What Films Would You Like To See Kodak Re-Introduce Again? And why?

[Milpool]

Yeah papers would be nice. I’d love to try the Polyfiber A Mark Citret uses, or at least have Polymax FA back. Not that there’s anything wrong with the Ilford papers. But the prices are becoming eye watering. I’m still hoping to get around to trying the Foma papers.

Since we're dreaming:

Verichrome, Plus-X, and Ektapan, but in ALL formats:

35mm, 120, 220, 2x3 sheets AND filmpacks, 4x5 sheets AND filmpacks, 9x12, and 8x10.

Also bring back the original metal film cans for 35mm, and especially the Plus-X in purple trim and Tri-X in green.

Oh, bring back the original 20 roll Propack boxes of 120 and 220.

While we're at it, bring back Velox, Ektalure, Kodabromide, Medalist, and Opal, in all grades and surfaces.

Ohhhh the feels ...

 

[chuckroast]

There was a general question at first "what films would you like to see Kodak bring back"........
It is a forum characteristic that some people simply answer the question, while others go into excruciating detail....which may or may not be pertinent to the question at all, and in the end is just one more opinion with no more weight than any other opinion. It was a simple question....not a competition where there is a right answer.

I am put in mind of this classic xkcd cartoon:

 

[chuckroast]

I like what Lachlan says about "double-blind" tests. With his habitual skepticism about any ability to differentiate things qualitatively, which can't be pigeonholed into formalized technical terminology, does that mean keeping both eyes closed?

In my early career, I spent a few years doing applied research examining what factors affect the ability of a person to hear things in a noisy environment. What that taught me is that testing of human perception is tricky. In most cases, when a variable gets changed, if the effect is perceptible by humans, it's barely statistically significant. This appears to be the case for all the senses.

That's why the term "clinically significant" gets tossed around so much - is the thing we're doing providing practical benefits like improving symptoms, quality of life, and so on irrespective of the statistical outcomes?

If I test a change in material composition and then measure the strength of that material, statistical analysis is meaningful. But if I change where you sit listening to a noisy recording, or prop you up in front of several prints, it almost never is. Why? Because the variability in human-to-human perception usually has a larger effect on the experimental results than the thing you're trying to test.

That is, we humans vary so much in how we hear, see, taste, touch, and smell, that is will often overwhelm subtle changes in the thing itself we're measuring. An exception to this is when the things we're measuring and comparing are grossly different - say a wall sized print from a Minox negative vs one made from 8x10.

Subject bias also shows up. For example, if we put up two prints of an abstract image taken with different films, there is no way to know exactly whether the there is a real difference in perceptual response or whether some subjects just don't like abstracts in general and think both images suck.

Double blind testing has an important role in play in research. To the degree possible, it removes the bias of the experimenter from outcomes. But it does not give you magically correct outcomes nor does it overcome the inherent variability across human subjects.

There are many things where you cannot easily reduce the outcomes via mathematical and scientific methods that are still nonetheless completely valid. Psychoacoustics is but one example. And yes, how we perceive a picture hanging on the wall is another.

It is unfortunate that we've moved from the "science" of the Enlightenment to the "scientism" of the postmodern age. Scientism treats science like a belief system (which it is not), as a bringer of truth (which is does not do), and the only meaningful way we're supposed to know anything (which is absurd).

Placing quantitative analysis above the human experience is like saying I can only appreciate Rembrandt's "Night Watch" by standing 10mm from the canvas and apprehending the brush strokes (which would likely get you kicked out of the Rijksmuseum!).

The math isn't the only way to understand reality. The map is not the territory.

Also, I still want Velox back ...

 

[BrianShaw]

In my early career, I spent a few years doing applied research examining what factors affect the ability of a person to hear things in a noisy environment. What that taught me is that testing of human perception is tricky. In most cases, when a variable gets changed, if the effect is perceptible by humans, it's barely statistically significant. This appears to be the case for all the senses.

...

Also, I still want Velox back ...

Yep, on both: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3018227/ and Velox.

(It would make me even happier to also see Azo back too.)

 

[chuckroast]

Yep, on both: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3018227/ and Velox.

(It would make me even happier to also see Azo back too.)

That's a very good read. Thanks!

