Is there really a strong interest in film photography?

faberryman · Jul 1, 2022

snusmumriken said:
A little while back in this discussion, somebody (faberryman?) stated that no-one went back to old technologies except for nostalgia's sake. It took me a while to react, but it really isn't true.

Here’s an example: nostalgia or return to a better technology? CDs are tangible, and have artwork, liner notes, and pretty good sound, with none of the hiss of your old reel-to-reel tapes, or snap, crackle, pop of vinyl records. Remember the good old days when we would sit around looking at the artwork, reading the liner notes with a magnifying glass, and listening to 80 minutes of uninterrupted music? You sure can't do that with downloads or streaming. Well, maybe you could look at the artwork and read the liner notes on your phone or laptop, but that's not the authentic CD experience.

How to survive the inevitable CD revival

Compact Discs are making a comeback, kinda. The shiny digital format is gaining new fans thanks to new gear and of course new music. Here's how to get onboard.

www.engadget.com

Cholentpot · Jul 1, 2022

faberryman said:
Here’s an example: nostalgia or return to a better technology? CDs are tangible, and have artwork, liner notes, and pretty good sound, with none of the hiss of your old reel-to-reel tapes, or snap, crackle, pop of vinyl records. Remember the good old days when we would sit around looking at the artwork, reading the liner notes with a magnifying glass, and listening to 80 minutes of uninterrupted music? You sure can't do that with downloads or streaming. Well, maybe you could look at the artwork and read the liner notes on your phone or laptop, but that's not the authentic CD experience.

How to survive the inevitable CD revival

Compact Discs are making a comeback, kinda. The shiny digital format is gaining new fans thanks to new gear and of course new music. Here's how to get onboard.

www.engadget.com

I'm sure my kids will be all over CDs in 20 years.

snusmumriken · Jul 2, 2022

faberryman said:
Here’s an example: nostalgia or return to a better technology? CDs are tangible, and have artwork, liner notes, and pretty good sound, with none of the hiss of your old reel-to-reel tapes, or snap, crackle, pop of vinyl records. Remember the good old days when we would sit around looking at the artwork, reading the liner notes with a magnifying glass, and listening to 80 minutes of uninterrupted music? You sure can't do that with downloads or streaming. Well, maybe you could look at the artwork and read the liner notes on your phone or laptop, but that's not the authentic CD experience.

How to survive the inevitable CD revival

Compact Discs are making a comeback, kinda. The shiny digital format is gaining new fans thanks to new gear and of course new music. Here's how to get onboard.

www.engadget.com

Not only do I still listen to CDs (by now that won't surprise you), but I have also kept some irreplaceable LPs. Sadly, I can't justify the cost of a modern deck...which is where I think we will be with film and cameras in 20 years' time. My great-grandparents' clockwork music box took sheet metal discs and is somewhat massive, but it still works fine. Draw what parallels you like.

pentaxuser · Jul 2, 2022

Andrew O'Neill said:
I think there is more of an interest now than there was five years ago, because my enrollment is increasing each year...or that could just be down to my sparkling personality...

The latter reason unless you hand out free donuts to your class. Then we'd have to re-visit the situation to eliminate those with hunger "of the belly kind that is banished with bacon and beans" or in fact donuts

On a more serious note I do think that if we are looking for confirmation about numbers then enrolments at colleges are an important indicator

pentaxuser

pentaxuser · Jul 2, 2022

snusmumriken said:
I like to go fly-fishing. I started with carbon fibre, but now I use a 1930s cane rod with a silk line. I also use a steel-frame bicycle. And of course film cameras. I love the aesthetics of all three, and their limitations define the game. I don't know what this says about me, but I'm happy.
View attachment 309196

Yes that is a bike that would attract my attention. It has the classic lines that I associate with a racing bike

