Vinyl Records - Could it happen with film?

Hello.

I apologize if this has been posted before; I didn't see it on the last few pages.

With that being said, I don't know how many of you have noticed, but vinyl record sales have been up the upswing as of late. This has been all over the news, for reasons which may include the fact that the average viewing American would find it funny that some crazed "nuts" may actually still utilize an "old" medium. It's a fairly modest increase, and perhaps the trend won't continue, but it did get me thinking about some things.

Now, I'm one of the ones to ride this wave. I'm almost too young to remember the end of vinyl's heyday, yet I found myself borrowing an old record player of my friend's and buying and playing vinyl records. There's a whole slew of reasons why someone may prefer vinyl over film. CDs, and in turn, MP3s have taken most of the physical ritual out of the medium. Additionally, the warm sound of vinyl is contrasted with the compressed, loud sounds of the digital music (for reasons easily found by Googling). To make a long story short, I've learned about a musical experience which I think beats the CDs I've played and heard.

But anyway, what I'm trying to get at is, the same reason I found myself listening to vinyl is the reasons I like film. I prefer the experience, the "look", and all the things we all enjoy about analog photography.

Do you think it's possible we could see something similar with film? Again, I'm not talking about film becoming the primary photography medium of choice, but perhaps in a few years people get sick and tired of the unromantic routine of digital and some return to the "real" thing? The year to year sales of vinyl increased approximately 30%. That's not bad for a medium whose use defies all common marketing sense: they're more expensive, they wear, they require more care, etc. The same argument you could make for film photography over digital. It's not just older folks too, it's young people like me (<=30). I think this is an interesting topic because it may be interesting to see who and how many may reject digital media (to whatever extent) and why.

Of course, look at fine art, people still use many different print processes, analogue instruments/recording techniques are in constant use and re;use in music and in photography wet-plate, even, is making a resurgence. The only sad thing is that supplies of materials for photography are generally determined by the big businesses like Kodak, though to their credit they have just introduced a new Ektar 100asa colour film. The demise of Kodachrome is particularly lamented though.
People yearn for variety and quality, the digital revolution will just become another option in one's palette. It is early days but there are still a lot of people using film and a younger generation coming through often looks to the past for inspiration. Let's celebrate the difference and continue onwards enjoying whatever media we choose to use.

The great majority of people will prefer digital for the convenience factor. There will be a minority of adventurous & open minded types who see the benefits of traditional photography. I teach photography & I see both groups. Some people fall asleep as soon as I talk about anything film related. I see others who start with digital SLRs & a few months later they're in the B&W darkroom.

Yes the analogy between film photography and vinyl is a good one. I have a large vinyl collection (over 1000 Lps) My main reason for collecting them is they are much more pleasurable to own, larger artwork, different sound and not forgetting the collector factor there's nothing like finding an original mono copy of a Beatles album or a Stereo Jazz great for a few quid, going to HMV and buying the CD isn't the same neither is downloading from iTunes with the little jpg artwork.
Film for me is similar in that i like old manual cameras, using film, developing it late a night, watching the magic alchemy of seeing the emerging print....
The analogue experience feels much more magical to me
Mark

Harry Hollis said:

The demise of Kodachrome is particularly lamented though.

Click to expand...

The last I heard, Kodachrome wasn't yet dead. People are anticipating its demise in the not-too-distant future, but lamentations are still premature (unless I've missed something, of course, or if you're lamenting the passing of Kodachrome 25 or Kodachrome 200).

I'm with Mark, and somewhat like him: my first job out of college in 1973 was selling stereo equipment (based on having been a college radio dj), and I've got many, many records, some dating back to those same college years. And I like records for the same reasons Mark does -- the size, the photos, graphics, the lyrics. The connection to the artist and the act of listening to great music.

But I don't think that we can count on the same degree of emotional attraction to film among a large enough group of people to support a surge in film production. To the listener, the product's form and packaging was often nearly as important as the music. To the average picture-taker, film was only ever a means to an end, the photograph. If it's less costly and quicker to use digital, nearly all people will (and have) switch(ed) and not look back.

I have had a vinyl collection for years. When CD sales went nuts in the late 80s and early 90s I picked up some nice stuff on vinyl very cheaply - I bought a copy of Miles Davis' "Sketches of Spain" for a dollar somewhere and it plays perfectly. The only "repair" I would do is to take a record cleaning kit and clean the dust off the record prior to playing it.