 

[DREW WILEY]

Chuck - Back when I did a lot of architectural color consultation, to do it well (especially outdoors under varying seasonal and diurnal lighting conditions), it was crucial to take into account all kinds of psychological and physiological variables which raw instrumentation couldn't provide (and I had access to the best pigment spectrophotometers). My clients were frequently architects and high end renovation contractors who had gotten burned by the cookie-cutter approach to color selection, sitting at a desk with a pile of paint color chips. I took the trouble to examine the actual site in various kinds of lighting, and was very conscious of all that, because I was also being paid to photograph the final result for sake of their portfolios. In some case, three of more subtle tweaks of the same general paint color might be applied to the same wall at different levels, depending on how the light would hit it at a time of day important to the client, or how vegetation color casts in shadows might affect it during certain seasons. It was fascinating work and paid well, but involved too much running around and exhaustion to keep doing it over the long run, except nearby.

I take the same approach toning and evaluating my own darkroom prints, using different light sources and viewing them at different times (never after a long computer session when my eyes are fatigued). Since I'm my own fussy client in that case, it's what pleases me that counts. At that point, math means zero. In fact, rarely do I print a negative exactly the same way; different variants might be equally lovely, but in different manners.

 

[Milpool]

None of that has anything to do with the visibility of the character of film grain. The Rembrandt “analogy”, what Lachlan is suggesting is nothing like that.

Drew Wiley, great yarn.

 

[paddycook]

Oh yes. Ektar 25 was great.

Best C41 film ever made IMHO. Fuji Reala a close second. Late 80s era Kodak Gold 100 third.

 

[paddycook]

Nobody wants Kodak BW400CN back?

I do.

 

[Dr. no]

I hadn’t though of the papers…all (well, maybe most of) the different surfaces…
Mostly I’m happy with current offerings (except Kodachrome) but I’d like a great big run of the older, longer-shelf-life films and papers: graded papers, Verichrome, plus-x and such. A big run so we can stock up for the next 50 years.

None of these were perhaps best in all categories, but they were often better in several,

And I’m sure we could come up with (and argue about) several dozen measureables to more completely define all the possible characteristics of films, but why? You use it and you like it or not. If you like it you use it again, if you can get it. You use something else and keep taking pictures, and keep arguing/bragging/complaining about it. That’s the activity we’re here for, not looking at curves or grain.

 

[John Wiegerink]

Yes, I'll forgo any old films being brought back for just some short runs of Kodak enlarging papers of the past. I have a couple of favorites, but would be happy to see just about any of the old papers come back.

 

[chuckroast]

Yeah papers would be nice. I’d love to try the Polyfiber A Mark Citret uses, or at least have Polymax FA back. Not that there’s anything wrong with the Ilford papers. But the prices are becoming eye watering. I’m still hoping to get around to trying the Foma papers.

I print pretty much exclusively on Fomabrom Variant 111 VCFB. It reminds me somewhat of the old Bergger VCNB. I very much like it and prefer it to the Ilford products I've tried.

That said, I have several small nits as regards to the Foma:

1. I wish the paper was a bit heftier and more like a traditional DW paper.

2. I have seen some slight evidence of emulsion chipping, and damage, especially wet. It's not a some huge problem, but I always worry when I see emulsion chips in the developer tray.

 

[DREW WILEY]

The Foma emulsion is a bit fragile. It's "Neutral" status is not particularly malleable. It can be shifter warmer through selective development and toning, but not very far at all the other direction toward cold, like Berrger NB did quite well.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Milpool - yeah, the Rembrandt analogy. Looking at his paintings in person, replete with his genius with impasto relief, is an entirely different experience than looking at them in books. Having something there that is almost intangibly special is different than trying to quantify it all. An expert faker will go to the trouble of finding vintage canvas and vintage-style pigment, and learn how to precisely replicate the techniques, but still will never have quite the same effect. It's no different with photography.

The character and effect of film grain is just one more paint brush in the overall kit. Some people do their best work with a brush big enough for painting houses, others with a tiny squirrel-hair brush like Dali, maybe someone else dripping the paint from a bucket like Jackson Pollock. The right tools for the right person - that's what counts.
Sometimes these forums get so obsessed with artificial objective standards that the whole point gets misplaced.
And not all of that can be quantified! If it could, everything rewarding in photography and printmaking would become mechanically predictable and damn boring.

 

[albireo]

In my early career, I spent a few years doing applied research examining what factors affect the ability of a person to hear things in a noisy environment. What that taught me is that testing of human perception is tricky. In most cases, when a variable gets changed, if the effect is perceptible by humans, it's barely statistically significant.

This is fundamentally incorrect and misrepresents how statistics works. If an effect is reliably perceptible by a human subject across repeated trials, its statistical significance (p-value) will be incredibly high, not "barely significant." You are confusing effect size (how small a difference is) with statistical significance (how sure we are that the difference isn't random chance). Science is perfectly capable of detecting tiny, subtle effects with massive statistical certainty if the study is powered correctly.

