Fair point
For the mass market, I'm afraid digital is now the be all and end all of photography. Like it or not, film is now a niche.
Bye Kodak?
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Soldato
I used to work in a Kodak wet lab years ago before the dry revolution.
They were on rocky ground then, tbh I can't believe they're still going as they were just interested in the current bottom line.
They were on rocky ground then, tbh I can't believe they're still going as they were just interested in the current bottom line.
Soldato
True, though in 3-5 years we'll see an end to film projectors in cinemas and pretty much all films will be shot digitally.
Or shot with film and converted for digital playback. Having original film masters for archival purposes makes sense for investors, even digitally shot movies are being archived onto film.
Soldato
I bet film will last longer than a DVD, HDD or memory stick.
Although, if something is spread enough online then it will last as long as we can maintain this electronic society.
Doesn't and hasn't stopped the industry from continuing to shoot on film. The digital intermediate process means that you can have all the benefits of film, played back digitally.
Soldato
Yep, that already happens and has done for a long time, what I mean though is that in 3 to 5 years films won't be shot on 35mm and then go through the DI process, they'll be shot digitally and finished as a file that'll then be sent off to the cinemas to show on their digital projectors at every mainstream cinema especially in the US and UK.
Soldato
+1
digitel is the second coming and is only getting better with better ISO performances and resolutions
Soldato
That would have been a slightly outdated viewpoint 5 years ago, let alone today. Digital imaging has been like a second coming - it has popularised photography to a vast audience who might otherwise have never had the opportunity to take & develop their own images. When I started getting interested in photography at 6th form in the 80s the 'prosumer' market was tiny compared to today, with only the real enthusiasts having darkrooms at home - nowadays everyone and their dog seems to use PS
Film is dead for the vast majority of people and has been for years - the final line in that news story sums up what a seismic shift there has been in the last 15-20 years:
Cinema is also rapidly transitioning to digital (hello Avatar!), so that market will vanish as well. They'll probably get gobbled up by someone for their patent portfolio - or flog the patents and become a boutique company focusing on a few profitable lines, but the Kodak of yesteryear is effectively dead.
There's a ton of directors that down right refuse to shoot digital, and that's not going to change any time soon. Peculiar too that the cost of storing film securely is tiny compared to the cost of doing the same with digital footage.
What rubbish the rest of that post was, real photography, as a hobby, has been no more popular over the past 10 years than you would expect it to be without CCDs or CMOS sensors. What may have become more popular is buying a compact and calling yourself a photographer, but we all know that's not the same thing. Yes, it's good for taking pictures of stuff you wouldn't want to waste film on - like facebook profile pictures or pictures of your film gear (
), but then it just serves the same purpose that disposable cameras did, and often it does it in a worse way.It might not be a very popular viewpoint, but it's still right. Film is a 'better' medium in the same way that vinyl is a 'better' medium. It doesn't mean it's the only one, but to pass off something that almost all of the most symbolic photographs in history have used, and has reliably served the photographic community for over a hundred years to a standard that digital can't compete with as 'dead' is absurd and disgusting.
One thing I don't get is how Kodak and Fuji seemed to have failed in continuing to push film to the mass market. Yes, a lot can be said for digital's convenience, but they really could have emphasised how film has a tangibility and quality that can't be matched, because I don't see any digital full frame compact cameras, yet pretty much every compact film camera (ignoring APS, another one of Kodak's genius moves, although APS would still be bigger than most PnS cameras) is full frame. They could have championed film's superiority at a compact level while highlighting its longevity and stability - film can't get wiped by viruses for example. That would have slowed the mass transition towards digital I feel. Instead they just let everyone buy 2mp digital compacts without any aggressive counter marketing. Yeah, it would have dented their digicam sales, but it may have established that for quality and recording important moments, go for film, for convenience, go for digital. That quality gap is somewhat smaller today than it was ten years ago, but until we have scanners that can resolve film to the point where you can see between each granule, we'll never really know how much true resolution film holds.
Soldato
Good point, i wouldn't be surprised if it's just another case of making a bit of easy money in the short term without sparing a seconds thought for the long term consequences.
By the way, i know i'm coming across as bigoted and closed minded in this thread. But i don't care. Because i'm right.
When you're using a film camera you get it. You understand how it works. You know that turning this dial will change a gear in a clockwork system that will make this open and close at a certain speed, and you know that when it does open the chemicals will react to it and will turn into something that will stay on the film while you wash off the rest and leave you with a picture - one of the most brilliant and important discoveries man has made.
When you're using a digital camera you just sort of accept that it works and get on with it.
