invirormentalists, Kodak: The choice for digital over film?

[MattKing]

The difference is - the analogue industry began to face the consequences of environmental problems as it became aware of them/was confronted by them, while the digital industry sometimes did, and sometimes offloaded them to other locations.

 

[Lee Rust]

Here in Rochester, back in the late 80's and early '90's there was considerable local controversy about "cancer clusters" and chemical pollution in the residential neighborhoods surrounding Kodak Park, and the company eventually did take significant steps to clean up their act.

Even as recently as 10 years ago environmentalists were still concerned about the possible carcinogenic effects of residual airborne methylene chloride emissions from Kodak's film base production, to the extent that they were collecting regular air samples for testing.

I used to smell that distinctively sweet methylene chloride odor on the wind all the time, but nowadays ... nothing ... because Kodak stopped producing their own acetate film base in 2013 and are now reportedly using stockpiled or outsourced supplies.

End of problem, except wherever that outsourced acetate is being manufactured.

 

[analoguey]

What about the electricity Used up in preserving, backing up and recharging all these digital devices/cameras? Every Google search needs x w/hr or something. Facebook more etc.,

 

[lxdude]

I'm not real happy that film emulsions are made from the bones and hooves of murdered animals, but since those animals were slaughtered for their flesh, the gelatin is a by product. I'm hoping to remove myself from that on the printing end by going to prints made from Liquid Light on traditional rag paper. The only way I see to avoid the other end is by using paper negatives.

Liquid Light uses gelatin.

 

[hgaude]

But it's all too convenient that the top 5 reason why people shoot digital over film, somewhere in that top 5, chemicals come up.

Sometimes its easy to overthink things. Once there became a way to not NEED chemicals to create an image, it became very easy to use them as an excuse. (Note I said image, not a photograph because to get something physical you still have to have something physical )

Casual image creators, think young people with cell phones, create an image, get the emotional satisfaction and move on. This simply wasn't possible before, so the effect couldn't really have been well predicted. As we see, that momentary emotional satisfaction is all most people want from an image. A photograph is a more permanent thing, like a painting and the satisfaction seems to exist on more and different levels.

My .02 as a photographer who does a lot of photography for both high school seniors and their parents who want very different things from the experience...

 

[removed account4]

Liquid Light uses gelatin.

there was someone experimenting with white glue ( like elmers / pva )
instead of gelatin .... i can't rmember if it worked or not ... the other alternative is
albumen,collodion and salt.

 

[Lee Rust]

Casual image creators, think young people with cell phones, create an image, get the emotional satisfaction and move on. This simply wasn't possible before, so the effect couldn't really have been well predicted. As we see, that momentary emotional satisfaction is all most people want from an image.

Back in the 19th century when photos were rare and expensive, and transportation and communications were slow or impossible, photographs were treasured mementoes of people who might never be seen again because of accident, distance or disease.

In the 20th century, with automobiles, phones, planes and modern medicine, it gradually became easier and easier to predictably keep in touch. Photos were cheap and easy to make and started to accumulate in shoe boxes, rarely seen and often forgotten.

Now in the 21st century, transportation is fast, communication is non-stop and people can routinely be kept alive and functional for decades beyond the historical norm. Seeing, recording and transmitting still and moving images is effortless, continuous and practically cost-free. Few people bother to print out their personal pictures because each day another dozen or even hundreds of high-quality still and moving snapshots can be instantly posted to a Facebook or Instagram page to be shared with a torrent of competing images from friends and family.

Each day another batch of old pictures scrolls down into the digital shoebox at the bottom of the screen, never to be seen again. Who needs to reminisce about what happened yesterday or last month when there's always something new to look at? Perhaps our ancestors would have been similarly cavalier about their photos if they had access to the technologies we take for granted.

Maybe it's just human nature to be focussed on the present. Perhaps the appreciation of photographs as historical or artistic objects is just a curious by-product of a passing age that some of us cling to out of cultural habit. Try to imagine life without physical photographic images of the past. That's the way people lived for millions of years before 1839, and the future will have some similarities.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Lee, regarding the Methylene Chloride, the local vigilantes thought they saw it everywhere. It turns out that the plastic parts in their air test kits were exuding more of the chemical than Kodak was (which was nearly zero). There was quite an article about it in the D&C.

