35mm photographic film extinct?

[N10]

love that photo comparison Will. & Yeah i have to agree that digital format has wayy too many advantages that can't be ignored..compared to the 35mm one..in the end it's just a matter of preference.

 

[gallagho]

I have just picked up a Holga 120 for fun, they produce a unique photo!

 

[derangboy]

It seems it might be possible for 35mm film to be supported by the hobbyist group who typically process their own film. Colour negative film is still my favorite overall photography medium as very few methods of presentation have the impact that slide film has. My primary film camera is a Leica M6 with 35, 50 and 135mm lenses. At some point in my life, I'll get the digital body!

 

[X Racer]

In a word, yes...

Digital has so many pros that it is a no-brainer these days...

 

[kaptain_zero]

Digital has one big honking con....... it requires a charged battery! :sick2:

Traditional photography can be done with something as simple as an empty cardboard box, a small piece of tin foil, a piece of sheet film, adhesive tape and a pin.

Another con for digital cameras is that should you even accidentally point the lens at the sun, lens in focus, and it's NOT an SLR with mirror, chances are, you'll smoke the ccd. A traditional camera allows you to simply advance the film, even if the sun has burnt a hole in it, to take another image.

I don't own a film based camera anymore, I've gone digital, but I still miss the old ways and their superior capabilities... Equaling Tech-Pan with a 35mm CCD........ I think we have a way to go yet!

 

[brucec]

The other day, I took out some of my old Velvia slides to share with a friend. It's been a while since I've broken out the slides, light panel, and loupe, but hands down, there is no purer way to experience an image than a slide through a Rodenstock loupe. It's a world of difference looking at the actual film that was in the camera being exposed to the actual light of the image that you are capturing. It's so good in color, sharpness, everything that your brain interprets it in 3D, even though you are clearly just using one eye to view the slide. No digital print or HD monitor can match that. I showed some co-workers who had never seen slide film through a loupe and they were absolutely stunned at what a real photograph looks like compared to the lame LCD excuse that we use today.

That said, I don't think I will ever use my Nikon FM2N or beautiful 50mm f1.2 Nikkor again. The D90 setup is just too easy to use. It's a shame though, because slides are still king.

 

[kosPap]

I do not about you at US but in europe it is still strong for the amateur photographers and clubs....in my club we have orders from germany every 2-3 months...at very reasonable cost....

e can get Agfa, Ilford and Fuji, ilford papers and you should see what is going in in Chehia....it is a land astill standing with local reissues of old recipes (Tri-X)..many of these can be found in digiatltruth.com

Bragging abit oin my frdge I have still Agfa Ultra50, APX25 and APX200S!

 

[blasterman]

Traditional photography can be done with something as simple as an empty cardboard box, a small piece of tin foil, a piece of sheet film, adhesive tape and a pin.

..And then you take the sheet-film to a lab running half a million dollar's worth of computer controlled processors and chemical heaters, pumps, control strips, etc. Not to mention the production technology required to make film in the first place. Or, you process Tri-X yourself, and dump the silver rich chems down the drain so the local streams and rivers have to deal with it.

With digital, you just need a home computer and a $100 printer, and a camera.

It's a world of difference looking at the actual film that was in the camera being exposed to the actual light of the image that you are capturing.

I used to run several E-6 lines, and frankly after working with mostly 4x5 and 8x10 trannies I find it hard to 'get-off' on squinting at a stupid piece of amatuer 24x36" film. Also, do you mount and frame those little pieces of film on your wall, or hide them in a shoe box? If they are so great, why don't you share them with us rather than describe them to us?

No digital print or HD monitor can match that.

Frankly, I get more excited seeing my work roll out in a 24x36" LightJet print than stare at a tiny 35mm piece of film throug a loupe. Then again, the real thrill here is the fact you aren't held accountable and don't have to share the image, right? I used to play in the NFL and was married to a supermodel as well.

Also, Velvia, or 'Disney Chrome' as we used to call it it the most unfaithfull garbage ever made. Velvia distorts colors and contrast so that middle aged housewives could by calendars of light houses with neo-deco colors. I'm trying to think of how many commercial portraits I've seen shot on Velvia, and the answer is none. All Velvia does is make a bland composition look better by increasing color saturation, which is why amatuer landscape photogs used it.

At least I shot 6x7 Astia or at most Provia, then hand processed it through a custom E-6 calibration tweaked for Fuji and not Kodak. Velvia, ran through Kodak control sets (which it was 90% of the time) tended to look much worse than processed correctly through Fuji controls. Provia, given proper extended color developer time, darn near matched Velvia without as much distortion and without 'radioactive baby crap' greens.