By the way, i know i'm coming across as bigoted and closed minded in this thread. But i don't care. Because i'm right.
When you're using a film camera you get it. You understand how it works. You know that turning this dial will change a gear in a clockwork system that will make this open and close at a certain speed, and you know that when it does open the chemicals will react to it and will turn into something that will stay on the film while you wash off the rest and leave you with a picture - one of the most brilliant and important discoveries man has made.
When you're using a digital camera you just sort of accept that it works and get on with it.
Yes and No, while Digital Projectors will continue to be more prevalent, shooting on film is not going to go away.
Film still has an ethereal quality to it, much like I mentioned in my earlier post, Directors and DOPs aren't just going to stop shooting it because Digital Cameras exist.
This is exactly the same as how there are Photographers who still exclusivley shoot Film, and of course there are those who will shoot with both mediums.
Very well put.
I love to use my 35mm SLR every now and then, it's not a pro body but I've taken some fantastic photographs with it. The other thing with Film is that you are limited with your exposures, which forces you to think more about what you are going to take.
One thing about Digital which is both a plus and a minus is that it's so easy to just take so many pictures to ensure you get the right one. Surely I'm not the only one here who sometimes is processing their photos and thought "Why did I take so many?" when you are then sat trying to work out which is best. I know that had I been shooting film, there are plenty of throwaway shots I've taken digitally that I just would never have bothered taking on 35mm.
We live in a world now where they are people growing up who will have never even shot film.
Anyway, three examples as to why Kodak NEEDS to survive (well at least their film products), as shot by myself:
This is Kodak Tri-X, an ISO400 film pushed to 800. Its latitude is so great that you don't even have to adjust developing time to compensate for the underexposure. When developed in Diafine, you can shoot anywhere between 400 to 1600 on the same roll and have great results:
This is Portra 400, and like Tri-X it is incredibly forgiving on exposure, you can expose this at ISO50-3200, on the same roll and get good results:
Now last but not least, Ektar 100. It isn't as lenient to over/underxposure as the previous two, but the colours you can get from it rival slide film at times:
Also the first and last were taken with a compact camera. Film beats digital hands down if you want pocketablity and quality.
Now while Ilford and Fuji do have b/w somewhat covered (still love TX for its versatility though, Fuji own the slide market with Velvia and Provia), Kodak's colour negative films are a whole league above Fuji's, plus you can get them from 35mm up to 8x10.
This is Kodak Tri-X, an ISO400 film pushed to 800. Its latitude is so great that you don't even have to adjust developing time to compensate for the underexposure. When developed in Diafine, you can shoot anywhere between 400 to 1600 on the same roll and have great results:
This is Portra 400, and like Tri-X it is incredibly forgiving on exposure, you can expose this at ISO50-3200, on the same roll and get good results:
Now last but not least, Ektar 100. It isn't as lenient to over/underxposure as the previous two, but the colours you can get from it rival slide film at times:
Also the first and last were taken with a compact camera. Film beats digital hands down if you want pocketablity and quality.
Now while Ilford and Fuji do have b/w somewhat covered (still love TX for its versatility though, Fuji own the slide market with Velvia and Provia), Kodak's colour negative films are a whole league above Fuji's, plus you can get them from 35mm up to 8x10.
Soldato
does film use FF sensors? i seriously need to find my mums Film SLR.
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Love that last one GT Racer
Now I really like film and it certainly has some nice image feature and rendition qualities and paying per shot is a fantastic way of forcing composition, choice, and ultimately quality (the counter argument is equally valid- learning, experimenting and sports photography gets very pricey).
However, I think some of the analogue fans needs a little firmer grounding in reality.
There are lots of numbers throw about for film/slide properties that are simply not true for very simple reasons and can shown to be false.
On resolution, a 35mm frame has an agreed maximum resolution of around 20MP under optimal conditions. Funny enough this matches the current FF camera top models. This is true only under optimal conditions, that means, high end tripod and head, top end glass stopped down a little, the highest grade of film, mirror-lockup and remote release. Most people shooting with 35mm wont get more than 8-12MP. And these numbers match well to currnt digital cameras. If we take the 12MP Nikon D3 we know from peoples experience is that it is fairly easy to get high resolution sharp (sharpness is an effect of capturing optimal resolution) photos at this lower resolution. People who use the 24MP D3x struggle to get the true 24MP resolution without shooting under optimal conditions with the very best lenses.
We can look at theory to see why this is the case (look at table 3):
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/resolution.shtml
Take a 35mm frame at a landscape scene, we have typical green light (forests, fields, grass, mountains, etc.) shot at f/16 to get foreground and background with the DOF, and blow me, a theoretical resolution of only 7MP. Hence shooting at f/16 will always be problematic on full frame. If we drop back to f/8 we get a good 29MP and the lens is still stopped down enough.