I never left film completely, and even now I take all my best stuff with film. As long as I can buy film I will shoot film, and even if film becomes hard to get I may just start making my own emulsions.

The Breeders just came out with a new LP a couple months back...it was even recorded the ol' fashioned way...all analog in the studio to a etched tin master.

Trask said:

To the listener, the product's form and packaging was often nearly as important as the music. To the average picture-taker, film was only ever a means to an end, the photograph. If it's less costly and quicker to use digital, nearly all people will (and have) switch(ed) and not look back.

Click to expand...

I'd have to agree with that to some extent. For decades, many were satisfied with instamatics and drug-store-processed prints. Now, any digital camera on the market will do just as well for that purpose. The resurgence of vinyl is in part a reaction to the crappy production of many CDs, as marylandphoto points out; it would be like the digital camera makers saying, well, people only want highlights, not shadows, so we won't give them the bottom four bits of data. But it's not entirely about quality per se; there have always been crappy, cheap cameras and crappy, cheap stereos and radios. It is partly about having an experience not mediated by the computer. Even with the cheap, crappy stuff, the experience is different from digital, whether it's "better" is arguable, but it is definitely different. And, indeed, engaging in a certain amount of ritual (why I like to use mechanical cameras, no auto-anything).

That said, vinyl will not be more than a niche market; if CDs go away, it'll be because of the Internet and high prices, and low perceived quality. (Note that efforts to introduce higher-quality cd formats failed in the market). Film will remain a niche market for the forseeable future, but one that we hope will grow to at least be sustainable.

That said, I haven't actually used my turntable in a while.

Is it just me or were CD's much higher quality in the earlier days? I bought the hype finally in 1992 and got a CD player, and some of the classical CD's I got around then are much better than some of the more recent things I have picked up. Could it be just that they were much better produced?

I get comments quite often about how alive my prints look, and people ask me what I did to my files to get such prints.

Ummm... had them printed? I then let on that they were taken with a 30+ year old Spotmatic or an ancient TLR or whatever it was that I used for that particular photo.

Is it just me or were CD's much higher quality in the earlier days?

Click to expand...

It's not just you. Google 'loudness war'. It's very tragic, and thinking about it inspires rage to well up in my heart in roughly the same fashion as book-burning does.

Also, this resurgence in vinyl popularity is the worst thing that happened to vinyl. Now you have every halfpriced books, ebayer, and thrift store thinking records are all of sudden worth money when they used to be $0.50-$1.00. Records at thrift stores used to be 5 for a dollar, now they are usually a couple bucks each. I'm not sure you can compare vinyl with photography anyway; turntables never wear out and well-kept records don't either. But film is a commodity, one that doesn't last forever at that, and economic factors causing the production of film to stop can cause the production of photographs to stop.

The loudness war is only with crappy pop music.

If you want an album from 20 years ago, get it on vinyl. If you want an album from today, get it on a CD. Today's vinyl sucks (extremely low quality), yesterday's CDs sucked. Not to mention CDs and Vinyl draw from the same master, so there would be no describable difference between the two. Good engineering and mastering matters more than whether the music is on a CD or vinyl.

That said, I rip CDs and I rip some old vinyl (Jazz, mostly). It's amazing to have a server full of your entire music collection, losslessly packaged.

The people who buy vinyl today are mostly either hipsters, or crazy audiophiles who think there is a difference. There is a resurgence in film today among hipsters who get $90 Holga's and overpriced no-name film.

I'm 16, and so many of my friends take photography courses, where they have to use film. I think they all like it. I have friends who use digital cameras, who talk about their wish to use film, but they think it is too expensive, or they don't think they're good enough yet (to quote, "I don't want to waste a frame."). Pros still use so much film. Why are some people here so afraid about film's future? It is here to stay, even if the populace discounts it. Too many people still use it.

I am about to sink an ungodly amount of money for a new turntable, tone arm, phono preamp, and phono cartridge for my fairly large LP collection. For those in the know since the late 70's it was known that recordings on vinyl had a certain sound that was not reproduced in CD form. I now have a very high performing CD player which is much superior to those that were from many many years ago. It has been known for some time that turntable set-ups in the $1000 to $2,000 range could outperform CD players in the $10,000 range. It will be interesting for me to compare the sound of my turntable versus the digital playback. I expect though the really well recorded CDs now sound phenominal, I expect that really well recorded vinyl will sound still better.

