Endangered species....

A bit of frightening news....

http://beta.news.yahoo.com/much-longer-photographic-film-hold-162516670.html

Sandrine Bascouert said:

A bit of frightening news....

http://beta.news.yahoo.com/much-longer-photographic-film-hold-162516670.html

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I don't see any sign of film being near an end. On the contrary, many new photographers are trying to differentiate from the digital crowd by trying the "film look". And with a profusion of cheap used film cameras available, the number of new photographers entering that arena is huge. You can get a decent film SLR for about 20€ on the bay, say 50€ with a lens. You can get a Canon EOS 1x, Nikon F3/4/5 or Mamiya RB67/RZ67 with lens for 200-400€. Those prices attract a new crowd (including myself, I dare say...).

It is true that, eventually, those cameras will be dead. But that will take another century. And for what it is worth, there are film cameras still manufactured today (e.g. Cosina).

So I see film still being manufactured for a very long time, especially BW film, which is comparatively easy to manufacture and can be easily processed at home. After all, other "dead" technologies are still around us: vinyl records, for example.

Quite true, I used to do gum bichromate process (even if I made my "films" using an inkjet printer!) 10 years ago, I also used to make my own chemistry when buying anything else than ID-11 was regarded as non-sense.

As long as there will be people to buy it, people will sell it....

Think of it, the best new digital camera with a back is about $47,000 for 80 MP!

Well one sheet of 4x5 film scanned at 3000 dpi gives us 180 megapixels!

One frame of MF is ~ 75-80 Megapixels!

What I'm doing now is to take all the composition shots, scouting around with my digital camera and then when I've made up my mind, set up my 8x10 and take one shot! That's, BTW, ~720 MP but with smooth transitions.

So, yes, film is cheap and cameras are at give away prices!

Asher

I don't want to start a war about the real-life resolution of film, but the value of 180 Mpix for 4x5 film appears to be somewhat optimistic. I think that in real life, one already has difficulties extracting real 80 Mpix from a medium format digital back or even 20+ Mpix from a 24x36 sensor, considering the limits of the optics. A lens able to project the equivalent of 180 Mpix on the surface of a 4x5 detector (film or electronic) would be a pure miracle.

I agree that film is cheap. I would even add that film has advantages beyond resolution. Actually, film does not need inflated resolution claims to convince me. I already have enough resolution for my needs.

Jerome Marot said:

I don't want to start a war about the real-life resolution of film, but the value of 180 Mpix for 4x5 film appears to be somewhat optimistic. I think that in real life, one already has difficulties extracting real 80 Mpix from a medium format digital back or even 20+ Mpix from a 24x36 sensor, considering the limits of the optics. A lens able to project the equivalent of 180 Mpix on the surface of a 4x5 detector (film or electronic) would be a pure miracle.

I agree that film is cheap. I would even add that film has advantages beyond resolution. Actually, film does not need inflated resolution claims to convince me. I already have enough resolution for my needs.

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Jerome,

You raise a good point on the quality of the optics. How many line pairs/mm would one expect on a LF lens? The figures I quoted, for scanning at 3000 dpi, allow a 10x enlargement. Well, let's look at a 5 x enlargement that's just scanning at 1500 dpi. Is there enough resolution with the optics to confirm that? Well, look at an enlargement of a 4x5 negative to 20x25 and I'd consider that it would look perfect at 10 inches. So that means there's enough resolution in the lens for ~ 50 MP equivalent.

Of course, there are questions of dynamic range and noise of both systems and the quality of the glass.

Asher

Take a picture. Any picture. That is photography.

Film or Digital? Who cares. Enjoy. Just go and take some pictures.

Asher Kelman said:

How many line pairs/mm would one expect on a LF lens?

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Not as much as one would think. Large format typically uses small aperture and the limit is caused by diffraction.


You will find the following discussion here (emphasis added):

"Thanks to Schneider's large format lens data, we can compare large format image quality to 35mm. The MTF curve on the left is for the 150mm f/5.6 Schneider Apo-Symmar lens, focused at infinity at f/22. It could be a little better than actual lens performance because it's derived from computer simulation. But it's almost certainly worse than optimum because the lens is diffraction-limited at f/22; it is almost certainly sharper at f/11 and f/16. Its image circle is u' = 110mm, more than sufficient to cover the 4x5 (inch) format with room for camera movements. The principal difference between this curve and the Photodo curves (above) is that the three lines (top to bottom) represent 5, 10, and 20 lines per mm (instead of 10, 20, and 40). This is a first class view camera lens; hence we'll refer to it as an "excellent 4x5 lens."
We can find the lens's 50% MTF value, flens, by modifying the above equation to flens = 20/sqrt(1/MTF20-1), or we can also use the above table by substituting MTF20 for MTF40 and dividing flens by 2. Since MTF20 ~= 66%, we estimate flens to be 28 line pairs per mm. This is just under half the value for the excellent 35mm lens and just slightly under the diffraction limit ( f50 = 32 lp/mm for f/22). Even at optimum aperture (around f/11) a view camera lens is not likely to be as sharp as the excellent 35mm lens; it has to cover about 4 times the image circle (16 times the area). Next we run MTFcurve 45 13 28, (Velvia film + lens) and we find that the 50% and 10% MTF values of the film + lens are 27.1 and 49.9 line pairs/mm. Sharpness is almost entirely limited by the lens; the film hardly plays a role.