Also, they purportedly saw leaks of chemicals in water seeping out from the banks of rock along 390 here. It turns out it was algae growing in the ground water and coloring it. It was quite vivid. We had some growing here near us.

PE

 

[Bob Carnie]

Very good post

But also some of the future may contain people thriving for more hands on items that they can make themselves.. I think this explains the resurgence of historic print processes being combined with immediate technology.

We just finished a Contact Photo Festival show with great reviews.. Image capture was I phone but final prints were tri colour gum over palladium..

many , many young workers gob smacked with this possiblilty of image making.

Bob

Back in the 19th century when photos were rare and expensive, and transportation and communications were slow or impossible, photographs were treasured mementoes of people who might never be seen again because of accident, distance or disease.

In the 20th century, with automobiles, phones, planes and modern medicine, it gradually became easier and easier to predictably keep in touch. Photos were cheap and easy to make and started to accumulate in shoe boxes, rarely seen and often forgotten.

Now in the 21st century, transportation is fast, communication is non-stop and people can routinely be kept alive and functional for decades beyond the historical norm. Seeing, recording and transmitting still and moving images is effortless, continuous and practically cost-free. Few people bother to print out their personal pictures because each day another dozen or even hundreds of high-quality still and moving snapshots can be instantly posted to a Facebook or Instagram page to be shared with a torrent of competing images from friends and family.

Each day another batch of old pictures scrolls down into the digital shoebox at the bottom of the screen, never to be seen again. Who needs to reminisce about what happened yesterday or last month when there's always something new to look at? Perhaps our ancestors would have been similarly cavalier about their photos if they had access to the technologies we take for granted.

Maybe it's just human nature to be focussed on the present. Perhaps the appreciation of photographs as historical or artistic objects is just a curious by-product of a passing age that some of us cling to out of cultural habit. Try to imagine life without physical photographic images of the past. That's the way people lived for millions of years before 1839, and the future will have some similarities.

 

[Photo Engineer]

As long as it wasn't Bob smacked!



PE

 

[DREW WILEY]

I remember the methylene chloride witch hunt pretty well. Although a lot of it is a bad thing, what the Plumbers Union did is get word out how plastic water pipe was carcinogenic due to methylene chloride, as well as capable of producing toxic gas if your house caught fire. Of course, all your vinyl furniture, shoes, carpet padding, etc etc etc produce toxic fumes too. And being in a burning house isn't a good idea anyway. And of course, it was perfectly fine if the water district used plastic pipe outside the house, which they often do; somehow it only magically becomes carcinogenic within your house when it becomes easier to install than sweating copper pipe and takes jobs away from the plumbers. Then people panicked about methylene chloride paint stripper because it is a suspected carcinogen. So what was the result? People who made strippers simply removed this suspected carcinogen and substituted known carcinogens or nasties like toluene and benzene. Why settle for less than the read deal? Or people started using torches to strip paint and got the best of both worlds - inhaling lead paint fumes as well as a burned down house from time to time. Oh the stories I could tell!

 

[Sirius Glass]

I remember the methylene chloride witch hunt pretty well. Although a lot of it is a bad thing, what the Plumbers Union did is get word out how plastic water pipe was carcinogenic due to methylene chloride, as well as capable of producing toxic gas if your house caught fire. Of course, all your vinyl furniture, shoes, carpet padding, etc etc etc produce toxic fumes too. And being in a burning house isn't a good idea anyway. And of course, it was perfectly fine if the water district used plastic pipe outside the house, which they often do; somehow it only magically becomes carcinogenic within your house when it becomes easier to install than sweating copper pipe and takes jobs away from the plumbers. Then people panicked about methylene chloride paint stripper because it is a suspected carcinogen. So what was the result? People who made strippers simply removed this suspected carcinogen and substituted known carcinogens or nasties like toluene and benzene. Why settle for less than the read deal? Or people started using torches to strip paint and got the best of both worlds - inhaling lead paint fumes as well as a burned down house from time to time. Oh the stories I could tell!

