Why did you move from film to digital?

[removed account4]

In the 50s and 60s dye transfer was still the standard for inexpensive color portraits...

as mentioned today i asked my uncle who used to make dye transfers in the 1960s if this is true, he did not corroborate your statement.

 

[faberryman]

as mentioned today i asked my uncle who used to make dye transfers in the 1960s if this is true, he did not corroborate your statement.

What? You mean his statement wasn't true? Who'd have thunk?

 

[MattKing]

Any chance that there is confusion here between dye transfer and dye sublimation?

 

[removed account4]

What? You mean his statement wasn't true? Who'd have thunk?

you never know, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction ! i mean look in the time we live in...

Any chance that there is confusion here between dye transfer and dye sublimation?

.
no clue, maybe.. dye sub was supposedly invented in the 1950s...
but i figured i'd ask my uncle. he's a treasure trove of information and experience.
he reitterated 6 hours labor to just get set up to make the first print, and then you could make
1 print every 20-30 mins after that... he did mention a kodak product that made it "easier"
i think that was what he was using when he said 6 hours labor...

 

[RPC]

In the 50s color portraits were not common and would have been expensive no matter what. I grew up in the 60s and all my color school pictures were standard prints. Dye transfer has always been expensive and complex and would never have been used for "inexpensive color portraits".

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

When you grow up with the "old Tri-X" you've had plenty of grain. Modern film is so radically different than what was made pre-80's, there's no comparison. I have given up trying to use a grain focuser strictly on "grain" when printing. I don't scan, if I did I would probably shoot color negative film. For me the utility of film is for PRINTING . If all I did was inkjet, and computer display, I probably would use digital exclusively. (Oh except for color slides ) You can add grain with software. I'm not saying to stop buying film, it's so much fun.
One other thing about film that's amazing. Right now you can find used film cameras and lenses for almost nothing. No barrier to starting to get amazing results.
I hope that I can keep going in my darkroom for a long time. I love it all.
Best Regards Mike

Why would you continue using color slides?

 

[BMbikerider]

Why did I move - well it seemed like a good idea at the time. I re-appraised my ideas shortly afterwards. I still use digital when I need something quickly, and still prefer film

 

[mshchem]

Why would you continue using color slides?

Nostalgia. I love to process reversal . I grew up with Kodachrome, my Dad started with Kodachrome in 1949, he stopped in the early 80's. I shoot medium format slides too. It's tricky and finicky, still love to project.

I still shoot probably 80-90% negative film color and black and white . I'm really enjoying digital, cameras are so much better than 10-12 years back.

 

[mshchem]

Any chance that there is confusion here between dye transfer and dye sublimation?

Matt, correct me if I'm wrong, but until Eggleston, and a few others. Dye transfer was primarily used for graphic arts work. Would allow better control for printing advertising etc.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Now, if you are going digital, then make a library of letter size pigment prints of what you want to archive. That will be your backup to fall back on. I need to get going on that myself. Use letter size Hollinger archival boxes and stack em up with master prints. I had some scan comparisons but can't find em. You can recover +/- 90% or so from a master print.

I have to few prints deserving such respect or treatment but I'll take my best photograph ever tomorrow.

 

[jtk]

Matt, correct me if I'm wrong, but until Eggleston, and a few others. Dye transfer was primarily used for graphic arts work. Would allow better control for printing advertising etc.

Dye transfer was routine and cheap, used by many small town portrait and school photographers before Kodak Ektacolor became the big dog on that scene. Dye transfer as an art medium didn't come along until various art photographers decided to graduate to color (Ektachrome) before Kodak came up with its excellent interneg film. For a long time, in a tiny market, dye transfer did serve a useful purpose for advertising purposes (e.g. automobile photos) because it is easier than chrome to heavily retouch....but Ektacolor, done by professional labs in the 70s, killed dye. I once took a beautiful dye transfer project away from one of the last dye transfer labs with Ektacolor. Later took a rent-paying piece of business from them with halftone silkscreen.

 

[jtk]

Why would you continue using color slides?

I would have continued to use color slides if excellent and quick slide processing was available....one or two day turn-around was important to me. I would never put up with the mail or anonymous technicians to process my film.

I've never added grain to digital. I like grain therefore have avoided sodium sulfite developers. Nikon scanner records grain (and dye clouds) effectively and I never try to reduce it....

 

[jtk]

In the 50s color portraits were not common and would have been expensive no matter what. I grew up in the 60s and all my color school pictures were standard prints. Dye transfer has always been expensive and complex and would never have been used for "inexpensive color portraits".

Wrong. In the 50s, while my father was in Korea, my sister and I and all of our classmates were photographed by a school photographer (cheap!) and our prints were made locally (San Leandro, California). Pretty sure the photographer economized by gang printing.

Dye transfer was never "complex"...small town photographers in the 50s were commonly capable of dye transfer printing.

