'Bye 'bye print film

[NZDavid]

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After more than three decades, I find it’s time to say ’bye ’bye to print film – at least, for personal photography. I may, just possibly, use Fuji 400H professionally if I really need to; otherwise I shall stick resolutely to slide film or digital.

 

My decision follows a few weeks of solid purging and reorganizing of my negs and slides. While most of my films over the past few years – slides and negs – have been assiduously filed by date, that doesn’t apply to old stuff. And who ever looks at it? In the last few years I have hardly ever used print film. And while it’s good for scanning and printing, the old postcard prints often used to be disappointing. And what’s the point of keeping shoeboxes full? The best deserve to be printed and displayed or put into photo albums, but who has time?

 

We still love slides. There’s still nothing to compare with projected pictures, especially if it’s a memorable overseas trip. So I have filed slides in slide trays and stored others in plastic sleeves. I’ll still scan and print favourites, but as for print film, farewell!

[Canfred]

Interesting point here is the Kodak Professional Ektar 100.

Newly issued Sept.10. 08 by Kodak as a result of ever diminishing use of chrome film and the related dissapearing labs , something we here in Australia are painfully aware of.

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[boilerdoc]

Ditto on the Ektar 100. Kodak is still coming up with new films. Haven't seen any yet but it'll be great. I hear you on the digital vs film but I still use both. Someone once said that 'Shooting digital is like shaving a man's legs. Clean and slick but highly unpleasant"!

Steve

[rob_x2004]

Last time I checked, from go to woe but excluding petrol to get to the post office, a roll of slide processed unmounted cost me about thirty eight to forty Aus, mounted about fifty bucks a thirty six. I can carve a bit out of that if I go the eBay buy bulk import and all that stuff. Still it works out pretty pricey. I found a 3 roll of 25Ektar under the house the other day ... The new hundred ISO sounds good to me. While an 8.2 might not pay for itself it would be a least cost option pretty quickly.

[NZDavid]

That does sound pricey, Rob. Bulk film from B&H about $US6 a roll. Processing approx. $NZ20 ($US14, $A16) for 36 mounted at Kens Digital - Future Fresh Solutions @ $NZ1.25 (US75c, $A1 per slide. Interesting to know how those rates compare.

[Guest wls.shanghai]

Gentlemen -

 

no worry - no headache

 

analogue photography is alive

 

we have TOP B&W films and chemicals (ACROS & PRESTO etc.)

we have TOP color films (REALA 100 & KODAK EKTAR 100 etc.)

we habe extreme good slide films (VELVIA & KODACHROME etc.)

 

no farewell

 

wls

 

btw: agree with Steve - " Shooting digital is like shaving a man's legs

clean and slick but highly unpleaseant:)

[leicapages]

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not sure I understand this: slides take up much more space than negatives when filed. So space should (at least in my experience) not be the decisive factor to move from negatives to slides...

[rob_x2004]

David it is a year since I did the exercise. But roughly;

 

Store (specialist supplier) Provia is AU$21, same as your bloke.

 

B&H first shipping charge is $US42 mail. There are several break even points on bulk quants just before shipping jumps to the next level and B&H are not flexible about this.

For example to land twenty rolls of provia at $6.26 costs me US$187 incl shipping. To land one hundred rolls of provia at $6.25 per roll costs me US$709inc shipping.

 

Cheapest processing is (was) unmounted AU$9.50 plus $4.5p&h up to $21 plus about a dollar each to mount, better guys are unmounted AU$14 or $AU20 mounted, post pack would be about six bucks cheapest.

 

Post pack from me to processing I thin cheapest traceable is $7.50 post pack but stamps have gone up recently so I dont really know.

 

As tricky as I could get with combinations was $40 mounted providing I was prepared for an initial outlay of six to eight hundred dollars. Obviously the prices came down the more I got developed in one hit, saving on post packs or couriers to the processors.

 

At the moment there is the exchange rate to add to for out now sixty four cent dollar so the B&H costs are going to multiply by a factor of around AU$1.54 or more.

[NZDavid]

Yes, overseas postage is now getting hefty. From Europe seems to be worse. Rob, those processing cost don't look too bad, but you might also like to check out Kens Digital - Future Fresh Solutions here in Christchurch -- if postage is economic. A couple of words dropped off my last post: scanning is about $A1 per slide for an 18MB scan, which is pretty good value.

 

<Slides take up much more space than negs.> But prints take up even more space. I am talking about actually looking at slides, not just filing them away. I am also talking about mostly personal pictures -- travel, family. (Professional ones are stored separately.) Slides are far more satisfying than postcard prints. So what I've been trying to do is to ruthlessly purge old slides and just keep the ones we enjoy looking at. It's also easier than maintaining photo albums -- does anyone still do that? I still get prints made if they are really special.

 

I have also been interested to see how long slides last. My old Kodachromes from the '80s are still fine; ditto parents' old Kodachromes from the '50s are fine; a friend tells me his slides shot in the '40s <!> are still in good condition. By contrast, I am not sure how long digital pictures stored on CDs or DVDs will last. Or how long digital images will last if stored on a computer hard drive, a third party drive, or on the web.

[JBA]

I haven't shot a roll of print film since the '70s when I discovered Kodachrome. Uncut, unmounted slides don't take up any more space than negatives, though mounted slides allow you to cull the really bad shots, akin to deleting in digital.

 

These days, I get everything scanned to CD.

[nikau]

This has probably been covered before, but with regard to the life of film, I've been scanning a lot of my old transparencies dating back to the 1960s. Kodachromes from then seem as good as the day they were taken. Sadly, I mostly shot Ektachrome, Agfa and even Ferrania back then and their keeping properties have been variable. The best have lasted pretty much as well as the Kodachromes and the worst are little more than faded pieces of magenta-colored celluloid! A senior lab technician once told me this would be due to the quality of the chemicals used, and the quality of the processing job itself. Fortunately, the restoration feature on my Nikon 9000 does a fantastic job of bringing them back. I just need to make a few tweaks in Photoshop. I've processed my own b&w right from the start and am happy that they have withstood the years and will probably still be good in 100 years! Just wish they'd been taken with Leica lenses.