That's why the term "clinically significant" gets tossed around so much - is the thing we're doing providing practical benefits like improving symptoms, quality of life, and so on irrespective of the statistical outcomes?

"Clinical significance" does not exist irrespective of statistical outcomes, but builds on top of them. A drug cannot be clinically significant if it fails its statistical efficacy trials. In the context of photography, if a certain film or developer provides a "practical benefit" to the look of a print or a scan, that benefit can be isolated and verified. If it can't be verified under blind conditions, then the "benefit" is in your head, not in the print.

Subject bias also shows up. For example, if we put up two prints of an abstract image taken with different films, there is no way to know exactly whether the there is a real difference in perceptual response or whether some subjects just don't like abstracts in general and think both images suck.

This is the biggest, most embarrassing blunder in your post. You are conflating subjective preference with perceptual discrimination. A proper double-blind test doesn't ask, "Do you like this abstract art?". It uses an ABX testing model as follows for instance: "Here are prints A and B, and here is hidden print X. Is X identical to A or B?" Personal taste in abstract art has zero impact on a subject's physical ability to detect film grain, acutance, or tonal curves.

Double blind testing has an important role in play in research. To the degree possible, it removes the bias of the experimenter from outcomes. But it does not give you magically correct outcomes nor does it overcome the inherent variability across human subjects.

Nobody claims it's "magic." It's maths and methodology. And it absolutely does overcome human variability through proper statistical controls, blinding, and sample sizes. Its primary job is to eliminate, whenever possible, expectation bias (and not to fix subject variability!).

Placing quantitative analysis above the human experience is like saying I can only appreciate Rembrandt's "Night Watch" by standing 10mm from the canvas and apprehending the brush strokes (which would likely get you kicked out of the Rijksmuseum!).

Beautiful, classic example of a strawman argument! Proponents of double-blind testing aren't trying to use math to tell you which photograph is beautiful, or how to "appreciate" art. But if an art dealer claims a painting is an authentic Rembrandt and wants to charge millions for it, you'd use quantitative analysis (pigment testing, X-rays, etc) to prove it. In photography, if someone claims a specific gear choice or workflow creates an objectively superior physical result, double-blind testing is simply asking them to prove they aren't falling for a placebo.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Ho hum. I need to get back into a REAL darkroom in a few minutes, at least for awhile, prepping negs for the next session at least. Endlessly wandering around in the semantics of cyberspace instead just isn't my cup of tea (actually I prefer coffee anyway).

Yeah, for awhile I made some decent extra money sleuthing art fraud myself. I was no expert at it, but had sufficient skills and equipment to save clients a lot of time and money otherwise. For example, with simple heat lamps and Tech Pan film, I once discovered a Victorian style "Dogs with Cards" underpainting to an alleged Old Masters oil painting. I made a few hundred bucks and saved the client thousands, since the opinion of a real expert wasn't even needed at that point. Of course, from clear across the room, I could tell it was a fake, simply due to its lack of the magic of the real deal. No special statistical analysis or pigment testing needed. Sometimes the obvious is the best answer.

This whole talk about "superior" film and paper and so forth has to be emotionally qualified and not just scientifically quantified. One man's medicine is another man's poison, as the old adage goes. Is conspicuous grain a hero or a villain? Taste is largely personal.

 

[chuckroast]

If it can't be verified under blind conditions, then the "benefit" is in your head, not in the print.

This is a pitch perfect example of the scientism to which I previously referred. It's the "if we can't measure it, it's not real" line of argument and it's bogus. There are many things that are real that cannot be reduced to sense-mechanical examination. Science cannot - by its very nature - answer every question mankind cares about and claiming it can - no matter how indirectly - is flatly wrong.

You're trying to give science and the experimental method a power it cannot have.

I would encourage you to read the quantum physicist Stanciu's book, "The Great Transformation". He lays waste to these kinds of claims.

P.S. If I perceive a benefit looking at a print that you cannot "verify under blind conditions", that benefit is still very much real. The world is way bigger than what can be measured.

 

[bfilm]

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." --William Bruce Cameron, 1963

"Digital photography is a science and film photography is a chemical miracle." --Steven Spielberg, 2017

 

[MattKing]

If I perceive a benefit looking at a print that you cannot "verify under blind conditions", that benefit is still very much real. The world is way bigger than what can be measured.

The very real challenge with this is whether that perception can be shared with others, and whether that benefit is indeed a benefit for those others.

 

[chuckroast]

The very real challenge with this is whether that perception can be shared with others, and whether that benefit is indeed a benefit for those others.

