I wonder if they know that film is light sensitive?

Stephen Frizza said:

ive had the film shake experience myself, where the hell do people come up with such outrageous ideas that dropping a canister of film will blur its contents???

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My roommate used to work at a Wolf camera outside of Chicago, and he'd often get angry customers coming in and throwing their film down on the counter.
His response was to tell them that they'd just ruined the film and it'd probably all be out of focus now.
Funny that his way of dealing with dumb customers may have just made even dumber ones.

I asked my wife to drop off some sheets to be processed. the lady at the counter asked how many sheets? In order to answer her my wife opened the box and counted them. My wife is brilliant, or at least much smarter than i am, but even smart people do dumb things.

A student friend of mine once went to a car boot sale. She told me that she met a woman selling a box of Ilford photographic paper. When my friend asked her how many sheets were in the box, the woman opened the box and inner bag and began counting. Needless to say the seller lost her sale!

b1bmsgt said:

It helps if you remember that the human race is basically a bunch of $#@%$# idiots.

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I once read something like this: "Consider the average human. Now consider that, by definition, half of humanity is dumber than this person." Cynical, amusing, and -- even more amusingly, in an ironic way -- technically incorrect, since the quote confuses average and median.

More seriously, we live in a very complex world, and there's no way any one person can understand even a tiny fraction of that world. Sadly, our educational system (speaking as a US citizen) seems to be doing a rather poor job with science education at the moment. I doubt if many people really ever knew all that much about photography or photographic materials, or were motivated to learn. No doubt there will be (and probably already are) "dumb consumer" stories related to digital cameras. Perhaps there are people storing their CF cards in light-proof bags, for instance.

kevs said:

"I am not expendable, I'm not stupid, and I'm not going."

Kerr Avon. Blake's 7 - 'Horizon'

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I've got that quote on a T-shirt!

b1bmsgt said:

It helps if you remember that the human race is basically a bunch of $#@%$# idiots.

(C'mon, you all know I'm right...)

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Goddammit. OK, I'll be the only one to say it; I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I hate to be the patronising do-gooder, but if noone else is going to bother, someone has to:


This thread is rapidly turning into a 100% bang-on example of why (a) independent camera stores have a reputation for being staffed by up-themselves patronising snobs, and (b) in the main went out of business to be replaced by chains, who may not have known anything about cameras but sure as hell knew how not to treat their customers like imbeciles. (Oh, and (c), why APS and the like was invented.)


Honestly, you people. Were you squeezed out if the womb with an intricate understanding of photography already embedded as some kind of race memory? If not, how did you learn that film is light sensitive and you shouldn't pull it out of the canister? If you hadn't learnt/been taught it somewhere, you wouldn't know it.

My curiosity was piqued, so I just grabbed a couple of rolls of consumer film from the fridge to take a look. First, a roll of Kodak Gold 200 120. The following warnings/instructions are on the box:

Develop before 03/2006 (yeah, it's very old .)
PROCESS C-41
FOR COLOUR PRINTS

There's nothing else written inside the box or on the foil wrap (other than the ISO.) I'm actually surprised - I was expecting at least an 'open in subdued light', but not even that.

Second roll I grabbed was Agfa CTprecisa 100 in 35mm. On the box

SLIDE FILM
PROCESS AP 44/E6
Process before 06/2008
DAYLIGHT/FLASH

On the inside of the box (which I bet most consumers never read) it says:

Set camera to ISO rating of film. The film should be protected against heat, excessive humidity, X-rays and harmful gases (e.g. formalin vapours.) Exposed film should be developed immediately.

Again, personally I was amazed. This is consumer film, not professional, and yet there is more text warning against formalin vapours (!) than there is actual explanation in English to joe-punter about what to do with the damn stuff to get it developed (like, 'always rewind film before removing from camera and protect from light', or something simple like that.)



Yeah, it's obvious when you know. 35mm is not user friendly, though. People should be allowed to make mistakes and learn without being called idiots.

Tim;

My packs of film say "Open only in total darkness" or "Open only under light conditions specified for this product".

This is on two boxes of film sitting next to me.

PE

Photo Engineer said:

Tim;

My packs of film say "Open only in total darkness" or "Open only under light conditions specified for this product".

This is on two boxes of film sitting next to me.

PE

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Do you want me to scan in the packets to prove I'm not lying, PE (since I assume that's what you're accusing me of)?


(Actually, the only packets I can find which have any kind of warning about light are Kodak EIR and Ilford SFX; most of my film is professional film though so I wasn't really expecting to find warnings on it - the Gold 200 120 and Agfa CT are the only 'consumer' films I could find.)

No, I don't think you are telling us a fib. I'm just saying that the labels seem vary with package. Mine come from paper and sheet film. Maybe Kodak thinks that the professionals need more information than amateurs?

PE

Tim;

I just had a horrible thought.

Maybe they think we citizens in the US need more information due to our average intelligence than you Brits do!

PE

Photo Engineer said:

Tim;

I just had a horrible thought.

Maybe they think we citizens in the US need more information due to our average intelligence than you Brits do!

