Is there really a strong interest in film photography?

[Alan Edward Klein]

It depends on the context. When it comes to the 4- or the 8-track, it’s referred to as a cartridge. The Philips audio cassette is, well, a cassette. But when you look at all the formats that have come along over the years, there is lots of ambiguity. Some formats that featured supply and take up reels, like the RCA tape cartridge and the Elcasaet, were referred to as “cartridges.” In the radio business, a “cart” was a thing that played in a continuous loop.

Is there a definitive name for the “package” that holds 35mm film that is placed in a standard 35mm camera?

I'm old enough to had bought an Akai reel-to-reel tape recorder. Complete over design for my uses with sound-on-sound, sound-over-sound, etc. But I bought it when I was in Japan in the USAF and it was pretty cheap there, relative to USA prices. I also bought a Nikon F Photomic T at the time there when it came out, so you can date me pretty well. Another bargain.

 

[Agulliver]

It depends on the context. When it comes to the 4- or the 8-track, it’s referred to as a cartridge. The Philips audio cassette is, well, a cassette. But when you look at all the formats that have come along over the years, there is lots of ambiguity. Some formats that featured supply and take up reels, like the RCA tape cartridge and the Elcasaet, were referred to as “cartridges.” In the radio business, a “cart” was a thing that played in a continuous loop.

Is there a definitive name for the “package” that holds 35mm film that is placed in a standard 35mm camera?

Early Realistic branded audio cassettes (to the Philips standard) from Radio Shack were described as "tape cartridge".

I've always been told that the roughly cylindrical container in which 135 film is wound for camera use, is called a "cassette".

I have a nice Akai GX210D reel to reel tape deck with auto reverse, three motors, three heads and frequency response to make any CD player break down and weep. Though S/N ratio isn't up there with modern audio. I'm old enough to remember when such devices were new, but not to have owned one back then. Got mine in the 21st century, having owned a lesser Akai 1720L since the early 90s.

 

[VinceInMT]

I'm old enough to had bought an Akai reel-to-reel tape recorder. Complete over design for my uses with sound-on-sound, sound-over-sound, etc. But I bought it when I was in Japan in the USAF and it was pretty cheap there, relative to USA prices. I also bought a Nikon F Photomic T at the time there when it came out, so you can date me pretty well. Another bargain.

Yep, I bought lots of my audio and photo stuff when I was in the army, stationed in Germany In the early 70s. I still have most of it. This and more….

 

[VinceInMT]

Early Realistic branded audio cassettes (to the Philips standard) from Radio Shack were described as "tape cartridge".

I've always been told that the roughly cylindrical container in which 135 film is wound for camera use, is called a "cassette".

Thanks. Yep, it gets ambiguous.

I have a nice Akai GX210D reel to reel tape deck with auto reverse, three motors, three heads and frequency response to make any CD player break down and weep. Though S/N ratio isn't up there with modern audio. I'm old enough to remember when such devices were new, but not to have owned one back then. Got mine in the 21st century, having owned a lesser Akai 1720L since the early 90s.

Excellent. Yes, the S/N isn’t as good as newer stuff with with the natural decline of my ability to hear higher frequencies and a healthy dose of tinnitus, my reels still sound pretty good to me.

Not to derail the thread, but I have written up, sort of memoir style, my interest and history with magnetic tape, photography, and other stuff on my web site under “Hobbies, Interests, and Passions.” Every tape machine and camera has a story to tell:

http://www.codecooker.com/

 

[Helge]

Yep, I bought lots of my audio and photo stuff when I was in the army, stationed in Germany In the early 70s. I still have most of it. This and more….

View attachment 309933

I always wondered, what do you actually use reel to reel for as a HiFi enthusiast? Mix tapes? Radio recordings? Both seems anathema to the whole idea of HiFi.

I get that the potential is there for very high sound quality, but what about the source?
Outside of the very few recordings released on R-R tape, there is little original material released for it.
Play the original from Vinyl or CD.
Otherwise Metal tape or good Chrome with HX-Pro or similar is so good that combined with the hugely improved convenience that it's not even a question of which to choose.

They are super good looking and interesting to look at, but how often do you actually use your R-R?