Assuming a 35mm frame is cropped for an 8x10 print, a 4x5 frame is 4 times larger. The ratio of total detail at the 50% level is 4*27.1/36.8 = 2.94. The ratio at the 10% level is 4*49.9/68.6 = 2.91. A 4x5 image can therefore resolve approximately three times the linear detail of 35mm, assuming both employ good technique: excellent lenses and film, optimum aperture, correct focus, sturdy camera support, good atmospheric conditions, etc. Since the passing of the Speed Graphic era, such good technique has been standard practice in large format photography; it's less common with 35mm. A 24x30 inch print from 4x5 would have the same detail as an 8x10 from 35mm. It can be extremely sharp! This result is in substantial agreement with R. N. Clark's scanner detail page."

For what it is worth, 27.1 line pairs per mm is 1376 dpi and 49.9 is 2534 dpi.

A scan at 2000 dpi on 4x5 inches would give us 80 millions pixels, but a Bayer sensor would need a bit more sensels to give us the equivalent resolution. Depending on subject and the demosaicism algorithm, a 2000 dpi scanned 4x5 inch film would be up to 115 millions sensels of a Bayer sensor.

fahim mohammed said:

Film or Digital? Who cares. Enjoy. Just go and take some pictures.

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I think that both Asher and myself have written along this reasoning. And very nice pictures have been taken with iPhones, Olgas, Polaroids or even large format portrait lenses, which were designed to be noticeably less sharp than what was possible at the time. On the other side of the spectrum, you have very expensive cameras orbiting the earth and able to digitize the planet with a resolution sufficient to tell the make of your car.

The medium is not important, but knowing the possibilities of the medium (of which resolution is one of the many parameters) is interesting.

Jerome Marot said:

............."A 24x30 inch print from 4x5 would have the same detail as an 8x10 from 35mm. It can be extremely sharp! This result is in substantial agreement with R. N. Clark's scanner detail page.[/I]"

For what it is worth, 27.1 line pairs per mm is 1376 dpi and 49.9 is 2534 dpi.

A scan at 2000 dpi on 4x5 inches would give us 80 millions pixels, but a Bayer sensor would need a bit more sensels to give us the equivalent resolution. Depending on subject and the demosaicism algorithm, a 2000 dpi scanned 4x5 inch film would be up to 115 millions sensels of a Bayer sensor.

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Thanks Jerome for the detailed reply. Essentially, as I pointed out, the 4x5 LF easily gives us an approximate equivalent to have an expensive 80 MP MF digital back, technique being optimal, of course. The advantage of the MF back is of course speed in setup and immediate results!

The use of film has advantages in that it sets the atmosphere for more considered shooting and the cost is considerably less where a few detail rich images are required.

In each, what counts is the image and the human emotions and ideas it carries and that's why we're all here! My interest in film is that for some conditions, the format, lenses and adjustment of the plane of focus makes it ideal and then I'll use it! For large group shots at weddings, a 6x7 shot with film can easily be more practical as a companion to any DSLR used for most of the work.

So let's do both!

Asher

fahim mohammed said:

Take a picture. Any picture. That is photography.

Film or Digital? Who cares. Enjoy. Just go and take some pictures.

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It may be a character defect of mine but I can't bring myself to be so passive and so uncritical that the medium of the picture is irrelevant.

Pictures are more than appearances. The medium carries crucial information. A graphite drawing, a black and white digital picture, a gelatin-silver photograph, and a mezzotint can be made to bear the same image and to look the same in a frame on a wall. But the only place where all of them are identical, equivalent, indistinguishable, and randomly interchangeable is in the shallow world of "looks like means same as".

The medium, not just the appearance, is the component that carries information about the artist’s relationship to the work and the work's relationship to things in the real world. Knowing about the medium, its implications and connotations, enriches the viewing experience for the astute spectator. Being able just to name the subject matter is pleasant, a bit lazy, and surely not enough.

