Kodachrome, Ilford, Agfa: Leica & the Future?

[andybarton]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I found an image of Frank sitting on his doorstep. His home is in the woods near Nordseter.

 

That's absolutely not what I was suggesting

[jaapv]

Sorry, Andy....

[stunsworth]

Frank, next month take a drive to Arles. You'll see lots of photographs both digital and film. In September take a drive to Perpignan, you'll see lots of photographs both digital and film.

 

It's just possible that after seeing those you'll realise that there's more to photography than the method in which the photographs have been made.

[earleygallery]

Frank, you use Leica so I take it as a given that you see the nuances between Leica optics and others, so I'm surprised you don't see them between a digital or film image. You post seems to be coming from the 'one is better than the other' angle. They are different mediums that's all, as with other art forms (or recording mediums perhaps).

 

Try this. Buy some Tri X film and take the same photograph with your M8 and a film M from your collection - use the same lens. Make a digital print from the M8 file and a wet print from the Tri X negative. Study the results and post them and your findings here.

[Guest BigSplash]

Frank, you use Leica so I take it as a given that you see the nuances between Leica optics and others, so I'm surprised you don't see them between a digital or film image. You post seems to be coming from the 'one is better than the other' angle. They are different mediums that's all, as with other art forms (or recording mediums perhaps).

 

Try this. Buy some Tri X film and take the same photograph with your M8 and a film M from your collection - use the same lens. Make a digital print from the M8 file and a wet print from the Tri X negative. Study the results and post them and your findings here.

 

I may do this but if I do it will be a winter project as messing with chemicals is something I do not do in Summer. Also why Tri X and not FP4 ...I have always used the slowest film I can get my hands on to reduce grain.?

[Michael Hiles]

... Also why Tri X and not FP4 ...I have always used the slowest film I can get my hands on to reduce grain.?

 

I think this is an important question.

 

One very powerful aspect of film is the wide variety of material that produces different results - and not only grain and accutance (not to speak of developers). There is much more to this than minimizing grain, or maixmizing sharpness.

 

We hear much discussion of how to duplicate the qualities of "super belchfire single malt XXX" using photoshop, light room etc. It all says to me that there are subtlties to film that are very rich, and the digital workers are trying to mine the same vein.

 

This is not to denigrate digital, but to add some thought as to why film continues to be a very deep resource. And this says nothing about the richness of silver-based printing.

[earleygallery]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Michael,

 

You've put it perfectly

[andybarton]

Also why Tri X and not FP4 ...I have always used the slowest film I can get my hands on to reduce grain.?

 

In that case, why not PanF+ or Rollei ATP if you want fine grain? There are plenty of films out there that have much finer grain than FP4

[octo]

 

1) What colour film options are still available to buy. in 2009 and 2010?

2) Is processing generally available or is it only with a specialist lab?

3) Price to buy and develop a 36 exposure transparency colour film roughly

 

 

Comments? How do people expect things to change, and what would they like to see going forward to help them enjoy their Leica M7 new purchase?

 

I live about 12-15 km from you and I shoot exclusively film - mostly B&W - I get my films cheap and fast from an online company: PM me for the address. I have a dedicated (retired) photographer in Le Cannet who's become a friend and develops & prints my stuff. My dark room has everything but water -and me, time - so I appreciate he kept me on his list; but there is a young enthusiastic guy in Cannes who has taken over a shop in Avenue de la République. he is pretty good with computers, Photoshop and all that kind of thing, but also shoots, likes, and sells film cameras (check a couple of his Meica M4s, if they're still around). I got a very good deal a month ago on a Summicron 2/28 ASPH...Same thing: remind me in your PM to give you address and phone and mail.

I leave the philosophical answer as to the future of films to my learned colleagues in the Forum with just a remark that, at least in B&W, Kodak keeps putting out new emulsions: the so called 'Professional' series.

Don't hesitate to get in touch.

