Is there really a strong interest in film photography?

[Alan Edward Klein]

True that. Here in the USA in the film world, the big blow came with the Hollywood writer's strike around 2008. Prior to then, most scripted television (whether cable or broadcast) and feature films were still shot on negative film. The strike brought in a lot of reality shows that were digital video, and that just stayed the norm in TV after the writers came back to work. It was sheer inertia that had kept Hollywood shooting thousands of feet of negative for as long as it did.

Is that when digital picked up the term "soap opera look"?

 

[B+WFriend]

I tried digital for a while and it definitely has its applications. But for all my “real” photography I definitely prefer film. The end result may be very similar for most viewers, but the workflow and the control has what I’m looking for.

 

[TJones]

Is that when digital picked up the term "soap opera look"?

“Soap opera look” predates digital, and was originally caused by the higher frame rate of videotape used to record the soaps. These days, it’s a “feature” of most TVs, and affects both digital and film recordings. I disabled it almost immediately when I bought a new TV.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Who can even stand to watch a soap opera long enough to tell the difference? Evening TV content is bad enough, but daytime? .....Sheesh

 

[Pieter12]

Depends on what you mean by a pro. When I was doing architectural photography, I took far fewer shots in a year than the typical amateur would shoot in a day. The whole point was to get it right the first time. Most of the work was up front evaluating the shoot, balancing the lighting, careful positioning and metering, and so forth - no time left over to waste on redundant shots. That's not the case when people are guessing or bracketing and so forth. Now with digital cameras, the number of "hope I got it" shots seems to have increased tenfold, pretty much the antithesis of professionalism.

Pretty much the same story with studio portrait pros, or even skilled environmental portraitists. Not everyone drinks 39 cups of coffee before a shoot to hype a machine-gunning mentality. But don't get me wrong; we need more machine-gunners to keep up the volume of film sales.

What about a wildlife pro? - yeah, they might rapidly shoot an opportune sequence when it arrives, but might have to wait for weeks in a blind for that to happen. And then that opportunity might last less than half a minute.

Even when pros would shoot medium and large format film they still shot more film than amateurs. They would bracket. They would shoot "insurance shots" held to be processed later in case something went wrong along the way. And they would shoot test shots and for snip tests. Beyond architectural work, shooting commercially for a client, there would always be variations of a given set-up to shoot, too. They would shoot personal work to expand their portfolios. And pros include sports photographers who would burn through a multitude of rolls during an event. Landscape really is more the domain of art and amateur photographers, most professional landscape ended up being shot as stock.

 

[MattKing]

There were thousands and thousands of amateur photographers for every pro photographer. Many of the pro photographers often spent most of their days doing things other than exposing film.
Ten thousand people shooting 4 rolls a year used more film in a year than a pro wedding photographer would shoot in several years.
Film use is and was multi-facetted, and the entire ecosystem was set up to serve all sorts of very different needs.
While National Geographic's Kodachrome line was the highest volume lab for slide film, the additional Super 8 and Regular 8 movie volumes - not to mention 126, 828 and 110 volumes in other labs meant that some of those other labs processed higher total volumes than the National Geographic lab.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Landscape and nature stock photography consumed significant volumes of 4x5 Ektachrome in particular. David Muench sometimes shot more of it in a day than I did in months. I was a printmaker aiming for something quite specific, while people like him were playing the odds in stock photo business with the most possible images, thousands and thousands of em overall. But there was also an incentive back then. My brother once sold one-time printing rights for a single 4X5 nature Agfachrome for over $4,000, which was a lot of money back in the 60's. One could actually make a decent living at it. Nowadays, you'd be lucky to get a two dollar royalty on a published digital image; and the competition has increased ten-thousandfold.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

“Soap opera look” predates digital, and was originally caused by the higher frame rate of videotape used to record the soaps. These days, it’s a “feature” of most TVs, and affects both digital and film recordings. I disabled it almost immediately when I bought a new TV.

What do you disable?

 

[TJones]

What do you disable?

Look for “motion interpolation” or “motion smoothing”, and turn it off.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Next time you're out quail hunting with a 12 ga shotgun, just leave a shell in it for sake of the TV when you get back home. Accidents happen.

 

[Pieter12]

Ten thousand people shooting 4 rolls a year used more film in a year than a pro wedding photographer would shoot in several years.

Pros include some many categories: Photojournalists, Portrait photographers, Police departments, Documentarians, Scientific, Commercial photographers of all ilks--lifestyle, food, cars, table-top, catalog, fashion, etc. Plus cinematography for movies, documentaries, scientific and tv commercials. When we would shoot a TV commercial, it was not unusual to shoot 100-to-1 ratio, that is 100 seconds of film for every 1 second of the final cut. Then there is all the film that was used for prints to distribute to theaters, archiving, etc. Not to mention how much film was used for high-speed filming.

