Questions about Disc Film

ilduce · Jan 10, 2009

Hello all!

I'm working on an article about disc film, and am looking for any information about the format. Over the last few months I've been experimenting with disc film to varying degrees of "success," so I've got plenty of images to work with. In particular I'm looking for technical publications, but I'd love to hear your stories / facts / firsthand experiences with disc film.

PHOTOTONE · Jan 10, 2009

Early one-hour photo labs had an "attachment" for their film processors that took the disc film.

bob100684 · Jan 11, 2009

so do you splice the disk to a leader card just like 35mm/110/120? I've been curious about just how it worked....

Photo Engineer · Jan 11, 2009

The disks stacked on a central spindle and were processed either in a drum or in a deep tank with a circular and up-down agitation.

PE

analogsnob · Jan 11, 2009

Disc was an interesting design but for those of us that didn't deal with it every day it was a tremendous pain. If it didn't get enough agitation, just the normal nitrogen burst in the dip and dunk wasn't enough it had to be spun and rather quickly, the contrast and density dropped off the edge quickly.

Printing was a challenge, we had all kinds of problems with that channel (probably because we didn't see that much of it) and I never saw a print even at 3r that wasn't grainy. I made 8x10's a couple of times and the results wouldn't have been acceptable other than they were the only pictures of somebody's sainted mother.

PHOTOTONE · Jan 11, 2009

bob100684 said:
so do you splice the disk to a leader card just like 35mm/110/120? I've been curious about just how it worked....

No. There was an addition to the C-41 machine, it seems to me like it attached to the side of the machine, and probably used the same chemical reservoirs and circulating pumps, but processed the film in a separate tank and agitation mechanism.

I don't know of any lab technician that actually "liked" Disc film printing.

railwayman3 · Jan 12, 2009

I bought my Mother a disc camera in about 1982, thinking it would be easy for her to use, but the results were never up-to-much, the least hint of underexposure gave grain like rocks and the colors were never brilliant.

I remember the perfect Kodak samples in the photographic shop, even enlargements! I doubt whether any ordinary user got the same results in RL!

(Interestingly the camera still works on the original internal lithium battery, after 25+ years! But not seen any film for many years.)

ilduce · Jan 12, 2009

Thanks everyone for the info so far. I've been developing disc film at the lab I work in, though.... probably not the right way.

I know I could send it away for non-destructive processing, but with the image quality being so low, I don't mind losing a few frames. And its fun to see the look on my bosses face when I send it through like that, which I reckon is a disaster waiting to happen.

Is there any way I'd be able to track down copies of Kodaks tech publications?

Francis in VT · Jan 12, 2009

As a sales person I remember customers wanting an explanation of why their Vertical pictures with flash were always underexposed. They tipped the camera the wrong way so that their hand was over the flash. This is a case where square would have been better.

nickandre · Jan 13, 2009

Just looking at that makes me laugh. Kodak was completely serious about this?

Photo Engineer · Jan 13, 2009

Yes, and it sold like hotcakes for a few years.

PE

David A. Goldfarb · Jan 13, 2009

People love the idea of a camera that doesn't take up any space and fits in a shirt pocket. If only they had a film like today's Ektar 100, it might not have been too bad. The format is the same size as Minox (8x11mm), but since it's essentially sheet film, it has the potential for better film flatness, but alas, the cameras and lenses were nothing near the quality of a Minox, so it was worse than 110.

Photo Engineer · Jan 13, 2009

A word that comes to mind is "EDSEL".

I guess that the reason I can say that is the same that says "only Nixon could go to China". That is an old Vulcan expression of course that few know.

PE

Double Negative · Jan 14, 2009

I remember looking at Kodak Disc cameras at the EPCOT Center photo shop back in the early 80's! They were small and new and quite the rage... Thankfully I never bought into that system. I was tired of using my Kodak Instamatic X-15 (which shot 126 film) though and started getting into photography around that time. Ended up getting a Canon A-1 w/50mm f/1.8 lens... Forever changed my life.

