The Death of Film

I'm seriously toying with the idea of going back to film. Another Sinar P2 with Schneider glass and a stock of Tri-X 320 ASA film sounds very desirable.

It's dead to me. The emulsions I liked have been discontinued and I don't want to wear out my scanner any more than necessary, since I still have thousands of unscanned slides.

Wilt wrote in post #14958097
Film may not be truly dead, but it is very depressing how many great emulsions have been discontinued by the manufacturers! ... EPN had the most linear exposure vs. density curve on the market, which gave it the most accurate tonal rendition, but less midtone snap.

EPN and Fuji Astia were the two I used towards the end. I wouldn't call EPN "great", though; it never got the T-grain reformulation that the rest of the Ektachromes did, which meant it was very grainy in 135.

airfrogusmc wrote in post #14956292
Two of the biggest ad agencies in New York still insist on film and I saw a PBS special on the top National Geo photographers and half still shoot film.

your info may be dated!
Almost all National Geographic photographers shoot digital and all the submissions for the magazine are processed digitally

melcat wrote in post #14958585
EPN and Fuji Astia were the two I used towards the end. I wouldn't call EPN "great", though; it never got the T-grain reformulation that the rest of the Ektachromes did, which meant it was very grainy in 135.

I shot it in 645 and in 4x5 sheet film! 135 was dead to me as a professional format, unless the point was shooting in very dark available light circumstances where the lenses were 2EV faster at max aperture.

watt100 wrote in post #14958745
your info may be dated!
Almost all National Geographic photographers shoot digital and all the submissions for the magazine are processed digitally

It was 2010...

irishman wrote in post #14957795
Interesting---had no idea my opinion would lead to personal attacks!

You're entitled to express your opinion about film. However, your desire to be "the first to throw dirt on its casket" is flat-out offensive.

How about answering the question that several posters have asked: why would you want to deprive others of the choice of using film?

yogestee wrote in post #14958270
I'm seriously toying with the idea of going back to film. Another Sinar P2 with Schneider glass and a stock of Tri-X 320 ASA film sounds very desirable.

Agree!!!! but for me I think Deardorff.

moose10101 wrote in post #14959297
You're entitled to express your opinion about film. However, your desire to be "the first to throw dirt on its casket" is flat-out offensive.

How about answering the question that several posters have asked: why would you want to deprive others of the choice of using film?

That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think? Just because he wouldn't mourn the loss of film as a choice doesn't mean he wants to deprive others of the choice.

Not that I'm as giddy about film going away, however if it did, I wouldn't think twice about it. There are precious few people using film compared to digital in the photography world; I'm not one of the film users, so it wouldn't bother me the slightest if film just went away.

Film is likely to stick around in some form for some time to come. Digital has replaced film to the extent that photography replaced painting; there are still people doing it, but it's more for a creative expression than status quo.

frugivore wrote in post #14957339
Some of you mentioned that film is still being used professionally. Is there a parallel in the video and/or audio industries? If so, to what extent has digital medium replaced them so far?

I can't speak for professional video, but the pro audio market is well into its own digital revolution and has been for some time. It's quite rare now to see analog (equivalent to film in this parallel I'm trying to draw) equipment in an application with a large budget. In many applications the biggest concern is with overall footprint taken up by signal processing equipment; to have all the features available on a digital sound mixer in analog form would require a huge investment in not only cash but in seats taken by gear rather than sold. Digital signal processors and sound mixers are trickling down to smaller markets and lower-budget applications as the price barrier comes down. As a matter of fact Behringer has just released this year a digital audio mixer that I predict will probably destroy the analog share of the church and medium size club market, cutting the price of entry into the medium-format digital mixer market from $9000 to $3000.

Very expensive large-format analog equipment is now suffering from the same price depression affecting a lot of older film equipment. Since the market was already very small to begin with, and anyone who would spend megabucks is probably looking to go digital, the prices on the used market are falling precipitously. It's not at all uncommon to find equipment in pristine condition that sold new for $25,000 being sold used for $5000-$7000

Arizona Highways magazine is one of the few remaining publications that insists on images from large format cameras. Over the decades, the magazine's landscape photography has gained a reputation of unrelenting quality. However, like other magazines, it's seen declining circulation, around 350,000 -200,000 per month which is about as good as you can expect for a regional publication with limited appeal.