That's certainly true , but that doesn't mean it's not real

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

In my early career, I spent a few years doing applied research examining what factors affect the ability of a person to hear things in a noisy environment. What that taught me is that testing of human perception is tricky. In most cases, when a variable gets changed, if the effect is perceptible by humans, it's barely statistically significant. This appears to be the case for all the senses.

That's why the term "clinically significant" gets tossed around so much - is the thing we're doing providing practical benefits like improving symptoms, quality of life, and so on irrespective of the statistical outcomes?

If I test a change in material composition and then measure the strength of that material, statistical analysis is meaningful. But if I change where you sit listening to a noisy recording, or prop you up in front of several prints, it almost never is. Why? Because the variability in human-to-human perception usually has a larger effect on the experimental results than the thing you're trying to test.

That is, we humans vary so much in how we hear, see, taste, touch, and smell, that is will often overwhelm subtle changes in the thing itself we're measuring. An exception to this is when the things we're measuring and comparing are grossly different - say a wall sized print from a Minox negative vs one made from 8x10.

Subject bias also shows up. For example, if we put up two prints of an abstract image taken with different films, there is no way to know exactly whether the there is a real difference in perceptual response or whether some subjects just don't like abstracts in general and think both images suck.

Double blind testing has an important role in play in research. To the degree possible, it removes the bias of the experimenter from outcomes. But it does not give you magically correct outcomes nor does it overcome the inherent variability across human subjects.

There are many things where you cannot easily reduce the outcomes via mathematical and scientific methods that are still nonetheless completely valid. Psychoacoustics is but one example. And yes, how we perceive a picture hanging on the wall is another.

It is unfortunate that we've moved from the "science" of the Enlightenment to the "scientism" of the postmodern age. Scientism treats science like a belief system (which it is not), as a bringer of truth (which is does not do), and the only meaningful way we're supposed to know anything (which is absurd).

Placing quantitative analysis above the human experience is like saying I can only appreciate Rembrandt's "Night Watch" by standing 10mm from the canvas and apprehending the brush strokes (which would likely get you kicked out of the Rijksmuseum!).

The math isn't the only way to understand reality. The map is not the territory.

Also, I still want Velox back ...

There was a great book decades ago called How to Lie with Statistics. Check it out.

 

[albireo]

This is a pitch perfect example of the scientism to which I previously referred. It's the "if we can't measure it, it's not real" line of argument and it's bogus.

You are desperately trying to reframe this into a philosophical debate because you cannot defend your previous errors (and fundamental misunderstanding) of statistics and experimental design. Nobody here is saying that "if we can't measure it, it's not real" What we are saying is: If you claim a physical film stock has an objectively observable physical characteristic, that characteristic is measurable. If it completely vanishes the moment you close your eyes or hide the label, it isn't a property of the film. Full stop.

There are many things that are real that cannot be reduced to sense-mechanical examination. Science cannot - by its very nature - answer every question mankind cares about..

No one is asking science to explain the meaning of love, the existence of the soul, or why an abstract photo makes you feel lonely. We are talking about whether Film A has different grain, contrast, or resolution than Film B on a piece of photographic paper. That is a question of chemistry, physics, and human optics. Set the existential philosophy aside. Stop trying to protect a basic discussion about photographic materials with a shield of cosmic mystery.

I would encourage you to read the quantum physicist Stanciu's book, "The Great Transformation". He lays waste to these kinds of claims.

Name-dropping a book about the philosophy of quantum physics to avoid admitting you don't understand how an ABX discrimination test works is pure comedy. Quantum mechanics doesn't change the fact that humans are susceptible to confirmation bias and the placebo effect.

P.S. If I perceive a benefit looking at a print that you cannot "verify under blind conditions", that benefit is still very much real. The world is way bigger than what can be measured.

Thank you for finally admitting your true position. This is the definition of the placebo effect. If you pay $15 a roll for a boutique film stock, look at the print, and "perceive a benefit" that completely vanishes the second you don't know which print is which, then the "benefit" you are buying is the label, not the image quality. You are enjoying the experience of your own bias. That is totally fine as a personal hobby, but do not pretend your unblended placebo effect is an objective truth that others should take seriously in a technical discussion.

 

[chuckroast]

There was a great book decades ago called How to Lie with Statistics. Check it out.

In fairness, most of "lying statistics" is caused by sloppy methodology and lousy applications of the methods.

 

[GregY]

The very real challenge with this is whether that perception can be shared with others, and whether that benefit is indeed a benefit for those others.

