PDN's article on the future of film

[Diapositivo]

My big fear is being forced to accept digital (ink jet) prints from my negatives. I have NO experience in what those will look like compared to analogue and fear that I will not be happy with that. Your take?

The general consensus in the forum, supported by the opinion of competent people like PE, is that for various reasons colour negatives are much less at risk than slide film. Black & White is totally out of extinction risk, colour negative is closely observed, slide film is on the Appendix I of CITES

Regarding printing, you will always be able to print colour negatives to chemical papers using laboratories which use machines like the Durst Lambda. Those machines scan the negative, obtain a digital image which they use to project coloured light on the photographic paper (just like an enlarger would do) which is then developed chemically. It's a hybrid process which belong to this forum as most participants just ignore that when they bring their negative film to be developed and printed the most likely occurrence is that the printing is hybrid.

Actually I suspect a Durst Lambda is able to print a positive with just the same ease as it prints a negative. Those machines are not produced any more but should certainly remain working for many years. Besides, production can resume one day. It's like with film cameras: new ones are scarcely produced now because the second-hand market satisfies the demand.

I think you can buy that GF670 with high confidence that you will be able to use it with black & white and with colour negatives and have them printed on chemical papers for many years to come.

 

[Zewrak]

True, but consider for discussion... Economic models show a cost (say per roll of 25 cents). Using the large scale system they're used to, they can figure the 25 cents base plus advertising (ha) distribution, fixed plant costs, labor costs, money costs, profit, shareholder equity, amortized write offs and all those factors to come up with a retail price and predicted volume. (say $3.50)

Now, change the formula so the base cost of the film is no longer 25 cents but 75 cents. For you and I it makes sense to raise the retail price to $4.25 and all is well.

But in their mind it needs to go to $10.50 to keep their spreadsheets going and now it's out of reason.

Well here a roll cost you 7$ now, we still buy. We will still buy at 10$.

 

[CGW]

The general consensus in the forum, supported by the opinion of competent people like PE, is that for various reasons colour negatives are much less at risk than slide film. Black & White is totally out of extinction risk, colour negative is closely observed, slide film is on the Appendix I of CITES

Regarding printing, you will always be able to print colour negatives to chemical papers using laboratories which use machines like the Durst Lambda. Those machines scan the negative, obtain a digital image which they use to project coloured light on the photographic paper (just like an enlarger would do) which is then developed chemically. It's a hybrid process which belong to this forum as most participants just ignore that when they bring their negative film to be developed and printed the most likely occurrence is that the printing is hybrid.

Actually I suspect a Durst Lambda is able to print a positive with just the same ease as it prints a negative. Those machines are not produced any more but should certainly remain working for many years. Besides, production can resume one day. It's like with film cameras: new ones are scarcely produced now because the second-hand market satisfies the demand.

I think you can buy that GF670 with high confidence that you will be able to use it with black & white and with colour negatives and have them printed on chemical papers for many years to come.

The big Durst Lambdas are great but they're large, expensive, and require pricey contract-bound service. Lab owner friends went with a new Fuji dry system that's very impressive after retiring their Lambda.

 

[jp498]

You are right of course. I am primarily a color shooter so the fact that B & W will be around for the long haul is less than satisfactory a reason for me.

My big fear is being forced to accept digital (ink jet) prints from my negatives. I have NO experience in what those will look like compared to analogue and fear that I will not be happy with that. Your take?

Sounds like you're fearing uncertainty more than actual results.

Inkjet results vary quite a bit depending on the output material and operator skills. They can put out crap or they can put out imagery that looks like platinum of 100 years ago or the most contemporary color. I think they lack slightly in emulating actual silver prints.. But I like B&W darkroom, so I stick with analog printing of most of my film.

Color film especially c41 is still a wonderful capture medium you should be willing to use, knowing you can do either analog or hybrid or fully digital output.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Yes inkjet can look pretty good. What I've seen lately from most hobby photog's injet prints are over saturated, saccharine images. The attitude of "more color the better" and "The bigger the better". I've owned 3 Epson printers. They crap out way too soon. It seems that the days of E-6 are numbered and I hope C-41 neg film will survive. The is still at least RA chemistry and paper still available.