PE

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Spot on

If I recall correctly there is a warning on (some) films about loading and unloading in supdued light
Kind regards

tim_walls said:

....Were you squeezed out if the womb with an intricate understanding of photography already embedded as some kind of race memory? If not, how did you learn that film is light sensitive and you shouldn't pull it out of the canister? If you hadn't learnt/been taught it somewhere, you wouldn't know it......

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We've only just begun. At least most people of voting age should have some recall of the time when photography meant film. But at my place we sell both digital & traditional paper to students; after having had a few open up their Multigrade to check the surface, we've got used to giving tutorials on light sensitivity. What will it be like in another 10 years?

Photo Engineer said:

Tim;

I just had a horrible thought.

Maybe they think we citizens in the US need more information due to our average intelligence than you Brits do!

PE

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That actually occurred to me, but I decided not to mention it ;-).

Unfortunately I don't have a lot to compare with - most of my 35mm I buy in bulk roll so I don't have much by the way of boxes; but here's another couple of examples from the fridge:

Kodak E100VS 35mm 5-box:
EKTACHROME Transparency Film
Vivid Saturation
Only for sale in the EEA, Africa & Middle East
For optimum quality, process at a Q-Lab Service Member
Film does not include processing by Kodak
Process before 07/2009
ISO 100/Process E-6/CAT 392 0444/5.E100VS 135-36/24x36mm

Kodak TMax100 120 5-box:
T-MAX 100 Film
Black & White Negative Film
Cat 857 2273/5.100TMX 120 ISO100

No warnings about light anywhere. I'm sure I've seen 'load in subdued light' somewhere - I'm thinking the end-tabs or backing paper of 120 film - but on the whole, I've not spotted it on the outer packing of any of the film I've got!

It may be a regional thing; after they've printed the limitation of liability on the box in 4 different languages there's not that much room left anyway...

Photo Engineer said:

Tim;

I just had a horrible thought.

Maybe they think we citizens in the US need more information due to our average intelligence than you Brits do!

PE

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Besides the possible negative effects on brain growth of a life long of junk food , I personally think it has more to do with the average pay for lawyers to ward off 100 million dollar damage claims, than with the average intelligence of the average (or should I say median ) American.

At least here in the Netherlands we always joke about the Americans having warnings "Do not dry your pet dog in the microwave!" on their new bought household equipment.

One of those rumors you always wonder if they are actually true or not... Maybe best to keep it a mystery... more fun

oh no!

first the Canadians laugh at us for driving north in August with our snowmobiles expecting to find snow right after we cross the border in 90 degree summer weather...

...and now the Dutch are laughing at us too?

at least the Aussies still like us...

Please note however, that many of these stories come from England, Australia and other 'colonies' but not mainly the US.

Therefore, this has some impact on my thinking of the average Brit as well. Then when I hear them speak, it erases all doubt!

They can't speak or spell English. You see, you must remember that the American way of speaking was the original pronounciation of the English language at the time of the revolution and both the US and Canada use that pronunciation. The Canadian spelling kept the extra "u" in color and etc, but also kept the original English accents.

The accent in England 'migrated' over the years.

Of course, if we had not dumped all of that tea into the Boston Harbour < note extra "u" for our British readers, we might understand them better.

As Churchill once said, "we are two great nations separated by a common language"

PE

well, if they had dumped some sodium carbonate into the harbour at the same time as the tea, maybe we could have developed a lot of large format film...

...and a nice salt water rinse as well, eh?

Film had not been invented yet.

PE

true, but I still like the idea

srs5694 said:

I once read something like this: "Consider the average human. Now consider that, by definition, half of humanity is dumber than this person." Cynical, amusing, and -- even more amusingly, in an ironic way -- technically incorrect, since the quote confuses average and median.

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Sorry to burst your bubble, but IQ is a bell-curve. As such, the mean and median are the same.

maxbloom said:

Sorry to burst your bubble, but IQ is a bell-curve. As such, the mean and median are the same.

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Yes, at least as a first approximation, but that's not part of the definition of "average." IQ also isn't exactly a bell curve, since its tails don't go out to infinity in both directions.

srs5694 said:

Yes, at least as a first approximation, but that's not part of the definition of "average." IQ also isn't exactly a bell curve, since its tails don't go out to infinity in both directions.

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Perhaps, since there aren't discreet values. But psychologists do approximate scores beyond a few standard deviations in either direction.

The curve doesn't have to go from -infinity to +infinity. It only has to be symmetrical about the average. There are worse flaws than that in the concept of measurable intelligence.

I remember a couple students demanding that their photo prof buy them some photo paper to replace theirs since he had not told them that they could not open the package (to divide the sheets between them) in the classroom.

This was 20 years or so ago...somewhere around that time, Kodak stopped writing in big letters on the packages, "Open only under safe lights" or something of that nature.

But even the best and brightest amongst us make stupid mistakes. I took some overly sharp portraits of my parents -- I figured I'd use the stretched-stocking-under-the-lens trick to soften their aging faces. I tried three times with no luck...the image remained sharp -- that's when I figured that the method does not work when contact printing 8x10 negatives.

Vaughn

The concept of (+infinity and -infinity) may be a little esoteric but certainly warrants further investigation.