Kodak and Fuji announced at Foto3 that they were surprised that film sale reduction had slowed and things were becoming more stable in the sale of film. They also noted as did Ilford that Pros and Art Photographers in particular were using film for at least a portion of their work. That was for certain projects or for personal usage. They pointed out that many Pros offer to clients the option of film versus Digital for their projects and they discuss the Pros and Cons of each. Hopefully there will be a place for both film and digitial imaging in the future.

For the workshops that I will be teaching, though it will mainly be oriented toward digital because that is what is wanted by the masses, I will carry both a film and a digital camera for teaching while my partner has switched entirely to digital.

Rich

Yeah, CDs were better in the early days, because they were from analog tape

Does anyone *want* film to become like vinyl, a quaint curiosity that only eccentrics use? I sure as hell don't. I'm shooting schools with film, a hundred feet at a time, and intend to do so as long as film is still made in 70mm size.

So if you want film to be like vinyl, only shoot B&W, never use film for your actual customers, and keep lowering your prices to compete with portrait mills. Don't shoot C-41, about the only medium that Kodak and Fuji actually make money on.

We're in a transitional period, but people are going to come around to the fact that film is still being used successfully after all the hype wears off. I'd say we're nearing that point now. A lot of young photographers have told me that it is the professors and teachers that are telling them they have to use digital.

I'd say the majority of photographers who really want to work in fine art or some other avenue of professional photography other than, say, photojournalism really really want to use both.

nature, I doubt you'll hear a difference. You may think you do (expectation bias), but I sincerly doubt any human can tell the difference between a well engineered/mastered CD or record.

AutumnJazz said:

nature, I doubt you'll hear a difference. You may think you do (expectation bias), but I sincerly doubt any human can tell the difference between a well engineered/mastered CD or record.

Click to expand...

I am sorry, but I have to disagree. I bet I will hear a difference. I always have in the past of over 30 years of listening. The turntable, tonearm, phono preamp and cartridge is costing me about $30,000. So, I hope that I will hear a difference. My upgraded (parts replaced) Denon CD/DVD player and upgraded Denon Blu-ray players have outperformed $15,000 to $40,000 stock single and multi box unit CD and DVD players. What we are hearing is not just perceived, it is what we are noticing in the highs, lows, mids, imaging, soundstage, dynamics, tone of instruments and voices, overtones, etc.

Rich

Of course vinyl is always going to sound different. About the only way to get a CD to sound like vinyl is to do a recording of the the vinyl and burn a CD.

The loudness war is only with crappy pop music.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately it's not. Unless you only listen to classical or something, and you really mean 'the loudness war is only with pop music' which is about true. There are many many great albums by great bands that are poorly mastered due to overcompression, starting in the mid-90s especially.

nature, it's called expectation bias. It is a powerful thing. Also your upgraded stuff probably outperformed the expensive ones because the expensive ones tend to be reboxed low-end players. (Personally, I route all my digital audio to an external DAC...a Twisted Pear Audio Opus DAC which goes to an M^3 amp I built and then to headphones [or speakers with a different amp].)

BetterSense, really? I read the rollingstone article a while back, and that is just what I gathered from it. I listen to jazz, classical, and classic rock...Either ripped from current CDs or old vinyl.

AutumnJazz said:

nature, it's called expectation bias. It is a powerful thing. Also your upgraded stuff probably outperformed the expensive ones because the expensive ones tend to be reboxed low-end players. (Personally, I route all my digital audio to an external DAC...a Twisted Pear Audio Opus DAC which goes to an M^3 amp I built and then to headphones [or speakers with a different amp].)

BetterSense, really? I read the rollingstone article a while back, and that is just what I gathered from it. I listen to jazz, classical, and classic rock...Either ripped from current CDs or old vinyl.

Click to expand...

The tests have normally been done blind or even double blind. With enough listening we can normally hear a difference and distinguish one from another.