I've noted that commercial shooters who shot Velvia in different countries tended to produce images that all looked the same because the ridiculous film dye dumbed down everything to look the same. I've noted that digital capture on the other hand tends to record with fidelity forcing the photog to think harder and not rely on industrial film dye to think for them.

Then again, that's what film is all about. The film dye thinks for you, the lab tech thinks for you, and then you go on the internet and say how great it was, but don't have anything to show for it. The actual purpose of photography is to share images, which goes contrary to everything I typically read from the film shooters here. They squat in their basement staring at film dye a through a loupe afraid to get drum scans of their slides because this will show just how bad their work actually is.

I'm willing to bet the digital snaps posted in other threads here have much photography in them as well.

 

[Tempest UK]

I just shot a roll of Ilford FP4+ 125 in London the other day, using the Olympus OM-1n

It's certainly not extinct.

 

[McGizmo]

I purchased an old Leica and new fangled electric camera at about the same time. The digital camera could not yield an angled line; it was a stairway of pixels that were the size of an old Buick. I presume there were some advances in film after that and certainly the electronics in the 35mm film SLR's took on greater significance!! Exposure control and auto focus even!!!

I switched to digital well before it could compare to film because most of the shots I took were underwater with ambient light. These shots required post production color correction whether they were film or digital and the latter, I could do myself.

At this point, you could give me a Leica, Hasselblad (sp) or any top end film camera. You could include free film and free developing. You could give me the whole package at no cost to me and I would pass because I wouldn't use it.

I am no pro. I am no expert. I have equipment (cameras and software) that is well beyond my knowledge but I have figured out enough to get images that are more than satisfactory and I can get them whenever I want and work with them whenever I want. No chemicals, no paper, no physical materials needed unless I actually want a print. The only thing required for my images is energy and I now even get that from the sun. In the past, I contributed hundreds of rolls of film and thousands or 4x6 prints to the landfills. No idea what the impact was in chemicals, packaging, transportation and what have you.

I have no idea what the state of 35mm photographic film is today. I have always enjoyed photography and I think my first camera might have been a Brownie Starmite if I got the spelling right. A christmas gift in the '50's probably?!? No matter. I had my own B&W darkroom in HighSchool and college. HarryN talks about spending a couple hours in Photoshop. Hell how about spending the whole damn day in the dark room with nothing to show for it! :nana: Like I said, I am no pro!

I take more pics now than I ever did and I do enjoy it. This would not be the case if I were still shooting film.

A good friend graduated from Brooks Institute and he did exceptionally well for a number of years and owned multiple very nice homes. I understand from my brother that recently he was working at a front desk in a Hotel or perhaps it was a restaurant. At any rate, the digital revolution killed the industry he was a master in. He shot fine automobiles and motorcycles among other things. If you wanted a shot of a Corvette on the beach in the Bahamas with a pretty babe on the hood, you flew the equipment, car and babe to the Bahamas. This was a business.

A friend posted THIS VIDEO on Facebook and if you catch the tail end, you can see where digital has taken us beyond film; not that there is any real surprise here but it is an interesting thing to see.

I think one way of considering a photo is that it is a means of capturing information to be viewed and evaluated at any point later in time. To my knowledge, RAW format now allows us to record much more information than film does and whether it is TMI or not is case specific.

 

[kaptain_zero]

..And then you take the sheet-film to a lab running half a million dollar's worth of computer controlled processors and chemical heaters, pumps, control strips, etc. Not to mention the production technology required to make film in the first place. Or, you process Tri-X yourself, and dump the silver rich chems down the drain so the local streams and rivers have to deal with it.

With digital, you just need a home computer and a $100 printer, and a camera.

My pinhole camera comment was done tongue in cheek. As for Digital being a more green way of doing things.... naw..... They pollute as much or more than the old gear did... $100 printers are made in a factory using toxic substances, they are thrown away many time in less that 2 years because they are not worth fixing... they use ink cartridges that are designed to be replaced, as frequently as possible, rather than reused.

My Omega enlarger is built like a tank and will still be going strong after 50 years. Silver can be recovered from processing, even on a small scale, the other chemicals are rather benign in the great scheme of things. Inks contain solvents that evaporate into the atmosphere, digital cameras have to be replaced when new imaging technology comes along... When was the last time a camera manufacturer offered to replace the image sensor rather than the entire camera to give you the latest imaging sensor? All digital cameras require batteries of some kind.... Their manufacture and limited lifespan adds more metals and chemicals to the dump. That 50 year old film camera was able to take the latest film technology just as well as the older types of film.

My first light meter (a Gossen) did not require batteries and lasted my father and me 35+ years before it became unreliable...

