chrisg-optical Loc: New York, NY

Film, especially 35mm film will be around with us for a bit more and maybe longer - Pop Photo estimated about 20 years recently! EVENTUALLY, it will become like the typewriter - very few still use it while 99.9% will just use MS Office or equivalent. I've heard some say they just like the look of film - digital to them looks "artificial". Up until 2 years ago Walgreens had a large rack of Fuji print film but now it is just a few pegs. You can get film from a variety of brands on eBay and Amazon but be aware of the expiration date. I will still use film occasionally until there is no way to process it anymore.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Canon 5D3 - 860G (no battery)
BG-11E Battery grip - 310G
2 x LP6 Batteries - 160G
70-200 f2.8L MKII - 1490G

Total: 2,820G (6.2 LBs) - can get a little tiring after holding it up for several hours, but not in the league with that .50 cal. 😅

zoomphoto Loc: Seattle, WA USA

On a quick internet search I was able to find 60+ film labs around the country. Adorama, B&H and others stock film in many speeds and brands in 35mm thru 11x14.

Kuzano

Yes, Ground Glass for cut sheet.

However, if I load a roll film holder, I generally focus the first frame, and then shoot the frames "fixed focus" through the roll. One of my lightweight 4x5 camera's is a fixed focus 65mm wide angle. It is prefocus infinity and req no ground glass, although it has a ground glass for critical focus when I want to check.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Dead is relative to Market share. The photography market is SO HUGE that there are enough people to support the remaining film producers. But the users of film generate a tiny percentage of images being recorded.

Film is "dead" like LP vinyl albums. Scarce, compared to mainstream digital tools.

HOT Texas Loc: From the Heart of Texas

I just bought this one two days ago along with 5 rolls of FUJI Fujifilm FUJICOLOR C200

(Download)

therwol Loc: USA

Many older cameras used mercury batteries with an odd voltage of 1.35 volts. There was no voltage regulator in these cameras. The mercury batteries maintained a constant voltage until nearing failure. If you put an alkaline battery of the same size in these cameras, the 1.5 volts affects metering accuracy, requiring that you make an adjustment in metering that was/is difficult to do with any consistency.

Cris Camera offers adapters that let you use an alkaline or silver oxide battery in these cameras with an output dropped to close to 1.35 volts. Silver oxide batteries have a flatter discharge curve and longer life than alkaline batteries so that metering remains accurate for longer.

http://shop.criscam.com/collections/mercury-battery-adapters

The MR-9 adapter is the one that should be used in the SRT-101. I actually used two of these in my Nikon FTn (which requires two batteries) until I gave up on using the camera and switched to digital. That was a personal choice. I wouldn't bash anyone who still wants to use film. It's just not for me any longer.

This article may also be of some use.

http://brucevarner.com/PX625Replacement.html

HOT Texas Loc: From the Heart of Texas

Great Info!!! Thanks!!!!

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

zoomphoto Loc: Seattle, WA USA

This sounds like you have a Cambo Wide. I have one with a 6x9 back and Schneidner 47mm.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

If you are going to use B&W film, you need to process and scan it yourself or find a good lab. Such labs are RARE. Even in the heydays of film, unless you were in a large metropolitan area, finding a lab that treated B&W as anything other than an annoyance was a problem.

Labs don't make any money on 4x6 color prints. The dirty little secret is that the cost of making an 8x10 is only pennies more than making a 4x6 (80 square inches of paper vs 24 square inches of paper that quite often costs (way) less than $.35 per square FOOT in large quantities. You have marginally more chemistry, and a bigger envelope, but the same labor, power, water, and overhead. But psychologically, we think an 8x10 is worth more, and a 16x20 is worth a LOT more. So we pay more.

B&W is another matter. MOST labs hate it, because the volume is so low, they can't make money on it. They want to use a chromogenic paper and run it through EP2 or their Fuji equivalent color process. And that "dye cloud" image is never as rich as a genuine silver print or a pigmented inkjet print, for that matter.

Professionals ordering hand enlargements or scans have long cut their negatives into strips. Since 1968, I cut mine into six strips of six, plus the frame or two leftover at the end of the roll, if it was worthy. Six strips fit on an 8x10 contact proofing frame... Most labs do not want 35mm negatives cut individually, since they are so fragile. You order by edge number.

Some labs use roll film scanners, which can scan up to 100 feet of film automatically. We had nine of them (Bremson HR500+) at the lab where I worked. They cost $50,000 each, and that was before the network and the server and the Kodak DP2 license... Alas, they are now obsolete, and parts are hard to find. But they could make huge files.

GREAT B&W film processing can be done in a light room, using a daylight tank, loaded in a changing bag or completely dark closet. End to end process takes around 30 minutes:

Developer 4 to 12 minutes (typical range, depending on the formula and dilution)
Stop Bath (30 seconds)
Rapid Fixer with Hardener (2-4 minutes)
Hypo Clearing Agent (2 minutes or less, depending on brand)
Wash in running water (5 to 10 minutes)
Wetting agent (Photo-Flo) 30 seconds
Squeegee and hang in a dust free area (bathtub with shower head and shower curtain works great) (about an hour)

If you keep all the chemicals at 68°F/20°C by using a big tub of water that you bring to temperature with the tank and chem bottles in it, you can get very repeatable results.

Find the Time Life Library of Photography at a library or used book store and read The Darkroom volume. It's still pretty accurate... B&W processing has not changed much since World War II (!). That book was written in the late 1960s and revised for the 1980s.

Once you have great negatives, you can scan them at high resolution on any Epson V-series scanner and do whatever you want with the files.

OR, you can re-photograph the negatives, using a digital camera with quality 1:1 macro lens, and raw mode. A 16 to 24 MP file can be enlarged mighty large, and retains nearly all the detail and grain of the original image.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

As long as the lab doesn't butcher my B&W negatives, I've found that my Plustek scanner does a fine job of digitizing them.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

I was pretty amazed at what I got using my Epson v700 from a 35mm frame of Tri-X and having it printed at a camera store lab that unfortunately closed last month.
Better than any print I ever made in a darkroom and I'm not a neophyte at this.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

I've only used one B&W lab, a boutique lab run by a friend of mine, that didn't scratch film. He used Nikor reels and tanks and hand processed. All the others used roller transport machines.

That said, if your lab has a Refrema dip-and-dunk machine, it is safe. I put one in a facility in Charlotte back in 1990 and we loved it for sheet film down to 135.

Biggest problem with non-boutique labs is that you generally have no control over the developer and time. A very wide range of results can be had by choosing different developers and varying the time, temperature, agitation, and dilution of the developer. This affects contrast, grain, gamma, and edge sharpness, as well as effective film speed. Many labs process all B&W at the same time and temp, in the same developer, with the same agitation. With the wide variety of films available, you may or may not get acceptable results.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

Since I do my own scanning, I can fix some of these issues. Since I'm not going into the chemistry business myself, my only other hope is to pick good labs.