Anyone shoot film still?

[tiggr33]

I'm headed on a Photography Road trip on Friday (and will be in WDW to shoot a few days) I'm bringing my Rebel G and a couple rolls of both Kodak400 & 100 Tmax B&W, some Fuji Provia, and some Kodak Pro BW400. I will occasionally still shoot film/slides. Even when I shot digital, I try to set up as I did when shooting film. It's a shame though, at WDW I'd expect to see atleast some sort of film.

 

[seashoreCM]

In a pinch you could dismantle a disposable camera to use the film inside, but I would recommend that only those with a Ph.D. in photography try it. Not all disposables actually have a 35mm or APS cartridge inside to hold the film and it is not obvious whether the film is inside the cartridge to begin with or inside the cartridge only after all the shots are taken.

It is difficult to use an assortment of differnet kinds and speeds of film unless you have several cameras because you won't have the kind of film you need in the camera at the right moment.

For those who are accustomed to shooting with film, fortunately, using the same rules for digital give the same results. There could be a systematic difference for example one camera may tend to blow out highlights necessitating an overall one stop reduction, but for all I know one particular kind of film could also be susceptible to blowing out highlights requiring the same compensation.

unfortunately it's almost all Gold 200/400, only a couple rolls of b/w, which I would much prefer.

Another situation for the photography Ph.D. and your own darkroom. Use, develop, and print a roll of color film as if it were black and white, although some special maneuvers are needed. The first stage of the development of color film yields a black and white negative image of the same kind (silver related chemicals) as on black and white film.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

What's next? No LPs? No slide rules? Is digital taking over everything?

 

[boBQuincy]

What's next? No LPs? No slide rules? Is digital taking over everything?

You are too late, the movement to "Stop Digital Madness" finally gave up in the late 80's. We could bring it back!
http://stereophile.com/interviews/sheffield_steel_doug_sax/

photo copyright Stereophile magazine

 

[scoot241]

What's next? No LPs? No slide rules? Is digital taking over everything?

LPs are actually making a little bit of a comeback.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

You are too late, the movement to "Stop Digital Madness" finally gave up in the late 80's. We could bring it back!

Well I'm not giving up my slide rule. Math was never intended to be digital. If it was, irrational numbers wouldn't outnumber rational numbers.

 

[WVDisGeek]

Slightly OT...

Digital must be taking over everywhere (Or I am getting too old, which I refuse to face...)

While cleaning out our offices last week, I ran into some columnar pads. I can remember when I first started in public accounting, that is how we did everything. One of the younger folks in the office had never even seen them before and had no idea what they were.... (Sorry, this probably only makes sense to the accountants on the Boards, but seemed semi-relevant...)

Still, it seems somehow wrong that in a photography rich location semi-sponsored by Kodak that NO film would be stocked....

 

[stargazer214]

I think I have to agree now, perhaps film industry is really dead. In our place, some photo studio are giving special offers in selling the films.. geeez. I couldn't even remember the last time I was able to hold a negative. Everything seems to be digital as of now.

 

[littleangie]

i am a photography student in college. Our teacher only teached using B&W film. we have to buy 4 rolls of film for each assignment we do. We can buy film at our bookstore on campus. Originally the film was $6 a roll and over the semester is went to 50% off now. I prefer to shoot with film then digital. So i hope film makes a comeback soon.

 

[YesDear]

I must be old!

I remember when you went to SAM's, Costco, BJ's, whatever and they had stacks and stacks of Kodak film in really competitive price packages! Of course they were next to the blank VHS tapes!!

 

[Groucho]

Another situation for the photography Ph.D. and your own darkroom. Use, develop, and print a roll of color film as if it were black and white, although some special maneuvers are needed. The first stage of the development of color film yields a black and white negative image of the same kind (silver related chemicals) as on black and white film.

Yes, but you won't get the expanded dynamic range of true b/w film, as I understand it.

As for LPs, I bought two players off Craigslist last year and put one right in my main living room and another in my son's room. He thinks they are fascinating! It doesn't hurt that we already had a big pile of kid's albums (including many Disney soundtracks) from my childhood.

 

[WDWAurora]

I'm shocked they had APS. I had read that NOBODY was making that anymore-and Kodak was one of the first to stop. I thought fuji was the holdout still making it, but had stopped in the past few years. I have difficulty getting some of my APS negatives scanned (can't find all the pictures to do it myself) because so few stores process the film.

 

[J3nn78]

Yes, but you won't get the expanded dynamic range of true b/w film, as I understand it.

As for LPs, I bought two players off Craigslist last year and put one right in my main living room and another in my son's room. He thinks they are fascinating! It doesn't hurt that we already had a big pile of kid's albums (including many Disney soundtracks) from my childhood.

