Here's Whats Behind the Comeback of Vinyl and Printed Photographs

[George Mann]

That's quite a claim, do you have a source?

This is one of many "secrets" that the intellectual elites have kept from the masses!

It would suggest Beethoven was a dunce.

I don't recall him being a member of any audio societies.

 

[blockend]

Compressed to hell and back by YouTube demons, sometimes the message transcends the medium:

 

[Agulliver]

I think there are several different types of person buying vinyl records....and likely photographic film.

I grew up on vinyl and film....started using both at a very early age. Before I could read I had a collection of around 50 45rpm singles, I could identify them by the artwork on the labels and the pattern in the groove. Before I was six I could handle a vintage medium format folding camera, intuitively setting aperture, shutter and focus. All this by 1979....fast forward a decade and I'm now a teenager with a decent hi-fi system in my bedroom and later than some of my friends my first CD player. It's an expensive Marantz model, wheedled out of my parents by doing gardening, housework, Christmas money etc...£500 and 6kg of sexiness.....and I was disappointed. Sure, I could "hear" the lack of hiss or rumble but I knew something was missing. As a clasically trained musician I was probably missing harmonics...I still am not totally sure but every CD I tried sounded dead. Felt dead. In some cases I had the same material on LP and even with the relatively inexpensive turntable I had at the time I just couldn't listen to the CD. After spending two fruitless years trying to convince myself to "go digital" I gave up and bought a Systemdek IIx900 which I still have to this day. Indeed I have it's predecessor as my "office turntable" at work. And it's predecessor which was handed down by my dad now has pride of place in a close friend's house. People did think I was mad spending good money on a turntable in 1991. Who's laughing now?

So I never really stopped buying records. I noticed "vinyl" enter the lexicon partly via DJs where using vinyl rather than any digital source was seen as a badge of honour. Also I noted at a street food event locally last weekend there were two very middle aged DJs using Technics SL1200 decks, and with them box upon box of 45's from the 1970s onwards.....probably earning the most money in their long careers and certainly gaining huge respect for spinning actual vinyl. Indeed it is said that it was hip-hop and the need for real vinyl in clubs that kept many of the record presses going through the 90s and early 2000s. Not my music at all but a big thank you to those hip-hop DJs who kept the presses going.

Yes, you have the "hipster" generation who discovered vinyl as something new to them. It is said that many don't even play their records. And those who came back to vinly because of the preference for physical objects over the intangible.

Factor in the loudness wars and the fact that sometimes a vinyl LP is mastered completely differently to the CD and download/stream....and you have another audience for the LP.

As for nomenclature....I always called them records....at least once I was old enough to pronounce the word....when I was first taught how to use an autochanger I was too young and it came out "gakki". "Record" or "LP"....if one was being posh. "Vinyl" came in sometime around the turn of the decade 89/90 to distinguish between CD and records and it kind of stuck. It may well have been a DJ thing. False marketing and "wisdom" had it that CDs were better in every respect, when in fact all they really ever had going for them was convenience. I knew the tide was turning when my cousin visited with his kids, and I was looking for a specific record to reminisce over with my cousin....perhaps 2007? His then 10 year old son joined in the hunt "Oh vinyls....do you know they sound better than CDs?"

As for film photography....I note several friends and acquaintances dusting off old cameras and trying them again. My local camera shop sees lots of people doing the same, or youngsters who have found/been given a parent's old camera (old being anything from 50s to 90s) and want to try it. Crucially they are coming back to buy more film, and to have their film processed. I did stop film photography for about 3 years, and kind of forgot how much fun it is and how it can be more creative than digital. Also how it certainly has an individual look even if most of the time I scan rather than print. Seeing people out and about with film cameras does have an effect, more people want to try. That's why now is the time to advertise and raise awareness....people often ask me "where can I buy film?" and I point out two shops in the town centre that sell it....they're quite amazed....I might be out and about with a box camera and people assume it's not loaded "because surely you can't still get film for that?"......"Sir, I can still get film for my 1899 Folding Pocket Kodak. This is easy, I could buy some over the road".

