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Film is dead..... really? Let's see what 2017 looks like?
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Feb 19, 2017 11:45:04   #
Kuzano
 
Well researched and thorough article on the state of film. Certainly not wondering why my film camera biz is brisk and prices on 35, MF and Large Format have been rising for some time now. Large Format prices have been solid for a few years now.

https://www.zorkiphoto.co.uk/2017/02/2017-the-year-that-film-returned/

I occasionally build my own. Part of the fun of film... Mamiya lens n finder, Linhof 4X5 back. 4X5 film sheet is 13 times larger than digital full frame. IQ and Resolution is huge.


(Download)


(Download)

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Feb 19, 2017 12:15:01   #
rmorrison1116 Loc: Near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania
 
Who said film is dead?! Film is still available and lots of folks still use it. From time to time I get out one of my film cameras and run a roll through, just to keep them in working condition and to compare film vs digital images. No, film is not dead and whoever said it was, don't know diddly...

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Feb 19, 2017 12:19:19   #
Kuzano
 
Yeah, I know, but occasionally you get a "film is dead" post right here on UHH. Narrow minded.

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Feb 19, 2017 12:20:31   #
rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA
 
Reminds me of a humorous Mark Twain quote: "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

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Feb 19, 2017 12:23:54   #
mas24 Loc: Southern CA
 
I remember using some of those film brands on my father's Minolta SRT 101. I remember too, using Fuji film that came in a green and white box. I had to send it off for processing. Kodak, no problem processing locally. My father sold that camera around 2008, because the digital cameras were becoming more popular. We both bought compact digital cameras then. One advantage he and I liked, was that you could view your photos just after taking your shot. There are many on this forum who still use film, and owning rare vintage cameras. As for myself, I won't ever go back to film. It's just too problematic.

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Feb 19, 2017 12:25:46   #
GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City
 
Kuzano wrote:

I occasionally build my own. Part of the fun of film... Mamiya lens n finder, Linhof 4X5 back. 4X5 film sheet is 13 times larger than digital full frame. IQ and Resolution is huge.

Nice job!
Get much vignetting from that lens on 4x5?

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Feb 19, 2017 12:56:52   #
blackest Loc: Ireland
 
Kuzano wrote:
Well researched and thorough article on the state of film. Certainly not wondering why my film camera biz is brisk and prices on 35, MF and Large Format have been rising for some time now. Large Format prices have been solid for a few years now.

https://www.zorkiphoto.co.uk/2017/02/2017-the-year-that-film-returned/

I occasionally build my own. Part of the fun of film... Mamiya lens n finder, Linhof 4X5 back. 4X5 film sheet is 13 times larger than digital full frame. IQ and Resolution is huge.
Well researched and thorough article on the state ... (show quote)


Thank you , I really enjoyed that article.

I think the fly in the ointment is processing, it's a bit like the raw and jpeg argument some people like to process others don't.
To really work, there needs to be processing and scanning at a good resolution available.
Even today i can find a frontier machine which scans film and uses a lazer to produce photographic prints price goes as low as 17 cents for a color 6 by 4
Black & white processing is more scarce, and most inkjet printers are not up to the job of producing high quality black & white prints. Ok in the Us you can get some highend printers very reasonable after rebate but that doesn't exist in europe and certainly there is no comparison in printing costs.

I'm trying to make it happen here in ireland, i have found someone to process black&white, but they are setup for boutique type printing not a heres your 24 6x4's that existed and still exists for colour film.

I don't believe i'm the only one with lenses i use for digital that can also be used with film and i have film bodies to use them with too.
If i can head out for a weekend and shoot a roll of black & white film put it in the post on monday and have prints by friday. I would be doing it regularly.

I can't be the only one who has been through the scanning negatives phase, it was a right chore and i don't want to do it again and i don't want a low res scan that is barely enough for a 6 x 4!

Is there any need to cut negatives? I wonder if that frontier machine in town could handle scanning a black & white film...

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Feb 19, 2017 14:43:14   #
rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA
 
blackest wrote:
Thank you , I really enjoyed that article.

I think the fly in the ointment is processing, it's a bit like the raw and jpeg argument some people like to process others don't.
To really work, there needs to be processing and scanning at a good resolution available.
Even today i can find a frontier machine which scans film and uses a lazer to produce photographic prints price goes as low as 17 cents for a color 6 by 4
Black & white processing is more scarce, and most inkjet printers are not up to the job of producing high quality black & white prints. Ok in the Us you can get some highend printers very reasonable after rebate but that doesn't exist in europe and certainly there is no comparison in printing costs.

I'm trying to make it happen here in ireland, i have found someone to process black&white, but they are setup for boutique type printing not a heres your 24 6x4's that existed and still exists for colour film.

I don't believe i'm the only one with lenses i use for digital that can also be used with film and i have film bodies to use them with too.
If i can head out for a weekend and shoot a roll of black & white film put it in the post on monday and have prints by friday. I would be doing it regularly.

I can't be the only one who has been through the scanning negatives phase, it was a right chore and i don't want to do it again and i don't want a low res scan that is barely enough for a 6 x 4!

Is there any need to cut negatives? I wonder if that frontier machine in town could handle scanning a black & white film...
Thank you , I really enjoyed that article. br br... (show quote)

Before I was willing to switch to digital, I wanted to know that I would be getting images with as much detail as I was getting from film, so I sent some 35mm Kodachrome 25 slides {chosen because each had clear detail on it} to a professional, who returned 3000 x 2000 scans to me. After an evening of comparing details on original slide to scanned image, I became convinced that these images captured all of the detail that was on the original.

