, you've got an intense demographic tangle of computer and software development, military and space applications with actual manufacture, big battery and transportation innovations (like Tesla), and quite a few giant pharmaceutical and biotech industries requiring a tremendous amount of in-house R&D and facilities operations. So things are in flux at the moment, with only certain mainly keyboard kinds of tasks now feasible from a home office, and many other tasks still requiring either grueling long daily commutes from inland burbs, or else struggling with the extremely high real estate and rental prices closer in.

An innovative option is how some big tech films offer amenities like their own gyms and showers and cafeterias. Then young workers will park a motorhome or camper on some allowable nearby street and bicycle to work. Not exactly "homeless" style - some of those tricked out fancy campers cost over 300K. But by doing that for eight or ten years, they'll walk away multi-millionaires instead of being ridiculously in debt to a local mortgage. But many tech jobs involve temporary contracts, with some benefits, but no guarantee of permanent employment. The landscape keeps shifting, and some people roll the dice with start-ups, working endless hours for potentially a giant gold strike down the line, or potentially a huge disappointment.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

A reminder to those who haven't read my posts before: I've been photographing and working in my own darkroom since the 1960s, have and use film cameras from 35mm through 11x14 and also employ electronic equipment for capturing images as well as to print those and files from scanned film.

All this "magic" talk is hype. A photochemical process is science, not magic. Magic? With the press of a button, my inkjet printers convert digits into the best looking prints attainable. Unlike gelatin silver papers available today, Hahnemuhle FineArt Baryta Satin prints made on my Canon PRO-100 have a surface that's of perfect reflectance. Shiny enough to support incredibly rich blacks, but not so shiny that they demand rigidly controlled lighting to view without being obscured by the veiling glare of reflections. A perfect color match for Rising mat board. No optical brightening agents to induce garish whites. And those prints "magically" spit out of a machine on my desk.

The only shortcoming of magical inkjet prints is that they have lower life expectancy than legacy gelatin silver prints. Note that we've no reliable data concerning the longevity of today's darkroom papers. For almost everyone here, that's of no consequence. Look at the Is there a really strong interest in film photography thread for some reality about how estate executors and legatees send almost all personal photos directly to landfills. That's been my experience with the three estates for which I was executor. In the case of exceptional people whose work might be of some value to the world at large, whether because they're famous and it's so-called "art" or they are doing HABS/HAER/HALS projects, shooting on polyester-base film and printing whichever way desired solves the image life expectancy problem for at least 500 years.

Bottom line: film is not dead -- yet. When the fad young people are driving of 35mm color to be posted on "social" media fades away (pun intended), the second great industry contraction will occur. That will result in prices which make what today's PHOTRIO posters moan about seem like the good old days. If an extremely small manufacturing base can still be supported by a market with extremely high levels of disposable income, some film will survive. We'll see.

Actually, some of you will see. I don't expect that point to be reached within my actuarially probable remaining lifetime. It's like when someone hysterically scared about a non-critical medical issue ask their doctor "am I going to die?" and gets the answer "yes, but not today."

 

[markjwyatt]

...

All this "magic" talk is hype. A photochemical process is science, not magic. Magic? With the press of a button, my inkjet printers convert digits into the best looking prints attainable. ...

I don't know- I remember the excitement of seeing a print come up under safelight (even though you got even a bigger kick when you turned the white light on). I never really felt that with digital printing because I already saw the final result on screen before I printed it.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

...All this "magic" talk is hype. A photochemical process is science, not magic. Magic? With the press of a button, my inkjet printers convert digits into the best looking prints attainable......

I don't know- I remember the excitement of seeing a print come up under safelight (even though you got even a bigger kick when you turned the white light on)...

There are numerous non-magical things that can cause excitement which aren't "magic." For example, science.

...I never really felt that with digital printing because I already saw the final result on screen before I printed it.

No one ever saw a final inkjet print result on a screen. Transmitted-light screen images, whether on an electronic display or from a physical transparency in an optical projection system on a white screen, cannot approximate an inkjet print's characteristics in any useful way. So-called "soft proofing" is worthless.

 

[Pieter12]

I realize there is no magic to photography or printing. But there is a magical feeling when one does what could be imagined as incantations over a piece of photographic paper under an enlarger and sees the hoped-for/expected/unexpected results when the white light finally gets turned on. I am sometimes a little disappointed when the negative is good enough there is no manipulation--I feel like part of the process is missing, some of the challenge is gone. Not that I'm complaining.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Polaroid's been there, done that. A screaming failure. Polarchrome, Polapan and Polagraf 35mm instant films. Very delicate emulsions, the black & white positive film had an interesting look.

Next time I post a humor tag.

 

[Sirius Glass]

We had bathrooms before we had the Ilford pop up tent. Do young people not have bathrooms? And what about the changing bag and kitchen counter for developing film.

