Is there really a strong interest in film photography?

[VinceInMT]

Maybe he's thinking that leaving 15,000 photos might be torturous for them to go through.

Maybe, but my mom dumped the bulk of my dad’s slides on me a few years ago and it was hardly tortuous going through them and rebuilding a family narrative.

 

[VinceInMT]

I’d say around a $1000 is realistic and attainable. And about the max of what you could have Joe(anne)-average film shooter consider putting down to save on expensive bad lab scans and have much more control.
$500 would be ideal but would probably eat too much into profit margin for anyone to be willing to try it.….

Quality and cheap don’t always go together. I doubt that the “Joe(anne)-average film shooter” will be any more picky about quality that the “Joe(anne)-average music listener” who was quite satisfied with factory-made audio cassettes. The manufacturers have a way of racing to the bottom.

The other side of the query about “cheap,” it depends on a personal perception of need/want/value and what disposable income (or credit limit) the consumer has. I think I mentioned previously that a friend and I both are into baking artisan breads. He paid $10,000 for his Viking range. I paid about $400 for my Kenmore. My bread is just as good as his and I can buy lots of flour for the $9,600 I saved on the oven.

 

[Helge]

Quality and cheap don’t always go together. I doubt that the “Joe(anne)-average film shooter” will be any more picky about quality that the “Joe(anne)-average music listener” who was quite satisfied with factory-made audio cassettes. The manufacturers have a way of racing to the bottom.

The other side of the query about “cheap,” it depends on a personal perception of need/want/value and what disposable income (or credit limit) the consumer has. I think I mentioned previously that a friend and I both are into baking artisan breads. He paid $10,000 for his Viking range. I paid about $400 for my Kenmore. My bread is just as good as his and I can buy lots of flour for the $9,600 I saved on the oven.

For a $1000 you could most definitely do something more than good enough.
There will always be cheapskates and people who just don’t have the money.
But there is also people who do.
The higher end option does sell.
iPhones sell. Sony sells. Volvo and Mercedes sells. Miele sells.
And I bet there are more of those people who see the ultimate long lasting value among film shooters than not.

Plus bad lab scans are not cheap.
When you do a quick bit of addition those $1000 will be back I no time, with much much higher quality output and a hundred times the satisfaction.
It would only take one example to convince most people.
Compare a well done camera scan with an Epson or decrepit Frontier scan.
There is just no comparison.

 

[Agulliver]

The thing with family photos, is that it's quite possible to be the only person in your family with the equipment and knowledge to scan photographic media. Who am I to know what people will find interesting or sentimental in 5,10,20,30,50 years time? I've been going through some of the photos my dad took of me as a toddler, some of which I've never seen before because at the time they weren't considered sufficiently good for the photo album and the prints were discarded. He kept the negatives, and I've found a treasure trove of little memories and such things as "Oh, that's the one time I met great aunt so-and-so. Might even be the last photo of her. Doesn't she look happy swigging that gin!". You just never know. Almost 30 years ago I was given my late grandad's output of 8mm cine film from the 60s and early 70s (he died in 1972) and after one film show nobody was much interested. Now, they are interested again because my cousins all have families of their own and even grandkids who want to see their parents when they were kids and long departed but still discussed family members. SOmething mundane and every day is now a historic document such as my grandad taking his camera into a Yorkshire textile factory.

 

[VinceInMT]

The thing with family photos, is that it's quite possible to be the only person in your family with the equipment and knowledge to scan photographic media. Who am I to know what people will find interesting or sentimental in 5,10,20,30,50 years time?

Exactly, or the person with the TIME to devote to such a project. I’m retired and when Montana winters arrive, it’s a good time to take on inside projects.

One thing I’d add to the assembling of the old family photos is to get someone to identify people, places, and time. I did that with our family’s 8mm stuff too.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

As a small addendum to Hennings, as per usual, excellent post, much of the reason for the orange mask is due to the duping factor. Whenever something is duplicated by analog means the characteristics of the two involved media will add and subtract in complex ways, like interference patterns spatially. Only also in colour space and tonally.
This means higher contrast often and an extra accumulation of colour skewing, in the case of film.
Positive film is only a single generation (1.5 depending on how you look at it) and is thus immune to this effect.

We should not hope for this to be taken out of C-41 under any circumstances, as the ultimate way of using film is still to print it photochemically.