I can't quite get my head around anything other than the diamond shape( as it was known) steel frame and brown leather saddle for bikes

pentaxuser

Sirius Glass · Jul 2, 2022

pentaxuser said:
Yes that is a bike that would attract my attention. It has the classic lines that I associate with a racing bike

I can't quite get my head around anything other than the diamond shape( as it was known) steel frame and brown leather saddle for bikes

pentaxuser

You really need to try a recumbent bicycle. Once you do, you will not use an ~~upright~~ upwrong bicycle again.

reddesert · Jul 2, 2022

I don't understand the common argument that the limit on "film revival" is a limited supply of film cameras, and that soon those will be exhausted and then the manufacturers will stop making film. First, every time a film company introduces a new cheapo plastic film camera, many people on Photrio respond "Why would I want this when I can get a more featured old camera for the same $50?" (See the current thread on the new Kodak H35 plastic half-frame camera.)

Second, sure there is a finite supply of old film cameras, but the limit is very, very large. It's really hard to imagine that we will run out of working Nikkormats, Spotmatics, etc soon - when you can buy one of them for the price of 3 rolls of film, it suggests that scarcity is affecting the price of film, not of film cameras. These are ~50 years old, it's hard to see why they'd all be dead at 75. Maybe they'll be dead at 100 years, but that is outside the horizon of reasonable predictions for film, photography, or society at large.

Sirius Glass · Jul 2, 2022

Any interest in film and cameras, expensive cameras, moderately priced cameras and cheap cameras is good for film photography.

Brendan Quirk · Jul 2, 2022

Tadeusz123 said:
old Schwinn

1983 Schwinn Super Sport. Bought new. Still ridden every year.

Brendan Quirk · Jul 2, 2022

jtk said:
"Photography" for some people means toys and technologies...ownership...acquisition. For other people (like me) photography is an active verb that's mostly about making images that can be shared.

In my case, sharing images centers on making prints...I rarely bother to put images online.

Very much true. Photography is about making pictures. Cameras are fine toys, but after a bit, the pictures come first again.

I also give primacy to prints. Having the need, in these days, to put pictures online, I only do scans of prints. Scans of negatives would be easier, but do not reflect the final product.

faberryman · Jul 2, 2022

Andrew O'Neill said:
I think there is more of an interest now than there was five years ago, because my enrollment is increasing each year...or that could just be down to my sparkling personality...

The test is if they sign up for the follow-on courses. Hopefully they do.

albireo · Jul 3, 2022

Brendan Quirk said:
I also give primacy to prints. Having the need, in these days, to put pictures online, I only do scans of prints. Scans of negatives would be easier, but do not reflect the final product.

You forgot to add 'in my opinion'. Again, and for your information, the 'final product' is whatever people want it to be.

For some people, possibly more than you imagine, the final product is the negative or positive image captured on the film.

For said above user group, a flat, linear, gamma corrected 16bit/channel scan of the final photo on the negative/positive is a much more faithful (and/or useful, depending on purpose) representation of the signal on the film than a strongly compressed, strongly non linearised rephotographed version of said negative on silver gelatine paper.

The process you are familiar with, nowadays, ends at different stages for different people, and that is fine.

Agulliver · Jul 3, 2022

I was at my local jazz and blues club last night for the first time in a month, apparently I'd been missed. The BD Lenz trio were over from NY/NJ and their drummer made a point of talking with me as I was "using a real camera".

Regarding supply of cameras....the super 8 crowd went through something about 20 years ago...our member "wahiba" may remember.

"There are millions of working old super 8 cameras, no need to worry".
Cameras stop working, cannot be repaired, perceived value goes up, sales of super 8 film go down, ordinary mortals are now pretty much complete priced out of an activity which was wholly viable just 20 years ago.

While there are many times more still cameras than movie cameras, and often they're less complex, they are still largely mechanical devices which need trained technicians/engineers to keep going...and there are fewer of those. Perhaps the reason why I see young'uns buying K1000s and also 1930s to 50s cameras is because they're generally simple and built to last. How many Zeiss-Ikon folders ever needed CLA to function acceptably?