 

[MattKing]

I am an audiophile in "recovery" - just can't seem to find a nearby meeting.
I do enjoy poking fun at some of the associated pretensions, but I also appreciate good sounding stuff.
Still have a few SACDs, and every time I listen to them wonder at how that technology's potential was wasted.
I have a turntable back in a place of prominence, but am just as likely to listen to a CD in a car.
Anyone here ever had a turntable in their car? My Dad's cousin's husband did back in the 1950s, and apparently it was wonderful.
Of course he was a producer, and the bandleader for the CBS orchestra, so he was allowed some eccentricities.

 

[GLS]

Still have a few SACDs, and every time I listen to them wonder at how that technology's potential was wasted.

It is indeed a shame, as they sound light years better than CDs, assuming they have been mastered properly, and from an appropriate source (i.e. not just up-sampled from 16/44.1). You can still buy them, but they are for the most part limited to jazz or classical releases (with some exceptions). Of course, when the ability to rip the DSD files from the SACDs came along some years ago (originally done with the Playstation 3) that re-invigorated interest in the format. Since then there have been a slew of niche sites (HDTracks, NativeDSD, Acoustic Sounds, Channel Classics etc) offering legit downloads of the DSD files, along with many manufacturers releasing DACs which can handle the files. There are even portable music players/DACs which can handle them now. One can then play them back via a media center, portable player or a PC.

 

[jerrybro]

Those could be used with a laptop or smartphone as the source. I was talking about the spend needed to get an acceptable source quality from vinyl. Turntable, arm, cartridge, phono amp and record cleaner.

As well as $$$, a price many audiophiles pay for their passion is an intolerance to flaws in the audio reproduction. It can destroy their listening pleasure. We're all different in what we can tolerate. Poor quality recordings drives my eldest nuts but I don't mind. It's the opposite with guitarists making squeaks. He doesn't mind and I can't stand it. When an audiophile keeps noticing a flaw in the source, they often switch to a different source for the majority of their listening.

On the opposite end, I know a few people that mainly play their vinyl when it's party time. Plenty of Rice Krispies and some scratches. Good fun had by all.

Actually, the rate of sound improvement drops off as the quality of the component improves, there is a point of diminishing returns where most people can't hear the difference. A reasonable turntable, mine is a 1970s vintage manual direct drive, with a good cartridge and a good stylus goes a long way. Most of the complaints people have with LPs is noise due to dirt. Instead of spending thousands on playback a few hundred a good cleaning regimen make a major improvement. Audio is full of snake oil charlatans selling it.

Back to film. There are a lot of similarities with LPs, a solid well built and aligned camera using good clean optics will produce good negatives. How good the negatives are depend on the quality and age of the film. The rest of the film to print chain that results on something worth hanging on the wall can be likened to the rest of the audio system chain that fills the room with sound.

I live in the world of precision metrology, and here everything matters. I try to apply the same principles to audio, photography, and everything else I'm interested in.

 

[macfred]

Anyone here ever had a turntable in their car? My Dad's cousin's husband did back in the 1950s, and apparently it was wonderful.
...

Never had one but captured this car with a Philips Mignon car record player a few weeks ago ...

 

[Ces1um]

Never had one but captured this car with a Philips Mignon car record player a few weeks ago ...

I imagine the tracking force of the stylus/needle must be pretty high to keep the record from skipping. Must wear out a record fairly quickly! Still, it's amazing that they could be fitted into a car and actually function.

 

[macfred]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWJITs6UwAA4Z1U.jpg
Muhammad Ali is shown jockeying singles into the Philips record player in his 1959 Cadillac Eldorado

 

[awty]

Never had one but captured this car with a Philips Mignon car record player a few weeks ago ...

View attachment 232681

That is very cool, I want one.

 

[awty]

Old analog systems had form as well as function. Now days everything is a plain and boring black or white box. Took me much time to find an audio streamer to go with the rest of my audio system. .
This one was rescued from the Nautilus

 

[albireo]

Wish I could recommend this somehow.

You hit the nail on the head.