 

[DREW WILEY]

If your enlarger has a colorhead, that's all you need to print color negs, plus a simple processing
drum and some sort of temperature control, and ventilation of course. It's pretty easy to do. No need for some expensive digital printing device. They use the same paper as you can in the home
darkroom anyway. Both Mitsubishi and Fuji distribute color papers in Asia, and Kodak might too. RA4
paper also tends to be cheaper than premium black and white paper. Chrome film, however, is going
to be a lot harder to print in a conventional darkroom due to the demise of Cibachrome, which got
quite expensive anyway.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

True Drew. Cibachrome is contrasty stuff and it's hard to master printing it. RA paper is pretty cheap. When I did a lot more RA a few years back and wanted to print a transparency, I'd do internegs.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Internegs are a bit tricky too unless you have mastered masking first. I'm working with the new Portra 160 sheet film at the moment and am testing masked vs unmasked standardized transparencies to fine-tune the process. I'm pretty optimistic that I'll get result quite superior to
old-school ITN film. The big problem is the rapidly escalating cost of Kodak 8X10 neg film. So right
now the experiments are obviously on 4x5.

 

[Roger Cole]

You don't need the colorhead. I've printed hundreds of color prints using CP filters in the filter drawer. Not as convenient but works just fine.

 

[chuck94022]

I have not been to Beijing in years. I have to get up there sometime as I am burning out on Shanghai.

Do you shoot medium format? What (135mm) effective focal length do you shoot if yes?

I shoot small medium and large format! In MF I have a Mamiya 6MF with 50, 75, and 150mm lenses. (maybe about 35, 50, 100mm equivalent)

There is a good group on Facebook for Beijing based photographers, called Beijing Photo Walks, if you want to connect with a community of mostly expats who do street shooting.

 

[RattyMouse]

I shoot small medium and large format! In MF I have a Mamiya 6MF with 50, 75, and 150mm lenses. (maybe about 35, 50, 100mm equivalent)

There is a good group on Facebook for Beijing based photographers, called Beijing Photo Walks, if you want to connect with a community of mostly expats who do street shooting.

I wish you were in Shanghai. I'd love to see large format shooting up close. Never had any experience with that.

Not a facebook user but thank you anyways!

 

[PKM-25]

Chrome film, however, is going
to be a lot harder to print in a conventional darkroom due to the demise of Cibachrome, which got
quite expensive anyway.

Do we even have an optical / analog material left to print from chrome? I used to do lots of Fuji type R back in the day.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Type R papers were discontinued long ago due to the ascent of Ciba. Now to print a chrome you
either have to scan it, make an interneg for chromogenic paper, or do a much more convoluted and
therefore more fun yet expensive color separation route onto dye transfer or color carbon. So for practical purposes, analog printing directly from chromes is nearly extinct. Old school interneg film
has a bit of an upsweep to the curve, so by what degree you exposed it, you could control the
highlight gradation. If you started out with a low contrast chrome, you could expect blaah. Masking
with the appropriate modern color neg film will allow you to place the entire scale of the chrome onto
the straight line part of the curve. You also mask up or down for contrast. More work, but really a
much nicer level of reproduction. Internegs got a bad rap back when commercial labs often did them half baked. But there's no reason they can't be done precisely.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I know what you mean. Interneg negatives are never as sharp and if you don't do them right, you'll be struggling with color cross overs printing it.

 

[DREW WILEY]

There's no loss of sharpness if done correctly by emulsion to emulsion contact, or by precision enlargement onto sheet film in a vacuum holder using an apo graphics lens. Some labs used hokey duplicating cameras where the film plane was never ideal. The stereotype that internegs are inherently poor is equivalent to thinking all photographics prints are poor because someone is accustomed to a one-hour lab at the drugstore. Perhaps the largest reason for crossover in both
internegs and positive dupes is that a lot of the film being used was getting badly out of date.
But there are some tricky points of certain dyes in the original not reproducing correctly. Velvia is
not the easiest film to interneg, though I have successfully done it. The nice thing about masks is
that you can tweak the curve and not just contrast. No need for Photoshop if you prefer lab work.

 

[dr5chrome]

The facts remain - KODAK cares little about films outcome. Dont use KODAK as an example for anything.
They most certainly have the wherewithal to do what ILFORD did and down-size their operation, they choose not to. We will loose KODAK and all the products they produced NOT because folks dont want to buy them, but because they are fed up with the 'kodak games'. Until some old/current employee's buy the film division and do what they did @ ILFORD, kodak products are history.

dw

You might reread the article section "The Kodak Conundrum" to get a sense of what concerns me. I'm still looking for reports of Kodak's volume of film sales, not the dollar value which can go up on declining sales if unit prices rise, which they have been. It's all about demand and that's what's troubling Scott DiSabato, the Kodak rep quoted extensively in the article. I'm not looking for bad news but I'm just not seeing as much good news as some here axiomatically do whenever these reports surface. Mud wrestle all you like.