Oh well.... as I mentioned earlier, I don't use film based imaging equipment anymore. But it is the convenience, not the quality that made me switch. Old black and white photos have lasted a long time and given us a record of what came before... Prints from a $100 printer are less likely to do so, though I must admit... there seems to be a lot of changes happening in that regard... new inks, new papers etc. etc..... I just don't follow it so I'm a bit in the dark with the latest stuff, and I'm happy to admit that.

Ultimately, the value of any image, will never be determined by the technical process used to make it, but rather it is based on the image itself.

In the end, we must all make our choices based on what we know. It is unfortunate that in our world today, so many companies/governments/individuals give us only the information that supports the illusion that whatever they are selling is better for us and our environment than what someone else sells/does.

Back to the original question as posed by N10, I'd have to say no.... film will be here for a long time to come. Even my dentist still uses film to capture xray images and then scans them into the computer... Film tech is high quality and low cost in many applications.


Regards

Kaptain"Going back to my flashlight drawing board" Zero

 

[paulr]

I was big into shooting film as a college student. Since I was usually broke, I bought surplus black and white movie film from Freestyle (amazing place that advertised in photography mags), hand loaded it into cartridges and developed and printed it myself (usually just to contact sheets). When I graduated and entered the workforce I had more disposable income but no free time. I bought a few kilobucks of Nikon SLR gear over the years after that (not all at once, more like $100 here, $200 there, sort of like flashlights). I still have almost all of it, good stuff too, but never use it. I saw a guy using a Nikon FA in a park yesterday and was just amazed to see it.

These days I have some Nikon DSLR stuff mostly in order to use my old lenses, but I rarely even use the DSLR. Almost all my shooting is with a Canon pocket digicam (A570IS if anyone cares). I usualy only look at them on a computer--they look great on a 15" laptop screen, and one of these days I'll get a 30" high res monitor. I only one an actual print once in a huge while, and generally only postcard sized even then.

Film still exists, you can still buy it and get it processed, but it's basically a special purpose item by now. I've used a couple of disposable single-use film cameras with the built-in underwater housings in environments where I wouldn't want to bring a digicam. There's been a few times when I felt like taking my Nikon FM2 out for a walk and shooting some frames just for fun, but I doubt I'd ever get around to getting the film developed.

I do think the Nikon film SLR's had stupendously better viewfinders than any digital SLR that I've looked at, including some high end ones (Canon 1DS).

 

[Colorblinded]

Extinct? No, not yet. Definitely endangered though. Less selection in some ways, some prices going up, harder to get good stuff at just any shop. However, there have been more projects where enthusiasts are bringing out some unique products.

 

[will]

This has been an interesting thread to read through. I started in photography with a manual rangefinder camera. I learned how to use a light meter, what depth of field meant and all the trappings of figuring out how to make a decent image on film. I took lots of slides and put them in those Kodak round trays. I even bought a screen to project the slides on. The image quality from slides is superb, project them up to a screen that is 6 feet wide and you really have a show.

Now a bit of reality - how often did I break out the slides and look at them? not very often.

I then switched to color negatives. These are easy to look at, but more often than I care to think about, the colors were off. Over the years I found a few places that did a good job processing and printing. I stored all these prints in albums and now I can watch the colors fade away, yes, even with proper storage the colors fade.

I did some of my own processing with B & W film, I have a small enlarger that I drag out every few years and make some prints. I never got into color processing due to the expense and difficulty in getting decent color prints.

I just bought a film scanner and I am in the process of converting all my old images to digital. Scanning a negative or slide is not as good as an original digital image. The process is slow, I have been doing this in the evening while the TV is on. The software has a 'color restoration ' feature which does a good job fixing up old negatives and slides. When I complete this, all the images will be copied to DVDs and then given to my children. There is no way I could do that with negatives or slides.

So - aside from the artistic merits of film vs digital. Digital has the edge on ease of viewing, making copies, non-fading . I can fix up images on the PC with no expense due to materials, just time spent. I can view images easily, I can take lots of pictures with no worry about having them all printed out.

 

[brucec]

..And then you take the sheet-film to a lab running half a million dollar's worth of computer controlled processors and chemical heaters, pumps, control strips, etc. Not to mention the production technology required to make film in the first place. Or, you process Tri-X yourself, and dump the silver rich chems down the drain so the local streams and rivers have to deal with it.

With digital, you just need a home computer and a $100 printer, and a camera.



I used to run several E-6 lines, and frankly after working with mostly 4x5 and 8x10 trannies I find it hard to 'get-off' on squinting at a stupid piece of amatuer 24x36" film. Also, do you mount and frame those little pieces of film on your wall, or hide them in a shoe box? If they are so great, why don't you share them with us rather than describe them to us?



Frankly, I get more excited seeing my work roll out in a 24x36" LightJet print than stare at a tiny 35mm piece of film throug a loupe. Then again, the real thrill here is the fact you aren't held accountable and don't have to share the image, right? I used to play in the NFL and was married to a supermodel as well.