Anyway, as to the article linked in the OP: the tangibility of both vinyl and analogue photography is definitely an aspect. However, in regard to vinyl specifically, in my view a very large part of its resurgance is a by-product of the loudness wars. The invention of the CD (and digital music generally) allowed the music to be compressed/brickwalled to within an inch of its life, which if done sacrifices all the dynamics (which are a natural part of music) for the sake of volume, and makes it incredibly unpleasant & fatiguing to listen to for more than 5 minutes. This practice really only started gaining traction in the mid-90s however, and reached its apogee in the early-to-mid 2000s (coinciding with the rise of the iPod), when the whole vinyl counter culture kicked off again. Music mastered for vinyl cannot (out of necessity) be compressed to anywhere near the same degree, otherwise there is a real risk of losing tracking during playback (i.e. the needle can literally jump out of the groove). This, I believe, is the number one reason so many people seem to prefer the "sound of vinyl". Of course, digital music always could be (and still sometimes is) produced well and with all its dynamics intact, but that is not what the "wisdom" of the music industry bean counters demanded, and therefore such efforts were always marginalised.

Since the aforementioned mid-2000s dark days, there has been a (very) slow general reversal in the degree to which mainstream music is compressed, but it still remains far too much IMO.

 

[foc]

Regarding analogue systems, in another thread on here, I mentioned that microfilm etc was a great archival storage format. To access it all you need is a light source and a magnifying glass. So simple but effective.
And negatives are the same. No matter how old your negs are or what format, you can still read them and make a print by light transmission (by scanner or optical print).

Part of the appeal of film and film cameras is that they are NOT perfect and don't always give perfect results. They are hailed now for their faults.
Back in the day we strived for perfection with film, little or no grain, colour saturation, exposure latitude etc. Then along came digital and it made everything so perfect, exposure, ISO etc.
What was once film's achilled heel is now its' strength.

But then as film users, we knew that all along.

 

[removedacct1]

That is one ad crazy web site. The content is unavailable if you're using an ad blocker, and I see why. After allowing the ads they were everywhere, dwarfing the content.

Any content hidden behind an “ad paywall” like that I ignore. It’s never a good experience when you do grant permission to load ads.

 

[pentaxuser]

The whole thread has virtually moved to only one aspect of the article, namely music and vinyl records and this may reflect the weight given to the printed photograph revival i the article where the author almost seems to cover this as afterthought and gives very little evidence of a comeback in printed photos. I remain to be convinced that printed photos will ever make anything resembling a comeback and certainly I fear greatly for the future of b&w silver gelatin prints

pentaxuser

 

[CMoore]

The whole thread has virtually moved to only one aspect of the article, namely music and vinyl records and this may reflect the weight given to the printed photograph revival i the article where the author almost seems to cover this as afterthought and gives very little evidence of a comeback in printed photos. I remain to be convinced that printed photos will ever make anything resembling a comeback and certainly I fear greatly for the future of b&w silver gelatin prints

pentaxuser

Yes, i share your sentiments.
On Youtube, i see there are A LOT of "younger people" that are shooting FILM, but the large majority of them seem to scan the negs.
It is something that is hard for me to grasp. If you are not going to print....... it Almost seems that it has become Hip/Cool to say..... "Yeah, i shoot film"
This is all supposition on my part, but it is my experience.
If it got that bad (paper sales), would Ilford and Foma continue to manufacture film, even if they stopped making paper.?

 

[George Mann]

The whole thread has virtually moved to only one aspect of the article, namely music and vinyl records and this may reflect the weight given to the printed photograph revival i the article where the author almost seems to cover this as afterthought and gives very little evidence of a comeback in printed photos. I remain to be convinced that printed photos will ever make anything resembling a comeback and certainly I fear greatly for the future of b&w silver gelatin prints

pentaxuser

This has been my biggest pet peeve since the demise of Kodachrome. The lack of affordable, readily available optical analog print services is a serious boon to a true revival of film use.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Those could be used with a laptop or smartphone as the source. I was talking about the spend needed to get an acceptable source quality from vinyl. Turntable, arm, cartridge, phono amp and record cleaner.

