General Discussion on Film
So after reading thru the "practice" thread and playing with all my old equipment again. I got to thinking about film cameras. I have collected them for a while, and yesterday went thru my collection. I had not realized how much gear I had amassed. I was at a crossroads several years ago as to whether to stick with film or go to digital. Digital won out as its easy to share, and inexpensive to process, and instant gratification. At the time film was still better than digital in many ways, but over time that has largely been eradicated as a major difference for most people. So I boxed up my cameras and stored them in the deep recesses of my closet as a collection.
Yesterday, I decided to sell them. I need to upgrade my digital cameras...My K20d 's are good cameras,reliable, but based on old technology and only 12 meg. I really want to get a Pentax K3 and see what I can do with a 23 meg camera. I could sell them, but will keep them. This is a pic of some of what I am selling...
http://i1309.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2c0c7848.jpg
I am have a bunch more as well to ad..
Even now, I can't let some things go.. I am keeping 2 of my first camera, the k1000, and 2 of my last cameras, Pz1p . I took my worst and best pics with these.. and I will need them if I ever want to shoot film again. Ironically both these 2 cameras are in huge demand still. The K1000 is still the choice of any classic photography class, and the Pz1p was the last high end film camera pentax made...even more sought now as Ricoh has bought out pentax..Its a beautiful and functional camera.
I am selling a bunch of M42 threads..., keeping all my takumar glass though as I still use these.
Its actually depressing though....I can actually remember which cameras I took what photos with in alot of cases. I have them sprawled out on the table and have been picking them up and dry shooting them. Film cameras have a certain feel to them, hard to explain if you haven't shot them extensively. I like digital but I do miss the feelings of shooting film. There was always an anxiety..did I get that shot right? you have to really think about the shot, and really know your film, filters and camera. Then there was the moment of either happiness if the shot came out good or utter frustration if you messed it up..In short.A challenge. Don't get me wrong, digital is still a challenge, but its different.
So when being nostalgic about selling your prized film age gear, what else do you do, but go thru decades of slides and pictures. Which made me realize something.. Since shooting digital, I don't have binders of pics and slides anymore. They are stored on the hard drives, burned into DVDs, etc. hardly accessible. I find I print less pics of what I shoot...instead viewing it on a monitor. Thats a loss too...even the best monitors have severe resolution limitations... whereas I could look at a slide and see the depth of the image, heck I can see the layers of emulsions.
It was inevitable but with all the digital focus these days, many film makers and developers have closed. And the ones that still do make film have cut back product lines and raised prices. Some of the films I use to love shooting are all history.
Leads me to a Question for you guys, do you find yourselves printing your pics much? or just sharing them and viewing them electronically on sites like Flicker? How do you archive them? What do you use them for? If you print them, what size do you usually print them to? Do you maintain a print portfolio to document all you have done and how you have progressed? Where do you get your prints done?
As I sit here looking at this stuff I realize how far the hobby of photography has progressed, but I do see that even with great progress, you can still lose some things.
Just rambling on... but thought this might be a good thread discussion, not so much on the techical differences between film and Digital media, but more of the differences that are hard to put into words. The historical,emotional, and practical differences.
You are going to laugh, but it makes me almost want build a darkroom and play around with black and white.:)
al
Re: General Discussion on Film
Talk about a walk back in history Al and perhaps not related but Tom and I in the last several months have scanned and recorded all the old slides and movies from my and Tom's parents and grandparents. We then copied all the media over to CD or DVD so it could be shared with all the kids and grandkids. Once I learn more about post processing I plan to clean up some of the slides.
So get some of your photos off those hard drives and share them with your family.
Re: General Discussion on Film
Pat its great that you have been archiving those slides to share. I scanned all mine too years ago, but now need to re-do them all. Scanner technology has improved significantly . when I did mine I used a Nikon coolscan Ls 2000 from work. That was 1998-2000!
http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/scanner/scoolscan_2000/
2,592-pixel monochrome linear CCD
2,700 dpi
That system was top of the line when it was bought.... but you can pick up now for $50 on ebay. The resolution is fine for converting a slide to digital, and actually does a good enough job for taking a slide, scanning it and then printing and 8X10 pic. But theres just so much detail in the slides thats lost.