Rich

The snap, crackle and pop of vinyl is all part of the listening enjoyment for me. I love holding vinyl, sliding the record out of it's sleeve, placing it on the turntable, inspecting the label, watching the tone arm come down. Then studying the jacket, cover art, extensive notes than can actually be read without a magnifying glass. Yup Vinyl rules. I also collect c.d.'s of earlier artists that recorded on shellac (read 78's) because I do not have a 78 turntable yet. But when I listen to the old blues masters like Charlie Patton or Blind Willie McTell what annoys me most is the digital silence between tracks, just ruins the experience. I wish that they had the surface noise incorporated between tracks.
I shoot digital almost exclusively when I'm on the job, but on my own time on my own projects I shoot film. Today I bought 50 rolls of Tri X and negatives thrill me more than any digital file ever could. I have a real connection to the neg in my enlarger , knowing that that strip of film was with me when I shot it, whether it was at home or someplace far from it. The magic of silver based photography continues to charm me. Now if you'll excuse me I have to put a Bix Beiderbecke album on the turntable.
Just for the fun of it, if you ever get a chance to watch CRUMB by Terry Zwigoff , you'll see one hard core old time record collector. You'll also see a family that is everything the Walton's were not. Happy shooting!

naturephoto1 said:

The tests have normally been done blind or even double blind. With enough listening we can normally hear a difference and distinguish one from another.

Rich

Click to expand...

I'll take your word for it, then.

marylandphoto said:

Hello.
Do you think it's possible we could see something similar with film? Again, I'm not talking about film becoming the primary photography medium of choice, but perhaps in a few years people get sick and tired of the unromantic routine of digital and some return to the "real" thing? The year to year sales of vinyl increased approximately 30%.

Click to expand...

To get back on topic;
I came back to film for the same reasons a number of other folk are turning to vinyl, I was looking for something better then today's status quo. In the '90s I was also seduced by the magic of digital; CDs/MP3s and JPGs/RAW, taking the bait that the latest box from Sony/Canon/Apple will be the silver bullet. After six generations of magic boxes, still no silver bullet, but through it all there was this background buzz, more like a whisper; LPs sound better; It doesn't look as good as film. And now more than a few are looking behind the curtain (Oz reference), peeking outside the cave (Plato reference).

From the two years since this article was written, Internet helps analog photography hold on, APUG membership has more than doubled from 12,000 to 28,000. You'd think that with the growth of digital the trend should be reversed. What's going on? We want hi-fidelity in sound and pictures. We are no longer satisfied with fast-food photography.

So, yeah I think Ilford/Fuji has it right, don't cut off your nose to save your face, because there is a new/old paradigm on the horizon.

Terry

1) Several things should be clarified about CDs vs. vinyls. Many CDs are crappy because of the crappy tape recording. And the tape recordings are crappy because of the integrated electronics used in the sound processing. In my 1K CD collection I have several (especially in classic and jazz, but also 2-3 in rock) who’s sound is fantastic if listened on a good CD player, and the appropriate amplifier and loudspeakers. Yes, I have distinct amplifiers and speakers for, on one hand acoustic instruments and opera and jazz voices, and on the other hand for electronic instruments and rock voices. The difference is made, like in photography, by resolution vs. contrast (dynamic in sound): resolution is for woods, and dynamic for electronics. But in all cases, the amplifiers have to be made with discrete components! As for the rest of my CDs, they are crappy for the reasons mentioned in the beginning. In conclusion, I don’t believe in a perceivable difference between a CD and a vinyl, condition being set that both should be made from quality tape recordings and with sound processing electronics with discrete components (only exception for the CD's coding).

2) Film and vinyls have in common only the analog recording of the information. This is all, and it isn’t the main issue. The real issues are the followings:

a) While vinyls are only a recording medium, film and optical printing are more than that: they are means of expression. Did anybody hear from a singer who prefers to create vinyl music instead of CD music? Nonsense! But there are photographers who chose to express themselves with film, and others with digital. From this point of view, vinyls and film cannot be compared. They are completely different things.

b) Digital vs. analog (in photography) is the other main issue, because each of these two means of expression render a part of the photography more accessible for certain uses (B&W, color, slides) and users (amateurs, artists, professionals, paparazzi, etc.). I strongly believe that in print, B&W is more accessible (easy of use and large possibilities for manipulation) when it is done with film, optical printing, and chemical processing. On the other hand, color is far more accessible (in the same sense) when done digital. Although, I have very little experience with transparencies, I cannot have an opinion about this subject matter.

Final conclusions:
- At a deeper regard there is very little in common between vinyls and film. In fact, there are more differences than similarities.
- While vinyls and CDs are in competition, film photography and digital imagery are alternative but non-exclusive processes: each of them with their distinct purpose and users.

phenix said:

Did anybody hear from a singer who prefers to create vinyl music instead of CD music? Nonsense!