 

[Cholentpot]

I always wondered, what do you actually use reel to reel for as a HiFi enthusiast? Mix tapes? Radio recordings? Both seems anathema to the whole idea of HiFi.

I get that the potential is there for very high sound quality, but what about the source?
Outside of the very few recordings released in R-R tape, there is little original material released for it.
Play the original from Vinyl or CD.
Otherwise Metal tape or good Chrome with HX-Pro or similar is so good that combined with the hugely improved convenience that it's not even a question of which to choose.

They are super good looking and interesting to look at, but how often do you actually use your R-R?

Uh oh.

Don't upset the Reel 2 Reel guys. I was once one of them.

 

[Helge]

Uh oh.

Don't upset the Reel 2 Reel guys. I was once one of them.

You know, I am one too. Mine is in the cellar for the exact reasons stated above. That is why I'm asking the question.

 

[Cholentpot]

You know, I am one too. Mine is in the cellar for the exact reasons stated above. That is why I'm asking the question.

I could never find one that ran at the right speed.

 

[VinceInMT]

I always wondered, what do you actually use reel to reel for as a HiFi enthusiast? Mix tapes? Radio recordings? Both seems anathema to the whole idea of HiFi.

I get that the potential is there for very high sound quality, but what about the source?
Outside of the very few recordings released on R-R tape, there is little original material released for it.
Play the original from Vinyl or CD.
Otherwise Metal tape or good Chrome with HX-Pro or similar is so good that combined with the hugely improved convenience that it's not even a question of which to choose.

They are super good looking and interesting to look at, but how often do you actually use your R-R?

Just as a point of reference, I've never chased the "perfect sound" genie. I got my first reel machine in the mid-60s and was satisfied with making recordings off radio and playing them back. My equipment got better over the years and I got into making mix tapes on reel that I could load up and let play for 3 hours at a time. And, of course, I copied LOTS of vinyl, an analog equivalent to file sharing, especially when I was living in an army barracks. Later, when I really got more active in collecting radio broadcasts I picked up a Tandberg TD20A SE, a pro-sumer reel machine with 10" reels, that I could use for making very long recordings.

Today, I have every reel I ever acquired, many factory pre-recorded, and still listen to them along with vinyl and 8-tracks and cassettes. Like I said in another post, at this point in my life, my hearing isn't the best so I don't quibble about a few db of S/N or some high end frequency loss on the media.

So, yes, I still use the reel machines.



Plus, it's just cool to keep using the old stuff.

 

[VinceInMT]

I could never find one that ran at the right speed.

On many of my machines I've replaced the motor capacitors that have dried out over time that helps with the speed issue. Also, a clean and lube and a new belt works wonders.

 

[Helge]

I could never find one that ran at the right speed.

Being this a photo forum, a place for people making their own art, you’d think that some people actually used the R-R for studio recordings?
But how often would you use something like that?

A Nagra or other portable R-R, I’d totally get for recording live music, nature sound recordings, family members audio or interviews.
But they don’t really seem to be what people go for.

I have a few old valuable radio recordings that I snagged up or inherited. That why I hang on to my deck.
But who wants to record the radio of today?

Edit:

Just as a point of reference, I've never chased the "perfect sound" genie. I got my first reel machine in the mid-60s and was satisfied with making recordings off radio and playing them back. My equipment got better over the years and I got into making mix tapes on reel that I could load up and let play for 3 hours at a time. And, of course, I copied LOTS of vinyl, an analog equivalent to file sharing, especially when I was living in an army barracks. Later, when I really got more active in collecting radio broadcasts I picked up a Tandberg TD20A SE, a pro-sumer reel machine with 10" reels, that I could use for making very long recordings.

Today, I have every reel I ever acquired, many factory pre-recorded, and still listen to them along with vinyl and 8-tracks and cassettes. Like I said in another post, at this point in my life, my hearing isn't the best so I don't quibble about a few db of S/N or some high end frequency loss on the media.

So, yes, I still use the reel machines.



Plus, it's just cool to keep using the old stuff.

Thanks for the answer.
Good midrange is what matters most anyway.
Apart from “pirated” content and mixtapes (which has lost a lot of its relevance to me with vinyls new status) do you ever listen to the old radio shows?