We as serious amateur photographers should hope for RA-4 printing to remain and become much more common again. Both as an amateur endeavor and professionally.

What the masking is doing is also not possible to emulate by scanning and correcting. And if scanned and de-masked perfectly, negative colour film will in fact give the most accurate colours. And also with about double the dynamic range captured.
Slides inherent dynamic range, as a display medium, is unequalled anywhere.
But as Henning says, a heck of a lot of what is desireable in the colour reproduction is up to psychooptics and application, not down to what is “correct”.

Personally I shoot about half and half of negative and chrome colour.

Why half and half? Or should I say when one over the other?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Hello Steven,

to your first question:
The mask is mainly useful (and was introduced) for optical printing on CN paper. And for us as photographers it is important to differentiate between more technical and theoretical factors and our "real world": If you are using colour negative film and look at the whole imaging chain up to the final result you see several factors that influence the colour rendition:
- with optical printing it is your personal filtering process (your visual impression / your taste) and the choice of your colour paper, and both have huge influence on the resulting colour
- with scanning you have the characteristics of the used scanner, of the scanning software, and the "filtering" = editing you use as a scanner operator.

Or to say it in a different way: Give one negative to 10 different photographers or labs and you will most probably get 10 different results in colour rendition.
So in "the real world" colour accuracy of negative film is often a more theoretical concept.
That is by the way one of the reasons why in pre-digital times in professional photography for book publications and in advertizing almost exclusively positive film was used: You always have the transparency as an original and as reference. And all who are involved in the process can refer exactly to that.

And then you have the very important point that often film manufacturers simply don't go for "most accurate / most precise" colors, but for "most pleasing colours" for the target audience.
Best example ist Kodak: None of the current Kodak CN films is really "accurate" in a technical sense. All current Kodak CN films have a warm (yellowish) rendering. Most a quite strong one (especially all the amateur films, Ektar 100, but also Portra 400 and Portra 800), others a bit less (ProImage, Portra 160). Portra 160 is currently the only Kodak CN film which is oriented more to a neutral, less warm colour rendition (but not completely neutral).
Kodak is doing that because due to their experience and market research their customers go for that warm look, have a preference for it.
Fujifilm has a different approach.

And then of course you have the problem that different people indeed see colours differently.
E.g. if you ask 100 people looking at the same colour chart you will not get 100 same descriptions of these colours.

If I look at my personal colour assessment, the most natural / neutral / accurate colour films I've used and tested have been Reala, Superia Reala, Astia 100F and Provia 100F.

Therefore my recommendation as a photographer for a very pragmatic approach:
Just use the film and a certain colour rendition which fits your subject and your creative idea. Use what you like.
And don't care too much for theoretical or technical concepts.

To your second question:
Color reversal film generally has a bit finer grain (and higher resolution and better sharpness) than color negative film of the same speed. The main reason is the reversal process: When the film is exposed, mainly the larger silver-halide crystal are exposed. And in the reversal process these are removed, and the finer/smaller crystals remain forming the final positive picture.
And with Velvia 50 and Velvia 100 we have in addition the unique characteristic and advantage that they are delivering a superior, unsurpassed resolution already at extremely low object contrast (1.6:1) with 80-85 lp/mm. No other colour film is offering that, especially no colour negative film.

Best regards,
Henning

Like you I find Velvia 50 wonderful. However, I don't try to match the colors in the original chrome in my resultant image on the screen after scanning it. I adjust until it meets my eye's approval. It's my photo, not some Japanese engineer's image who designed Velvia fifty years ago and is probably dead. Velvia is the start. Of course, if you look at my Velvia photos, you probably would see the Velvia in them.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

The thing with family photos, is that it's quite possible to be the only person in your family with the equipment and knowledge to scan photographic media. Who am I to know what people will find interesting or sentimental in 5,10,20,30,50 years time? I've been going through some of the photos my dad took of me as a toddler, some of which I've never seen before because at the time they weren't considered sufficiently good for the photo album and the prints were discarded. He kept the negatives, and I've found a treasure trove of little memories and such things as "Oh, that's the one time I met great aunt so-and-so. Might even be the last photo of her. Doesn't she look happy swigging that gin!". You just never know. Almost 30 years ago I was given my late grandad's output of 8mm cine film from the 60s and early 70s (he died in 1972) and after one film show nobody was much interested. Now, they are interested again because my cousins all have families of their own and even grandkids who want to see their parents when they were kids and long departed but still discussed family members. SOmething mundane and every day is now a historic document such as my grandad taking his camera into a Yorkshire textile factory.

