The comeback?

[removed account4]

Great story, just as long as your shots are in decent light.

thnx
yeah ( bad light ) .. just imagine a 5 year old kid with a modern digital camera ( phone / p-s &c ) that takes great photographs in dim light ..
im surprised every 5 year old kid in this modern age doesn't become addicted to making photographs.
oh cr@p, maybe that's why the inter webs is full of photography

 

[DonJ]

whats not special about that .. being able to see something and then see what it looks like in photographic form is a powerful thing
even for a 5 year old. i still am nearly breathless sometimes when i see an image made with the sun as a print or a print made in the darkroom.
not everyone feels this way. a lot of people don't give a hoot. they don't care even about snappies they make with their phone.. they're just snappier...
but once in a while a different person will just stare at what they made, and be hooked. f v d is a dead argument at this point its sight and emotion thing.

I'd expect it to be a more powerful experience if they could see the result immediately vs. waiting a week or more. Again, what's special about analog to that 5 year old?

 

[faberryman]

I'd expect it to be a more powerful experience if they could see the result immediately vs. waiting a week or more. Again, what's special about analog to that 5 year old?

It depends on if they are sensitive or not. Sensitive children will be able to tell the difference between real and fake. Of course.

 

[warden]

I can't speak to the five year olds but I have some experience with the 8-16 year old group. Each year I round up the neighborhood kids and take happy snaps, and then make darkroom prints for their parents. It's a great time for the adults on picture day with wine and hors d'oeuvres, and the kids get to run and play when Mr. Jeff and his old time camera isn't making them sit.

The kids all know about film and have seen videos of their latent images appearing on paper. They 'get' the magic of that, and think it's Walt Disney level amazing stuff. They all know I have extra cameras and free film for anyone who wants it, but no takers so far, not even my kids. I'd never push it on them and it's cool with me if they prefer the phones.

I think it's unlikely that film will have a "comeback" beyond volumes that we are experiencing currently. The market is right-sizing to whatever it must be to satisfy the next generation, and that generation isn't showing all that much interest from what I can see online and on my street. I'm cool with that.

 

[faberryman]

I think it's unlikely that film will have a "comeback" beyond volumes that we are experiencing currently. The market is right-sizing to whatever it must be to satisfy the next generation, and that generation isn't showing all that much interest from what I can see online and on my street. I'm cool with that.

I don't see it but others do. I guess I am just standing in the wrong place. When I go to the Lomography web site, it seems like millions of young people are shooting film.

 

[removed account4]

I'd expect it to be a more powerful experience if they could see the result immediately vs. waiting a week or more. Again, what's special about analog to that 5 year old?

maybe IDK its all i had so that was my experience .. regarding other 5 year olds,
couldn't tell you i'm not currently 5 years old.

 

[Berkeley Mike]

thnx
yeah ( bad light ) .. just imagine a 5 year old kid with a modern digital camera ( phone / p-s &c ) that takes great photographs in dim light ..
im surprised every 5 year old kid in this modern age doesn't become addicted to making photographs.
oh cr@p, maybe that's why the inter webs is full of photography

Touche!

 

[Berkeley Mike]

IDK
all i could tell you was i saw the pix and i said : this is cool ! my parents didn't really have much to do with it except feeding my camera for me
since i was a little kid with no income .. they paid for processing too, until i was old enough to learn how to do it myself ...
i wasn't emulating them. they never photographed the shrubs or my friends sister hanging upside down off of the swingset .. or ...

This is awesome but consider this...how would the experience have been different if you had immediate feedback as you shot?

 

[Berkeley Mike]

It depends on if they are sensitive or not. Sensitive children will be able to tell the difference between real and fake. Of course.

What is fake?

 

[removed account4]

This is awesome but consider this...how would the experience have been different if you had immediate feedback as you shot?

i would be doing it endlessly ! ( and it would have been FREE )
and if i could have made video like that too when i was 5 i'd have done that endlessly as well.
we live in amazing times for anyone involved in these modes of creation ... not to mention
a 5 year old kid ( under the supervision of his parents of course LOL! ) can go online and find a community of
other 5 year old kids who are aspiring photographers and budding videographers on all corners of the globe to share with and learn from ...

 

[jtk]

To a 5 year old I suspect the magic is in communication and, of course, crayons.

 

[Berkeley Mike]

i would be doing it endlessly ! ( and it would have been FREE )
and if i could have made video like that too when i was 5 i'd have done that endlessly as well.
we live in amazing times for anyone involved in these modes of creation ... not to mention
a 5 year old kid ( under the supervision of his parents of course LOL! ) can go online and find a community of
other 5 year old kids who are aspiring photographers and budding videographers on all corners of the globe to share with and learn from ...

By age 9 they would be blowing us out of the water.

 

[removed account4]

By age 9 they would be blowing us out of the water.

yup !

 

[Sirius Glass]

This is awesome but consider this...how would the experience have been different if you had immediate feedback as you shot?

Back then real people did not need instant feedback. Today's airheads hold their breathe until they see the image, so they would have just passed out back then. Genes must have changed and people cannot hold an instance in their brains now. Sad. So sad

 

[removed account4]

Back then real people did not need instant feedback. Today's airheads hold their breathe until they see the image, so they would have just passed out back then. Genes must have changed and people cannot hold an instance in their brains now. Sad. So sad

LOL you mean the polaroid image-making wasn't around back then ?
you are really kind of funny

 

[scheimfluger_77]

... Back of paper napkin calculations suggest:

30,000,000 rolls at 3 ft/roll= 90,000,000 ft

Assume 60% for Movie to wag the dog:

.6 x 90,000,000ft = 54,000,000 ft.

Divide by 1000 ft/reel and 1500 ft/reel:

54000000ft/1000 ft/reel= 54,000 reels and 54000000ft/1500 ft/reel= 36,000.

