Will film cameras make a comeback like vinyl?

Let me know when they get it to the same quality and development time as the original. Maybe they can have a go at discovering the secret of Damascus steel.

 

Also, a lot of the chemicals and materials Polaroid sourced are no longer available. A lot of this has to do with evolving environmental laws. That stuff gets grandfathered in, but when someone starts fresh they have to find alternatives.

Kodak is reintroducing Ektachrome and they too had to make adjustments because of new rules. Hopefully it looks as beautiful as before when it's reintroduced next year. They're running beta tests on the new emulsions I believe...

dan c

 

Interesting to both get benefits and drawbacks getting top notch gear. I found similar results when I got better guitar amps after using cheap ones; while they did sound better, they revealed bad technique/habits much more then the cheaper ones.

 

That is also why you don't see vacuum tubes made in North America/England anymore; lots of nasty chemicals and processes involved in crafting them.

 

while looking through some of my old Photography equipment came across a few Kodak Pre-Paid Slide mailers...O' Well. LOL.

 

Nope. There is no good reason to use a film camera anymore. I have a few and I really like them too.
I am sure there will be someone, or some group, that does use them. If for nothing else than the history of the medium.

There was a time when digital was inferior to film. Now digital is as good as film but with many benefits film can not compete with.

 

Who really knows? I went to Reckless Records in Chicago last week, and they were selling refurbished old school Polaroid Instant Cameras. I think they were $129.

 

...but for that price they toss in a pork pie hat and a pack of American Spirits.

 

See my post #117 above. There are good reasons to use both film and digital.

 

There's been a huge change at Polaroid/Impossible Project. The largest investor in IP actually bought what existed of original Polaroid, and changed the company name back to Polaroid or PolaroidOriginals, and obtained all Polaroid IP=Intellectual Property..
The patents may have expired, but not the trade secrets, which were never patented and continued to progress in original Polaroid - and PolaroidOriginals now have that plus the contacts for all the original sources of raw materials. Now they know what they are doing and can work toward exactly replicating and improving the original films and beyond. Even with new environmental restrictions, now they know what the original films were, and don't have to guess or try to reverse engineer. The current films are already hugely better than what they had a year ago.
The original peel-apart film manufacturing machinery was destroyed and Impossible Project couldn't save that originally, but PolaroidOriginals is trying to buy Fuji's machinery for that, since Fuji continued to make compatible peel apart film until a few years ago.
That is getting interesting.

 

The current films are nearly there, in color and contrast. The developing time is arguable - they say 15 minutes - but the original SX-70/600 was really around 5 minutes to be 90% there and actually continued going for a full 24 hours before stopping, and the new ones really go 24 hours too. So I'd say the developing time could be called roughly equivalent. You still need to be careful about shielding the new ones from light right out of the camera, but less careful than the first Impossible films.
But, there's no way to know about fading, over years, yet, compared to the original Polaroid films.

 

film is wonderful, not that I indulge in it much myself, cost mainly.
but like all formats, there are always going to be people interested in it
forever and a day. one thing though, kind of like comparing analog to digital,
there is something beautiful about film over a digital file, and vice versa.
there will always be people curious about film making and glad to see they still
teach that stuff in some schools. there will always be home hobbyists that will
pursue the interest even if it is not cost effective, because they like to do things
hands on.
there is even a place near where I live that still process super 8 film.
I didn't even realise that is was still available to purchase, but there you go!
I wouldn't count the old format down and out quite just yet.

 

Unfortunately they recently sent out a release dashing any hopes of peel-apart film production. For whatever reason it sounds like they can’t get Fuji’s equipment and starting from scratch is financially impossible. So it’s a for real impossible project...

Just grateful they’re able to do what they’re doing.

dan c

 

If it does, please someone alert me so I can make a killing on my old Minolta X-700!

 

It's dead Jim. Let it go...

 

Lol. I'd prefer a free meal from Devil Dog's.

 

What's a 'professional film camera'?

Not all film is created equal and not all film has an expansive contrast range exceeding that of a FX digital camera like my Nikon 810. I photographed the moon and the stars numerous times with my 810 and never ran into any major contrast issues by adjusting the parameters and options available to me in digital camera and that doesn't even include using photoshop.

The same is NOT true for film cameras where the only options available were film speed and exposure and if you were developing B&W you had a few other options like choice of film developers, pre-soaking the film and developer time. With color you have none of the aforementioned options.

 

And a bottle of beard oil.

 

A few months ago, I saw an enjoyable documentary called "The B Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography" about the large format Polaroid portrait photographer. The end of film production meant her retirement, and while in theory she could use a high resolution digital camera and a large format Epson printer, there is no chance she'd be able to learn all the new technology and start again from scratch. So I understand that in some cases something special and unique has been lost.

 

What I think we need is to get some kind of control and perspective over digital photography.

Digital photography has made the very thing it does...next to worthless IMO.

Years ago I would take one 36 roll of 35mm for every week I was on holiday. Once I got those pictures back, people at work and family would actually ask to look at them (yeah fancy that). I would look at them several times and then again over the years to come. Those 60 or so shots would be of some personal value.

Then with mature digital tech 20 years later I would go on holiday and take loads of shots and then never look at them. I don't even bother loading them up off the Compact Flash half the time. People never ask to look at them (even my family) and I NEVER ask to look at anyone's either as I know there will be 500 pics and 2 hours of crap HD video.

I don't care and they don't care either.

Now I go on holiday I take just my phone and I take maybe 20 shots, 40 tops for a two week break. I still hardly look at them but I don't despair so much. I have also noticed that as more of my friends know I hardly take any shots they do not recoil in horror if I show them a pic of the hotel we stayed at or similar. They know there are not 400 more.

Photography is now trivial trash. Merely good for trivial fun moments that eventually will be lost...like tears...in rain.

 

I wouldn't blame digital photography for that. The first rule of digital photography is to delete early and often, and never let them stack up. If I get a dozen good images out of two hundred shots, I'm a happy man.

 

Yeah you are right but I've just given up and I don't think I'm the only one.

Back when you had a 8MB CF card...

Maybe thats it. Just slot a 250MB card in your camera.

"I'm good for 50 shots!"

 

I just pretend that I do. Even with my wife's phone which automatically uploads every image to Google Photos, we still go through and delete every bad image, and make new albums of the good ones.

I only wish Google would change their system so every image had a distinct and unchanging URL so I could share them everywhere. Instead, I find myself having to download them and reupload them on other services.

 

There is value in scarcity and difficulty. Loading, operating, and developing 35mm film was "hard" -- at least compared to taking a snapshot with your iPhone. Something that is finite is always going to hold more value (both economically and emotionally) then something that is effectively infinite.

This is a fascinating and unexpected result of digital. You're seeing it now in music with the resurgence of vinyl. You see it in film - polaroids as an example. Since there is no limit on the number of times something can be downloaded, it means less.

I go to a concert, and am amazed at the numbers of cameras in the air recording video/snaps. It's the whole "Pics or it didn't happen" mentality. And as you said, nobody really looks at them anyways.

There is a similar backlash against quartz watches.

I think at the end of the day the perfection of digital takes away from the appreciation of the result. A really great 35mm snapshot is a thing of beauty. A mechanical watch that is accurate to +/- 2 seconds a day is a masterpiece of engineering and precision. A great analog stereo system is a wonder to hear. All are hard to duplicate, and are worthy of appreciation and sharing.

 

Yeah that would be a killer feature.