The whole disc concept was weak at best. It solved some problems, but the ridiculously small negative size and limited number of shots were hard to overlook. So what did we end up with? 110 film followed by APS-C. *sigh*

nickandre · Jan 14, 2009

Isn't there a huge film waste? The entire center would have to be cut out. However, I read once that it is "bits of film" glued onto a disc. Is that more accurate?

railwayman3 · Jan 15, 2009

tiberiustibz said:
Isn't there a huge film waste? The entire center would have to be cut out. However, I read once that it is "bits of film" glued onto a disc. Is that more accurate?

Just looked at a processed disc, and the whole disc seems to be die-cut from a single sheet of thick film. The numbers and bar code, etc., (as the illustration above) appear to be pre-exposed to show up after processing.
The whole film was within a black plastic case (bit like a computer floppy) which dropped into the back of the camera.

Photo Engineer · Jan 15, 2009

My wife and our kids loved them as they were so small and easy to load. They used them everywhere and took a lot of pictures. A lot of non-photography people were converted over to this and to the 110 cameras due to the size, format and ease of use regardless of the image quality.

PE

tim_walls · Jan 15, 2009

Double Negative said:
The whole disc concept was weak at best. It solved some problems, but the ridiculously small negative size and limited number of shots were hard to overlook. So what did we end up with? 110 film followed by APS-C. *sigh*

You know, I think to this day that APS was an outstanding format. I reckon as a consumer point-and-click format APS actually pretty much nailed everything that was required.

It was small, convenient, easy to load, easy to use (one look at the can and you can see if it's part exposed/exposed/developed,) more or less cockup proof (no leaders to pull out,) keeps the negatives safe for reprints, provided cute features like the format selection options and so on, and had perfectly adequate picture quality for its target market.

I know I'm probably meant to say my Canonet or my Zorki or something are the most 'fun' cameras I own, but I'd be lying. I think that award probably goes to my Canon IXUS APS camera. Even now consumer digitals have only recently matched the IXUS APS in terms of size-to-image-quality.

Sure, it's rare I think "schucks, I won't use the 4x5 for this one, I'll use the APS" but I don't really think that was the intent of the format .

archphoto · Jan 15, 2009

PE, you are right, Kodak has been trying all along to get more people to photograph more.
Disk was the "end" of a series that started with Bantam, was followed by 126 and 110 and ended here, on film that is.

With the upcome of digital the end came for these formats.
Now we have a 2Mpix camera (or better) in our cellphone.......

Peter

railwayman3 · Jan 15, 2009

archphoto said:
PE, you are right, Kodak has been trying all along to get more people to photograph more.
Disk was the "end" of a series that started with Bantam, was followed by 126 and 110 and ended here, on film that is.

With the upcome of digital the end came for these formats.
Now we have a 2Mpix camera (or better) in our cellphone.......

Peter

You could even extend the series right back to the George Eastman's introduction of flexible film to make life easier than plates...wasn't it something like "You take the picture, we do the rest"?

Picking up on tim_walls praise of APS, I'd agree that this is/was an outstanding piece of design to address everything the average customer needed....I think there were even features like subject details recorded and printed slide mounts which were never really used before digital stepped in?

When I first met my partner about four years ago, she used an APS camera in preference to her pocket digital, just because she liked to get all her pictures developed as "real photographs". She's become much more seriously interested in the hobby since then (reminds me, she's got my Rolleiflex somewhere ) but she still slips the APS in her handbag when she's visiting the kids!

Photo Engineer · Jan 15, 2009

The APS format was introduced to directly compete with Digital. It used the same frame size as a digital sensor, and the information recording capacity along with the picture was as great or greater than that currently done with digital. So, even though the APS system had great potential, it was downplayed by "real photographers" and digital kept going. If more people had bought into APS, that would have surpassed digital by far today.

There were great plans in store for APS data recording, and can you imagine Ektar 100 in APS format? It could record the name of the picture, the location of the picture, time, date, best size for cropping, all on a side stripe on the film. Oh well. No one here, so far has said anything good of APS except Tim.

