Is APS totally dead?

Theo Sulphate · May 10, 2019

Kodachromeguy said:
On a similar note, my friend who ran the camera store here in my town told me that he sold many (many!) memory cards for digital cameras. He sold them to people who did not erase their cards or reuse them - they just bought additional ones, like buying more rolls of film.

That's me - I don't erase or re-use the card other than to delete really bad photos on them. Perhaps I see the card as "extra security" in addition to having the photos on my hard disk and on USB drives. Since I probably haven't made even 500 photos with my two digital cameras, I'm not spending a lot of money on these cards.

Even so, I realize hard drives and SD cards have a limited life. USB sticks have a relatively short life and they need to be rewritten every once in a while, as the memory cells depend on capacitor charges of microvolts to maintain the integrity of the data.

Paul Howell · May 10, 2019

I have a few rolls of APS, the minilab near me can still develop, I shot a roll but, the film now 10 years old is showing signs of fog. I have a roll of Fujicolor that is dated to 2001, wont bother to shoot it. I see rolls that were supposedly in cold storage on sale, along with some 110 and even disk. How old are those, 20 years? APS was ok up to a 5 X 7 or maybe a 8 X 10 with ISO 100. My shot with a 126 Kodak reflex, then later a 35mm point and shoot, she bought a APS camera and shot with it for about a year before going to 35mm P&S.

Photo Engineer · May 10, 2019

Kodachromeguy said:
On a similar note, my friend who ran the camera store here in my town told me that he sold many (many!) memory cards for digital cameras. He sold them to people who did not erase their cards or reuse them - they just bought additional ones, like buying more rolls of film.

What's wrong with keeping your memory cards?

PE

Helge · May 11, 2019

AgX said:
At APS for mid-way change of cassettes the information of the cassette being partially exposed was indicated mechanically at the cassette and the number of last frame written on the magnetic strip. (Thus only advanced APS cameras yielded the mid-way change feature.

By no means could a type 135 SLR camera automatically get to now that last frame of a deliberately chosen half-way exposed cassette.
At best it could have stored that figure inside a data-back or alike. But then the photographer would have to assign a ordinary figure to that cassette. And call-up that number again at the data -back after re-loading it.
Actually I am not even aware of a type 135 SLR that yields this even limited feature. (The databack of the F5 does not,)

I’m sorry I can’t find examples of cameras with the whole process automated right now, though I could swear that I’ve read about at least a couple, perhaps from the early EOS line.
There are several cameras with accurate optical sprocket counters and leader out rewind option however.
If there is a hard backstop in the takeup spool, you’ll be able to very accurately get to where you where, if you note the frame number. You wouldn’t even have to worry about sacrificing a shot.

Helge · May 11, 2019

Theo Sulphate said:
Simplifying film loading has been a goal of camera manufacturers for a long time. I could say that the Minox of 1937, with it's film contained in a cassette, might've been the first. Certainly the popularity of 1960's Instamatic and Super-8 cameras show the benefit of simple loading.

Of course, the reason camera/film manufacturers introduced simplified loading is that they knew 95+% of the population just wanted to point the camera and press the button and if they could provide that, their sales would increase considerably.

This reasoning also created the automatic transmission.

The Quick Load or Easy Load was invented in the 60's. If the customer can’t be taught to insert the cartridge and pull the leader to a red line, you probably don’t want that customer. They are potentially going to cause a whole lot of other trouble in general and put a bad name on your brand.
Of course the bulk of short term marketing and finance guys would disagree vehemently, but then those guys are generally idiots, barely better than anyone else in predicting trends and usage behavior.
The old slotted take-up spool is bad design. No doubt or contest there. But in the last fifty years that has mostly been in enthusiast cameras, where people can be trusted to check tension or the take-up indicator.

AgX · May 11, 2019

Yes, no wonder that type Rapid failed in the USA after having being brought up against type 126.

(Strange enough it was successful in West-Germany seen the mass of respective cameras showing up.)

railwayman3 · May 11, 2019

Just reminded me of a few years ago, when a friend who knew of my interest in photography, asked if I could look at their APS camera which was "stuck".
I soon found that they had managed to put the cartridge in back-to-front ! Not totally a foolproof system ?

trendland · May 11, 2019

AgX said:
Yes, no wonder that type Rapid failed in the USA after having being brought up against type 126.

(Strange enough it was successful in West-Germany seen the mass of respective cameras showing up.)