For similar reasons, it is at our own peril that we pour scorn on the new plastic cameras such as Holgas, the Lomography cameras, the new Kodak branded half frame and the other mostly plastic cameras. Because while they may be of no interest to us, they are an affordable way into film for people who don't own a camera. The Kodak branded cameras keep the Kodak name visible and may help sales of Kodak film. I don't think some plastic camera is going to drive a film revival, but at this point every little increase in visibility, use and sales will help.

Thinking of the £50 Kodak branded camera, I looked up the 1973 Argos catalogue online and it turns out that when one adjusts for inflation, the recommended price for a Kodak Instamatic was £40.

Alan Edward Klein · Jul 3, 2022

albireo said:
You forgot to add 'in my opinion'. Again, and for your information, the 'final product' is whatever people want it to be.

For some people, possibly more than you imagine, the final product is the negative or positive image captured on the film.

For said above user group, a flat, linear, gamma corrected 16bit/channel scan of the final photo on the negative/positive is a much more faithful representation of the signal on the film than a strongly compressed, strongly non linearised rephotographed version of said negative on silver gelatine paper.

The process you are familiar with, nowadays, ends at different stages for different people, and that is fine.

In my last house I had around thirty 16x20 prints mounted on the walls. When we moved, my wife said "no" to all those so I'm left with just a few on the walls. So now my scans are for FLickr and I make slide shows to be shown on a 75" 4K HDR TV with music background, titles, credits, etc. My old projector broke, SO now I show them on the TV, or monitor, or download to Youtube where family can watch from their phone or home equipment at their convenience. Watching a slide show on a 75" TV is impressive.

Here are samples. The scuba show is from 35 years old Ektachromes. The rest are digitally captured. Call them up from this link .

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDzogShfhgCHh2rVvEsFOJQ

albireo · Jul 3, 2022

Alan Edward Klein said:
In my last house I had around thirty 16x20 prints mounted on the walls. When we moved, my wife said "no" to all those so I'm left with just a few on the walls. So now my scans are for FLickr

Alan, I know your flickr account well. Great work. Always a pleasure to browse your work.

Makes it me sad to think I would have never had the pleasure of seeing 'what you saw' (and what many other talented photographers saw) if film photography had decided to stop at prints stored in some drawer in another continent.

Alan Edward Klein · Jul 3, 2022

Nice of you to say. Thanks.

VinceInMT · Jul 3, 2022

Brendan Quirk said:
Very much true. Photography is about making pictures. Cameras are fine toys, but after a bit, the pictures come first again.

I also give primacy to prints. Having the need, in these days, to put pictures online, I only do scans of prints. Scans of negatives would be easier, but do not reflect the final product.

I tend to agree about the primacy of prints and I observed a reaction them just this past week. I spent 2 weeks in Italy in May on a study abroad with other university students. While I shot lots of images with my phone that I used in the daily blog I wrote on the trip, I also took along my Minolta SRT-201 and several rolls of Ilford HP5+ which I used, mostly, for shoot-from-the-hip street photography. After returning, developing and scanning the film, I added them to my blog so my fellow travelers could see them. I’ve also posted some of those images in the gallery here.

The professor who led the trip sent out a mass email and invited any and all to a summer critique where we could show work we’ve been doing since school let out in early May. The majority of those who showed up had been on the Italy trip and had seen these black and white images online. I brought 8x10 enlargements of some of these street shots made on Ilford FB paper and mounted on matte board. I didn’t install these but passed them around and noticed how they spent more time looking at each image than they probably did with the digital version. Not only did they hold each one in their own hands, they would hold it away, then bring it in close up, tilt it to change the way light reflected off the emulsion and the surface, and generally embrace it as a physical object. Comments included revenue to the richness of tones in the prints.

The subject matter and compositional elements aside, I am leaning toward believing that it’s the physicality of the print, whether from a digital or film source, that allows it to transcend what the digitally viewed version has to offer.