PE

nickrapak · Jan 15, 2009

I guess it's my turn to come in defense of APS...

Of all the sub-135 "consumer level" ideas, APS was the best. It offers the possibility of great image quality, offers features that, honestly, I would have liked to see in 35mm. I think that it offered the small size and all-auto convenience desired by most consumers, in a package which could deliver good prints and reasonable enlargements. In fact, for P&S, I prefer my compact APS camera to a larger 35mm P&S, simply because of the size/image quality.

tim_walls · Jan 16, 2009

Photo Engineer said:
There were great plans in store for APS data recording, and can you imagine Ektar 100 in APS format? It could record the name of the picture, the location of the picture, time, date, best size for cropping, all on a side stripe on the film. Oh well. No one here, so far has said anything good of APS except Tim.

It's a great shame more wasn't made of it, I have to say. APS was actually quite well suited to the 'hybrid' age as well - my old film scanner was a Canon with an APS adapter. Scanning 35mm always has and always will be a deeply tedious exercise - scanning APS was pretty much just a case of pop the cartridge in the machine and press the button - and you didn't even have to worry about dust because at all times the negatives have been safely sealed away.

You could envisage with modern technology consumer-level APS scanners that would be no bigger than, say, 3 packets of cigarettes with a slot in the top to pop the cartridge in, that would just automatically scan the film - making use of the exposure details recorded on the magnetic strips to optimise each scan. The whole process could be made not much less convenient than plugging a digital camera in to download photos, it's just instead of a Compact Flash cartridge you'd use an APS cartridge.

I'm also thinking - if APS slide film hadn't been so short lived - of an APS projector for projecting slides; just pop the cartridge in and start projecting.

Actually, I'd kill for something like that - my usual 'holiday snap' format is 35mm slide just because I love projecting the things when I get back, but by God I hate storing mounted slides...

Mark Antony · Jan 16, 2009

We had a disk film processor made by Noritsu. It took overflow from the chemical tanks on the 'mother' C41 machine and had little tanks with less than 2-3 L capacity.
I think the process was called C41A as it used chemicals from the overflow.
The machine had a dark bag/box arrangement where you broke open the disk to load it on the hanger.
The disc was loaded onto a hanger (about 5" long plastic) that had a wheel at one end, the disc was placed on a spigot in the centre of the wheel and held by a key way and 'cap' disk (max 3 films per hanger stacked). The wheel was driven by a rubber band which kept the it moving during processing.
You placed the hanger onto a drive bar, after 3 mins the lift drive mechanism would move the hanger to the next bath.
The machine had a countdown and you couldn't put a hanger on when the countdown reached 15 sec, it also had sensors to show which baths had hangers in them and an annoying buzzer when it dropped into the box at the end of the drier.
Hope that is clear, I'm sorry I don't have any pictures of the beast, I hated it-not a fan of disc cameras.
Mark

PHOTOTONE · Jan 16, 2009

Mark Antony said:
We had a disk film processor made by Noritsu. It took overflow from the chemical tanks on the 'mother' C41 machine and had little tanks with less than 2-3 L capacity.
I think the process was called C41A as it used chemicals from the overflow.
The machine had a dark bag/box arrangement where you broke open the disk to load it on the hanger.
The disc was loaded onto a hanger (about 5" long plastic) that had a wheel at one end, the disc was placed on a spigot in the centre of the wheel and held by a key way and 'cap' disk (max 3 films per hanger stacked). The wheel was driven by a rubber band which kept the it moving during processing.
You placed the hanger onto a drive bar, after 3 mins the lift drive mechanism would move the hanger to the next bath.
The machine had a countdown and you couldn't put a hanger on when the countdown reached 15 sec, it also had sensors to show which baths had hangers in them and an annoying buzzer when it dropped into the box at the end of the drier.
Hope that is clear, I'm sorry I don't have any pictures of the beast, I hated it-not a fan of disc cameras.
Mark

That is exactly what I was thinking about, but I didn't remember the details.

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