There was no such thing as "standard prints." Ansco Color was common but it was terrible, faded quickly, and was no cheaper than dye transfer.

 

[removed account4]

Dye transfer was never "complex"...

im not sure where you get your information but people who make them now and who made them back in the day
do not agree with you.

 

[RPC]

Wrong. In the 50s, while my father was in Korea, my sister and I and all of our classmates were photographed by a school photographer (cheap!) and our prints were made locally (San Leandro, California). Pretty sure the photographer economized by gang printing.

Dye transfer was never "complex"...small town photographers in the 50s were commonly capable of dye transfer printing.

There was no such thing as "standard prints." Ansco Color was common but it was terrible, faded quickly, and was no cheaper than dye transfer.

None of what you say holds much water, if any, especially about the complexity of dye transfer. It is probably the most complex analog imaging system ever devised.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I added digital to my inventory of tools. There are things it does extremely well, very fast and very economically. I am grateful now that we have the option to bridge the two worlds and use whatever source material we want for whatever end product we want, be it shooting Kodak Ektar 100 and making inkjet prints or shooting digital and making palladium prints from enlarged negatives. While I would be unhappy should film cease to be an option, I am now at a point where I feel like the cameras I have available produce images of sufficient quality that I would not feel unable to make the images I want to make.

 

[Agulliver]

Hmm....I held onto film for 100% of my photography until spring of 2005. I'd tried digital cameras from compacts (Sony, Sanyo, Kodak) and a nikon D50 and didn't really find they offered me anything that film didn't. Additionally I believed, and still do, that film has the edge in terms of image quality. However I chanced upon a generic (branded Goodmans) 1.3MP digital camera in a charity shop in 2005 and bought it in part because I was due to attend a wedding and stag night in Boston and felt it would be an easy way to get photos and share them via email with the other wedding guests on both sides of the Atlantic. Although I did shoot 35mm and 120, it was easier to share the digital images.

Around the time Facebook came along, my dad died and I inherited his D50 and Sanyo compact digital camera. I found a place for these in my photography....with the D50 the quality was pretty good and the ability to change ISO without swapping films or carrying multiple bodies around was a boon. The compact was great for taking to parties etc. Then film got more expensive, processing likewise and less easy to find good labs. The Royal Mail upped prices for letters over 25mm thick which meant posting 135 cassettes to mail order labs suddenly skyrocketed in price (over 3X what it had been). Digital took over for a while. I think I was caught up with the technology (I am a geek) and the convenience. The two digital cameras I had between them offered the best convenience I'd ever experienced and decent quality. I think I shot just three rolls of film between 2009 and 2013.

Then late 2013 I went on holiday and forgot the charger for my D50. By luck I'd packed a film SLR on a whim and some Tri-X. I managed to buy some Fuji Superia 400 while on holiday and rediscovered how rewarding film photography is.

Now, despite having a decent Samsung compact digital, the D50 and now a D7100 I still spend more time on film. Digital still definitely cannot do B&W properly, and there's just something about film which digital cannot emulate even when the film is scanned or when digital images are edited to "look like film" (ugh).

So I use both. The D7100 is a great tool in many ways, I can shoot colour photos in any light conditions. But ultimately film is better. And it's not only me who thinks so. Sometimes I shoot a scene on both....and friends say there is just something extra about the film shots.

 

[trendland]

I did not change - but : BTW to ask in other direction ( Digital -> Film) would be more interesting!

with regards

Ähhm - I just get in mind : this post may looks like suspicious to be corected via moderator!

 

[trendland]

Hmm....I held onto film for 100% of my photography until spring of 2005. I'd tried digital cameras from compacts (Sony, Sanyo, Kodak) and a nikon D50 and didn't really find they offered me anything that film didn't. Additionally I believed, and still do, that film has the edge in terms of image quality. However I chanced upon a generic (branded Goodmans) 1.3MP digital camera in a charity shop in 2005 and bought it in part because I was due to attend a wedding and stag night in Boston and felt it would be an easy way to get photos and share them via email with the other wedding guests on both sides of the Atlantic. Although I did shoot 35mm and 120, it was easier to share the digital images.

Around the time Facebook came along, my dad died and I inherited his D50 and Sanyo compact digital camera. I found a place for these in my photography....with the D50 the quality was pretty good and the ability to change ISO without swapping films or carrying multiple bodies around was a boon. The compact was great for taking to parties etc. Then film got more expensive, processing likewise and less easy to find good labs. The Royal Mail upped prices for letters over 25mm thick which meant posting 135 cassettes to mail order labs suddenly skyrocketed in price (over 3X what it had been). Digital took over for a while. I think I was caught up with the technology (I am a geek) and the convenience. The two digital cameras I had between them offered the best convenience I'd ever experienced and decent quality. I think I shot just three rolls of film between 2009 and 2013.