Also, Velvia, or 'Disney Chrome' as we used to call it it the most unfaithfull garbage ever made. Velvia distorts colors and contrast so that middle aged housewives could by calendars of light houses with neo-deco colors. I'm trying to think of how many commercial portraits I've seen shot on Velvia, and the answer is none. All Velvia does is make a bland composition look better by increasing color saturation, which is why amatuer landscape photogs used it.

At least I shot 6x7 Astia or at most Provia, then hand processed it through a custom E-6 calibration tweaked for Fuji and not Kodak. Velvia, ran through Kodak control sets (which it was 90% of the time) tended to look much worse than processed correctly through Fuji controls. Provia, given proper extended color developer time, darn near matched Velvia without as much distortion and without 'radioactive baby crap' greens.

I've noted that commercial shooters who shot Velvia in different countries tended to produce images that all looked the same because the ridiculous film dye dumbed down everything to look the same. I've noted that digital capture on the other hand tends to record with fidelity forcing the photog to think harder and not rely on industrial film dye to think for them.

Then again, that's what film is all about. The film dye thinks for you, the lab tech thinks for you, and then you go on the internet and say how great it was, but don't have anything to show for it. The actual purpose of photography is to share images, which goes contrary to everything I typically read from the film shooters here. They squat in their basement staring at film dye a through a loupe afraid to get drum scans of their slides because this will show just how bad their work actually is.

I'm willing to bet the digital snaps posted in other threads here have much photography in them as well.

Wow, calm down please. I was just lamenting about the difference in experience looking at the original slide through a loupe and then at the digital version of the same slide on a LCD monitor. I agree that film is largely about processing. I used to use the Slideprinter in Denver for processing, printing, and scanning, and I thought they were pretty good. Maybe not by your standards? But I don't think Velvia was all that bad. Yes it was unrealistic, but is B&W any more realistic? Velvia was meant to emphasize colors for outdoor shots and it had a pretty good track record in many outdoorsy magazines like Nat Geo. Bride magazines, obviously no.

I think you are a pro photographer so I can see how you think that photography is ALL about sharing. Because if you don't share, you don't get paid, right? But for myself, a lot of my photos are taken so that I can remember the feeling and experience of that particular place and time. To others, it may be just a picture, but for me, I was actually there standing in the snow, feeling the cold bite at my hands, shoulders aching under the straps, the dampness where a little snow got in my boot, a faint taste of blood from chapped lips, the overbearing silence of snowfall. I'm just saying that viewing the actual slides evoke these memories better than looking at the same thing on a screen.

 

[Colorblinded]

Well I don't really know what blasterman is going on about after a point, but I agree with him on Disneychrome. I tried it, never much cared for it.

 

[Black Rose]

Bragging abit oin my frdge I have still Agfa Ultra50, APX25 and APX200S!

I had some Agfa Ultra 50 but I never ended up using it.

I put it on eBay and it sold for double what I paid for it.

 

[ElectronGuru]

I find it ironic that in the film industry (in which I work) everyone spends tons of time shooting things digitally so that in the end they can make it look like film.

Discussing not the technology, but the people using it, there's a (relatively) new fixation with the idea of authentic. We are essentially analog beings and for most of the time with most recording technology, analog has been the standard. That started to change in the 80's as one technology after another begin turning digital and by the 90's, it seemed that people began to lament, 'missing' the old tech. Movies started adding grain, songs gained added pops and scratches, and children's photographs started appearing en masse in grayscale (aka black and white), resembling that of their grand parents when they were kids.

Faced with puzzles like this, I like to play a game. Reverse the sequence and ask if digital photography came first, would anyone bother inventing film? Is it enough that a given print be better (more accurate) or does it need to look (or feel) like something meaningful to the viewer to be as meaningful. That is, when something is (or simply looks) too perfect, does it still feel real?

A funny aside to all this is color temperature. Film has always been at a given/set temp. You bought indoor or outdoor film and it was configured for the most likely lighting these environments were likely to have. Not very accurate. Digital cameras can be configured to one of dozens settings, covering hundreds of environments, calibrated pre or post shooting for highly accurate color. And the first thing we (tv shows and movies) did with this ability was start tuning the color to be less real and more surreal (see Matrix 1999).

So is it accuracy we are after or just control?

 

[frisco]

The other ironic thing in the film industry is how some things are still shot on film and than digitized than manipulated on the computer!

frisco

 

[HarryN]

I have seen great photos, and not being an artistic type, am just amazed by them. The fact that they are taken digital vs film is not that important to me. In my case, I am just to "frugal" to make the DSLR jump unless I really get a clear benefit. Some day I will do it, but the cameras need to get a lot easier to use and more reasonably sized before that happens.