Of course being able to quickly develop your own film eliminates the exquisite sense of anticipation of waiting four or five days to get your film back from the film processor, which young people cite as one of the main reasons they shoot film.

Moving my enlarger around on a cart is not practical because of its size and weight. Also a cart would not dampen vibrations enough.

 

[Pieter12]

Next time I post a humor tag.

Next time do some research before posting a supposed joke.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I don't see the pictures appear in the developer - I keep the safelight so low, it would be pointless. I develop by strict timing, anyway. I used to do a lot of Panalure (panchromatic paper) - pure darkness, so I am used to not looking. Of course, I remember "The Magic" from the early days, and am not in any way disparaging it!

I have more consistent results by using Dektol and timing the development for two minutes. That brings consistency and repeatability between prints.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I'd say that if you make less than $160 a year you really ARE low income! (I know you meant 160k.)

Does it not occur to them to move away?

The homeless are here because of the warmer weather. They left places in the midwest and rust belt because of the cold. Others came here to get health care at the Veterans' Hospital. They thought they had the money to rent an apartment only to discover that apartments here cost several times what they cost at there hometowns. They have no where else but the streets. Only recently the VA moved them to a tent city on the VA property so they have bathroom facilities and around the clock protection. Life's problems are not solved with cookie cutter answers and glib political pronouncements.

 

[markjwyatt]

There are numerous non-magical things that can cause excitement which aren't "magic." For example, science.



...

When "magic" is used in quotes, it implies an emotional response. Even scientists have emotions (well some of them at least ).

 

[Roger Cole]

Hi Roger. "Tech" is a very complex thing. Not everything can be done remotely. Consumer electronics is just the tip of the iceberg. In this area, you've got an intense demographic tangle of computer and software development, military and space applications with actual manufacture, big battery and transportation innovations (like Tesla), and quite a few giant pharmaceutical and biotech industries requiring a tremendous amount of in-house R&D and facilities operations. So things are in flux at the moment, with only certain mainly keyboard kinds of tasks now feasible from a home office, and many other tasks still requiring either grueling long daily commutes from inland burbs, or else struggling with the extremely high real estate and rental prices closer in.

An innovative option is how some big tech films offer amenities like their own gyms and showers and cafeterias. Then young workers will park a motorhome or camper on some allowable nearby street and bicycle to work. Not exactly "homeless" style - some of those tricked out fancy campers cost over 300K. But by doing that for eight or ten years, they'll walk away multi-millionaires instead of being ridiculously in debt to a local mortgage. But many tech jobs involve temporary contracts, with some benefits, but no guarantee of permanent employment. The landscape keeps shifting, and some people roll the dice with start-ups, working endless hours for potentially a giant gold strike down the line, or potentially a huge disappointment.

Oh yes, of course I'm aware there are plenty of jobs that can't be done remotely even if all companies allowed it. But when I hear "tech" as in the jobs I think of out there I think of primarily code developers (what we used to call programmers,) network folks (my specialty, I've been an IP engineer working for two, soon to be three I hope, ISPs for over 20 years,) most of their management and similar jobs. The company I'm leaving lost pretty much our entire Design Engineering department and several other positions a few years ago to Silicon Valley jobs done remotely. My friend/colleague, and he wasn't in design but did a lot of network modeling for us and was hired for that, went to work for Microsoft, making what is probably double or so what he had been making here, but still lives almost rural, further outside of what is already one of the more remote suburbs, or nearly suburb, of Atlanta. When he was negotiating the job at MS he told them, "I'd be walking away from a nice pension plan" as this company still had one then and still does for those of us hired before 2018. I just put in to start getting mine when I depart the company in January. Microsoft's response was, "welll...we don't have anything like that, but how about some nice stock options?" As he told us at the time (the market was in at least pretty good shape then, better than now anyway) "Guys I HAVE to take this. The stock options alone will pay off my house."

But of course you gotta do what you gotta do, but it probably is an option for at least some people. I like the thing with the RV, which makes all kinds of sense. Pouring a slab with an enclosure like a large pre-fab garage just for added security when away and then parking a used RV or travel trailer on it is one of my thoughts I'm mulling over if I go the weekend property in the mountains route instead of moving there. And yes, zoning in those areas will allow it.

There's no doubt that housing costs are out of control in much or most of the US now, and I'm sure that factors in to people not doing darkroom work. But the comment about "what about someone living in an efficiency?" struck me because my first thought was, "I don't know a single person living in an efficiency." And I don't. I have a friend living in his van he parks in the driveway of friends or people he's doing work for (he's a really good carpenter) but that's completely by choice. He likes the freedom of it and the lack of expense, but he's not the sort who would be interested in photography much less darkroom work. I don't know a single other person that isn't living in at least a one bedroom apartment. But THEN I realized that I also don't know, at least well enough to know their living arrangements, a single person under about 35-37 years old now (aside, obviously, from children of those people.) So other than "both property values and rent have become insanely expensive" I really don't know much about the living arrangements of younger people these days. Still - even an efficiency has a bathroom, and a kitchen area. That's sufficient, if awkward and inconvenient.

