Is there really a revival of analog photography

[CMoore]

If a scanner is the most important thing then this would seem to bode ill for the future of darkroom paper, wouldn't it?

On the IlfordPhoto site yesterday there was info on the Photography Show at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre (NEC) next month and there seemed to be little there in terms of lectures, stands etc to indicate that those in the "photography business" other than Ilford's presence have yet recognised a revival in analogue matters that is of sufficient import to warrant much attention.

The Imaging Warehouse, formerly called Nova Darkroom, send me a lot of info on their courses but all of it pertains to Permajet and has nothing to do with traditional darkroom stuff

pentaxuser

If i could not have a darkroom, i would probably just shoot digital

 

[George Mann]

If i could not have a darkroom, i would probably just shoot digital

Imagine if you lived in a van, but film photography was one of the loves of your life.

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

Imagine if you lived in a van, but film photography was one of the loves of your life.

There are people who do wet plate/tin type out of a van. Of course, if you also had to live in the van, well that might be crowding things.

I've gone out west with a film developing kit in the trunk of the car, it doesn't take much space. Add a few 8x10 trays and a 'suitcase enlarger' and you are all set. Print outside on moonless nights out in the country (I'm thinking Montana & environs).

And there are lots of people living quite well out of their vans. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCofJu853kJKpkg4y5a-9YXg ("Foresty Forest") is a channel I like for vicarious adventuring in the Canadian Rockies.

 

[Helge]

If a scanner is the most important thing then this would seem to bode ill for the future of darkroom paper, wouldn't it?

On the IlfordPhoto site yesterday there was info on the Photography Show at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre (NEC) next month and there seemed to be little there in terms of lectures, stands etc to indicate that those in the "photography business" other than Ilford's presence have yet recognised a revival in analogue matters that is of sufficient import to warrant much attention.

The Imaging Warehouse, formerly called Nova Darkroom, send me a lot of info on their courses but all of it pertains to Permajet and has nothing to do with traditional darkroom stuff

pentaxuser

Not at all. Scanning has just taken over the role of the contact print or the cheap small prints (that tragically ended up being associated with the end product for most people. IE "development" meant small shitty drugstore/supermarket prints. The negatives was just these weird plastic strips that no one really know what to do with.)
Enlargers has gone from being free a few years ago, to commandeering respectable prices.
Once you've seen a darkroom print of your own work, there is really no going back to inkjet (pigment or dye).
And it's a unique piece of art. Not something that can be said for digital prints.

The NEC show seems to be mainly a very sales oriented tradeshow mixed with apparel, fashion and random other stuff (Hello Fresh and Guide Dogs‽). But there is other film guys than Ilford. Just at a casual glance-through: Analogue Wonderland, Paterson, Pixel Latr, SilverPan, Solarcan, Tetenal.
So certainly more than one.

 

[George Mann]

There are people who do wet plate/tin type out of a van. Of course, if you also had to live in the van, well that might be crowding things.

Believe me when I tell you that there is zero room in my van for a developing rig.

 

[Dismayed]

There certainly seems to be strong demand for high-end P&S cameras. Less so for fully manual cameras.

 

[Matthew K]

I would take that for sure, even though I much prefer manual cameras. I have a few automatic ones I keep around, but I don't often use them much. Like my digital cameras, they weigh down my shelves to keep them in place. Given the state of digital camera production, I imagine it would be easier to make a high-end P&S, as opposed to a lovely mechanical and fully manual camera.

 

[Matthew K]

Perhaps, but it's all personal perception and interpretation. I can make nice images with my digital camera, but I hate using it now. Like, the actual physical necessities of taking digital images and then working on them digitially just sucks. For me, that is. It's not that the images are bad in any particular way, but the process to get there is just awful for me. And, too, I find my digital images lack for something. You may call it soul, or feeling, or whatever it is that floats your boat, but for me the actual look of a fully digital file is off-putting. I don't actually much care for images so razor sharp you can cut tomatoes with them. I'm not quite on the Holga end of the spectrum either, but a nice pinhole image suits me fine

(I'm rambling, it has been a long day.)

 

[removed account4]

analog revival is wishful thinking! analog photography is all but dead; just a labor of love these days.

that's OK by me, but then again its more like 1903 than dead ... its good that we have manufacturers who make things on a small scale because there are fewer people doing it. i don't think it will die for as long as silver nitrate and thiosulfate-rice and the materials to make PT/PD and other processes that were flourishing before mister Eastman et al made it have mass-appeal and world wide phenomenon after world war 1. the trick of it all is to learn and eventually have an interest in one of those arcane processes, and using glass plates, so when mass marketed pre-made materials made by the conglomerates become difficult to afford or obtain due to supply chain issues or whatever, we can still make an image with some sort of device or an old fashioned camera, make an image using light and magic. we'll just have to get the ingredients at an apothecary, or make something from the cupboard or pine needles in the backyard there's nothing funner, ... what would be better than your electric car space suit wearing modernist neighbors thinking you are the neighborhood kook.