As well as $$$, a price many audiophiles pay for their passion is an intolerance to flaws in the audio reproduction. It can destroy their listening pleasure. We're all different in what we can tolerate. Poor quality recordings drives my eldest nuts but I don't mind. It's the opposite with guitarists making squeaks. He doesn't mind and I can't stand it. When an audiophile keeps noticing a flaw in the source, they often switch to a different source for the majority of their listening.

On the opposite end, I know a few people that mainly play their vinyl when it's party time. Plenty of Rice Krispies and some scratches. Good fun had by all.

To be honest, in my definition of quality the music is same as art and food.
Quality listening is not about party. I'm sitting in the middle, alone, sometimes in the dark. Sometimes with light, holding album and reading song text.
Phone and laptop are quickes for workout or sitting at work. But vinyl is same procedure as going to restaurant or in museum. Quality in overall procedure.

 

[BrianShaw]

LP's, EP's, and 45's.

33’s, 45’s, and 78’s.

 

[Peltigera]

When did they start calling them Vinyls?
Use to be just lp's or ep's or singles records.
I bought a lot of records in the 80's and by the time cd's came along I had a family and little to no disposable income, so about 12 years ago when I had money again I just continued buying records. Only have a shoe box filled with cd's and about 1000 lps, could live with just a few hundred, but people use to just give them away, like cameras.
To me records have a familiarity to them, like a warm memory. Film is similar. Although I often listen to digital streaming its only as a convenience, like digital images. To truly give me a connection it must be all hand made.

And what about my bakelites, err, 78s?

 

[foc]

Yes, i share your sentiments.
On Youtube, i see there are A LOT of "younger people" that are shooting FILM, but the large majority of them seem to scan the negs.
It is something that is hard for me to grasp. If you are not going to print....... it Almost seems that it has become Hip/Cool to say..... "Yeah, i shoot film"
This is all supposition on my part, but it is my experience.
If it got that bad (paper sales), would Ilford and Foma continue to manufacture film, even if they stopped making paper.?

I believe there has been a small revival of the photo print but people are very selective about what they wish to print.
The bulk print paper market is shrinking, Fuji Ireland confirmed this when I asked, but there are still people who want prints, enlargements and wall art (canvas, photoblock etc).

The casual print market (eg: printing a photo or two to show a friend) is now very small but a small group of people (25-35 age group) are printing quantities of photos (eg: 50 -6x4 prints in a deal) and are doing this on a regular basis. These people also buy photo albums (remember them????) in large capacity eg: 300 print size and pocket size, picture frames (traditional and modern) fridge magnets etc. Enlargements and poster-size print orders have increased. These customers are very discerning in what they want, size and quality-wise, but if you can meet their needs they will spend money. These customers also know what it is like to lose a hard drive or phone full of photos.

My own concern is for the colour silver halide print (RA4). I know Fuji are pushing their "dry labs". (They have only one wet lab listed on their website). I have seen the "dry labs" operate and they are very good quality. I think the average customer would be pushed hard to tell the difference between a RA4 print and the "dry lab" inkjet print.
From a lab operators point of view, besides daylight paper handling & less health and safety regarding chemicals, the biggest saving in operating a "dry lab" is the half to two-thirds saving in electricity costs.

 

[albireo]

Yes, i share your sentiments.
On Youtube, i see there are A LOT of "younger people" that are shooting FILM, but the large majority of them seem to scan the negs.
It is something that is hard for me to grasp. If you are not going to print....... it Almost seems that it has become Hip/Cool to say..... "Yeah, i shoot film"

As someone who is more or less in the target demographic you are describing in your post, I may perhaps help you understanding why many of these 'younger people' seem to prefer scanning the negs.

Setting up and owning a darkroom for printing is a dream of mine, and, I suspect, of many other people. However I (and many fellow film photography friends) simply don't have the time and space to equip one. Many of us are students: we'll be in a city for 3 years, in another for other 5 years, then we'll move to a different accommodation to hopefully settle (if you're lucky - greedy landlords and short term lets are increasingly the norm). Young people often simply don't own bulky items anymore. Owning an enlarger, tools, accessories etc would greatly increase the difficulty of our frequent house moves. Some of my friends have given up owning physical books, and certainly CDs, which are replaced by a Kindle reader and a smartphone with Spotify. This means many people I know in the 20-35 age bracket in Europe can fit the content of their life in a couple of large suitcases.