Then we should make it illegal to allow houses with plastic pipes to burn!

 

[blansky]

People who made strippers simply removed this suspected carcinogen and substituted known carcinogens or nasties like toluene and benzene.

WOW. In my area, they just removed their clothes.

 

[DREW WILEY]

That was some time ago. Now there are very good equipment options available and enforced legal protocols, licensing, etc. I'll probably sell around a million bucks of that gear here this year. The stereotypical drunken highschool-dropout California house painter is basically doomed anyway, because working clean also happens to equate to working efficiently, and therefore profitably. Get properly geared up and educated or go broke. It's a new era, thank goodness. Further out, where people thumb their nose at the EPA, the law still holds. They just did a huge bust in Idaho, where people assume they're immune to both Federal jurisdiction and the effects of lead poisoning. I've seen plenty of thatfirst hand, and it ain't purty. The painter who thinks he's gotten away with something just to get terribly sick himself, or watch his wife and kids undergo hundreds of thousands of dollars of lead detox, doesn't look very smart in the long haul, if he even gets that far.

 

[Photo Engineer]

I've seen them go overboard too Drew!

I've said before that one group lists EDTA as highly toxic!

PE

 

[DREW WILEY]

There was a huge whoopee-ding-dong investigative report on the news last week which caused a bit of panic. Somebody found out toothpaste
contained a "paint chemical" called titanium dioxide!!!!!! Guess nobody has bothered to read the label on ordinary table salt for the last few
decades, which routinely contains titanium dioxide whitener.

 

[Photo Engineer]

That is one of the reasons I tell my students to avoid table salt for making emulsions. It also contains KI unless specified otherwise, and some brands contain KSCN. Oooooo. Danger.

PE

 

[Element 6]

There was a huge whoopee-ding-dong investigative report on the news last week which caused a bit of panic. Somebody found out toothpaste
contained a "paint chemical" called titanium dioxide!!!!!! Guess nobody has bothered to read the label on ordinary table salt for the last few
decades, which routinely contains titanium dioxide whitener.

And here I thought everyone was dying from sodium related high blood pressure....Turns out its not the salt, but the TiO2!! In all seriousness, due to lack of even rudimentary chemical knowledge, its easy for today's news to create click-bate by publishing a chemical formula found in everyday items. I would say we need to educate ourselves, but Ive already accepted the general public is a lost cause.

 

[Kino]

Here's a good paper on E-Waste:

https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Climate-Change/Pages/Global-E-waste-Monitor-2017.aspx

When someone gives you the old bugabear about horrible chemicals vs clean digital, point them at this paper...

Most people I know who recoil in horror over photo chemicals have no problem pouring gallons of drain blocker down the sewer or dumping gallons of pesticides, fertilizer and weed killer on their lawns.

Hypocrisy and willful ignorance are endemic.

 

[removed account4]

I've said before that one group lists EDTA as highly toxic!

where i live (di)hydric acid ( DHMO ) poses a threat .

kind of a world on its head ...

 

[pbromaghin]

https://www.google.com/search?q=e-w...H6wKHesPBGAQ_AUICygC&biw=1680&bih=984#imgrc=_

 

[Lee Rust]

DHMO... dihydrogen monoxide. It's everywhere and can kill in minutes!

 

[RattyMouse]

I've seen them go overboard too Drew!

I've said before that one group lists EDTA as highly toxic!

PE

The safety data sheet from all 5 of our suppliers of EDTA carries an H351 GHS label: Suspected of being a carcinogen.
Additionally, GHS rules say that EDTA must carry a H318 label: Causes serious (irreversible) eye damage.

 

[Kino]

"sola dosis facit venenum" The dose makes the poison. The principle relies on the finding that all chemicals—even water and oxygen—can be toxic if too much is eaten, drunk, or absorbed.

 

[BMbikerider]

Digital is as harmful or more so than analog, due to the heavy use of toxic materials in making the sensors. Look up my previous detailed posts on this topic.

PE

You beat me to it. I was going to reply very much along the same lines.
I will continue to use both but will refrain from changing my digital SLR every time change my underwear.