I ran a few dynamic range tests in college a few years ago between TriX100, triX400, a Nikon D200, and a Fuji S3 (at the time was a dynamic range king of digital). As of about 3 years ago, Film had a dynamic range advantage at low ISO and was at a disadvantage to digital from ISO 800 and on (really, just pushed development 400 film). I should see if I can dig my paper out of the file cabinet with the results.

My gut tells me that If I redid the test today (no access to spectrophotometer anymore though to measure a neg), I bet the Nikon D3 kicks any B&W film's butt in dynamic range, grain/noise at any ISO in every way/shape/form. Oh and it's color!

Film is going away because it is inferior for 99.95% of photographic uses other than nostalgia. 8x10 sheet film might be the last bastion of film in commercial use and that's going away quickly that digital view camera backs are not so rediculous price anymore.

I don't miss it.

 

[Groucho]

I ran a few dynamic range tests in college a few years ago between TriX100, triX400, a Nikon D200, and a Fuji S3 (at the time was a dynamic range king of digital). As of about 3 years ago, Film had a dynamic range advantage at low ISO and was at a disadvantage to digital from ISO 800 and on (really, just pushed development 400 film). I should see if I can dig my paper out of the file cabinet with the results.

My gut tells me that If I redid the test today (no access to spectrophotometer anymore though to measure a neg), I bet the Nikon D3 kicks any B&W film's butt in dynamic range, grain/noise at any ISO in every way/shape/form. Oh and it's color!

Film is going away because it is inferior for 99.95% of photographic uses other than nostalgia. 8x10 sheet film might be the last bastion of film in commercial use and that's going away quickly that digital view camera backs are not so rediculous price anymore.

I don't miss it.

Well, there's a couple points here. First - the grain is not necessarily a negative for me when it comes to film. I'm not looking to get film photos that look like digital. Considering the amount of film work the OP has been doing despite his D700, I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Second - I'm also not so convinced on dynamic range. Most tests seem to indicate that color negative film has a range of about 10-12 stops, with b/w film more like 14 stops. (They also seem to have smoother transitions.) If you are to believe DP Review (which I don't always ), the D3 has about 8.5 stops of range... with over a step extra to recover from, but still not at the level of better color film and a long ways from b/w film. The Fuji S5 is still the king, with 11.8 stops at maximum dynamic range correction.

 

[manning]

Didn't Kodak cease production of film cameras several years ago? I remember it being a big deal in the news. They still produce film and paper, but I think the only cameras they produce now are digital.

They also recently stopped production of kodachrome.

 

[manning]

What's next? No LPs? No slide rules? Is digital taking over everything?

Actually LPs are making a come back.

Whoops old news, didn't see previous post.

 

[Groucho]

Oh, and Kodak does still make disposable film cameras, but I think that's it.

Many years ago (somewhere around 1990 or so), I had a summer job assembling Kodak Fling cameras in a tiny factory. There wasn't much to them (as you would expect), just a few bins of plastic parts including the tiny plastic lens. We just snapped 'em together and they went somewhere else to have the film loaded.

 

[J3nn78]

Well, there's a couple points here. First - the grain is not necessarily a negative for me when it comes to film. I'm not looking to get film photos that look like digital. Considering the amount of film work the OP has been doing despite his D700, I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Second - I'm also not so convinced on dynamic range. Most tests seem to indicate that color negative film has a range of about 10-12 stops, with b/w film more like 14 stops. (They also seem to have smoother transitions.) If you are to believe DP Review (which I don't always ), the D3 has about 8.5 stops of range... with over a step extra to recover from, but still not at the level of better color film and a long ways from b/w film. The Fuji S5 is still the king, with 11.8 stops at maximum dynamic range correction.

DPreview tested their D3 at 8.5stops shooting JPG's with standard contrast and saturation settings. Shooting raw, there is a WAY WAY more than 1 stop of highlight detail that can be pulled out with some careful lightroom adjustments. It has saved my butt on more than one wedding dress I can tell you.

But even if it was exactly matched 11 stops of color film to 11 stops of D3 digital nef file: Digital still has so many other advantages:

ISO changes on the fly. Frame rate is faster and reliable. White balance is not set to the film. Contrast is adjustable on individual image vs having to push/pull a whole roll at a time while developing. Not to mention we are talking a modern D3 body with focusing systems beyond anything you can get to stick film in.

I'm just saying for all practical purposes, D3 > 35MM. There is only one single possible advantage to film, dynamic range, and that is honestly debatable since there's really no way to 100% correlate negative density measurement to 0-255 brightness range.