When I moved, I threw out all the negatives of my 35mm photos. Back when taken, all the good ones were already inserted in a photo album. After that, I never went back to review the negatives of the rejected ones. I didn't see any point in saving stuff for future relatives when I had no interest in looking at them. The other point is that my aunts and uncles have their own families that saved pictures they took. So there was plenty to go around.

I will say that my cousin sent me some 8mm digital dupes of films he had some of which showed me and my family when I was a baby. But the point is, they saved it. Other than that, I would never have gone through their archives of photos and movies.

 

[Helge]

Why half and half? Or should I say when one over the other?

It depends on if I need speed and if high contrast is an issue.
If I can use flash or not (mostly I use bounce or remote trigger flash).
And finally what I want to do with the photo and how I’d like it to look.
If I for instance shoot inside a bar and I want to capture at least some shadow detail I use high speed negative and a controlled amount of flash.

If I’m doing long exposures at night like neon, stars or cityscapes, it’s slide all the way.
Landscape is great on slide with careful metering. If the sky is any priority, meter skewed towards that and use a polarizer and/or gradated ND filter.

Negative is great when the dynamic range is very wide or you need speed.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

It depends on if I need speed and if high contrast is an issue.
If I can use flash or not (mostly I use bounce or remote trigger flash).
And finally what I want to do with the photo and how I’d like it to look.
If I for instance shoot inside a bar and I want to capture at least some shadow detail I use high speed negative and a controlled amount of flash.

If I’m doing long exposures at night like neon, stars or cityscapes, it’s slide all the way.
Landscape is great on slide with careful metering. If the sky is any priority, meter skewed towards that and use a polarizer and/or gradated ND filter.

Negative is great when the dynamic range is very wide or you need speed.

I've started to try Provia 100 slide film when the dynamic range is too wide for Velvia 50. I really don't want to start on Ektar 100 because of the problems I find with scanning and color correction of negative color film. That's just me.

 

[Agulliver]

Exactly, or the person with the TIME to devote to such a project. I’m retired and when Montana winters arrive, it’s a good time to take on inside projects.

One thing I’d add to the assembling of the old family photos is to get someone to identify people, places, and time. I did that with our family’s 8mm stuff too.

I did a lot during the first covid lockdown. Retrieved a box of prints and negatives left by a great aunt who I don't even recall ever meeting and scanned everything...there are photos going back to the 1920s all the way up to the 1970s. Some were negatives with no prints...whether there never were any prints or the prints had been lost to time is unknown. But those negatives revealed points in time important to the family. For example we now have two photos of my great, great grandfather when until 2020 it was thought there were none. Then when it was permitted I sat with my mother while she identified as many people as she could in the photos. That's a record of my family that would otherwise have been lost. And now other family members are interested in it.

I cannot fathom any reason why anyone would ever discard photographic negatives. My mind boggles at such a cavalier attitude. It is not for me at all to say what other family members present or future might find interesting and want to see. But I can preserve some of it.

 

[VinceInMT]

I cannot fathom any reason why anyone would ever discard photographic negatives. My mind boggles at such a cavalier attitude. It is not for me at all to say what other family members present or future might find interesting and want to see. But I can preserve some of it.

Too each his own but I tend to be a collector so all this fits into my wheelhouse and it's all easy to fit because it's digital. Not only that, it's easy to distribute.

In a related vein, I am always on the hunt for locally made sound recordings, particularly stuff made on reel-to-reel tape. Over the past 20 years or so I picked up about 750 reels at various estate sales and digitized and curated all of them. They, like photo albums, create interesting historical narratives not only for what was recorded (mostly off-the-air content) but also about the person who recorded them as it was important enough for them to save. I might have posted this link before but two of those projects are online at one of my web sites. The Paper Tapes and The 600 projects.

OTR Annex

Back to film, perhaps this is one aspect of film that might interest a younger generation.

 

[faberryman]

I cannot fathom any reason why anyone would ever discard photographic negatives. My mind boggles at such a cavalier attitude. It is not for me at all to say what other family members present or future might find interesting and want to see. But I can preserve some of it.