Then late 2013 I went on holiday and forgot the charger for my D50. By luck I'd packed a film SLR on a whim and some Tri-X. I managed to buy some Fuji Superia 400 while on holiday and rediscovered how rewarding film photography is.

Now, despite having a decent Samsung compact digital, the D50 and now a D7100 I still spend more time on film. Digital still definitely cannot do B&W properly, and there's just something about film which digital cannot emulate even when the film is scanned or when digital images are edited to "look like film" (ugh).

So I use both. The D7100 is a great tool in many ways, I can shoot colour photos in any light conditions. But ultimately film is better. And it's not only me who thinks so. Sometimes I shoot a scene on both....and friends say there is just something extra about the film shots.

One prof.I met in studio around 2002/2003 has got a digital Nikon so I asked him what he'd paid for:
He was very proud to tell me the price (~ 5500 bucks if I remember correct - may be more)
I can't belive it - until he added " Well this is the special High speed Nikon" - hmm what did it mean?
High ISO ?

with regards

PS : It was 4megapixel with exposures up to 10-12 frames in one series...!

PPS : in 2002/2003 I was laughing about but I stood alone - today we A L L are laughing about right?

 

[wy2l]

Why move to digital? Here's a few reasons:

1) The high cost of E-6 film and processing.
2) No local firm to process E-6 film. More $$'s, shipping costs, and long wait times. Waiting for the processor to get a sufficient backlog to process my handful of rolls.
3) Additional costs to mount 35mm slides.
4) The lack of favorite E-6 film.
5) The time to scan film.
6) No E-6 5x7 film.
7) No need for a traditional darkroom - no chemicals going out of date. No chemicals to mix.
8) Time to process film.
9) I find it easier to manipulate digital images in a computer then in a traditional darkroom.

The straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, was figuring the costs to install a traditional darkroom in my basement.
I'm talking about building permits, walls, door, ventilation, electrical, plumbing, sink, enlarger, and the like.

 

[Agulliver]

I did not change - but : BTW to ask in other direction ( Digital -> Film) would be more interesting!

with regards

Ähhm - I just get in mind : this post may looks like suspicious to be corected via moderator!

++++++


For me, it was that holiday with friends in 2013 where I ran out of charge on my D50 and felt I was resorting to film. I shot two rolls of Tri-X and two of Superia 400....had to find out if the lab I'd used in the past was still processing film....had to buy the only developer my local camera shop was still carrying....get my dark room equipment out of the garage etc.....and I even had to get the negatives scanned & printed by a lab. But they were great, people genuinely felt I'd brought something aesthetically different to the table.

That lead to a slow comeback to film, initially with B&W by using up my frozen and cool stored stashes...then realising how little film was left compared to 2008, and how prices had gone up....which lead to me doing more bulk rolls which is pretty much how I do B&W now - and effectively at 2005 prices per roll. In 2016 I forgot to take my underwater camcorder housing on holiday and relied on a simply Vivitar 35mm under water P&S....that lead me to buying 6 rolls of Agfa Photo Vista Plus and realising it was actually really good....and to discovering the joys of C41 colour film again. I hadn't realised how much I missed it, how good it can look...again different to digital.

So I mix digital and film. Sometimes using one more than the other.....a recent trip to Oxford was captured almost entirely on film as was my 2018 school reunion. I have been specifically asked to shoot portraits of old school chums this summer on a 50s box camera.

 

[P.johnson14]

I went the other way. I started on 110 as a child, was given a Canon digital, used it for several years, then got out of photography for a few years. When I decided to start shooting again, I knew I didn’t want to sit in front of a computer, so I bought a Polaroid 100 Land Camera. I did nothing but peel apart for 3 years, and then moved to 120 and 35.

 

[jtk]

im not sure where you get your information but people who make them now and who made them back in the day
do not agree with you.

Not tricky. Simply a skill.

Until one is skilled enough to view two faintly different color prints from the same transparency and specify that difference in terms of density and Color Compensation units it's tough. But those acquired visual skills were normal in good professional color labs before total digitization.

It was of course easier to print Ciba, due to its high contrast, so misguided "archival" enthusiasts got diverted from color expectations of better materials: Ektacolor and of course dye transfer. .

 

[jtk]

If you get access to better digital cameras (including cheap ones) and if you become comfortable enough with Photoshop et al to print your own, you may change your mind. IMO if one doesn't print one's own, and doesn't develop basic skills with PS et al, I agree that film is easier.

 

[jtk]

None of what you say holds much water, if any, especially about the complexity of dye transfer. It is probably the most complex analog imaging system ever devised.

You've read that somewhere. Top quality Ektacolor printing and best efforts with Ciba (which required contrast control with B&W masks) were both more demanding, as was carbro printing.

As well, dye transfer chemistry was simple.