Where would film technology be now?

[Ariston]

I'm curious to hear the opinions of some of the experts here...

Where might film technology be now if digital had not come along. Film was a big business, with big money to invest in R&D. Digital has come pretty far in resolution and high ISO performance. How far might film have come along? What other innovations might have been possible for film?

 

[Colin Corneau]

Like digital, there'd only be so far they could go with just a few parameters -- I think you'd see improved grain, higher speed, splashier colours, etc. Maybe, like Reala did, film would minimize colour temperature so no filtration would be required for incandescent, fluorescent, etc.

Just a guess but there really was only so much 'wiggle room'.

 

[cmacd123]

there was a highly competitive - moon shot level competition between Kodak and Fuji for bragging rights when it came o Motion Picture film. (until Fuji backed away totally) compare any of the Eastman EXR films to the equivalent Vision 3 films to see how far and fast the technology could be pushed. (note some of Kodak's Still films now mention "Vision Technology" in their sell sheets.

 

[mshchem]

The amateur market drove the development of film to work with the infamous disc camera. I remember when Kodak started selling Super 8 with sound and high speed Ektachrome.

One wonders if medium format film could have been put into a cassette like APS that would record data.

Certainly things would be different, we have better everything than the old days.

Radically different processing machines could have had an impact.

Cheap film and discount processing spurred mindless shooting, the prices today help to focus the user on not wasting film.

 

[Tim Stapp]

Cheap film and discount processing spurred mindless shooting, the prices today help to focus the user on not wasting film.[/QUOTE]

Too funny of you to state that. I recall my father stating to me after a traveling portrait photographer had given me a camera with a roll of film (1965 era): "You can take all of the pictures that you want, you just can't have any film because we can't afford to have it processed." It took me 50 years to pick up another camera.

Now, here I am with a JOBO, shoothing 135, 6x7 and 4x5 cameras with an enlarger for each format.

Sadly, not one photograph of my children growing up.

The power of parental influence.

 

[MattKing]

APS - or something like it.
Even smaller, much less energy using, more eco-friendly colour processing.
A better way to show your photos on your TV.
And film that is even better than the spectacularly good film that we have.

 

[4season]

Even if film continued to dominate, I think the trend would have nevertheless lead us to electronic viewfinders (including film-era mirrorless revolution), image stabilization, EXIF-type data capture and electronic imagery, in this instance, scanned from film. And I think the likes of Flickr and Instagram would have arisen.

Per capita, people would shoot far fewer pictures due to cost, and there'd be constant pressure on manufacturers for more affordable products and services.

With film being a much larger industry than it is circa 2019, film manufacturers might be singled out for criticism in trade disputes and environmental matters - would our animal-free, biodegradable films be arriving from a Kodak factory located in Shenzhen? And far from being archival, such film might be built to last just long enough to be scanned. Perhaps it'd be hip to shoot fewer but better photos or even favor smaller formats including half-frame 35mm.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

I bet we'd have a good film scanner that cost less than $2000!

 

[Ariston]

I bet we'd have a good film scanner that cost less than $2000!

No kidding - this makes me wonder if we would also have better (maybe more automated) enlarger technology.

 

[Michael Firstlight]

I'd be able to load my negatives into my enlarger and it would perfectly calculate and control contrast, color balance, exposure, and automasking from my computer so I could print optically with thousands of film/paper/chemistry combinations with zero effort and specify what creative changes and effects I wanted and all of the other parameters would auto-adjust. It would basically be Photoshop for analog film printing. Also, there would be newer, cheaper, and larger automatic film and print processors.

As it is I'm pretty happy with digital scanning and digital printing for proofing and using a PhothTherm Super Sidekick 8 for fully automatic and programmable fuss-free film developing and a programmable Fujimoto CP32 with w/d and replenishment module for printing, but imagine what we would have now with software and advanced gear....

Mike

 

[Ian Grant]

Ron Mowrey, PE, mentioned some years ago that there were some significant break throughs that could very significantly increase film speeds. Research and development stopped because of the rise and switch to Digital by a lot of photographers.

Maybe Ron could elaborate a little.

Ian

 

[pentaxuser]

Ron Mowrey, PE, mentioned some years ago that there were some significant break throughs that could very significantly increase film speeds. Research and development stopped because of the rise and switch to Digital by a lot of photographers.

Maybe Ron could elaborate a little.

Ian

This is interesting news, Ian, and I hope Ron does elaborate. I always had the impression that in terms of speed the limits of film technology had almost reached its peak. I was watching that programme on the BBC today called Click and they were testing what for want of a better phrase was phones with a camera facility and the level of detail in some if the night shots was amazing.

OK even the Click geeks wondered if such speed rendering a near daylight picture in near darkness was what users would want.

pentaxuser

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

There would still be HIE.

 

[Ian Grant]

I've sent Ron (PE) a message he knows more than anyone here what was in the pipeline.