 

[lecarp]

"Is there really a revival of analog photography"

No there is not!
There is no need to revive something that has never perished!

 

[Ulophot]

Some may be aware of CameraRescue.org in Finland (of all places). From their home page:

"Our dream is to contribute to the global analog photography community by doing what we do best. In celebration of Finland’s 100th anniversary we united the mechanical camera expertise of our small engineering nation under one common goal – to rescue 100,000 cameras by the end of 2020. For us, rescuing cameras is the act of finding cameras that suffer from neglect or need to be repaired and getting them to the hands of new users.

"The goal that we set years ago was achieved in May 2021. Now the project's focus is moving from quantity to quality and education. We want there to be cameramakers also in 2050 and to make sure that happens, we started a school in 2021."

In the grand scale of things, they're tiny. One can argue the same for number of "views" of film photography videos, and subscribers to such channels on YouTube. However, it's notable that interest has continued in what seem significant numbers; that small, new manufacturers are continuing to succeed in finding markets for everything from view cameras to meters; and that Ilford and other companies have even brought out new films and papers over the period since film allegedly had died c.2013.

More significant, however, is what I would forecast as a cultural shift, judging from a host of factors internationally (for this forum they go a bit far afield). What emerges from certain trends, coheres in general with the thesis of The Revenge of Analogue: Real Things and Why They Matter (Perseus, 2016), which looks not only at film, vinyl, board games, and such, but also at some examples where people are rediscovering non-digital engagement, including with real people.

What I would suggest, is that the longer-term Western (in particular) trend based on the notion of a post-industrial society, upon which, ironically, the Internet/phone/screen/social-media society has rested, is reaching its own inevitable conflict with physical reality, and that in various ways, people are realizing it. That is, while we benefit enormously from all sorts of new technological advances in the digital and related domains, the neglect of the physical basis upon which our lives depend—food doesn't grow on the Internet or in the back room at the market, water doesn’t originate in the faucet—has intersected an increasing tempo of critical failures of various kinds that are causing a growing number of people to re-examine some of the axioms they've taken for granted over recent decades.

In one small way, I believe, this is what underlies (consciously or not) the refrain among new film users and other returning to film from digital: it slows me down; it makes me think about what I am doing; the pictures I make have more meaning for me; the physical process is challenging in a different way; it's not instant, you have to wait to see the images—and I like all that!

Barilla, a pasta manufacturer, had a magazine ad a while back, showing a group of 20s- or 30s-aged people enjoying a pasta dinner together, talking, laughing. The ad copy said something like, "Lasagna without cell phones." I don’t expect film to return to its former popularity, but I do think it has begun already to find its place, alongside other technologies and re-evaluation, among people who are tired of checking their phones every three minutes and preferring enjoying social life without the media, sitting down with a printed book, even some relaxed peace and quiet.

 

[Dusty Negative]

Some may be aware of CameraRescue.org in Finland (of all places). From their home page:

"Our dream is to contribute to the global analog photography community by doing what we do best. In celebration of Finland’s 100th anniversary we united the mechanical camera expertise of our small engineering nation under one common goal – to rescue 100,000 cameras by the end of 2020. For us, rescuing cameras is the act of finding cameras that suffer from neglect or need to be repaired and getting them to the hands of new users.

"The goal that we set years ago was achieved in May 2021. Now the project's focus is moving from quantity to quality and education. We want there to be cameramakers also in 2050 and to make sure that happens, we started a school in 2021."

In the grand scale of things, they're tiny. One can argue the same for number of "views" of film photography videos, and subscribers to such channels on YouTube. However, it's notable that interest has continued in what seem significant numbers; that small, new manufacturers are continuing to succeed in finding markets for everything from view cameras to meters; and that Ilford and other companies have even brought out new films and papers over the period since film allegedly had died c.2013.

More significant, however, is what I would forecast as a cultural shift, judging from a host of factors internationally (for this forum they go a bit far afield). What emerges from certain trends, coheres in general with the thesis of The Revenge of Analogue: Real Things and Why They Matter (Perseus, 2016), which looks not only at film, vinyl, board games, and such, but also at some examples where people are rediscovering non-digital engagement, including with real people.