Perhaps not everyone had a familial experience growing up that they would like to have a family photo album around the house to remind them of.

 

[jtk]

IMO a reasonably skilled photographer should make and distribute multiple copies of whatever family photos he likes (using his own taste/judgement). That's what I did for my immediate kin...maybe 20 very fine old photos made better by my PS skills.

 

[foc]

I cannot fathom any reason why anyone would ever discard photographic negatives. My mind boggles at such a cavalier attitude.

I think some people don't see negatives as important. They value the print but not the negative.
Most people when they view a negative, they don't see a recognisable image. It appears abstract to them.

A photographer views them differently (pun intended).

 

[Sirius Glass]

I cannot fathom any reason why anyone would ever discard photographic negatives. My mind boggles at such a cavalier attitude. It is not for me at all to say what other family members present or future might find interesting and want to see. But I can preserve some of it.

My ex mother-in-law when she would open up the processed film envelope would throw out the negatives before she even looked at the prints. I would tell her not to do that and explain why, but frankly the door knobs were better listeners. Yes later after her husband had died, she came to me crying that the only photograph that she had of her husband was bent and worn out. As a photographer, she expected me to be able to fix it and supply a new print.

 

[Agulliver]

I suppose I had negatives explained to me at a very young age, I am pretty sure four years old. And it's stuck with me. Always keep the negatives. If nothing else, technology for getting positive images from those negatives (be it optical or electronic) gets better every year and a positive image of whatever kind obtained from the neg is always better than a copy of a print. Prints were also said to fade, indeed those on display for decades do fade a bit. The whole point of the negatives is that they contain all the original information, there is no better source should you want or need to make a positive image later. I've *always* taken long term views on things. Even as a child the thought process was "Who knows who might want to see these in 40 years time?". Turns out in some cases it's me.

I've also had friends and colleagues who know I can scan film, who have lent me boxes or cases of slides and negatives which haven't been seen in decades....and the treasures they throw up make middle aged and old people very happy. Photographs long forgotten because they weren't the ones chosen for the slide shows or photo album.

Unless an entire strip of negs contains total duds (as in wildly out of focus, no image at all or totally fogged beyond recognition) I cannot even think of throwing them out.

Does this have much bearing on interest in film photography today? Probably not, except that people become aware that scanners exist...and that a proper scanner (flatbed or DSLR solution) is better than those cheap ones - though to be fair those cheap ones that are effectively 5MP digital cameras do give a basic idea of what's on a negative. People become aware of the longevity of photographic media. Pretty much everyone I know has lost a fair proportion of "little Junior's first steps" because they shot on digital media that is corrupted or no longer supported by modern systems. But 20, 30, 40, 100 year old negatives can still be turned into photographs with today's tech. Quite the marvel. I have a friend right now trying to retrieve music from 8" floppy discs. It's proving very difficult and above all, expensive.

 

[foc]

But 20, 30, 40, 100 year old negatives can still be turned into photographs with today's tech. Quite the marvel. I have a friend right now trying to retrieve music from 8" floppy discs. It's proving very difficult and above all, expensive.

Negatives are great. To view them, all you need is a light source behind them. Timeless.

 

[JParker]

I suppose I had negatives explained to me at a very young age, I am pretty sure four years old. And it's stuck with me. Always keep the negatives. If nothing else, technology for getting positive images from those negatives (be it optical or electronic) gets better every year and a positive image of whatever kind obtained from the neg is always better than a copy of a print. Prints were also said to fade, indeed those on display for decades do fade a bit. The whole point of the negatives is that they contain all the original information, there is no better source should you want or need to make a positive image later. I've *always* taken long term views on things. Even as a child the thought process was "Who knows who might want to see these in 40 years time?". Turns out in some cases it's me.

I've also had friends and colleagues who know I can scan film, who have lent me boxes or cases of slides and negatives which haven't been seen in decades....and the treasures they throw up make middle aged and old people very happy. Photographs long forgotten because they weren't the ones chosen for the slide shows or photo album.

Unless an entire strip of negs contains total duds (as in wildly out of focus, no image at all or totally fogged beyond recognition) I cannot even think of throwing them out.