[ivanadp]

My life as a photographer began with film - colour slide film and a Brownie camera. I later attended a college where we were trained to be B&W printers. From there I went into commercial photography just as the digital revolution was taking place. I have shot digitally for fashion magazines (Elle etc) and advertising for companies (billboard for Coca Cola, as an example) and also for many other varied clients. In the recent past I have also taken to shooting events for people such as weddings and the like - the advent of the Nikon D700 enabled me to shoot in a Leica-esque documentary style without the need for flash. (I tried Canon but just didn't like the cameras).

 

Anyway, the crux of my post is this: I have morphed into a photoshop user more than a photographer and am just itching to return to the simplicity of shooting B&W film. I think that it's marvellous that the digital revolution has arrived and that so many people are taking so many photographs and doing incredible things on their computers. But I don't want to be a computer operator. I have invested heavily in computers and printers and colour calibration software and hardware, not to mention all sorts of software that processes, sharpens, enlarges and colour converts my RAW files etc etc and it's becoming really, really tedious and dull. In fact, I hate it will a passion inversely proportional to my love of photography. The industry generally demands digital these days but I am feverishly trying to find a way to return to film, both for myself and also in a way that enables me to continue to earn a living - at least part of the time.

 

My assumption is that if I am "over" the digital process - that there have to be many other people over it too. I'm not talking about film die-hards who would never go near digital, I'm talking about people who have had extensive experience in both mediums and still feel the desire to return to film.

 

I joined this forum as I know that it will be a very short period of time before I own a Leica rangefinder again and am back shooting Tri-X and HP5 and this is my circuitous pathway back into that world.

 

Cheers, Ivan

[Guest BigSplash]

What did you make photographs with before you shot with digital cameras, Frank?

 

Leica M4, M5, M6 with a bunch of lenses and a Visoflex. Actually I bought my first Leica kit while working for 3 years in Brasil and I wanted top equipment to shoot Rio, Iguacu etc and I was not dissapointed with the results.

[Guest BigSplash]

Frank, next month take a drive to Arles. You'll see lots of photographs both digital and film. In September take a drive to Perpignan, you'll see lots of photographs both digital and film.

 

It's just possible that after seeing those you'll realise that there's more to photography than the method in which the photographs have been made.

 

Good idea I shall go ...I'll check the dates on Google .

[kenneth]

Frank, next month take a drive to Arles. You'll see lots of photographs both digital and film. In September take a drive to Perpignan, you'll see lots of photographs both digital and film.

 

It's just possible that after seeing those you'll realise that there's more to photography than the method in which the photographs have been made.

 

Steve, I cannot speak for Frank but for me the photographic method is what it is all about. If I only had digital as a choice I would stop taking pictures as this is not my livelihood but my passion

[jamhowa]

I think the one thing that all of us need to remember is that all of us on this forum are different. We are an extremely small portion of the photographic/imaging population. The business side of photography is almost completely digital. The best custom labs in my area admit that they are processing less than 5 rolls of film a day now. With such small volume, just the cost of refreshing the chemicals becomes cost prohibitive for most labs.

 

Blacksmith shops and stables did not close overnight. My father never stopped calling a refrigerator an ice box, but the process by which his beer was kept cold was not the ice of his youth. I suspect that film is like that. A few of us will hang on, but in the end it will be a forgotten technology.

[lars_bergquist]

My point is simple: A technology does seldom disappear completely, as long as it does something that a number of people want, and as long as it can be practised with generally available materials. People doing wet plate photography? daguerreotypes? I can believe that. I presume these people also coat printing paper with egg white and sensitise it with silver nitrate. I can also furnish you with a recipe for making your own gelatin dry plates (but they will be very slow, and blue sensitive only).

 

But the film user is dependent of an industry, which is now subject to serious attrition. He needs suppliers of film, of colour development services, and of processing chemicals and paper if he wants to run a darkroom. All these things are becoming increasingly difficult to find. Especially for the non-dedicated photographer. As volume sales disappear, attrition feeds on itself. For very many people, film is ceasing to be a practical proposition. The demise of Main Street one hour processing is underway. The appeal of digital, to the occasional and even the hobbyist photographer, was always practicality, convenience -- and using film is daily becoming more inconvenient. This is called 'negative feedback'.