Rapid was no bad system (my very first camera was Agfa "Rapid") ....inside was normal perforated
35mm film! The planarity of Rapid was quite the same like 135 film!
Not so most amatheuric cassette systems!

with greetings

cmacd123 · May 11, 2019

Helge said:
The old slotted take-up spool is bad design. No doubt or contest there. But in the last fifty years that has mostly been in enthusiast cameras, where people can be trusted to check tension or the take-up indicator.

I nominate the Pentax MX is having the easiest manual load. Stick the leader in any opening between the multiple white nylon pins arrayed around the spool, and start winding. The Minolta X series sucks big time by comparison.

AgX · May 11, 2019

trendland said:
Rapid was no bad system (my very first camera was Agfa "Rapid") ....inside was normal perforated
35mm film! The planarity of Rapid was quite the same like 135 film!
Not so most amatheuric cassette systems!

You are right.

But type 126 was foolproof.
Not so type Rapid: Which side the new cassette to put in? Is the cassette with leader sticking out exposed or unexposed? What type of film is in the cassette?

Theo Sulphate · May 11, 2019

cmacd123 said:
I nominate the Pentax MX is having the easiest manual load. Stick the leader in any opening between the multiple white nylon pins arrayed around the spool, and start winding. The Minolta X series sucks big time by comparison.

The Canon QL17 GIII is very simple: place the leader in the vicinity of the takeup spool, close the back, ratchet the wind-lever a few times until the counter reaches 1 and stops (there's no need to release the shutter while doing this).

cmacd123 · May 11, 2019

Theo Sulphate said:
The Canon QL17 GIII is very simple: place the leader in the vicinity of the takeup spool,

the Autofocus EOS film cameras, - stick the leader near the mark and close the back. camera goes whirrr and is ready to shoot. The Rebel series (three digit models in europe) wind to the end of the roll and and count down. others just advance to shot 1. In both cases the frame number on the negative is centered with the shot.

And as far as the Rapid/126 comparison. 126 had the film type on a lebel on the back of the cartridge. (and part of the label showed through the back window of the camera.) so there was no possibility of confusion. Cartridge only went in one way. Kodak was aware of how their target customers used film and Cameras and made it as easy as they figured possible, using no electronics. Rapid seems to depend on the customer being aware of what film they are using. (was the type indicated on the tail of the roll?)

trendland · May 12, 2019

AgX said:
You are right.

But type 126 was foolproof.
Not so type Rapid: Which side the new cassette to put in? Is the cassette with leader sticking out exposed or unexposed? What type of film is in the cassette?

As far as I remember (for sure) 126 cassette was made for "to be most easily to load" but I've seen clients wich were indeed unable to find the "right direction" to put 126 cassette into 126
camera!

with regards

PS : it is like to load VHS cassette upside down in Video recorders - .......?

Agulliver · May 12, 2019

Physically disabled people might have still struggled with "easy load" 35mm cameras....though 126 would have worked that format was all but dead by the time APS came along. I have an old friend with cerebral palsy who's perfectly intelligent enough to learn how to load film.....he has a phD in computational chemistry.....but he struggles physically to do it. Another of his hobbies is AV/hi-fi and he chooses his equipment with large knobs and ergonomic remotes so he can actually operate it. In the 80s he purchased some sort of Olympus 35mm camera with automated loading and even then found it fiddly to pull the film to the desired position.

But for the rest of us, yes....I never could understand how a human of even average intelligence seemed scared to load a rollfilm camera, thread a tape deck or movie projector....but as we know...convenience sells....

It seems that among the expected advantages of APS for the consumer was the ease of loading and the fact that the film was kept in the cassette after processing...making it more difficult for the owner to damage the negatives. Ultimately it's debatable whether these were worth investing in a new camera/system for most users....and a few years later digital photography "solved" these issues more comprehensively by doing away with film entirely. Of course now users don't look after their digital files any more carefully than they did negatives....

MattKing · May 12, 2019

In my time in retail, I learned that for a certain small but significant number of customers, it wasn't the loading of 135 film that caused most problems, but rather the rewinding.
It is hard to appreciate the difficulty that others have with it, if you understand it yourself.
There is a reason that George Eastman's first cameras required you to send the entire camera full of exposed film back to Kodak in order to get the film developed and the camera reloaded.
As an aside, when I used to work as a Customs officer, it was not unusual to encounter US tourists who had guns that they were unable to load (or unload) without "expert" help.

AgX · May 12, 2019

Some issues are still unsolved.
As there are 8 ways to insert a slide. Only 1 is right...