 

[wblynch]

Our best hope for the future of Photographic Film in America is if someone like 3M were to buy the skeleton of Eastman Kodak. 3M is in Industrial Films and Coatings, where Kodak would have gone if they were smart.

 

[markbarendt]

Digital, in my experience is only really faster for the client, not for me; and fast is not always important for the client either.

One of the reasons I use film when I do a wedding or similar work is to save my time for my "easier to sell, higher profit work"; shooting, marketing, and selling have become the most important work for me to be doing in this genre of photography.

My work doing the backend processing is hard for me to sell at a profit at a retail level, and normally drags my overall hourly profit down in comparison to using pro-labs. They can do it so inexpensively compared to the rate I want for the same work that I just package the shooting and pro-lab work in up front.

Even if I chose to do wedding work digitally, I would use the same business model and would do my darndest to keep my shot count very close to what my film shot count might be for the same job. The real all in cost (my labor, pro-lab work, and all) ends up almost identical.

As a side note another reason I prefer selling film work is that it gives me an understandable physical unit to sell, a roll; instead of an intangible digital click.

On personal work most of my negatives never get to prints. I actually came to the conclusion that that doesn't matter to me if I every print all my shots. Really, there is no way I can actually put all my shots on my walls, nor would anyone want to see all of them.

Many of my shots are experimental in one sense or another, so if I get one truly special stand out composition that I'd be happy to frame from a given day, or eight to ten on a given vacation; I feel I have done really, really well.

I wonder if one reason might be that digital is just so much faster than doing your own darkroom work. Of course this doesn't matter if you send it out. But I have a HUGE backlog of negatives unprinted going back at least a year - most have been contacted but that's all -and several sheets of 4x5 and at least a half dozen more rolls of 35mm and 120 to develop. Working a full time job AND having a life with a wife now, AND the fact she likes to travel (she also hugely encourages my photography as I encourage her poetry) AND the fact we're visiting two sets of family in two different states on holidays and special occasions AND the fact I have other hobby interests, there's just no TIME. One problem is that with no running water in my darkroom right now set up and clean up times, already long enough, are extended. It's not like many hobbies I can for an hour here and there as I can. An hour is not enough time to get set up and then cleaned up leaving no time for actually printing, and even two hours means maybe half of it devoted to printing and hardly worth the effort. Digital I could, if I were so inclined, shoot away, process a few images a bit at a time on the computer and save my intermediate steps. I'm not doing that, though I expect to get into some hybrid workflow soonish (what else am I going to do with the 4x5 Ektachrome stashed in the freezer now that Ilfochrome is defunct anyway?)

As a middle aged adult I find my life incredibly rich, but incredibly busy and complicated. I love analog photography but it's just really hard to squeeze in time for it.

WRT ham radio - heck, I lost interest in ham radio many years ago mainly because all the other hams were boring old farts. They knew the technology, which had incredible capacity and potential to connect people in the days before the Internet, but had nothing worth saying and there was almost no one I cared to talk to. The exceptions were a few young guys about my age who were all local and we wore out the 2m repeaters (and upset not a few of the stodgy old guys we called Greyfaces (nod to anyone who catches the reference!)

So you mean to tell me there are young people in ham radio now? Wow. I've been wanting to get back into radio, but my attraction is almost completely to the old gear, stuff I wanted and couldn't afford when I got started in the 70s and older stuff yet that I can actually understand and work on. The old stuff to me has heart and soul in a way that a wunderbrick of ICs never will.



Dirka-Dirkastan, actually. Film, F### YEAH!

 

[CGW]

The facts remain - KODAK cares little about films outcome. Dont use KODAK as an example for anything.
They most certainly have the wherewithal to do what ILFORD did and down-size their operation, they choose not to. We will loose KODAK and all the products they produced NOT because folks dont want to buy them, but because they are fed up with the 'kodak games'. Until some old/current employee's buy the film division and do what they did @ ILFORD, kodak products are history.

dw

The prospect of Kodak "doing an Ilford" with film is all but counterfactual now, agreed. They abandoned the market here following Kodak Canada's collapse in 2005, leaving labs adrift and open to predatory pricing on paper and chemistry that boosted Fuji's business. Demand is still the key and no one has much good news on that.