VinceInMT · Jul 3, 2022

snusmumriken said:
Not only do I still listen to CDs (by now that won't surprise you), but I have also kept some irreplaceable LPs. Sadly, I can't justify the cost of a modern deck...which is where I think we will be with film and cameras in 20 years' time. My great-grandparents' clockwork music box took sheet metal discs and is somewhat massive, but it still works fine. Draw what parallels you like.

I tend to keep my feet in both current and past camps of media. I have a few CDs but pretty much skipped over them, jumping from vinyl to online digital. That said, I am heavily into magnetic recording, particularly reels, only seconded by 8-tracks. Yes, 8-tracks. And, while not at the top of my list, I do have a wire recorder and a few spools to go with it. Right now I am going through my fairly large collection of 45 rpm records and digitizing that collection just because.

Alan Edward Klein · Jul 3, 2022

VinceInMT said:
I tend to agree about the primacy of prints and I observed a reaction them just this past week. I spent 2 weeks in Italy in May on a study abroad with other university students. While I shot lots of images with my phone that I used in the daily blog I wrote on the trip, I also took along my Minolta SRT-201 and several rolls of Ilford HP5+ which I used, mostly, for shoot-from-the-hip street photography. After returning, developing and scanning the film, I added them to my blog so my fellow travelers could see them. I’ve also posted some of those images in the gallery here.

The professor who led the trip sent out a mass email and invited any and all to a summer critique where we could show work we’ve been doing since school let out in early May. The majority of those who showed up had been on the Italy trip and had seen these black and white images online. I brought 8x10 enlargements of some of these street shots made on Ilford FB paper and mounted on matte board. I didn’t install these but passed them around and noticed how they spent more time looking at each image than they probably did with the digital version. Not only did they hold each one in their own hands, they would hold it away, then bring it in close up, tilt it to change the way light reflected off the emulsion and the surface, and generally embrace it as a physical object. Comments included revenue to the richness of tones in the prints.

The subject matter and compositional elements aside, I am leaning toward believing that it’s the physicality of the print, whether from a digital or film source, that allows it to transcend what the digitally viewed version has to offer.

The problem for me with prints, is I'm limited to what I can do with them. Sticking them in a folder after looking once or twice just seems like a waste of time and effort. Scanning for Flickr or a slide show is pretty much what I could do now on a regular basis. It's just what it is.

What do others here do with their prints if you can't mount them and stick them up on a wall? And why do it then?

PrairiePhotographer · Jul 3, 2022

Two of my twenty-something kids own Nikon FM cameras and carry them on special “exploring” days. One of these kids works for one of the big tech companies. They also enjoy vinyl records. I’ve been trying to figure out what draws them to these vintage technologies. They seem to enjoy products that have permanence (rather than being disposable) and that demands something of them (skills, effort, attention). To be clear, most of their photos are taken with a cell phone and most of their music listening is on Spotify, but there is a sizable “digital backlash” part of their lives, too.

Alan Edward Klein · Jul 3, 2022

I think humans want to distinguish themselves from others. We all try to be different. Using film and old cameras do that.

VinceInMT · Jul 3, 2022

Alan Edward Klein said:
The problem for me with prints, is I'm limited to what I can do with them. Sticking them in a folder after looking once or twice just seems like a waste of time and effort. Scanning for Flickr or a slide show is pretty much what I could do now on a regular basis. It's just what it is.

What do others here do with their prints if you can't mount them and stick them up on a wall? And why do it then?

That’s a really good question. For me, I have all these boxes…..

But to answer the “why do it then” query, that’s really easy. I do it because I have to. It’s for the same reason I have hundred of pages in my drawing sketchbooks and stacks of old sketchbooks around. In my approach, it has never been about the finished product but, rather, about being in the process of creating and doing. I suppose this is why I have never been motivated to monetize or even show what I do.

