Where would film technology be now?

APS might have succeeded, though I think the serious photographers were mostly already using 135 and medium format....APS died in part due to the majority of cameras being crap, partly due to digital coming along just when APS was being pushed as "the next big thing"...but also due to users being disappointed when they discovered that the wider aspect ratios were merely crops from the full size neg. I suspect that had digital not come along or had it never achieved decent quality, that APS would have survived alongside traditional formats - though really it "solved" problems very few people were asking to be solved.

What I think we'd have had in reality is a greater variety of films available in all formats....better high speed films in colour and B&W....I think that there would have been considerable improvement in 800 an 1600 ISO films in colour and 3200 in B&W. Possibly Konica would have refined their 3200 colour film to an extent that it was viable in 135 format.

The sheer volume of film sales would have meant that we'd still have Porta in NC and VC varieties, and possibly Ektar at 50, 100 and 200 speeds. I think we'd generally have a far greater variety of colour palates and saturation styles, mostly aimed at professionals.

I imagine there would also have been new technology in film processing for both the labs and for the home. I'm quite fascinated by the idea of film developed by heat only.

Social media would have meant that there would be demand for instant photos and quick processing/scanning of 135, APS and possibly 110. Sales volume might well have meant that scanners for home users became faster, better and cheaper than they are now.

While I'm quite sure the thermal films Ron refers to are far more advanced than this, I have a bulk roll of perforated Metro-Kalvar "Space Age" vesicular film from the 1970's that was a copy-microfilm on a mylar base that was sensitive only to UV light and which could be handled/developed under room light using heat. Heat expanded the film enough to release trapped materials that would form an image after they cooled.

As interesting as this concept is, I've tried a number of bracketed time exposures in full sun (as well as leaving the film out in the sun as well) followed by trials of "developing" the film by holding it against the side of a very warm tea kettle for many minutes, but the film never cools to reveal anything but a blank strip. Either the chemistry within has escaped and/or evaporated or I'm not getting the required level of heat to cause the reaction needed.

1) APS may have survived. However, very few cameras supported all of its features. But, by this time, most manufacturers had essentially perfected the autoloading of 35mm and APS rarely offered anything else of benefit..
2) Storing EXIF information in either the rebate, or between frames.

I remember an article about progress that Agfa made before their demise on high speed film. Over 1000 with the grain of 100. Obviously that never came to market. People forget about Agfa sometimes.... We might even have some extremely high speed black and white films by now. True 3200 would be pretty nice.

Wallendo said:

1) APS may have survived. However, very few cameras supported all of its features. But, by this time, most manufacturers had essentially perfected the autoloading of 35mm and APS rarely offered anything else of benefit..
2) Storing EXIF information in either the rebate, or between frames.

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I doubt APS would have survived, in a way it was a system addressing problems which didn't exist. Thinking back to the 1990's into the early 2000's, I know that my friends, particularly the casual "snapshot and family" shooters, used autoload 35mm, very simple to use, usually automatic exposure, with very inexpensive processing by mail or on the High Street and often excellent results for the intended purposes. A few moved over to point-and-shoot digitals, but I know of others who used 35mm right up to the time that mobile phones started to include reasonably good cameras.

For pros - greater computer connectivity

For amateurs - lower costs

mshchem said:

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

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No need for it, really, because magnetic stripes can easily be laid on top of the 120 backing paper.

Yet, no need for magnetic film too, because optical digital information can also be printed on the sides of the film, or in-between frames (there is a camera that already does that).

Photo Engineer said:

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.

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As often are, your predictions are true: We already have an iso 800 film with the grain and sharpness of Portra 800 XD XD XD

Patrick Robert James said:

I remember an article about progress that Agfa made before their demise on high speed film. Over 1000 with the grain of 100.

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"The grain of 100" isn't really a reliable standard. The grain of a 100-speed color film of the C-22 era is way bigger than a 100-speed film of the early-80s C-41 era; which in turn is bigger than the grain of the 100-speed films of the 90s era, which in turn...

We don't have 1000-speed films currently on stock, but I can bet, really CAN bet, that the Superia 800 film has the grain of the consumer 100-speed films of early 80s. I have some 4x6" optical prints from Superia 800 that look much better than the same-sized prints of my early 80s photo albums... better grain, saturation, everything.

As for Agfa, what a great brand, sadly gone. With, by far, the best film box designs of any manufacturer!! (See Agfacolor XRG boxes for example; or Agfapan APX 100.)

Patrick Robert James said:

We might even have some extremely high speed black and white films by now. True 3200 would be pretty nice.

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I don't think there's anything that prevents Fuji or Agfa or Ilford to make a true ISO 3200 B/W film. After all, there was a iso 3200 **color** film; made by Konica.

However, i can bet that the current ISO 1250 of Delta 3200 gives the best compromise of grain vs speed when pushed to EI 3200, instead of using a true ISO 3200 film at 3200.