Prerecorded music is the only possible exception I could find to want to get into R-R again.
There is actually a few freaks doing new reels to this day.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I believe I used to record on my reel to reel from The High Fidelity tuner. Good music was often broadcast. So having a good machine to record it on made sense.

 

[Agulliver]

I always wondered, what do you actually use reel to reel for as a HiFi enthusiast? Mix tapes? Radio recordings? Both seems anathema to the whole idea of HiFi.

I get that the potential is there for very high sound quality, but what about the source?
Outside of the very few recordings released on R-R tape, there is little original material released for it.
Play the original from Vinyl or CD.
Otherwise Metal tape or good Chrome with HX-Pro or similar is so good that combined with the hugely improved convenience that it's not even a question of which to choose.

They are super good looking and interesting to look at, but how often do you actually use your R-R?

I do own a small handful of pre-recorded RTR tapes but none of the really good ones....which ought to sound as good as it gets. Back in the 80s when I was something of a child prodigy on the violin, I used a borrowed Revox A77 to record myself to listen back to my playing...and to record live concerts (mostly given at my school theatre, though to a paying audience).

Latterly I find two further uses for the machine I have now. At 7 1/2 ips it records tapes from FM radio which are indistinguishable from the broadcast. Even though I have a Nakamichi cassette deck, it cannot *quite* do that. WIth the BBC still broadcasting high quality live concerts across all genres on FM with little compression, I sometimes use mine to record off air. Especially with Proms season coming up. I debated putting Paul McCartney's recent Glastonbury set onto a reel but in the end I used two metal cassettes as I have a surplus of those.

It has another use that isn't matched in the analogue world. With double play tape and 3 3/4 ips I get two hours per side of high quality stereo, as good as a good cassette deck and a good type I cassette. I use that for radio plays, either from FM or from digital radio. Both sides of a tape = 4 hours = a lot of Hitchhiker's Guide or Doctor Who. My Akai has auto reverse so I can turn it on and listen back to a couple of plays or series. Back in the 90s I also recorded a lot of radio plays on my old 1720L as well as radio documentaries, political debates and so on. They're very versatile machines and I have half a lifetime of tapes to enjoy. If I didn't have history with the format, I am unsure if I would start now. There's a lot fewer rock concerts on BBC radio now...no more sitting for three hours figuring out when to turn the tape over for a full Pink Floyd concert. But still lots to enjoy.

 

[VinceInMT]

Apart from “pirated” content and mixtapes (which has lost a lot of its relevance to me with vinyls new status) do you ever listen to the old radio shows?

Absolutely. I've been an avid collector of OTR since 1970 and have over 65,000 shows. In fact, I have a website devoted to this hobby:

http://www.otrannex.com/

On that site you'll see links to "The Paper Tape Archive" and the "600 Project." These features hundreds of reels that I've picked up at estate sales, primarily to archive and share the broadcasts I found on them.

I have a web server I run on my home network and can access it with any device on the network (phone, iPad, etc) and can serve up all that old radio content which I entered into some custom database software I wrote that allows me to search by various fields.

Prerecorded music is the only possible exception I could find to want to get into R-R again.
There is actually a few freaks doing new reels to this day.

I follow a reel to reel group on Facebook. Lots of help for keeping the machines running. It's not unlike the help we find here.

 

[VinceInMT]

I do own a small handful of pre-recorded RTR tapes but none of the really good ones....which ought to sound as good as it gets. Back in the 80s when I was something of a child prodigy on the violin, I used a borrowed Revox A77 to record myself to listen back to my playing...and to record live concerts (mostly given at my school theatre, though to a paying audience).

Latterly I find two further uses for the machine I have now. At 7 1/2 ips it records tapes from FM radio which are indistinguishable from the broadcast. Even though I have a Nakamichi cassette deck, it cannot *quite* do that. WIth the BBC still broadcasting high quality live concerts across all genres on FM with little compression, I sometimes use mine to record off air. Especially with Proms season coming up. I debated putting Paul McCartney's recent Glastonbury set onto a reel but in the end I used two metal cassettes as I have a surplus of those.