What I would suggest, is that the longer-term Western (in particular) trend based on the notion of a post-industrial society, upon which, ironically, the Internet/phone/screen/social-media society has rested, is reaching its own inevitable conflict with physical reality, and that in various ways, people are realizing it. That is, while we benefit enormously from all sorts of new technological advances in the digital and related domains, the neglect of the physical basis upon which our lives depend—food doesn't grow on the Internet or in the back room at the market, water doesn’t originate in the faucet—has intersected an increasing tempo of critical failures of various kinds that are causing a growing number of people to re-examine some of the axioms they've taken for granted over recent decades.

In one small way, I believe, this is what underlies (consciously or not) the refrain among new film users and other returning to film from digital: it slows me down; it makes me think about what I am doing; the pictures I make have more meaning for me; the physical process is challenging in a different way; it's not instant, you have to wait to see the images—and I like all that!

Barilla, a pasta manufacturer, had a magazine ad a while back, showing a group of 20s- or 30s-aged people enjoying a pasta dinner together, talking, laughing. The ad copy said something like, "Lasagna without cell phones." I don’t expect film to return to its former popularity, but I do think it has begun already to find its place, alongside other technologies and re-evaluation, among people who are tired of checking their phones every three minutes and preferring enjoying social life without the media, sitting down with a printed book, even some relaxed peace and quiet.

What a delightfully articulate response. Thank you.

 

[Vaughn]

"Is there really a revival of analog photography"
No there is not!
There is no need to revive something that has never perished!

Quote edited to visually manageable levels, but I agree with intensity that was implied. As a form of expression, the use of film and/or wet processes has never died. We're still limping along, enjoying the view.

 

[Vaughn]

That's why I make my own printing material. And could learn to coat my own dry plates, I suppose, but I have enough negatives to work with already to keep me busy...plus my film in the fridge.

But no, that does not stave off the reduction of film types available, nor the reducing of the number of artists working with analog color photography. While color is possible without color film, it's a hard row to hoe, but at least the wheel has already been invented. What a terrible mixing of metaphors...

But photography might return to its roots, carried out by strange people in dark places, cooking things up with their own recipes.

 

[foc]

Some may be aware of CameraRescue.org in Finland (of all places). From their home page:

"Our dream is to contribute to the global analog photography community by doing what we do best. In celebration of Finland’s 100th anniversary we united the mechanical camera expertise of our small engineering nation under one common goal – to rescue 100,000 cameras by the end of 2020. For us, rescuing cameras is the act of finding cameras that suffer from neglect or need to be repaired and getting them to the hands of new users.

"The goal that we set years ago was achieved in May 2021. Now the project's focus is moving from quantity to quality and education. We want there to be cameramakers also in 2050 and to make sure that happens, we started a school in 2021."

In the grand scale of things, they're tiny. One can argue the same for number of "views" of film photography videos, and subscribers to such channels on YouTube. However, it's notable that interest has continued in what seem significant numbers; that small, new manufacturers are continuing to succeed in finding markets for everything from view cameras to meters; and that Ilford and other companies have even brought out new films and papers over the period since film allegedly had died c.2013.

More significant, however, is what I would forecast as a cultural shift, judging from a host of factors internationally (for this forum they go a bit far afield). What emerges from certain trends, coheres in general with the thesis of The Revenge of Analogue: Real Things and Why They Matter (Perseus, 2016), which looks not only at film, vinyl, board games, and such, but also at some examples where people are rediscovering non-digital engagement, including with real people.

What I would suggest, is that the longer-term Western (in particular) trend based on the notion of a post-industrial society, upon which, ironically, the Internet/phone/screen/social-media society has rested, is reaching its own inevitable conflict with physical reality, and that in various ways, people are realizing it. That is, while we benefit enormously from all sorts of new technological advances in the digital and related domains, the neglect of the physical basis upon which our lives depend—food doesn't grow on the Internet or in the back room at the market, water doesn’t originate in the faucet—has intersected an increasing tempo of critical failures of various kinds that are causing a growing number of people to re-examine some of the axioms they've taken for granted over recent decades.

In one small way, I believe, this is what underlies (consciously or not) the refrain among new film users and other returning to film from digital: it slows me down; it makes me think about what I am doing; the pictures I make have more meaning for me; the physical process is challenging in a different way; it's not instant, you have to wait to see the images—and I like all that!