 

[Roger Cole]

Internet service here by itself without TV cable and land line phone is around $83 a month for 400MBS. My wife insists we must keep landline phone service so with the Internet but no TV cable it;s $125 month. So currently I'm paying another $90 a month for approxmately 200 channels on three TV's with remotes. Comcast got you coming and going.

I also don't know a single person here in the Atlanta area who still has a conventional land line. (My sister back in TN does.) Some have VOIP numbers either through independent providers or their ISP like Comcast (maybe that's what you meant?) but not a POTS line. I can kind of see that, as there's redundancy for your cell phone(s.) You pay less money for more speed than I get here. I get about 300 Mbps and pay a lot more than that. But "it is what it is" because, as I said, I MUST have Internet. Even if I were not a complete web junky, and I am, I have to have it for my work. So Internet service doesn't factor in to cost comparisons of video for me.

 

[Roger Cole]

A reminder to those who haven't read my posts before: I've been photographing and working in my own darkroom since the 1960s, have and use film cameras from 35mm through 11x14 and also employ electronic equipment for capturing images as well as to print those and files from scanned film.

All this "magic" talk is hype. A photochemical process is science, not magic. Magic? With the press of a button, my inkjet printers convert digits into the best looking prints attainable. Unlike gelatin silver papers available today, Hahnemuhle FineArt Baryta Satin prints made on my Canon PRO-100 have a surface that's of perfect reflectance. Shiny enough to support incredibly rich blacks, but not so shiny that they demand rigidly controlled lighting to view without being obscured by the veiling glare of reflections. A perfect color match for Rising mat board. No optical brightening agents to induce garish whites. And those prints "magically" spit out of a machine on my desk.

The only shortcoming of magical inkjet prints is that they have lower life expectancy than legacy gelatin silver prints. Note that we've no reliable data concerning the longevity of today's darkroom papers. For almost everyone here, that's of no consequence. Look at the Is there a really strong interest in film photography thread for some reality about how estate executors and legatees send almost all personal photos directly to landfills. That's been my experience with the three estates for which I was executor. In the case of exceptional people whose work might be of some value to the world at large, whether because they're famous and it's so-called "art" or they are doing HABS/HAER/HALS projects, shooting on polyester-base film and printing whichever way desired solves the image life expectancy problem for at least 500 years.

Bottom line: film is not dead -- yet. When the fad young people are driving of 35mm color to be posted on "social" media fades away (pun intended), the second great industry contraction will occur. That will result in prices which make what today's PHOTRIO posters moan about seem like the good old days. If an extremely small manufacturing base can still be supported by a market with extremely high levels of disposable income, some film will survive. We'll see.

Actually, some of you will see. I don't expect that point to be reached within my actuarially probable remaining lifetime. It's like when someone hysterically scared about a non-critical medical issue ask their doctor "am I going to die?" and gets the answer "yes, but not today."

It is not "magical" in any literal sense, true of course. But at least SEEMS emotionally magical to many of us, in a way that a print being squirted out of an ink jet printer never will.

I really love the whole aspect of somewhat arcane (today, to most people) and basically over 150 year old (but of course vastly improved upon, but the principles aren't much different, for B&W. since the advent of dry plates) technology. Making something to hang on the wall with such tech has an emotional appeal to me that is almost "emotionally magical" even without watching a print come up in the developer tray.

 

[Roger Cole]

Moving my enlarger around on a cart is not practical because of its size and weight. Also a cart would not dampen vibrations enough.

You don't need it to dampen vibrations. You just need to use a foot switch and not touch or bump it. I've worked for most of my time in photography with enlargers from small 35mm only ones up to my Omega D2V sitting on plastic folding banquet tables. Perfectly adequate - just give a couple of seconds for vibrations to stop, use a foot switch for your timer (or directly if you prefer a metronome or such) and don't bump the thing while exposing. It takes a modicum of care when dodging and burning but just that - a bit.

 

[Roger Cole]

The homeless are here because of the warmer weather. They left places in the midwest and rust belt because of the cold. Others came here to get health care at the Veterans' Hospital. They thought they had the money to rent an apartment only to discover that apartments here cost several times what they cost at there hometowns. They have no where else but the streets. Only recently the VA moved them to a tent city on the VA property so they have bathroom facilities and around the clock protection. Life's problems are not solved with cookie cutter answers and glib political pronouncements.

That's a straw man argument Sirius. Neither Drew nor I were talking about homeless unemployed people. We were talking about people with decent jobs who have roofs over their head but may not be able to set up even temporary darkrooms under those roofs.