In the same way as many people used Superia 800 at 1600 instead of using Superia 1600 (which had the true, TRUE iso of 1600!)

Flavio, 120 backing paper is no use as it is most always discarded, and the registration, if kept, would be difficult.

As for Portra 800, I refer to Portra 800 being more like Portra 120 by now. IDK. Just a guess.

PE

Film speed and speed of processing are the main things that would be top candidates for improvement.
Price is a second contender, but unless some groundbreaking inventions were made, completely altering the fundamentals, like reusable film or non silver halide based emulsions, significant changes to the pricing structure is outside the scope of this fantasy.

As PE alludes to, one of the main culprits affecting the development and commercialization of higher speed film is keep-ability.
A current electronic camera sensor that had to be kept on, recording cosmic and thermal noise for months or years, before taking the actual picture, would give absolutely unusable results.

WRT to current CMOS sensors: Many things indicate that they have hit some fundamental stops in the current “paradigm”, and they really don't have the right motivation and inclination to do something about it. "Good enough" has become good enough "forever".
Moore’s Law as mentioned in another post here, now has little effect on sensor development and improvements, and hasn't had so for a long time.

There are limits to how much more sensitive you can make the individual sensor site, combined with still more bisecting of the die for more resolution. Not to speak of the battle with decent real dynamic range plaguing the field to a much larger degree than they let off.
The vast majority of claimed improvements in image quality by marketing departments, is because of improved post capture algorithms and techniques.
Something that, if someone put their head to it, could also be done for scanned film.

To try a short answer to the OPs question:
Point of sale hypering could be, and could have been, one option to solving the emulsion speed problem.
Hydrogen gas hypering was traditionally done to get speed up on long exposures (LIRF) but did actually also entail a real speed increase of a number of stops.
Perhaps classic gas hypering would not be the most practical of solutions, but surely a faster and more store friendly version could be thought up.
Two electron sensitisation has some of the same electrochemical effects as hydrogen hypering, but not to the same degree. And the two techniques could be combined for better effect.

Another way of hypering is flashing, or concurrent flashing film, which I did a long post on last year.
This could be easily build into a camera, which was done as custom mods for both still and cine cameras in the seventies.

The above techniques combined alone would mean the real possibility of shooting ISO 3200 with film without being forced to like lots of grain, excessive contrast and crushed blacks.

Better or even just good affordable scanners are also desperately needed today and would have probably come along very soon if film had survived longer as the main medium of serious image recording.
Building a sub $300 scanner that would beat the crap out of Flextight or drumscanner would be quite easy with the current abundance of cheap, small CMOS sensors (B&W preferably for this application), good plastic optics and developments in controllable HQ LED lights .

Ariston said:

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.

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Analog Photography had the Silver barrier. Since 1850 to 2000 insane amounts in R+D had been invested yet, with diminishing returns, but industry was still using the same than Archer and Le Gray 150 years before: Silver halide crystals ...so a revolutionary improvement in performance would have been dificult. Perhaps a bit less grain for the speed, a bit more DR, and for sure a more eco friendly manufacturing/processing.

General film photography had an strong leap forward in the digital minilabs era, scanning + digital-enhancing + digitally-exposing RA-4 boosted average results in a formidable way, in fact the image enhancing software was the core factor in the Frontier vs Noritsu competition.

Still something has been lost in translation, film photography treasures a powerful aesthetic vault that digital has not fully incorporated, today Ps makes "all" easy, but many digi (and film) shooters are simply not aware about what a tilt-swing can do in a portrait, to cite an evident fact.

HDR film!


I know, I just blew your mind.

BAC1967 said:

HDR film!
I know, I just blew your mind.

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This exists today, develop with POTA and you have 20 stops latitude if you want, in fact this exists since many decades ago, in 1950s it was used to photograph nulcear blasts 1ms after detonation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_trick_effect

This was the camera: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapatronic_camera

Helge said:

Moore’s Law as mentioned in another post here, now has little effect on sensor development and improvements, and hasn't for a long time.

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I don't think Moore's Law even applies to computers any more. In the beginning, processor and memory capabilities increased at a neck-break pace. But for many years it has just been creeping up in small steps each year.

138S said:

This exists today, develop with POTA and you have 20 stops latitude if you want, in fact this exists since many decades ago, in 1950s it was used to photograph nulcear blasts 1ms after detonation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_trick_effect

This was the camera: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapatronic_camera

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You just blew my mind, I didn't know about POTA. It sounds a bit more toxic than I would like to use though.

Kodak made a special film for the nuclear explosion photography. It had very long latitude. The ads featuring it had a photo of a light bulb in which you could see the burning filaments and the faint glass shell around it.

POTO toxic? It isn't very IMHO.