(Attempts were made with plane and edge colouring.)

cmacd123 · May 12, 2019

MattKing said:
In my time in retail, I learned that for a certain small but significant number of customers, it wasn't the loading of 135 film that caused most problems, but rather the rewinding.
It is hard to appreciate the difficulty that others have with it, if you understand it yourself.
.

the one that always got me in my short time was the Joly customers who came in wanting a "Good Camera because they are going on a trip - TOMORROW" their Instamatic was not going to do.

I always tried to steer them to an Olympus Trip 35. At least that one would likely get SOME good shots. Unfortunately, they often left with a Minolta SRt-101 which I got 4 times the commission on, and about 8 times the acid in my stomach.

Theo Sulphate · May 13, 2019

cmacd123 said:
the one that always got me in my short time was the Joly customers who came in wanting a "Good Camera because they are going on a trip - TOMORROW" their Instamatic was not going to do.

I always tried to steer them to an Olympus Trip 35. At least that one would likely get SOME good shots. Unfortunately, they often left with a Minolta SRt-101 which I got 4 times the commission on, and about 8 times the acid in my stomach.

Interesting. You gave them the best advice, yet they felt the need to buy a more complex camera they were probably unable to use.

Numerous times I was in Camera World of Oregon when someone would come in asking for their "best camera".

A family friend once visited us and he had a Rolleiflex probably a 3.5F -- it was the first time I'd seen a Rolleiflex in real life. Anyway, he couldn't load it and, since the camera was totally unfamiliar to me, I kept my mouth shut. We went to a camera store (this was the 1980's), and someone there took the camera in the back room and loaded it for him. He wasn't an idiot: he was a retired tool & die maker in the auto industry and also a private pilot. I'm sure he just didn't want to be bothered with learning how to set the exposure or load film.

Nodda Duma · May 19, 2019

Just sent off 5 rolls of APS film to be developed. Not sure what's on the rolls although they are from the past few months.. I think my kids might have had something to do with taking those pictures.

Agulliver · May 21, 2019

If we look at developments in camera design down the decade....ease of use and convenience is a common theme. Box cameras did away with most settings and were relatively easily loaded....35mm cameras did away with the backing paper and need to tightly tape the film and keep it dark after exposure....the loading systems of 135 were made easier....focus was made easier either by picturograms or distance ranges with small apertures....exposure meters were added to cameras.....cartridge loading was developed etc....as electronics became cheaper/more reliable then cameras became more automated....auto focus (grrrr) and so on.

In that sense, APS was the culmination of 100 years of making photography easy for the average human. But equally, throughout this process most of the truly fool-proof cameras were at the lower end of the market with fixed lenses etc....which meant that often the potentially interesting/fun features of APS such as the aspect ratios or data recording weren't really useful. Plastic lenses lead to the cropped panoramic images looking grainy and some cameras made limited or no use of the data recording. APS "solved" problems that either weren't important or for which solutions already existed. The potential for the "HDTV" (childish name) or panoramic crops was only realised in the APS SLRs and top end compact cameras....which few people bought.

A lot of my friends were left scratching their heads as to why their 12 inch long "panoramic" print was so grainy while my poster size blow up 35mm prints from my old "Craptika" looked far sharper. It wasn't the film necessarily, nor even the crop...but the quality of the optics.

Side note...the roll of Kodak APS film has gone from the convenience store in Luton town centre. I hope it was sold and used.

Kodachromeguy · May 21, 2019

Agulliver said:
A lot of my friends were left scratching their heads as to why their 12 inch long "panoramic" print was so grainy while my poster size blow up 35mm prints from my old "Craptika" looked far sharper. It wasn't the film necessarily, nor even the crop...but the quality of the optics.

Agu, don't forget, the " panorama" mode on APS was a fraud. The film was masked to expose a narrow slit in the middle of the frame. So panorama prints were enlargements from a tiny surface area of film. But the optics on the higher end A PS cameras were excellent. It is a pity that few of them can be used now on digital cameras.

lantau · May 22, 2019

Kodachromeguy said:
Agu, don't forget, the " panorama" mode on APS was a fraud. The film was masked to expose a narrow slit in the middle of the frame.

I never had any camera until near the end of my undergrad studies, when I got a Yashica APS point and shoot for Christmas 1999. The frame was exposed normally but the camera noted the format and the lab cropped appropriately.

AgX · May 22, 2019

Yes.
In type 135 cameras the film gate was masked to panoramic aspect ratio.
In APS only a hint for the lab was placed on the film. (I would have to look up whether optically or on that magnetic track.) The same time the finder was masked respectively.

removed account4 · May 22, 2019

Its too bad APS is gone, i have a canon elph that i was going to sell ,
now it is just a curiosity piece i guess ..

AgX · May 22, 2019

Sell it to a collector.

Is APS totally dead?

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