Engaging in the process, or either doing photography or drawing (or when I go out for a long run), puts my in what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined as “flow.” My focus is on what I am doing, the mind relaxes, and time disappears. It is not unusual to emerge from the darkroom, surprised that it has transitioned from day to night while I’ve been in there. It’s the same when I draw. Nothing else that goes on the world around me matters and a couple hours slips by.

That I end up with all this flat work as a result is just a measure of how effective the process is. I have the space to store the work and it will eventually become something for my children to deal with.

Sal Santamaura · Jul 3, 2022

VinceInMT said:
...Not only did they hold each one in their own hands, they would hold it away, then bring it in close up, tilt it to change the way light reflected off the emulsion and the surface..

And therein lies the major problem. Ilford, which uses the same Schoeller base for its products as other manufacturers do, and which also falls into line with the "fashion" to use a very glossy top coat, offers only fiber base papers that are, in my opinion, too damn shiny. Short of extremely controlled lighting on mounted/framed prints, as well as minimal illumination in the space where they're hung, surface reflections make comfortably viewing them a process that ranges from challenging to impossible.

The only solution I've found -- one that fortunately also addresses an ever-worsening shortage of water in much of the world -- is to use Multigrade RC Portfolio pearl surface paper. Prints on that, held in the hand, are both readily viewable without reflections and robust enough to stay relatively flat.

In the past, it has been suggested here that I ought try Bergger's semi-glossy fiber based paper. I purchased a package and, while its surface gloss is just about perfect, my aesthetic dislike for the creamy base is insurmountable. I'm also repulsed by the outrageously high level of optical brightening agents (OBAs) HARMAN incorporates into its Ilford Cooltone fiber base product, but know that a decent white is possible without OBAs while avoiding the color of butter. One need only examine Hahnemuhle FineArt Baryta Satin, which has become my primary inkjet paper, to confirm that.

pentaxuser · Jul 3, 2022

Alan Edward Klein said:
The problem for me with prints, is I'm limited to what I can do with them. Sticking them in a folder after looking once or twice just seems like a waste of time and effort. Scanning for Flickr or a slide show is pretty much what I could do now on a regular basis. It's just what it is.

What do others here do with their prints if you can't mount them and stick them up on a wall? And why do it then?

Well there are always print albums. Looking through those as the years pass, with say the wife,son or grandkids and remembering what is there, what happened etc revives memories that looking at a screen doesn't revive in the same way, at least not for me.

I suppose there is something that flipping through an album does for me what a screen doesn't. It is real( as in physical prints) as opposed to virtual. My brain had maybe 60 years of "real" and only a few years of "virtual" and even then it is a fleeting experience. My brain may never adapt.

A quick example. We look after the in-laws' dogs occasionally and when they arrived recently I had just been looking a print I had done maybe 3-4 years ago of one of the dogs with our cat, now deceased. I showed it to the in-law and that started a very enjoyable conversation. It involved me handing the print over than both of us looking at it. It was tangible- a real piece of thickish paper that holding it meant something to both of us

Would we have had the same enjoyable experience with say an i-pad, i-phone etc I doubt it

pentaxuser

Helge · Jul 3, 2022

reddesert said:
I don't understand the common argument that the limit on "film revival" is a limited supply of film cameras, and that soon those will be exhausted and then the manufacturers will stop making film. First, every time a film company introduces a new cheapo plastic film camera, many people on Photrio respond "Why would I want this when I can get a more featured old camera for the same $50?" (See the current thread on the new Kodak H35 plastic half-frame camera.)

Maybe film companies should stop introducing cheap crap “film fad” sploitation cameras?

Something like a Nettar with a few modern trimmings, I’d be all over the moment it landed.
Electronic shutter, possibility of optionally using your iPhone as a viewfinder, range finder and light meter, made of tough durable and light plastic and serviceability are just a few possible examples of things not readily possible with old cameras.

Is there really a strong interest in film photography?

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