The era of the large-format magazine that offered high-quality photos ended around the same time of the development of the first DSLR, in 1993, when Life reduced the size of its pages. But long before that, the similar Look magazine had gone out of business.

In the 21st century, the relentless emphasis on ever-tightening publication and distribution deadlines has eliminated the use of 35mm film for most remaining publications. It's hard to think of any factors that will reverse that trend.

irishman wrote in post #14956190
While at my local Barnes and Noble the other day, I noticed a book titled, "Film Is Not Dead." The author, Jonathan Canlas, makes the argument that the "look" of film cannot be duplicated in digital and that it is making a resurgence due to the special qualities that it possesses.

.......

I see lots of debate about whether film is dead or not and how much trouble and cost it was to develop film but I'd like to hear what you folks think about this statement - which in my mind is the crux of this thread.

I shot film with a Pentax back in the 70's but never got around to developing my own - just shipped it out to a development lab. For those of you that did, is this statement true?

airfrogusmc wrote in post #14959144
It was 2010...

Since you keep bringing that up why not ask National Geographic how many of their photographers use film ? I did and got a response from their Photography Dept

here you go:
askngs@nationalgeograp​hic.com

You may be shocked, (even amazed) that National Geographic is fully in the digital era !

WaltA wrote in post #14959797
I see lots of debate about whether film is dead or not and how much trouble and cost it was to develop film but I'd like to hear what you folks think about this statement - which in my mind is the crux of this thread.

I shot film with a Pentax back in the 70's but never got around to developing my own - just shipped it out to a development lab. For those of you that did, is this statement true?

Currently there is still a wide range of applications where film will continue to rule for a little while longer. Dynamic range issues and very large formats being the main points. However, dynamic range differences have been shrinking rapidly. Not always making it to consumer markets, but the tech is still advancing. And I am aware of at least two digital sensor banks that replaced film because they had a higher dynamic range than the team could get from film. Keep in mind, these are from astronomy projects and make high end medium format digital backs look like lunch money.

Sensor/film size? That issue is slowly going away, but it will be decades before we are likely to see decently priced (for home users) digital sensors much beyond full frame.


Personally I expect traditional wet plate and other very early processes to remain in use longer than modern film, simply because the market for film and all the stuff needed to process it continues to shrink. We will have fewer and fewer option for what to work with in that field, more and more people will give up on trying to get the consumables they need and just go to digital (Or die,... face it, a lot of people still using film aren't exactly what you would call youthful. There are some retirements you don't come back from.) With the lack of ready made materials that can be had cheap and easy, those who want to continue working with the more challenging process for whatever reason will likely be pushed into securing materials for themselves, which in turn will drive them back to simplier processes that take less technical equipment to process.

I don't know about you, but I don't have the equipment to batch produce rolls of 35mm film. But I do have most of the gear I think I would need to handle 3 foot tin plates.

irishman wrote in post #14956190
The author, Jonathan Canlas, makes the argument that the "look" of film cannot be duplicated in digital and that it is making a resurgence due to the special qualities that it possesses.

WaltA wrote in post #14959797
I'd like to hear what you folks think about this statement - which in my mind is the crux of this thread.

I don't buy it at all, though I haven't tried it myself, I have seen some good digital shots, convincingly processed to look like film.

When CDs first came out, there were many audiophiles that insisted that CDs could never provide the rich, deep sound provided by vinyl albums. Then they started to test that theory with blind tests. Thy audiophiles were asked to identify which sounded better a song played from vinyl or a song played from CD. Not surprisingly, they picked the vinyl every time -- even when it was a CD recording of a vinyl record playing. All they were listening for was the scratches. As a follow-up, they could not, with any accuracy, identify if they were listening to an actual vinyl recording or a digital recording of a vinyl recording (which cannot sound any better than a CD).

We should do the same for the fimophiles (okay, I just made that work up). Show them a print taken with film and a print taken digitally, of the same scene taken at the same time, processed to look like film, and see if they can accurately identify which is which. Of course the final printing technique would have to be the same (as it would be, for example, in a magazine).

I love film. I have a freezer filled with it. Convenience? Nothing beats a DSLR. But film still rules in some circles.