 

[Sirius Glass]

There is no doubt that the market crashed between 2000 and 2010. Like @Sirius Glass I took the opportunity to buy lenses and other gear I could not otherwise afford. the curious thing is that prices are now up again and I could not afford them if I didn't already own them.

We are just so wise beyond our years.

 

[Pieter12]

We are just so wise beyond our years.

With the number of years I have behind me, I don't know that I am (or was when I bought a lot of my film gear) really any wiser than, maybe less so.

 

[foc]

I am talking about still film.

Plus cinematography for movies, documentaries, scientific and tv commercials.

I am a little confused or maybe I missed something.
First, it was talking about pro still film and now includes cinema/movie film.

My post #475 https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...erest-in-film-photography.192580/post-2576559

relates only to still film.

 

[Pieter12]

I am a little confused or maybe I missed something.
First, it was talking about pro still film and now includes cinema/movie film.

My post #475 https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...erest-in-film-photography.192580/post-2576559

relates only to still film.

I added movie film because it became part of the discussion.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Well, aerial film counts as stills. And since the U2 program recently quit using film, there goes most of that volume, even though the detail and ease of interpretation was better than satellite imagery. There was also less risk of it being digitally altered by some nefarious insider. In fact, at one time, the processing and printing facility was kept true optical and entirely segregated from any digital capacity for that very reason, just in case decision-makers wanted a more reliable "second opinion".

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Look for “motion interpolation” or “motion smoothing”, and turn it off.

Ok thanks. As a side question, then why is there such a push in the industry for higher frame rates in cameras such as 60fps rather than 30 or 24?

 

[DF]

With the $$prices of film - paper - chemicals going up non-stop, the "upward curve" in "interest in film photography" will level out, then drop.
Eat - or buy film....

 

[Paul Verizzo]

Ok thanks. As a side question, then why is there such a push in the industry for higher frame rates in cameras such as 60fps rather than 30 or 24?

Having been alerted to new posting on this thread, I saw your question.

I think the answer is, "More is surely better." Movies did fine with 24fps, American television at 29.97fps. OK, perhaps some fast action like a fan got blurred, but no one noticed or cared.

I've noticed that the (ill informed) "young 'uns" think that their selfies need to be in 4K and 60fps. Because more is better, right?

Some years ago I did experiments shooting flowers with Kodak HD 400 film and then scanning at various dpi's. And then enlarging to standard photo print sizes. The upshot was, best as I recall, you can make a 300 lpi "photo quality" 11x14" print from a much lower scan quality that seems probable. I'm rusty on the details, sorry, but those megapixel numbers, etc. are mostly marketing BS. More is better, right?

And remember that in today's digital internet, instagram, etc. world, all those 4K videos are looked at on a tiny screen. It would have looked just as good as VGA.

 

[Don_ih]

Have you seen any leveling off of purchases for skiing, hunting, archery, boats, wines, 4-wheelers, bling trucks, woodworking tools, remote-control planes, or any other 1st world "essentials?"

Has any of that doubled in price over the last 10 years?
I'm not concerned about the rising price of film. I am, however, concerned about how expensive paper is.

 

[BrianShaw]

Speaking of first-world essentials… I just replaced my HVAC system. The price has tripled (or more) in the past 10 years, and might double in the next year.

 

[dutchsteammachine]

Saw a good number of people with film camera's at Eurofurence 26, Berlin.

I took my mamiya 645 S1000. I think next time I will take my Nikon F100 so canny shots are easier with AF.

Didnt see anybody with a super 8 camera, guess only I was crazy enough for that.

 

[VinceInMT]

You base this on what? Have you seen any leveling off of purchases for skiing, hunting, archery, boats, wines, 4-wheelers, bling trucks, woodworking tools, remote-control planes, or any other 1st world "essentials?"

An excellent point and compared to some of these other “essentials,” once one has the hardware, the consumables in film photography a pretty inexpensive pursuit. The least expensive passion I engage in, time-wise more than photography, is drawing and I don’t ever see the cost of paper and pencils pricing me out of doin it.

 

[Cholentpot]

Gen Alpha kids are far more interested in my film gear than my boring DSLR when I'm on a gig.

 

[faberryman]

Gen Alpha kids are far more interested in my film gear than my boring DSLR when I'm on a gig.

Gen Alpha kids were born 2010-2024. What kind of gigs are you doing with 12 year olds?