It has another use that isn't matched in the analogue world. With double play tape and 3 3/4 ips I get two hours per side of high quality stereo, as good as a good cassette deck and a good type I cassette. I use that for radio plays, either from FM or from digital radio. Both sides of a tape = 4 hours = a lot of Hitchhiker's Guide or Doctor Who. My Akai has auto reverse so I can turn it on and listen back to a couple of plays or series. Back in the 90s I also recorded a lot of radio plays on my old 1720L as well as radio documentaries, political debates and so on. They're very versatile machines and I have half a lifetime of tapes to enjoy. If I didn't have history with the format, I am unsure if I would start now. There's a lot fewer rock concerts on BBC radio now...no more sitting for three hours figuring out when to turn the tape over for a full Pink Floyd concert. But still lots to enjoy.

I too have a Nakamichi cassette deck and it does do a very good job in that format.

As for BBC content, I belonged to a "secret" trading group where we circulated American and BCC radio programs, mostly on CDs and DVDs, and I ended up with over 120,000 shows from the BBC. I really like the serial from the Sci-fi genre and the mysteries. I also used to snag quite a bit on content via USENET.

Yes, when Hitchhikers Guide first aired in the states, I was living in Southern California and rolled tape when it aired on one of our NPR stations. The same when the radio version of the Star Wars trilogy aired.

Over the past few years I've been digitizing all of that broadcast stuff so it's not only backed up but so I can catalog and more easily access it. I keep it on an external drive that is backed up to another external drive. I also shove lots of it into my iCloud account where I have a terabyte or so of storage.

BTW, I went to a used record store a year or so ago and asked if they stocked used tapes. The owner said no and we chatted about the tape world. When he saw how into it I was, he said that a guy had stopped by a while back and wanted to know if the owner wanted to buy some reels. When the owner declined the guy said, "Here, just find them a good home where they will be appreciated." The owner said I sounded like the guy and gave me the box. It had about 30 factory recorded albums, all from the 1960s: Beatles, Stones, Hermits, Sonny and Cher, Supremes, Spoonful, etc. I couldn't believe my luck. To buy all these today, like off eBay, it would be a small fortune. I should have bought a lottery ticket that day. Then, a year or so ago, a guy was selling some 8-tracks on Craigslist and I went to his house to get them. I mentioned I was into reels too and he goes into the garage and comes out with 8 reels that I bought for $5 each: War, BTO, Paul Simon, Tommy soundtrack, CSNY (Deja Vu), Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and a couple others.

 

[ragazzo]

I can attest to the younger generation being more interested in film photography. I'm in my mid-20's and have helped to flip a couple cousins and family friends onto the practice

Digital SLR's and mirrorless systems have become not just ubiquitous, but far from marketable as "consumer" grade products and increasingly entering the pro-sumer to professional category. iPhones have replaced the need for a form-first, ultra portable series of cameras (think canon powershot), while anything beyond those are practically just professional (bells +whistles) at this point.

So: as good as new digital cameras have gotten, they're not simple enough to fulfill the niche of the person who wants to casually document what's around them without spending extra money on storage, extra time on editing, and extra lenses to further spec out these models. Not to mention paying for a camera with capabilities far beyond what's required for most applications.

Somewhat counterintuitively, the younger generation has embraced the slower mode of film photography perhaps as a rejection to everything else in this era being lightning fast, and unnaturally so. It's not lost on these kids (intuitively smart, I've seen, across the board), that with speed comes a sacrifice of quality and the more nuanced and cerebral joys of the slower process. Not to mention the anticipation between firing the shutter and seeing the scans of that very scene. It's a version of that same dopamine feedback loop that social media has perfected except...slower.

The biggest thing however is sustained interest: I think point-and-shoot scans you get back from a local lab or even pharmacy already look great and have tones that are hard(ish) to replicate without fuss using an only-digital process. Yet, the fact that this is only the beginning of what's possible and is a lot of people's gateway into the practice of photography as a hobby, art form, love, what have you.

Also, I have no horse in the film v digital debate. Genuinely love and appreciate them both. But to me, it makes perfect sense that film photography has become more popular because I think digital technology (in the consumer realm only) has stagnated.