Does this have much bearing on interest in film photography today? Probably not, except that people become aware that scanners exist...and that a proper scanner (flatbed or DSLR solution) is better than those cheap ones - though to be fair those cheap ones that are effectively 5MP digital cameras do give a basic idea of what's on a negative. People become aware of the longevity of photographic media. Pretty much everyone I know has lost a fair proportion of "little Junior's first steps" because they shot on digital media that is corrupted or no longer supported by modern systems. But 20, 30, 40, 100 year old negatives can still be turned into photographs with today's tech. Quite the marvel. I have a friend right now trying to retrieve music from 8" floppy discs. It's proving very difficult and above all, expensive.

Thanks, you have hit the nail.
Exactly that!

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I did a lot during the first covid lockdown. Retrieved a box of prints and negatives left by a great aunt who I don't even recall ever meeting and scanned everything...there are photos going back to the 1920s all the way up to the 1970s. Some were negatives with no prints...whether there never were any prints or the prints had been lost to time is unknown. But those negatives revealed points in time important to the family. For example we now have two photos of my great, great grandfather when until 2020 it was thought there were none. Then when it was permitted I sat with my mother while she identified as many people as she could in the photos. That's a record of my family that would otherwise have been lost. And now other family members are interested in it.

I cannot fathom any reason why anyone would ever discard photographic negatives. My mind boggles at such a cavalier attitude. It is not for me at all to say what other family members present or future might find interesting and want to see. But I can preserve some of it.

Why would I want relatives to have negatives of pictures I never printed or are terrible? Plus it burdens them with going through so much stuff, they'll just ignore it. I feel I'm better off making prints of the ones I want to preserve and making slide shows digitally or keeping them in a photo album. Those they'll look at and keep and admire, maybe. The rest is just junk that no one is going to look at.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

IMO a reasonably skilled photographer should make and distribute multiple copies of whatever family photos he likes (using his own taste/judgement). That's what I did for my immediate kin...maybe 20 very fine old photos made better by my PS skills.

I agree with that. Those will be treasured. The rest of your stuff they're not interested in. I can't imagine going through one of my cousins' parent's albums to see their trips to Disneyland.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Why would I want relatives to have negatives of pictures I never printed or are terrible? Plus it burdens them with going through so much stuff, they'll just ignore it. I feel I'm better off making prints of the ones I want to preserve and making slide shows digitally or keeping them in a photo album. Those they'll look at and keep and admire, maybe. The rest is just junk that no one is going to look at.

Because there may be some unappreciated gems in the negatives. The negatives can be a treasure trove for one doing genealogical research.

 

[VinceInMT]

Why would I want relatives to have negatives of pictures I never printed or are terrible? Plus it burdens them with going through so much stuff, they'll just ignore it. I feel I'm better off making prints of the ones I want to preserve and making slide shows digitally or keeping them in a photo album. Those they'll look at and keep and admire, maybe. The rest is just junk that no one is going to look at.

For me, there is nothing to “go through” as everything is filed by date and content both digitally and physically. And I don’t have a problem with my heirs going through my outtakes, after all, they tell as much of a story as who I am and what I did as the ones that were eventually printed or shared.

It’s the same with all my sketchbooks, of which there are many, as I work out lots of ideas in them before ever completing a finished drawing or painting. When I was in Pittsburgh as few years ago I toured the Andy Warhol museum and while the Brillo boxes and soup can screen prints have their place, it was his early work, particularly his drawings from high school, that I found filled in the gaps about what made the artist.

 

[VinceInMT]

Negatives are great. To view them, all you need is a light source behind them. Timeless.

And they are the first generation/original image.

 

[Helge]

Why would I want relatives to have negatives of pictures I never printed or are terrible? Plus it burdens them with going through so much stuff, they'll just ignore it. I feel I'm better off making prints of the ones I want to preserve and making slide shows digitally or keeping them in a photo album. Those they'll look at and keep and admire, maybe. The rest is just junk that no one is going to look at.

Negatives take up basically no space. Especially for their historic and sentimental value.

Stop taking bad photos if you think so little of most of your work.
And you shoot 4x5?

You can never ever predict what frames are going to end up being important or interesting.
A few of the best photos I’ve ever taken was to finish a roll. And I only saw their value years later.

It’s a matter of education and upbringing to get people to understand the importance of negatives. It’s like throwing out any old media: Super problematic and often plain lazy and wrong to do en masse.