Wouldn't that depend on the perception of others? Can you persuade them? Is it worth the effort? Someone's wife/or husband for example may not see why you need that Ebony 8x10 camera (only $15,000)......or that copy of Ansel Adam's Moonrise... for your living room wall.

 

[chuckroast]

You are desperately trying to reframe this into a philosophical debate because you cannot defend your previous errors (and fundamental misunderstanding) of statistics and experimental design. Nobody here is saying that "if we can't measure it, it's not real" What we are saying is: If

I have no such misunderstanding. A good part of measuring human response barely makes it out of the statistical noise, if it does at all. Moreover, in many cases, controlling for human variability is very difficult, if not impossible no matter how crafty the experimental design. That's one of the reasons you see mathematical sleight-of-hand like meta analysis to try and make sense of data that otherwise is all over the place.

Statistics is a mathematical method to try and make data comprehensible and get an idea whether or not there is significance buried in said data. But it doesn't do more than that. It's doesn't give us truth or unimpeachable results, no matter how carefully the experiment is designed.

you claim a physical film stock has an objectively observable physical characteristic, that characteristic is measurable. If it completely vanishes the moment you close your eyes or hide the label, it isn't a property of the film. Full stop.

That part is true as written, but it absolutely nothing to do - or very little anyway - with how we will perceive it. Our perception of film is way bigger than how many grains of silver per nanonmeter the film has. You can do an experiment with relative l ease on a physical property of a film. But unless you happen to have a really homogeneous population of subjects, good luck figuring out that property's effect on perception.

No one is asking science to explain the meaning of love, the existence of the soul, or why an abstract photo makes you feel lonely. We are talking about whether Film A has different grain, contrast, or resolution than Film B on a piece of photographic paper. That is a question of

All of which can be measured with no humans outside the experimental team themselves. These are measurable properties and we don't need human perception to answer those questions. More to the point of what started this discursion, you don't need double blind anything to measure these. Instrumentation alone is sufficient.

chemistry, physics, and human optics. Set the existential philosophy aside. Stop trying to protect a basic discussion about photographic materials with a shield of cosmic mystery.

Which I never did. I am merely refuting two propositions, one explicit and one implict:

Explicit: You need double blind experimentation (the investigator and the subject are both blind to the differences been tested) to test properties of materials. This is false because you don't need a human test subject visually judging the properties of materials. Machinery can do that with considerable precision.


Implicit: You need to have some group of subjects staring at the resulting prints and thus need double blind testing to grasp the significance of the physical properties of various films. It's wrong because of <see above>.

Name-dropping a book about the philosophy of quantum physics to avoid admitting you don't understand how an ABX discrimination test works is pure comedy. Quantum mechanics doesn't change the fact that humans are susceptible to confirmation bias and the placebo effect.

It's not a book about the philosophy of quantum physics. It's a credentialed quantum physicist writing about the reason he left the field (at Los Alamos, no less) to teach humanities. He explains with considerable vigor how much mankind has become impoverished by taking the wins of the Enlightenment and turning them into scientistm wherein people worship the methods of science to exclusion of questions that cannot be answered by science. It's a terrific read.

Thank you for finally admitting your true position. This is the definition of the placebo effect. If you pay $15 a roll for a boutique film stock, look at the print, and "perceive a benefit" that completely vanishes the second you don't know which print is which, then the "benefit" you are buying is the label, not the image quality. You are enjoying the experience of your own bias. That is totally fine as a personal hobby, but do not pretend your unblended placebo effect is an objective truth that others should take seriously in a technical discussion.

Your entire argument is based on a false premise. I never said, nor do I think that the existential encounter that exists between a human and an artifact is "objective truth". In the area we are discussing here, no such thing exists. Science never produces "truth". It produces more and more likely explanations for observable phenomena and things we can infer from those observations. The explanations are always open to revision. (As one example, that's why gravity is still a theory, not "THE truth".)

But this is exactly the tapdance that scientism wants us to accept. Newton, Einstein, et al would have said that their work was describing what they could measure, or at least imagine from the physical world. They would not have claimed to have found "objective truth". That is the domain of philosophy and religion. Conveniently, scientism is actually a religion in drag, with a corresponding anthropology, soteriology, and eschatology - and it's bogus.

Why I Care:

The Old Church put limits on what was acceptable art and who could practice it.

The postmoderns and deconstuctionists of the 20th Century robbed art of its beauty and context.

Now the scientism bunch want to limit art to just that set of tools they understand and sneer anyone who dares to suggest that they are little more than well educated mechanics who need to stay in their lane.

I have to go now and interact at the quantum level with a Hasselblad ...