Hopefully the floodgates will be opened and newer film photography tech can be invested in by bigger conglomerates. It was always sad to me that film "died" at the turn of the century, when the technology to make the process efficient and achieve great results seemed to only be getting better and better. What I mean is, it's not like film just fizzled out and inherently contained this obsolescence...it was growing stronger and more accessible (i think), it's just that digital suited the needs of the world better for that time and swallowed it whole.

Sure prices are increasing from where they've been, but the fact that a Sinar p2 or RZ67 is in the consumer territory right now....just a thought!

 

[Minolta93]

Ilford or someone should really reinvent the daylight enlarger. A collapsible cone and some sort to print to two or three sizes. And internal development. No burn or dodge of course.

Ilford already invented the darkroom tent. Well, not invented. But they do have one for sale.

 

[BradS]

I too have a Nakamichi cassette deck and it does do a very good job in that format.

As for BBC content, I belonged to a "secret" trading group where we circulated American and BCC radio programs, mostly on CDs and DVDs, and I ended up with over 120,000 shows from the BBC. I really like the serial from the Sci-fi genre and the mysteries. I also used to snag quite a bit on content via USENET.

Yes, when Hitchhikers Guide first aired in the states, I was living in Southern California and rolled tape when it aired on one of our NPR stations. The same when the radio version of the Star Wars trilogy aired.

Over the past few years I've been digitizing all of that broadcast stuff so it's not only backed up but so I can catalog and more easily access it. I keep it on an external drive that is backed up to another external drive. I also shove lots of it into my iCloud account where I have a terabyte or so of storage.

BTW, I went to a used record store a year or so ago and asked if they stocked used tapes. The owner said no and we chatted about the tape world. When he saw how into it I was, he said that a guy had stopped by a while back and wanted to know if the owner wanted to buy some reels. When the owner declined the guy said, "Here, just find them a good home where they will be appreciated." The owner said I sounded like the guy and gave me the box. It had about 30 factory recorded albums, all from the 1960s: Beatles, Stones, Hermits, Sonny and Cher, Supremes, Spoonful, etc. I couldn't believe my luck. To buy all these today, like off eBay, it would be a small fortune. I should have bought a lottery ticket that day. Then, a year or so ago, a guy was selling some 8-tracks on Craigslist and I went to his house to get them. I mentioned I was into reels too and he goes into the garage and comes out with 8 reels that I bought for $5 each: War, BTO, Paul Simon, Tommy soundtrack, CSNY (Deja Vu), Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and a couple others.

What a treasure! There's at least one thrift store here in town that has a large supply of 8 tracks...all well used of course. Another place has a bunch of LP's. I've never really given any of this stuff more than a passing glance though.

 

[Agulliver]

Thinking of RTR tapes, some years ago it was common to find them in charity shops....in the 1980s at least. I managed to buy some with interesting recordings on....such as a debate in the early 60s about the "evils" of television. And BBC radio top 40 rundowns in the late 60s. More recently I bought via eBay some tapes of the Steptoe and Son radio series as broadcast in the mid 60s....complete with news broadcasts after them. Those old news broadcasts are really interesting, little time capsules.

 

[Pieter12]

Ilford already invented the darkroom tent. Well, not invented. But they do have one for sale.

Polaroid made the Daylab Jr. that would make prints from slides. I think Vivitar had a version, too. Polaroid makes one today that will make prints from a smartphone screen.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

...to me, it makes perfect sense that film photography has become more popular because I think digital technology (in the consumer realm only) has stagnated...

Mike would probably disagree with that:

One Crazy Camera

Okay, I've only had my new iPhone 13 Pro for the better part of one day, but let me show you a couple of things. First, this is Butters, cowering under my desk because of the fireworks. In this top...

theonlinephotographer.typepad.com

 

[Kodachromeguy]

It had about 30 factory recorded albums, all from the 1960s: Beatles, Stones, Hermits, Sonny and Cher, Supremes, Spoonful, etc. I couldn't believe my luck. To buy all these today, like off eBay, it would be a small fortune. I should have bought a lottery ticket that day. Then, a year or so ago, a guy was selling some 8-tracks on Craigslist and I went to his house to get them. I mentioned I was into reels too and he goes into the garage and comes out with 8 reels that I bought for $5 each: War, BTO, Paul Simon, Tommy soundtrack, CSNY (Deja Vu), Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and a couple others.