Click to expand...

Well.... I have friends who prefer to record on tape and release on vinyl.

One of them does sessions here: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct03/articles/toeragstudios.htm



Steve.

phenix said:

1) Several things should be clarified about CDs vs. vinyls. Many CDs are crappy because of the crappy tape recording.

Click to expand...

Rather, it's that the digital recordings are crappily engineered by the sound engineer who should know better. RMS remains the same, but anything over max q digital land makes for a digital slapping sound. The sneaky shortcut around this is to compress output. Analogue recordings mastered to vinyl depend on that engineer, but also depend on the pressing facility (how slow and thoroughly the records are pressed), the mastering lathe, and the vinyl material itself (virgin versus recycled).

I do recognize practical parallels between analogue and digital recordings the way I do between digital imaging and emulsion imaging. And this is where it's instructive to make the comparative analogies. "CD versus vinyl" is no different than saying "dye-sub prints and chemical prints". The analogy, however, fails when saying the CD/vinyl relation is comparable to CCD/emulsion. It isn't. The former is a method of reproduction (playback), while the latter is a form of creation.

And the tape recordings are crappy because of the integrated electronics used in the sound processing [...] In conclusion, I don’t believe in a perceivable difference between a CD and a vinyl, condition being set that both should be made from quality tape recordings and with sound processing electronics with discrete components (only exception for the CD's coding).

Click to expand...

Then what you should do is try the following: find a known recording which was recorded on analogue media and mixed down to analogue media and is regarded as a well-recorded album (usually identified by "AAD" on the CD pressing of said album). Then, find a vinyl and a CD mastering from the same mastering engineers (not the recording engineers). It's easier said than done, and it will require a little armchair curatorial research. Try finding a Japanese pressing of a recording you know well. Find it both on vinyl and CD, both in mint condition, and both showing the same pressing data on the obi strip (usually, it will look like "[97·6·13]", where this dating convention is year-month-day). Then, using your preferred equipment, listen to both, side by side. This is where one will be able to make out media quality variations.

Speaking from experience, the human ear can discern a sine wave from a square approximation thereto. And this is where our eyes, like our ears, can notice fine, subtle differences in what we perceive in terms of digital versus analogue quality. It's that je ne sais qoui we can identify, but not necessarily why. I used to play the "guess the vinyl" game with friends using two reference songs in particular: Talk Talk's "I Don't Believe in You" from German virgin vinyl and German CD, and the extended version of Thompson Twins "Doctor! Doctor!" from Japanese virgin vinyl and Japanese CD. Nine times of ten, the listeners would guess incorrectly.

2) Film and vinyls have in common only the analog recording of the information. This is all, and it isn’t the main issue. The real issues are the followings:

Click to expand...

See above.

a) While vinyls are only a recording medium, film and optical printing are more than that: they are means of expression. Did anybody hear from a singer who prefers to create vinyl music instead of CD music? Nonsense! But there are photographers who chose to express themselves with film, and others with digital. From this point of view, vinyls and film cannot be compared. They are completely different things.

Click to expand...

I must respectfully disagree with you on this one.

- At a deeper regard there is very little in common between vinyls and film. In fact, there are more differences than similarities.

Click to expand...

It's not that they have little in common -- on the contrary, there's a lot in common -- but it's a dissimilar analogy. A better comparison is that of dupe film from an original versus a vinyl pressing from an analogue recording.

- While vinyls and CDs are in competition, film photography and digital imagery are alternative but non-exclusive processes: each of them with their distinct purpose and users.

Click to expand...

Again, I must respectfully disagree. Compact discs and vinyl records are complementary formats, in that the advancements introduced by CDs enabled portability through digital information storage. Both formats are valid for reproducibility. What differs are the source recordings: digital recordings, like digital imaging, renders an analogue source into a permanently digital-only approximation (ones and zeroes, which can approximate the original analogue sine waves, but not replace them). With a digital recording, a zoomed in audio sine wave, when displayed, will look like tiny stair-steps, not a curve. Similarly, a 32-bit or 40-bit CCD will use the available tones and colours within that multi-million-bit palette, but the natural world doesn't work like this. The transition -- even when the eyes can't perceive it -- between brightness and colour variation can result in banding with a digital image, even if you need a special device to distinguish the threshold for that banding.