Barilla, a pasta manufacturer, had a magazine ad a while back, showing a group of 20s- or 30s-aged people enjoying a pasta dinner together, talking, laughing. The ad copy said something like, "Lasagna without cell phones." I don’t expect film to return to its former popularity, but I do think it has begun already to find its place, alongside other technologies and re-evaluation, among people who are tired of checking their phones every three minutes and preferring enjoying social life without the media, sitting down with a printed book, even some relaxed peace and quiet.

What a delightfully articulate response. Thank you.

I agree with Dusty Negative, it was a pleasure to read the above and I believe it reflects the human changes and reactions to technology.

 

[Don_ih]

If Kodak starts making b&w photo paper. I'll start to believe there's a real film revival.

 

[removed account4]

If Kodak starts making b&w photo paper. I'll start to believe there's a real film revival.

Naaah, if they jump start PROCESSING. When they dismantled the photo finishing arm of their operation it was the end. They are unable to produce small quantities like Ilford. From what I remember reading from tours Eager Appuggers attended, and threads that Simon Galley responded to, Ilford has 1 coating machine so things are a bit more manageable. That is, unless EK wants to make a massive run and sell expired fogged paper to paper negative shooters. .... or just coat double weight AZO / Gaslight / Silver Chloride paper that will have a 100 year shelf life. Its almost 1902 might as well make what people shot in 1902 .. at the same scale.

 

[miha]

Naaah, if they jump start PROCESSING. When they dismantled the photo finishing arm of their operation it was the end. They are unable to produce small quantities like Ilford. From what I remember reading from tours Eager Appuggers attended, and threads that Simon Galley responded to, Ilford has 1 coating machine so things are a bit more manageable. That is, unless EK wants to make a massive run and sell expired fogged paper to paper negative shooters. .... or just coat double weight AZO / Gaslight / Silver Chloride paper that will have a 100 year shelf life. Its almost 1902 might as well make what people shot in 1902 .. at the same scale.

Whay not using their film coater to make paper as others do? That being said I like your idea

 

[Don_ih]

They are unable to produce small quantities like Ilford.

Nope. They were unable to produce small quantities. They now should only be producing small quantities.

 

[MattKing]

The Eastman Kodak coater in Building 38 is still only practical with larger runs than the smaller runs that are practical on Harman's machines.
It is also quite busy.
And they really aren't working with paper any more.
You would be more likely to see black and white photographic paper coming off of the machine in Colorado owned by Carestream where much of the Kodak branded RA-4 colour photographic paper is produced.
I don't know whether they would have the capacity there to deal with fibre based papers.

 

[removed account4]

Whay not using their film coater to make paper as others do? That being said I like your idea

I know huh? its like a no brainer! I swear they should hire me as a consultant . I'll even go to the millinery store and get a bowler hat and show up on a penny farthing . the big wigs I don't think are very good at thinking outside the box. ! I mean can you imagine J Lane Dry Plates contact printed on double weight AZO? im gonna have to start that falling plate camera company soon .

 

[Don_ih]

And they really aren't working with paper any more.

That was my point. So long as Kodak won't make paper, there is no film photography "revival". Kodak will never make paper again.

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

So long as Kodak won't make paper, there is no film photography "revival". Kodak will never make paper again.

That's not entirely a bad thing. My memories of the last days of Kodak's paper making in the 1990's, with their inability to master making a long-lived paper without the use of cadmium, aren't pleasant. Each box of 'Elite' (I think that was the name of the stuff) that I opened produced fogged prints. I opened the next box, thinking I must have gotten a bum box, same result. At the end of opening up $300 worth of paper I gave up. I shifted to Agfa paper, but then came the infamous bronzing issue. Finally, at long, last I settled on Ilford - and that firm seems to have no problem making consistent boxes of long-lasting paper.

 

[CMoore]

I suppose you need to qualify the word "Revival".

Does it mean sales of Film, Paper, Chemicals, Cameras circa 1990...............or does it mean more Film and Paper (and chemicals.?)
sales than was happening the last 10-15 years.?
I have no idea about Paper, but it sure seems like Film sales have increased quite a bit in the last 2 years.....doesn't it.?
That does not mean it will last.........it might.......who knows

Personally, if i could not have, or at least USE a darkroom, my film days would be over.
Going through the ritual of "Shooting Film" just to stuff it straight into a computer..............i just do not jibe with that.
But maybe THAT is the future of "Film".?

"Shooting Film" and film sales might be going through a metamorphosis.

 

[Don_ih]

The people who have casually picked up film for its "look" and only ever scan it will drop it eventually to get that "look" from Fuji camera settings or Photoshop/Lightroom presets. Meanwhile, I've started hating my epson v600 scans....