As for processing, in 1977 IIRC, we were processing color paper with a 15" development time, a 15" blix and a 30" wash. Dick and Sylvia helped us out with their processing machine.

PE

I use POTA sometimes. Phenidone and Sulfite... hardly toxic.

Photo Engineer said:

Kodak made a special film for the nuclear explosion photography. It had very long latitude. The ads featuring it had a photo of a light bulb in which you could see the burning filaments and the faint glass shell around it.

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It would be interesting to know what top latitude TMX may reach with POTA... this is a test I'd like to make...

A problem is that an Stouffer wedge reaches 1,000:1 or 10,000:1 , so several exposures on different strips would be necessary for sure.

BAC1967 said:

You just blew my mind, I didn't know about POTA. It sounds a bit more toxic than I would like to use though.

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some burgers are more toxic

138S said:

Not at all, some burgers are more toxic

Original POTA has Sodium sulfite (30 g per 1L) and Phenidone (1.5 g per 1L)

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I may have to give this a try, it would come in handy with some photomicroscopy that I've been doing. For me getting the exposure right is the hardest part of photomicroscopy, 20 stops of latitude would come in handy. If I have some Phenidone left over I can season my burger with it.

BAC1967 said:

I may have to give this a try, it would come in handy with some photomicroscopy that I've been doing. For me getting the exposure right is the hardest part of photomicroscopy, 20 stops of latitude would come in handy. If I have some Phenidone left over I can season my burger with it.

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I'm also playing with a Leitz...

McDonald's frites contains dimethylpolysiloxane ! silicone... in the stated ingredients, so if phenidone makes the burger tasty...

Photographer's formulary says 15 to 20 stops DR, and 1 stop speed loss, it has to be mixed just before usage: http://stores.photoformulary.com/content/01-0070.pdf

Here there is a POTA variant https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/a-very-low-contrast-low-ph-full-speed-pota-variant.110490/ . With TMX it shows a 15stops range.

What PE pointed, perhaps to reach 20 stops an special film is needed...

Do you all remember the great slow films war of 2010? Yes the battle went on and on, 3M put out a .005 film and it killed the battle. Kodak got it down to ISO .05 before they gave it up. Fuji never stopped. Some say they have film that is slower than getting my car started in the middle of February.

BAC1967 said:

HDR film!


I know, I just blew your mind.

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Film was always HDR.
The whole thing is a desperate attempt to catch up with film.
And before you begin. No, your current scanner doesn't extract anywhere near the full range of negative film, and I doubt the the full colour gamut of slide. So your scans are not representative of anything.
To get an idea of how much range is in film, take a well exposed negative to the darkroom and begin burning and dodging.

Looking back, there was NOT tremendous evolution in B&W film emulsions from the 1960s to the 1990s...Tmax emulsions were launched, but many photographers preferred trusty Tri-X over the new stuff!
In color film, there was more evolution than in B&W...first, faster emulsions with ASA 400, then finer grain in the ISO 400 films being very similar to ISO 100 emulsions!

So where would we be today in films, if digital had not bouldered over the film world?!...I don't think a whole lot different that what we have today...simply more varieties of emulsions, rather than emulsions dying off like soldiers on Civil War battlegrounds!

Helge said:

No, your current scanner doesn't extract anywhere near the full range of negative film,

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It depends on the film, on the scene/exposure and on the scanner.

Densities in negative film (bw or color) are not a challenge for basic scanners, they easily take 2.8D desnities that woud hard to print in the darkroom. Deepest underexposed shadows in Velvia may reach 3.8D, and to recover all detail there a drum may be required.

Helge said:

and I doubt the the full colour gamut of slide.

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Problem is not maping colors in the slide, problem is that monitors/TVs have a color triangle that is different than the velvia one, also dynamic range of velvia surpases the one possible in the TVs. An slide is an slide, its greatness cannot flow in the TCP/IP networks...

wiltw said:

In color film, there was more evolution than in B&W...first, faster emulsions with ASA 400, then finer grain in the ISO 400 films being very similar to ISO 100 emulsions!

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Well, in color films we perhaps had an step back: was ancient consumer VR100 sharper than modern films ?

wiltw said:

Looking back, there was NOT tremendous evolution in B&W film emulsions from the 1960s to the 1990s...Tmax emulsions were launched, but many photographers preferred trusty Tri-X over the new stuff!
In color film, there was more evolution than in B&W...first, faster emulsions with ASA 400, then finer grain in the ISO 400 films being very similar to ISO 100 emulsions!

So where would we be today in films, if digital had not bouldered over the film world?!...I don't think a whole lot different that what we have today...simply more varieties of emulsions, rather than emulsions dying off like soldiers on Civil War battlegrounds!

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As far as I read Tri-x was reformulated in the 80's with less silver and more dyes. It ain't your grandfathers Tri-x.