Ian

 

[railwayman3]

Predicting an alternative future without digital seems very difficult. We can do a comparison between analogue and digitql cameras and how analogue might have been developed further, but there would also be major differences now and in the future if digital imaging didn't exist at all........I'm thinking no smartphones, selfies or social media sites (or, at least, in a very different form), probably no image recording on DVD, etc., and certainly still a traditional way of shooting and projecting movies.
It's probably possible to envisage better speed rating, grain and colour rendering of film, maybe new formats, and more environmentally-friendly processing. OTOH, would there be limits constrained by the basic physical and chemical properties of materials ? Or might there be (as with many inventions) a completely different and totally unexpected way of doing things come into use ?

 

[Bill Burk]

We could also wonder what if the demand for quality kept increasing. I mean what if the consumer never said ok was good enough. What if people demanded better and better quality.

 

[Photo Engineer]

There is a significant thread here about a Kodak R&D program which produced a top speed of ISO 25,000. It had many problems, chief of which would have been stability on the dealer's shelves due to heat and radiation. So, we knew that there were limits in ISO speed. Another new direction was thermal processing. We had B&W and color products that developed just by heating them. This gave a silver image and a stabilized silver complex that was colorless. There were many ways to go for the future, but ideally, I would say that we would have an ISO 800 film with the grain and sharpness of Portra by now. Just a guess.

Thanks to Ian. I decided to post here.

PE

 

[Ariston]

We had B&W and color products that developed just by heating them.

PE

Holy crap. That is the coolest thing I've ever heard.

 

[CMoore]

I realize this is all just a bunch of hypothesizing, but..... this IS where film technology would be now.
No way in hell the whole world would progress with Cameras/Computers/Electronics/Digital Technology for everything BUT film.
It would be like having the worlds most sophisticated weapon systems and aircraft technologies....... with an air force that still had props on their "jet" fighters.

 

[Ariston]

I realize this is all just a bunch of hypothesizing, but..... this IS where film technology would be now.
No way in hell the whole world would progress with Cameras/Computers/Electronics/Digital Technology for everything BUT film.
It would be like having the worlds most sophisticated weapon systems and aircraft technologies....... with an air force that still had props on their jet fighters.

I get what you are saying. But it is my understanding that many militaries continue to use older technology for certain uses precisely because it is most secure against cyber attacks and other vulnerabilities. And I wouldn’t want to be at sea in a ship with a captain who didn’t know his stars.

The concept of “progress” is relative. LED lights may illuminate a living room a lot better than a fireplace, but they won’t heat it quite so well. Nor do they function very well during a blackout.

 

[Ian Grant]

Holy crap. That is the coolest thing I've ever heard.

X-ray films and some Graphic arts materials have used thermal processing for quite a few years now.

Ian

 

[Ariston]

X-ray films and some Graphic arts materials have used thermal processing for quite a few years now.

Ian

I didn't know that... My wife used to work in an endodontist's office. I'm going to ask her how their x-rays worked.

That is cool technology. If consumer films were made that way, I could see it being in an instant camera of sorts. Instant negstives.

 

[Rudeofus]

A while back Ron gave an interview and compared progress in chemical research versus digital computers. Bottom line was, that chemical research had (and still has) more or less linear progress, which is much less than the exponential progress made in semiconductor fabrication (Moore's law still going strong). Film would likely have made some progress with extra funding, but nothing like progress in digital sensor technology. Compare Ron's "we'd have Portra 800 with the grain of Portra 400" with "going from noisy ISO 400 to impeccable ISO3200 and above" in the same time frame.

 

[Photo Engineer]

X-ray films and some Graphic arts materials have used thermal processing for quite a few years now.

Ian

Absolutely, and there were two types on the market.

DCD = Dry Chemical Development using "familiar" chemicals in a dry matrix of an emulsion in gelatin.

DPD = Dry Physical Development using a non aqueous matrix in a polymer with Silver mated to an organic backbone.

Grant Haist and I used DCD to make a full color dry print material that used 2 heat steps. One to develop and one to bleach and fix. It was not very good, but then it was cancelled so we never found out how good it could be. That was about 1975.

PE

 

[Ian Grant]

Absolutely, and there were two types on the market.

DCD = Dry Chemical Development using "familiar" chemicals in a dry matrix of an emulsion in gelatin.

DPD = Dry Physical Development using a non aqueous matrix in a polymer with Silver mated to an organic backbone.

Grant Haist and I used DCD to make a full color dry print material that used 2 heat steps. One to develop and one to bleach and fix. It was not very good, but then it was cancelled so we never found out how good it could be. That was about 1975.

PE

Thanks Ron, We had issues at work (Silver Recovery) because our factory used Ferric Chloride solution followed by old fixer to recover the Silver from X-ray films, As they had to be stored by law for 7 years (hospitals) we started to see the dry X-ray films in the year before I left. We collected spent developer & fixer as well as X-ray films from Hospitals and plated out the silver from the fixer collected which was then used to remove the re-halogenated silver in the X-ray films.

So we had to separate the types of film by hand not so economic.

Ian