Maris Rusis said:

The medium, not just the appearance, is the component that carries information about the artist’s relationship to the work and the work's relationship to things in the real world. Knowing about the medium, its implications and connotations, enriches the viewing experience for the astute spectator. Being able just to name the subject matter is pleasant, a bit lazy, and surely not enough.

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Maris,

The challenge then is to bring here the various media the photographer can use to bind him and his work together. I have made a commitment to myself to return to film for the special intimate relationship with the entire process. I will still enjoy the beauty of digital work. However, hopefully, I will also have the treat of seeing images materialize in a way integral to the continuous representations of color and tonalities with a method that I understand far more than silicon chips.

Hopefully, we will show different ways of imaging using our imagination, skill and openness to new experience. Let's look at alternative process too! I intend to encourage diversity in expression!

Asher

Maris Rusis said:

It may be a character defect of mine but I can't bring myself to be so passive and so uncritical that the medium of the picture is irrelevant.

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I think that the message is that the artist is free to choose whatever medium he pleases. That the choice of medium should not be relevant to our judgement of the final picture in the sense that some people will simply dismiss any picture not taken on their favorite medium as "not proper photography". Indeed some people believe that only analogue B&W pictures enlarged on real baryte paper are worth considering and that digital picture or inkjet prints are poor substitutes for the photographers too lazy to learn how to use film. There are less of these people around, because of the huge progresses of electronic capture and print in the past 10 years, but at the beginning of the digital photography age, there were plenty of them. Note that there are still people around who refuse to hear CDs and argue that only vinyls are Hi-Fi.

For the artist himself, obviously, the choice of medium is relevant. We want to come to a given picture and the technique used will allow us to manufacture that given picture or not. Some pictures can only be made on film, some can only be made under photoshop, some will need you to learn how to use brushes and paint. If we hang a picture on a wall, we are responsible for everything down to the choice of paper used to print it.

Wow,

I am becoming very proficient at throwing subjects that becomes more scientific and philosophical than I wished to. But ya'know, subjects are like children, they have to live their life...

Film is dead..that is a subject going on for sometime.
Nothing new.

Forums are full ( pages and pages of them ) discussing this same topic to death.

The other topic is which is better. Film or digital.
Once again, nothing new here.

Different mediums. Some like one. Some the other. Quite a few, use both.

Endless talk of issues that really do not ( imho ) add to my taking better photos ( in whichever medium ) really are pointless. And a waste of time for me. So I shall not participate in this
thread any further.

I would refer those who get a kick from such pointless ( imho ) discussions to forums on RFF, LUF, and APUG to get their high.

Maris Rusis said:

It may be a character defect of mine but I can't bring myself to be so passive and so uncritical that the medium of the picture is irrelevant.

....

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Since Maris quoted me in this reply, I shall respond. Apologies for participating again!

I am not an artist. Never pretended to be one.
I want to just record what I see; photographically. Film or digital is immaterial to me. Whatever I have at the time, I use.

I do not want to create art. I want to show ( the best I can ) what I saw. Hopefully, it would
also have a bit of what I might have felt at that time.

To each their own.

fahim mohammed said:

Film is dead..that is a subject going on for sometime.
Nothing new.

Forums are full ( pages and pages of them ) discussing this same topic to death.

The other topic is which is better. Film or digital.
Once again, nothing new here.

Different mediums. Some like one. Some the other. Quite a few, use both.

Endless talk of issues that really do not ( imho ) add to my taking better photos ( in whichever medium ) really are pointless. And a waste of time for me.

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But these are the Open Photography Forums and we don't discuss that here. Just look above: we already agreed that film is not dead and that neither one is better. Now we are discussing how using one ore the other might allow us to make better pictures, depending on the picture.

Jerome Marot said:

But these are the Open Photography Forums and we don't discuss that here. Just look above: we already agreed that film is not dead and that neither one is better. Now we are discussing how using one ore the other might allow us to make better pictures, depending on the picture.

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Let me address this to Fahim!

I really don't think it works to say you're not an artist. You've made it clear that the lens you use is from your heart. That already defines you as the artist and my experience with your pictures is entirely consistent with that judgement. You're just not pretentious about it.

What Maris advocates for himself, the use of analog film, works with his esthetics and others value his craftsmanship and artistry. I'm asking us to consider options in media by which our expression might be strengthened. So there's no advocacy for one medium over another, rather a treasuring of the individual paths we venture to travel to improve out work.

I myself have been so impressed looking at platinum prints waxed so the darker areas seem so much more vivid and giving the entire image a presence like no other B&W print I've seen. I also have looked at Bromoil pictures that are so lyrical that I want to go to Denmark to learn how to do that myself!

It's good to have an open mind to such possibilities as ways of presenting images our minds conceive.

The thing to do is what your heart directs your camera to do, as it has worked well up to now!

Asher