So 36,000-54,000 reels of movie film

Can that be possible?

Well... a two hour feature film is 10,800 feet of film, and that’s just the finished product. I would assume a minimum of 3-5 times that number just for Camera Original. Then there are the Masters (multiples) struck from the Camera Original. Then there are the Work Prints (multiples) struck from the Master. Then there are the Printing Masters (multiples) struck from the Work Prints. Then there are the Theatre Prints struck from the Printing Masters. They don’t make just one of those for the exhibitors either. I think your 54 million feet will be quickly accounted for with a relative handful of finished films.

 

[Theo Sulphate]

Analogue controls are not intuitive...

Well, that's where we disagree. It would be interesting to devise some sort of experiment for this. That would be difficult, because, except for the very young, we have all become accustomed to the controls we learned.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I'd expect it to be a more powerful experience if they could see the result immediately vs. waiting a week or more. Again, what's special about analog to that 5 year old?

My daughter opened her gift at a dinner in her home that was a Fujifilm Instax 6, instant film camera. The people were delighted in watching the film pop out and develop over a two minute period. The five year old there was more interested in his truck and vehicle gift. But the adults were having fun. I took home my wife and my picture and have put it in a small frame on the table. Who would do these things with a cellphone shot? Fun for about a dollar a shot plus the cost of the camera about $125.

 

[Sirius Glass]

LOL you mean the polaroid image-making wasn't around back then ?
you are really kind of funny

I know. I can really make myself crack up laughing sometimes.

 

[jamesaz]

My daughter opened her gift at a dinner in her home that was a Fujifilm Instax 6, instant film camera. The people were delighted in watching the film pop out and develop over a two minute period. The five year old there was more interested in his truck and vehicle gift. But the adults were having fun. I took home my wife and my picture and have put it in a small frame on the table. Who would do these things with a cellphone shot? Fun for about a dollar a shot plus the cost of the camera about $125.

I watched my grandkids play with one last winter. They were at the time 5, 8 & not quite 11. They had fun sharing the prints and posing each other but I suspect that, to them, film photography is just another menu option in the available visual presentation platforms or whatever it would be called in digispeak.
An older one (she'll be 18 soon) did have me get her a film camera maybe 3 years ago (k-1000) so awareness of film does exist among the young.

 

[Berkeley Mike]

There was a point when reading had not been widespread that people used mnemonic devices to memorize things. They did not "need" reading to learn but, boy-howdy, reading sure improved the learning experience.

Back in my undergrad days we spent countless hours in the stacks doing book-related research for papers. Card catalogues, micro-fiche, scouring aisles and floors for books and references. We didn't need no stinkin' computers. However, their use makes this much less time-consuming. This shortens the feedback loop, and therefore, the learning loop. Why would one not use it?

 

[MattKing]

There was a point when reading had not been widespread that people used mnemonic devices to memorize things. They did not "need" reading to learn but, boy-howdy, reading sure improved the learning experience.

Back in my undergrad days we spent countless hours in the stacks doing book-related research for papers. Card catalogues, micro-fiche, scouring aisles and floors for books and references. We didn't need no stinkin' computers. However, their use makes this much less time-consuming. This shortens the feedback loop, and therefore, the learning loop. Why would one not use it?View attachment 212876

Perhaps because in many cases the computer search tools rely more on tags and summations and interpretations as much then they do on the actual content of the items searched.
It takes a really informed appreciation of how computer searches work to understand their strengths and limitations.
The same concerns apply to non-computer based tools. But somehow the computer based tools are more enticing.
To pick a good but extremely arcane example, I'd suggest trying to deduce the impact of Bell v. Lever Brothers from the headnote.
Spoiler alert - you can deduce almost anything from Bell v. Lever Brothers.

 

[Berkeley Mike]

You know, it is really much like knowing how to manage the input in a chat room. You get to appreciate the benchmarks of certain kinds of participation and learn what to ignore. Information based research has those same hallmarks. You have to b e careful not to get narrow minded, or jump to conclusions too soon. That said, as much as one comes to know certain contributors, a type of voice or demeanor, or certain information sources, one cannot close off from them unless they are toxic. Not so different from understanding searches.

I read the Bell v. Lever Bros and do not know how it relates to our discussion. Sometimes I am dense. Can anyone help me see its applicability?

 

[removed account4]

I read the Bell v. Lever Bros and do not know how it relates to our discussion. Sometimes I am dense. Can anyone help me see its applicability?

i think it has to do with people using shill accounts to have arguments with themselves
and bolster their personal standing, buy and sell, win friends and influence people.
i probably shouldn't admit this but i have accounts on this website registered to 31 different user names.
sometimes i buy and sell things to myself, am argumentative,
and obnoxious and i even "like" my own photographs too.
lately i put a few of my accounts on ignore, they were too much.

 

[msage]

It's just the other way round:
People who invested thousands of dollars in digital gear because they believed in the "film is dead" propaganda, can't stand the fact that film has not dissappeard, and is now gaining interest again.
Their "wishful thinking" it that film has no future, because then they can justify for themselves that they have paid so much for digital gear.

Fact is that the market for digital cameras has collapsed by 85% in the last years. Lots of digital OEM camera manufacturers had to stop production, and even the first big player (Samsung) left the digital camera market.
And instant film is now a huge mass volume market again, being much much bigger than the market for DSLM / MILC cameras. The MILC market was about 4.1 million units in 2017, the market for instant film cameras was more than 7 million cameras (!!!) in 2017.

The "film is dead" prayers only demonstrate their lack of knowledge of the current photography market developments.

I don't think most people left film photography because ""they believed in the "film is dead" propaganda"", they moved on to new and better technology!