Once I had purchased a digital camera, I also purchased a Nikon LS-2000 scanner from a guy who refurbishes them; right now, that also means I need to keep my Dad's old Win XP computer going. I also have a Plustek scanner that does B&W negatives better than the Nikon does. Currently, if none of this equipment dies on me, I expect to have my nearly forty-years of film media scanned within another year or so. That was my way of dealing with some the issues raised here {I was always a slide type of guy, so printing is not an issue for me} - and now I'm even open to increasing my "to be scanned" pile by buying and using some more film

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Feb 19, 2017 15:04:23   #
Kuzano
 
GoofyNewfie wrote:
Nice job!
Get much vignetting from that lens on 4x5?


Yes, but the purpose was to use a roll film back and do 6X12 Pano. The lens doesn't quite cover the 4X5 image circle, but was a great lens for "near" 4x5. A format I shot regularly. You can get stuck on equipment limitations if you try hard enough? Right?

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Feb 19, 2017 15:08:53   #
blackest Loc: Ireland
 
rehess wrote:
Before I was willing to switch to digital, I wanted to know that I would be getting images with as much detail as I was getting from film, so I sent some 35mm Kodachrome 25 slides {chosen because each had clear detail on it} to a professional, who returned 3000 x 2000 scans to me. After an evening of comparing details on original slide to scanned image, I became convinced that these images captured all of the detail that was on the original.

Once I had purchased a digital camera, I also purchased a Nikon LS-2000 scanner from a guy who refurbishes them; right now, that also means I need to keep my Dad's old Win XP computer going. I also have a Plustek scanner that does B&W negatives better than the Nikon does. Currently, if none of this equipment dies on me, I expect to have my nearly forty-years of film media scanned within another year or so. That was my way of dealing with some the issues raised here {I was always a slide type of guy, so printing is not an issue for me} - and now I'm even open to increasing my "to be scanned" pile by buying and using some more film
Before I was willing to switch to digital, I wante... (show quote)


Is the scanner using USB or the parallel port? if it is usb then you can run windows xp in virtualbox as a guest operating system (vmware, parallels can do the same thing). I bought an old canon scanner and found it had no mac driver (it didnt have a windows7 driver either) the solution was to run the scanner in xp on my mac i think i allocated 1 GB of ram to the virtual machine. The virtual xp machine thinks it has a network drive shared with it from the mac and any files put in there are available to the mac. Vuescan is pretty good it can save as raw dng files.

If the plustek uses the parallel port, you may need to keep nursing the old xp machine. Actually to be fair you can configure parallel and serial ports to the virtual machine its just i don't think i've run a virtual machine on a system that has these old ports. I did manage to use a usb to serial adapter within a virtual machine, that worked.

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Feb 19, 2017 15:14:16   #
rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA
 
blackest wrote:
Is the scanner using USB or the parallel port? if it is usb then you can run windows xp in virtualbox as a guest operating system (vmware, parallels can do the same thing). I bought an old canon scanner and found it had no mac driver (it didnt have a windows7 driver either) the solution was to run the scanner in xp on my mac i think i allocated 1 GB of ram to the virtual machine. The virtual xp machine thinks it has a network drive shared with it from the mac and any files put in there are available to the mac. Vuescan is pretty good it can save as raw dng files.

If the plustek uses the parallel port, you may need to keep nursing the old xp machine. Actually to be fair you can configure parallel and serial ports to the virtual machine its just i don't think i've run a virtual machine on a system that has these old ports. I did manage to use a usb to serial adapter within a virtual machine, that worked.
Is the scanner using USB or the parallel port? if ... (show quote)
The Nikon scanner runs off SCSI!
I'm already running the USB Plustek off our Win 8 machine.

{Thank you for your suggestions}

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Feb 19, 2017 15:27:36   #
GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City
 
Kuzano wrote:
Yes, but the purpose was to use a roll film back and do 6X12 Pano. The lens doesn't quite cover the 4X5 image circle, but was a great lens for "near" 4x5. A format I shot regularly. You can get stuck on equipment limitations if you try hard enough? Right?


Yep!
Loved those big negs.

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Feb 19, 2017 22:08:47   #
BebuLamar
 
I started out shooting slides but then I started doing my own darkroom since 1980's so I switched to shooting color negatives. Now that I got rid of my darkroom and have digital camera. I think I will start shooting slides again. I still have a couple of Kodak slide projectors.

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Feb 19, 2017 22:16:40   #
rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA
 
BebuLamar wrote:
I started out shooting slides but then I started doing my own darkroom since 1980's so I switched to shooting color negatives. Now that I got rid of my darkroom and have digital camera. I think I will start shooting slides again. I still have a couple of Kodak slide projectors.
I dumped my projector and screen twelve years ago. I had committed to transitioning to digital, which meant scanning all my media, and we were moving something like 800 miles.

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Feb 19, 2017 22:24:59   #
BebuLamar
 
rehess wrote:
I dumped my projector and screen twelve years ago. I had committed to transitioning to digital, which meant scanning all my media, and we were moving something like 800 miles.


I have the Konica Minolta dimage dual scan IV which is a decent film scanner but I like to view the slide projected and when I only shoot film I have the need to digitize them. Now I have digital camera I don't need to digitize my slides.

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