The whole analog infrastructure in my area is gettting steadily rickety--fewer quality labs, reliance on mail order film purchase, scarce repair shops, vanishing cheap Frontier/Noritsu C-41 processing.

 

[kb3lms]

The prospect of Kodak "doing an Ilford" with film is all but counterfactual now, agreed. They abandoned the market here following Kodak Canada's collapse....

It really seems this is the unfortunate future. Locally, SE Pennsylvania, it is all but impossible to walk into a store and purchase ANY Kodak product, let alone film. CVS is the only local "pro-Kodak" retailer. One really wonders what they are up to. Not that I personally mind purchasing online, but making it difficult for people to buy your products doesn't seem to me to be a wise business model.

On a slightly happier note, the local Walmart is doing a healthy (in relative terms) business in FUJI disposable cameras and 35mm film. Maybe it's end of the school year field trips, IDK, but they've had to restock the disposable cameras twice in the last week and the display holds maybe 200. I know, because I've had to pick up some for my daughter's school activities and I've purposely watched the stock level because I surprised at the number they appear to be selling. (Not KODAK disposable to be seen anywhere)

The 35mm film rack of 4 packs (they stock about 16 boxes at a time mixed 200, 400, 800) empties out in about 3 or 4 days. For whatever reason, the powers at Wally-world only restock about every 10 days so maybe more would sell if they bothered to put it out for sale.

 

[Joe VanCleave]

My dislike of Kodak, and one reason I suspect for their lack of recent success, has to do with their lack of recognition of an enthusiast hobbiest market. Their products had for decades been marketed as either for amateurs - meaning the average jane or joe who knew nothing about photography and just wanted a roll of film to shoot at a party - to the working professional who relied on the quality of their products for their livelihood. Yet here was this enormous gulf between the two, filled only by non-professional photo enthusiasts, many of whom had every bit the working knowledge of the professional (and sometimes more) but the budget of an amateur. Kodak entirely ignored this demographic in their marketing, to their detriment.

Ilford, in contrast, understands that the enthusiast hobbiest is a major part of their market, and know how to communicate to the non-professional enthusiast, such as Mr. Simon Galley's participation in online discussion forums.

In all of my online years in various photo-related websites I've never heard of anyone from Kodak even attempting to acknowledge the existence of the non-professional enthusiast market, much less attempt to engage in dialog via discussion forums.

There is a huge market of enthusiast consumers looking for products like the micro-4/3 cameras of Panasonic and Olympus (the top selling format in Japan, who still have a reverence for film cameras) and the Fuji and Sony mirrorless digital cameras. For the most part, these are being marketed toward enthusiast non-professionals, people who want more control over the process than the Kodak mantra of "you press the button and we do the rest". This is the market that Kodak, for decades, has failed to even acknowledge. It is their loss, as others will fill the void.

-Joe

 

[Alexis M]

Kodak has a deeply imbeded big company culture...distant with their employees and clients, not keen on small moves, all about the right now, inflexible and innapropriate for what film has become as a product i beleive...not easy to change either, you cant ask a dinosaur to become a mouse even if life depends on it.

 

[Steve Smith]

not easy to change either.

Very easy to change but the instruction has to come from the very top.


Steve.

 

[CGW]

Very easy to change but the instruction has to come from the very top.


Steve.

Tired of chasing your tail yet? There's no "Battleship Potemkin"-style "revolt from below" in the wings for Kodak. The whole demand/profitability/accounting debate is over on film for Kodak. They're not, nor will they ever be, Ilford. Joe, upthread, got it right.

 

[hdeyong]

Nobody has mentioned, (I think), one possibility. A brand name as huge as Tri-X is worth something. Even if Kodak gets out of the manufacturing, which they probably will, they've screwed up every other decision, somebody will buy the rights to the name and will produce Tri-X exactly as we know it.
It may not be produced by Kodak, but if it's exactly the same thing, with the same name, wouldn't there be a good existing clientele? I think it's still the largest selling B&W film there is and I can't believe one day it'll just disappear. Even an existing film company could announce that they have 'bought' Tri-X, and it will remain in production in their existing facility alongside whatever they already produce.
This, to me, is a business opportunity they someone will grab. There are people out there who will buy Tri-X until the day they die.