Tag: film

“Some Thoughts on Digital Camera Lifespan”

Minh Thein on Petapixel has some thoughts on digital camera lifespan”

In the film days, the camera body and lenses lasted a long time; you invested in glass, got a decent body — one that fulfilled your personal needs as a photographer — and then picked the right film for the job. In that sense, image quality differences between brands were down to the lenses and the photographer.
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Bottom line: the camera body now plays a much more critical role in the imaging chain because it also contains the “film”, and this isn’t something you can change when the equivalent of a new emulsion is released.

Before you increased the technical image quality with better lenses and better film. A 1950 Leica M can use modern Leica glass and modern film. Still the same camera body.

Also another point Thein raise is how digital camera are obsoleted by unavailability of things like batteries, and the risk of losing ones archive with file format incompatibilities, *cough* RAW *cough* , as well as storage solutions.

This is something to be thought about with our society being more and more throw away. I wonder if the amount of e-waste isn’t worse than the chemicals used for film processing and printing.

What slide film taught me

The essay What slide film taught me (Archived at the Wayback machine) from Luminous Landscape relate what I basically feel about film photography, what happened with digital:

With digital, I have become sloppy. I can fix it in post processing — whether it is exposure (thanks to “RAW headroom”) or framing — crop with a few of clicks of the mouse. This has undoubtedly led to a lower quality of photographs.

I bought last year a Mamiya C-220 and rediscovered shooting film. Not that I got rid of the film gear I was using before, just that a TLR on medium format led me this new experience. I have been very happy with the result and the yield. I shoot mostly color negative with it, and this, with the scanning, offer some of the head room that slide do not offer. Still, thinking the shot makes my photography better.


Mamiya C-220, Mamiya Sekor 105mm f3.5, 1/60 f/8 – Kodak Ektar 100 negative film

Update 2024: linked to the archived article instead.

Kodachrome 2010

A small documentary “Kodachrome 2010” by Xander Robin, with an interview of Dwayne’s Photo lab manager and how it came to an end.

The video was taken down on YouTube due to a copyright claim.

Robert Cohen found his last roll of Kodachrome and went to the Missouri fair to shoot it ; then drove down to Dwayne’s to get it processed, anxiously waiting to see if the film had any picture on it.

My biggest regret is to not have shot Kodachrome more often. I think that the 3 weeks turn around in France was part of what turned me off.

Kodak filing for bankruptcy

Kodak just filed for bankruptcy in the US. This was almost expected as business has been declining over the years, being unable to make a come back from the decline of film.

The film division, still profitable after a reduction of costs, simplification of the product line like abandoning Kodachrome development isn’t big enough to sustain the rest. After deciding in November 2011 to sell their image sensor division to an equity firm, it sounded obvious that Kodak management didn’t know where to go.

Now several concerns:

First, what will happen to the film division? I’m sure that this is part of what they will try to offload for cheap. It is not growing anymore, quite the opposite, but they still have good film products and it would be a great loss to lose them.

Second, their patent pool is like a nuclear warhead that they are gonna sell to the highest bidder who will use it for patent warfare. Kodak has been known to litigate in the past to try to bring in some cash, unsuccessfully.

We’ll see how the reorganization goes.

How much longer can film hold?

NPR has a piece titled How Much Longer Can Photographic Film Hold On?:

At the turn of the 21st century, American shutterbugs were buying close to a billion rolls of film per year. This year, they might buy a mere 20 million, plus 31 million single-use cameras — the beach-resort staple vacationers turn to in a pinch, according to the Photo Marketing Association

Basically, film is not dead, but it is far beyond in term of market. The biggest risk for film is not that big companies stop producing it but rather that they hoard the technology to make it. Agfa Scala was the first example, albeit salvaged by the makers of DR5, still repeating the mistake. Polaroid is the second example, and the Impossible Project did the impossible with it. Kodachrome is the third and hardest example: a very complicated and undocumented process without any alternative. I believe slide film E-6 will be next. Time will tell.

12 film cameras to watch

Popphoto has an article about 12 film cameras worth buying right now.

The tragedy in Japan has made the current DSLR market a scary place, making this a perfect opportunity to get (back) into film.

Their list (in alphabetical order):

  • Bronica SQ/SQ-A
  • Canon EOS 1N
  • Canon AE-1
  • Fujifilm GA645
  • Hasselblad 500c/500cm
  • Leica R-series
  • Mamiya 645 Pro
  • Nikon FM10
  • Nikon N80
  • Pentax 67
  • Pentax K1000
  • Ricoh GR-1

It seems to cover all the bases from medium format, compact to reusing lenses from your DSLR. But the most awkward in the list is the FM10 as I think they should have recommended an older model instead, one solidly built. Also notably absent are TLR or 35mm rangefinders like a Bessa.

What is interesting to see is that Ricoh is still in the same line of products with their Ricoh GR-Digital: highly praised compact camera.