The Nikon 5000 ED
http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Nikon-Pro...N-5000-ED.html is what I would love...but at $3000..not happening.:)
Re: General Discussion on Film
I hear you Al but better to have less then nothing. Still this looks pretty good. Late 40s/early 50s vintage
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8571/...2cc0d2c6_c.jpg by
Re: General Discussion on Film
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Second Hand Pat
It is Pat, and the way that slide is degrading you need to too. Its a shame that back then they didn't have a better handle on archival plastics... Often times the very things that people were storing their slides and film in were actually degrading them more than if they left the slide in dry box!
All of mine are stored in archival plastic and archival storage boxes, even so, they will eventually degrade..the emulsions used have organic components like gelatin collagen.
al
Re: General Discussion on Film
Speaking of degradation... One of the reasons I brought up the question of how you store your digital images is related to that. Just as film degrades, so does digital media. If we store it on a conventional harddrive..the harddrive data corrupts, the drive fails. If we store it the cloud, thats just using someone elses harddrives. Storing it on DVDs is a good option but they also use organic components.
Heres an interesting article..
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec4.html
according to it...
Quote:
Among the manufacturers that have done testing, there is consensus that, under recommended storage conditions, CD-R, DVD-R, and DVD+R discs should have a life expectancy of 100 to 200 years or more; CD-RW, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM discs should have a life expectancy of 25 years or more. Little information is available for CD-ROM and DVD-ROM discs (including audio and video), resulting in an increased level of uncertainty for their life expectancy. Expectations vary from 20 to 100 years for these discs.
Few, if any, life expectancy reports for these discs have been published by independent laboratories. An accelerated aging study at NIST estimated the life expectancy of one type of DVD-R for authoring disc to be 30 years if stored at 25°C (77°F) and 50% relative humidity. This testing for R discs is in the preliminary stages, and much more needs to be done.
In theory some DVD storage could degrade faster than film.... a 20-100 year window is pretty bad, its basically saying "we don't know".. and that independent labs tests of DVD -R at 30 years under ideal conditions is a potential problem to say the least.
another interesting article
I store my images now on external US B harddrives and for redundancy ,I burn my pics into DVDs, and store in archival binders that are black and zip shut to cut down on the UV effects. I think theres a bit of short sightedness on the part of the Digital camera industry as to long term storage options and needs to be more consideration and research done on data decay in storage.
al
Re: General Discussion on Film
Sorry Al but all I could think reading parts of that was Clark Griswold from Christmas Vacation stuck in his attic watching old movies hahaha. Thats quite a collection. I'm fairly young and missed most of the film days, I still remember it but I was to young to own or really do much with it. Did take photography classes with darkroom experience though growing up in school. That was cool. Made pinhole cameras as well. They actually have a pinhole type lens for the new digitals, fairly cheap I was thinking about picking one up and playing with it. Obviously its a lot faster than a real pinhole, but it gives the pinhole effect. My dad got me into Photography, he did it professionally for a while back in the film days. Still has a bunch of his old negatives.
I've printed photos before, its not common but I do it. Mainly for myself, a few for others when they requested it, even hung a discus picture on the wall. Its a poster, I think its like 16x24 or something close to that. Its kind of why I want to get more landscapes and panos, I'd love to print some and hang them up. Not so much as a hey, welcome to my home look at my photos....but more for my own enjoyment. I used Adoramapix when I printed my stuff, was happy with it. I did some Metallic prints and they are freaking awesome looking the sheen they have to them. I gathered up my brothers last Christmas and took a picture of all 3 of us and turned it into a metal print for my mother for Christmas that year, that gift was a huge winner. Like the metallic printing, the metal print was pretty awesome looking. I'm sure I have photos of some of the prints somewhere, I'll try and find them.