Do these 1960s and 1970s reel-to-reel tapes play properly? Have you experienced issues with failure of the substrate or with data loss? In science agencies, this is a problem with the 9-track tapes that supplied data for mainframe computers. (Some of the subsequent data storage mediums have also been problematic.)

When I was in high school in the late-1960s and early 1970s, I recall that record stores in Harvard Square (Squay-yah), Massachusetts, sold classic music as LP record and reel-to-reel tape. I do not remember if much was yet offered on cassette; that may have come 5 or 10 years later. I do remember early-vintage cassette decks with the Dolby noise reduction chips. I still have some of the LPs that I bought back then, which I play on a Linn Sondek. A roommate had a reel tape deck but I never owned one.

 

[Paul Verizzo]

Oh yes, the majority of (electric) guitarists who I encounter who have valve (tube) or hybrid amps vastly outnumbers those who use solid state. One runs his own business manufacturing new valve guitar amps....some classic 60s designs are back in production...with valve (tube) suppliers offering matched sets of vintage branded valves for the best possible performance.

I am not sure if young people taking up film has anything to do with nostalgia. They don't remember the 1990s and don't get nostalgic for those times....it's more that it's new and tactile to them in an era when so many things are touch screens or voice activated.

1990's are yesterday.

Signed, COF. Certified Olde Fart. Developed film in my father's darkroom as a wee lad in the 1950's. Also, running a Dual 1229 1970's turntable for my vinyl.

 

[Agulliver]

Do these 1960s and 1970s reel-to-reel tapes play properly? Have you experienced issues with failure of the substrate or with data loss? In science agencies, this is a problem with the 9-track tapes that supplied data for mainframe computers. (Some of the subsequent data storage mediums have also been problematic.)

When I was in high school in the late-1960s and early 1970s, I recall that record stores in Harvard Square (Squay-yah), Massachusetts, sold classic music as LP record and reel-to-reel tape. I do not remember if much was yet offered on cassette; that may have come 5 or 10 years later. I do remember early-vintage cassette decks with the Dolby noise reduction chips. I still have some of the LPs that I bought back then, which I play on a Linn Sondek. A roommate had a reel tape deck but I never owned one.

I'm not personally familiar with data and instrumentation tape so I'm not able to comment, other than that I am aware of and have conversed with a guy who built a data tape player to replay NASA data tapes from the Apollo missions and got more detailed images from them than NASA could in the 60s....and pulled all the other data from them.

I am aware of "sticky shed syndrome" which affects mostly Ampex tape from the mid 70s into the 80s. During the oil crisis, new materials were found to lubricate tape and bind the magnetic oxide particles to the substrate...and new substrate materials too. Some from whale blubber, for example. The formulae chosen by Ampex (and possibly one or two Sony and 3M formulae) turned out two decades later to break down and cause the tape to stick to the mechanism and heads...and to shed oxide. Work arounds have been developed (primarily baking tapes at 50C for a few hours) which permit at least one playback but this certainly is a problem.

However it doesn't affect the majority of tapes sold to home users under brands such as Maxell, Philips, BASF, AGFA, TDK and the majority of Scotch/3M and Sony. Nor does it affect any EMI tape as used by the BBC and lots of British studios back in the 60s and 70s. It also doesn't affect anything made before about 1974 or after the 1990s. Mostly reel to reel tape didn't use the exotic brews that type II, III and IV cassettes did, and have lasted well. I personally own reels from the mid 50s which probably sound like the day they were recorded.

Regarding cassette tapes, I enjoyed the "micro revolution" in the early 80s and have many audio cassettes going back to 1981 with 8-bit computer data on them....mostly TDK D but some "computer cassettes" and lesser brands. I was able to retrieve 95% of it in 2011, just the really cheap cassettes caused a problem. I sent one off in 2020 to someone who was able to retrieve all the data by signal analysis, he replaced dropouts with the correct bits.

I do have some BASF LH reel to reel tape which was used as instrumentation tape. The original recordings were made at 15/16 ips and started with a scientist introducing an experiment and continued with bleeps and other signals. I've recorded over them with Doctor Who radio plays

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

One advantage of digital is they either work or don't. The 1s and 0s are there or they are not.