But we are so far OT it isn't funny. To the average disney world guest who couldn't give a rats behind about 11 vs 10.5 stops of theoretical dynamic range even if you could sit them down for a half hour to explain it (after explaining what shutter speed and a "stop" is): All they care about is digital is FREE and film costs $.

Just for fun though, Im going to really try and find the test data and see what I found. I'm interested now.

 

[Groucho]

I don't think you're getting it.

If you're a wedding photographer, paparazzi, newspaper reporter, etc - then sure, throw all your film equipment in the trash.

Us amateurs, whose goal is more to have fun that to just produce the final image as efficiently as possible, look upon some of the negatives as positives.

We know that digital can "beat" film in most technical ways but film and film cameras (be they SLRs, rangefinders, ultraminis, "toys", medium/large format, whatever) offer something different. Maybe it's the look of the film, maybe it's the handling of the device, maybe it's just the old-fashioned fun of manually focusing a hand-crafted metal lens, maybe it's even the action of winding the film... but it offers something on an emotional level that digital does not. They are different.

For me, it's the camera as much as anything... I have no interest in a modern film SLR; I don't want one that has autofocus and Program mode and other features of my digital SLR.

Oh, and film still debatably has an edge in absolute resolution... and if you talk medium or large format, it easily beats most digital.

 

[J3nn78]

I don't think you're getting it.

If you're a wedding photographer, paparazzi, newspaper reporter, etc - then sure, throw all your film equipment in the trash.

Us amateurs, whose goal is more to have fun that to just produce the final image as efficiently as possible, look upon some of the negatives as positives.

We know that digital can "beat" film in most technical ways but film and film cameras (be they SLRs, rangefinders, ultraminis, "toys", medium/large format, whatever) offer something different. Maybe it's the look of the film, maybe it's the handling of the device, maybe it's just the old-fashioned fun of manually focusing a hand-crafted metal lens, maybe it's even the action of winding the film... but it offers something on an emotional level that digital does not. They are different.

For me, it's the camera as much as anything... I have no interest in a modern film SLR; I don't want one that has autofocus and Program mode and other features of my digital SLR.

Oh, and film still debatably has an edge in absolute resolution... and if you talk medium or large format, it easily beats most digital.

I can agree with most of that. I can agree with the reasoning that some people prefer film is the feel, nostalgia, and experience of doing it that way. I mentioned that in my first post I think. No problems there.

Heck, I drive/race a goofy 91 mitsubishi 4dr car (Galant VR4). It's technically inferior to the new lancer evolution in every way. But it's cheaper, easier to deal with in self tuning, and I have a "history" with these engines must like older photographer have with film. I do it this way because I like it. But I can't really make much arguement that I wouldn't go faster in a 2005 Evo with the same mods. But I have alot of fun at the dragstrip doing it my way and smoking people in a car most people would assume runs 16's (it went 10.80 @ 131 last weekend, that's faster than pretty much any production street car)

But the days of both professionals earning their living from pushing a shutter button and the average consumer using 35mm are done. Complete non-enthusiast consumers don't care to buy/reload/process film anymore. Mom & Dad are sick of paying $12 for 21 junk prints to get the 3 good 4x6"'s they want. P&S digital cameras being $100 or so for the last few years maybe reduced WDW's 35mm film sales so low they just assume sell mickey pencils in the same retail spot.

Working professionals don't care about experience (I don't nor can't). The tool that works best is what I use. Changing out rolls of 35mm while the bride is walking down the isle Carrying 4 bodies around all the time.

That leaves the enthusiast who wants to do it his way just because. And that's great IMHO, as I said, Im the same way with my cars. Actually, Im even possibly the same way with WDW photos, as Im considering ditching my D90 travel camera and getting one of those goofy rangefinder style P*S cameras: Panasonic LX3, Canon S90, or maybe the micro 4/3rds stuff (mostly so I could use the fisheye 8mm oly lens). I'm willing to give up power/performance in nearly every area in order to make it fit in my pocket vs hang from my neck on vacation. Guess you can look at that in the same light?


EDIT:
Oh yeah, one thing we missed in our minor dynamic range debate: it's very dependent on ISO. At 200 film and D3/S5 might be film's game. Maybe at 400 too. Go push some ISO800 film 3 stops to ISO6400 and see the results. Then push it 4stops to 12,800 and you get a neg that is junk. Unfortunately, you can't buy ASA3200 to 6400 color film to even compare with a digital body, the only way to compare is an extreme push and did you remember to underexpose the other 23 frames on the roll to support a 3stop push to 6400? If my memory serves me, that was my ultimate finding, that while film did have a slight range advantage at it's rated ISO, the ability to go way higher ISO on digital with more DR in color on an individual file was practically superior.