Even if moving wasn't an issue, space is. In the sort of temporary accommodation described above, space is at a premium. You pay north of £1000 for a tiny room in a shared flat in London. You get your own room, bathroom is shared, kitchen is shared. Where on earth should one set up a darkroom and print?

 

[blockend]

As someone who is more or less in the target demographics you are describing in your post, I may perhaps help you understanding why many of these 'younger people' seem to prefer scanning the negs.

Setting up and owning a darkroom for printing is a dream of mine, and I suspect many other people. However I (and many fellow film photographer friends) simply don't have the time and space to equip one. Many of us are students: we'll be in a city for 3 years, in another for other 5 years, then we'll move to a different accommodation to hopefully settle (if you're lucky - greedy landlords and short term lets are increasingly the norm). Young people often simply don't own bulky items anymore. Owning an enlarger, tools, accessories etc would greatly increase the difficulty of our frequent house moves. Some of my friends have given up owning physical books, and certainly CDs, which are replaced by a Kindle reader and a smartphone with Spotify. This means many people I know in the 20-35 age bracket in Europe can fit the content of their life in a couple of large suitcases.

Even if moving wasn't an issue, space is. In the sort of temporary accommodation described above, space is at a premium. You pay north of £1000 for a tiny room in a shared flat in London. You get your own room, bathroom is shared, kitchen is shared. Where on earth should one set up a darkroom and print?

I completely agree. The demographic of this board is older than the one you have described. Younger people are more transient than previous generation, and they can store their possessions on a phone, or at least a laptop in a way my generation never could. In mitigation I can say my first "darkroom" was the alcove next to my attic window, protected by a dark curtain. Running water was three storeys below, the work surface was an ironing board. A bathroom would have been a luxury.

If I was your age now I'd be scanning and producing books, and sending my scans away for printing.

 

[albireo]

If I was your age now I'd be scanning and producing books, and sending my scans away for printing.

Yep that's my workflow at the moment, whether I like it or not: a hybrid film + digital one. I'll process my black and white negatives myself (that much I can do where I live) and then I'll scan those I like (two sizes: large size for archival, smaller processed size for sharing). Finally I'll label and archive all my negatives, in the hope one day I'll be able to produce wet lab prints of my favourite shots. Whenever I feel like producing a print from some of my negatives, I'll use a professional service. Outsourcing the printing to someone else is sub-optimal, I know. I'd much rather do it myself. But it'll do for now.

Before someone suggests the usual 'if you have to convert your negatives to the digital domain you might as well shoot digital' I'll say that is a non-argument for me and increasingly many people in my age group. There are countless reasons why the *process* of shooting film and developing it is completely unrelated to digital photography and is interesting to many as a craft in itself. So much so that I, for instance, have sold my DSLRs and shoot mostly film. For those times when I need digital, a modern phone is more than sufficient for my purposes. Some people I know (a younger age group) have never owned one of those expensive DSLRs or mirrorless supercomputers from Sony/Nikon etc and own an iphone 10 plus an Olympus OM1 with a couple of primes.

 

[GLS]

There are countless reasons why the *process* of shooting film and developing it is completely unrelated to digital photography and is interesting to many as a form of craft

This is true, and again ties into the tangibility aspects of shooting film, as I alluded to earlier.

Speaking for myself, I enjoy film over digital for various reasons. These include:

- The unique tonalities which you can achieve (I don't care how long you mess with digital files in Photoshop etc, they will never look exactly like the results from film)
- The inherantly different look of the images which comes from shooting a larger format than 35mm.
- The way it forces you to slow down and consider what you are doing much more carefully.

Since taking up medium format film a couple of years ago, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I have taken my DSLR kit out. I will still keep hold of it though, as it is irreplaceable for certain kinds of photography, and I use it to digitise my film anyway