Storage wise I do it all on HDDs. Multiple. New technology, its bound to fail at some point. So I back up my computer HDDs on multiple external HDDs and then keep those in separate places. I'll usually keep most pictures on my computer for the year (while still backing them up once) then at the end of the year I'll go through and make sure I've got them all on the external HDDs and then wipe them off the computer to make space for the new year. All folders are arranged by date, sometimes by name if I'm feeling up to the task.
Here is a bad photo of one of the few I currently have hanging. The photo was showing someone how I hung my LED fixture. Its of Chad's PB line taken at the Atlanta NADA show, I just loved the photo so much I hung it up. Still one of my favorite discus photos I have taken and I love the line of fish. Not the right frame for the format but its what I had at the time and have yet to change it. Hangs right beside my 100gal.
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c1...ps40ef473c.jpg
Here is another from the same batch of prints and partly why I printed to begin with. Liz fell in love with this fish as soon as it hit the water in Atlanta, bought it from Mike on the spot, and after she saw my photo of it she asked me if I could do a print for her. Roughly the same size, I believe it was in the 16x20 range. Glossy print but it looked amazing in person. Not sure if she still has it or not, I might have a copy myself. Along with this photo I ordered the one above, and like 6-7 others (star trails, water drops, etc) in different styles glossy, metallic, etc to see printing quality in each. Still have them stashed in the cardboard box, not sure what to do with them as I don't really care to hang them. They're nice just not what I'm looking to put on the walls currently. Maybe I'll pull them out of the box when I get home to share them.
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c1...att/print1.jpg
Re: General Discussion on Film
I'll see if my dad will go for that Al.
Re: General Discussion on Film
Quote:
Originally Posted by
brewmaster15
Speaking of degradation... One of the reasons I brought up the question of how you store your digital images is related to that. Just as film degrades, so does digital media. If we store it on a conventional harddrive..the harddrive data corrupts, the drive fails. If we store it the cloud, thats just using someone elses harddrives. Storing it on DVDs is a good option but they also use organic components.
Heres an interesting article..
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec4.html
according to it...
In theory some DVD storage could degrade faster than film.... a 20-100 year window is pretty bad, its basically saying "we don't know".. and that independent labs tests of DVD -R at 30 years under ideal conditions is a potential problem to say the least.
another interesting article
I store my images now on external US B harddrives and for redundancy ,I burn my pics into DVDs, and store in archival binders that are black and zip shut to cut down on the UV effects. I think theres a bit of short sightedness on the part of the Digital camera industry as to long term storage options and needs to be more consideration and research done on data decay in storage.
al
What we must also think about is playback. Sure you save DVDs now but how long before they start becoming obsolete and you have no way to play them? They are headed that way currently IMO. Same with USB harddrives. Theres no reason not to expect this technology to go the way of 8 tracks, cassette tapes, and VHS. Sure you can still find ways to play it but its not overly simple. I think the best thing to do is to store it how we are currently, but be ready to shift that data as the technology and times shift as well that way when the time does come we aren't scrambling trying to do it or making a larger jump than technology allows. I plan to eventually upgrade my current HDDs to SSDs as they start to fall in price and money allows. Not a long term solution, but its the next jump up in technology. Co-worker had most of his home movies degrade after just 10-20 years on VHS because of their improper storage. Theres always the option to upload it somewhere, like youtube. You can set it to private but still have your home movies in digital form and easy to share. I don't have any kids, but something like this seems like an attractive option for when I do.
I try to keep at least some of my HDDs locked away in my brother's fireproof gunsafe. Either way, redundancy is your friend here.
Re: General Discussion on Film
Quote:
Sorry Al but all I could think reading parts of that was Clark Griswold from Christmas Vacation stuck in his attic watching old movies hahaha. Thats quite a collection.
LMAO... only 46 Matt!:) The Pbs really do make a nice image there. I can see why you like it.