One physical measurements instead of theory? Head over to Photozone and see the MTF charts. Take the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 a typical lens FF user might sue, the NIkon version is the best wide to normal lens there is and will out resolve the Canon, so it should give about the best number for a zoom. This l;ens is much sharper than any equivalent that was available 20 years ago in the film heydey.
http://www.photozone.de/nikon_ff/456-nikkor_afs_2470_28_ff?start=1
What do we see, that across all focal lengths the lens cannot get close to the 4000Lines per height, thus there is no possible setting to get close to the 24MP.
In fact, exhaustive search will show you there is not a single lens in existence that will offer 24MP.
The high numbers that people state for film arise from a misunderstanding of grain. For example, we can take the 24MP frame of a D3X and interpolate it to 48MP. IF we printed the 24Mp and 48MP on a large canvas the 48MP would actually still look better than the 24MP. Furthermore, we could interpolate again to 96MP, then we can throw in some artificial grain. If we took a 100% crop of this 96MP frame it would appear to be plenty of details, but these are fake details produced by the grain and interpolation details.
As for dynamic range, the film strong point. True, but this is rapidly disappearing. The Nikon D7000 has 14 stops of DR, Ektachrome 100 has 7.5 stops, Kodachrome 25, 64, 200 has 8 stops, Tri-X 10.5-13.5, Tmax 100 17 stops.
To look at the progression, Digital sensor Dr has risen form 10 o 14 stops in 8 years, this progress will continue (especially if Canon and Sony stop having an MP fight).
As for grain/noise, digital sensor have long since surpassed the best film. No film comes close to the Nikon D3s.
However, I think some of the analogue fans needs a little firmer grounding in reality.
There are lots of numbers throw about for film/slide properties that are simply not true for very simple reasons and can shown to be false.
On resolution, a 35mm frame has an agreed maximum resolution of around 20MP under optimal conditions. Funny enough this matches the current FF camera top models. This is true only under optimal conditions, that means, high end tripod and head, top end glass stopped down a little, the highest grade of film, mirror-lockup and remote release. Most people shooting with 35mm wont get more than 8-12MP. And these numbers match well to currnt digital cameras. If we take the 12MP Nikon D3 we know from peoples experience is that it is fairly easy to get high resolution sharp (sharpness is an effect of capturing optimal resolution) photos at this lower resolution. People who use the 24MP D3x struggle to get the true 24MP resolution without shooting under optimal conditions with the very best lenses.
We can look at theory to see why this is the case (look at table 3):
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/resolution.shtml
Take a 35mm frame at a landscape scene, we have typical green light (forests, fields, grass, mountains, etc.) shot at f/16 to get foreground and background with the DOF, and blow me, a theoretical resolution of only 7MP. Hence shooting at f/16 will always be problematic on full frame. If we drop back to f/8 we get a good 29MP and the lens is still stopped down enough.
One physical measurements instead of theory? Head over to Photozone and see the MTF charts. Take the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 a typical lens FF user might sue, the NIkon version is the best wide to normal lens there is and will out resolve the Canon, so it should give about the best number for a zoom. This l;ens is much sharper than any equivalent that was available 20 years ago in the film heydey.
http://www.photozone.de/nikon_ff/456-nikkor_afs_2470_28_ff?start=1
What do we see, that across all focal lengths the lens cannot get close to the 4000Lines per height, thus there is no possible setting to get close to the 24MP.
In fact, exhaustive search will show you there is not a single lens in existence that will offer 24MP.
The high numbers that people state for film arise from a misunderstanding of grain. For example, we can take the 24MP frame of a D3X and interpolate it to 48MP. IF we printed the 24Mp and 48MP on a large canvas the 48MP would actually still look better than the 24MP. Furthermore, we could interpolate again to 96MP, then we can throw in some artificial grain. If we took a 100% crop of this 96MP frame it would appear to be plenty of details, but these are fake details produced by the grain and interpolation details.
As for dynamic range, the film strong point. True, but this is rapidly disappearing. The Nikon D7000 has 14 stops of DR, Ektachrome 100 has 7.5 stops, Kodachrome 25, 64, 200 has 8 stops, Tri-X 10.5-13.5, Tmax 100 17 stops.
To look at the progression, Digital sensor Dr has risen form 10 o 14 stops in 8 years, this progress will continue (especially if Canon and Sony stop having an MP fight).
As for grain/noise, digital sensor have long since surpassed the best film. No film comes close to the Nikon D3s.