I don't hang very many pics that I take.. but I have a few.. snapped these with my phone real quick and theres alot of glare, But they adorn my man wall. I don't have proper man cave here.. but I have a wall in the living room lol...
http://i1309.photobucket.com/albums/...psc6d37509.jpg
and then in the kitchen I have another print I had put on canvas..I gimped it to look like a painting...
http://i1309.photobucket.com/albums/...ps3a876412.jpg
Theres a few smaller 5X7's here and there and family collages as well. Most of what I print ends up in the photo albums.
al
Re: General Discussion on Film
Great subject Al. Just like Matt, I do not have much film experience because I missed it growing up. However, I have shot with film cameras, mainly my Minolta stuff and I frequently use my manual lenses like I mentioned in your other thread.
With regards to storage and printing. I go through a lot of pictures, and I do mean a lot. I have become very selective on the pics I take, but on a monthly basis I am still outputting well over 2k pictures of personal images, not including side jobs and such. This makes it difficult to keep orgranized in HDD, but it is what I do.
This is exactly my workflow for any session:
-Gather gear
-Shoot
-Return home and upload to CameraRAW
-Make first run deletes
-Rate higher end photos by star system
-make another run through set and delete any very similar shots and keep the best, star the best with the appropriate rating
-Last run. This last run is a very harsh one, and I have deleted many that my wife said she'd kill me for. But I am adament about only keeping the ones that I know have impact.
-work on really high starred files on CS6
-eject card reader from computer
-Plug in my 2nd backup HDD (yeah, all my other usb ports are being used, lol)
-I backup all my shots to the 2nd backup
-Once I backed them up, I insert card back in to camera and format
At this point, if I want to upload some really good ones to Flickr, I do. The rest stay on HDD's, BUT, the collection as a whole stays in specific folders
If you sign up with shutterfly.com, they send you all kinds of promotions. They kept sending me their 101 free 4x6 offer for months on end. I kept accepting and kept getting 101 prints for shipping cost only, about $5.
I got in to the habit of printing 101 4x6's every couple of months or so. I no longer get that offer, I suppose they caught on to me not getting anything else, lol, but now I just pay for the service for the 101 (still very cheap) and I print the standouts that are in that reserved folder in my HDD's.
Once they get printed, they get moved out of the folder, and the cycle starts again.
Now that I have laid it out, it sounds like more work than it actually is, but it is my workflow and I have been doing it for years.
Re: General Discussion on Film
Ricardo,
I do similar.. with the exception That I work with Gimp and Burn to DVDs also. When I was shooting slides... IN the film days, I shot far less than digital now for the same typical trip.A typical roadtrip of a week to florida I would go there with 50+ rolls film X 36 exp... so 1800 plus shots but over the course of the week....most wound up in the trash after going thru them..using digitals I can take more pics and its not as wasteful and expensive after the image is captured....which was one reason I made the switch.
I suppose I must seem like a dinosaur to you and matt lol.:)
al
Re: General Discussion on Film
I love this Al and if you are a dinosaur I hate to think what I am.
http://i1309.photobucket.com/albums/...ps3a876412.jpg
Re: General Discussion on Film
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Second Hand Pat
Thats one of my favorites too.. I'm really happy with the original pic too.
http://forum.simplydiscus.com/attach...2&d=1235514657
Re: General Discussion on Film
I print and hang some of my work, I had my slides and negatives converted to digital so I could use them.
This currently is on an interior wall that doesn't get direct light.... three foot by five foot snow geese printed in a single run and mounted. There were thousands of geese and this photo doesn't show 1/4 of them due to the narrow field of view of a 500mm lens
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...xplosion-1.jpg
While this one shot was taken with a digital camera I have others printed that were taken on film like this Ibis shot March 2000 on the Blackthorn Wildlife drive north of Cocoa Beach, FL
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...ge0000082A.jpg
Kodak Portra natural color film ISO 160 with a Kalimar (read cheap) 500mm f8 lens and Pentax ME Super.