 

So this is why I wrote that the future is digital. It was never a matter of digital producing 'better' end results than film, so that discussion is irrelevant. In that respect, digital is neither 'better' nor 'worse' than film. It is simply different. It has its own esthetic. This is based on precision, definition ... It is a fascinating thing to explore. Let's get on with that, instead of mourning the demise of the box camera, the mechanical typewriter, manual typesetting, cuneiform script or whatever.

 

The old man who came out of the darkroom

[lars_bergquist]

One participant pointed out that the M8 sensor does not fill the entire 43mm diagonal of 35mm lenses, so, says he, it does not make full use of the optical potential. But neither does the 35mm format. You would have to employ a circular film format with a diameter of 43mm! Is that what you are doing?

 

But within the confines of the format used, digital sensors do capture more of the detail that modern optics can deliver, than any practically useable film. And when I compare results from my M4-P and my M8, behind the same state-of-the-art lenses, the M8 wins hands down.

 

The old man who came out of the darkroom

[Gentleman Villain]

My life as a photographer began with film - colour slide film and a Brownie camera. I later attended a college where we were trained to be B&W printers. From there I went into commercial photography just as the digital revolution was taking place. I have shot digitally for fashion magazines (Elle etc) and advertising for companies (billboard for Coca Cola, as an example) and also for many other varied clients. In the recent past I have also taken to shooting events for people such as weddings and the like - the advent of the Nikon D700 enabled me to shoot in a Leica-esque documentary style without the need for flash. (I tried Canon but just didn't like the cameras).

 

Anyway, the crux of my post is this: I have morphed into a photoshop user more than a photographer and am just itching to return to the simplicity of shooting B&W film. I think that it's marvellous that the digital revolution has arrived and that so many people are taking so many photographs and doing incredible things on their computers. But I don't want to be a computer operator. I have invested heavily in computers and printers and colour calibration software and hardware, not to mention all sorts of software that processes, sharpens, enlarges and colour converts my RAW files etc etc and it's becoming really, really tedious and dull. In fact, I hate it will a passion inversely proportional to my love of photography. The industry generally demands digital these days but I am feverishly trying to find a way to return to film, both for myself and also in a way that enables me to continue to earn a living - at least part of the time.

 

My assumption is that if I am "over" the digital process - that there have to be many other people over it too. I'm not talking about film die-hards who would never go near digital, I'm talking about people who have had extensive experience in both mediums and still feel the desire to return to film.

 

I joined this forum as I know that it will be a very short period of time before I own a Leica rangefinder again and am back shooting Tri-X and HP5 and this is my circuitous pathway back into that world.

 

Cheers, Ivan

 

Exactly! You've just described my situation. This is especially true when photographing beauty as there are new expectations of retouching associated specifically with digital. Digital photographers are now expected to re-build a model or subject's skin...literally one pore at a time...pixel by pixel.

 

I didn't get into photography to spend all day sitting behind a computer and retouching pores We do have the option of outsourcing retouching, however, the look associated with digital retouching is still close to alien-like or transhuman...it's not the film look which is the reason that many of us started photography in the first place.

 

 

I think the one thing that all of us need to remember is that all of us on this forum are different. We are an extremely small portion of the photographic/imaging population. The business side of photography is almost completely digital. The best custom labs in my area admit that they are processing less than 5 rolls of film a day now. With such small volume, just the cost of refreshing the chemicals becomes cost prohibitive for most labs.

 

Blacksmith shops and stables did not close overnight. My father never stopped calling a refrigerator an ice box, but the process by which his beer was kept cold was not the ice of his youth. I suspect that film is like that. A few of us will hang on, but in the end it will be a forgotten technology.

 

That's a good point. There is a good chance that many current film labs are just going have to shut down.

 

But that doesn't mean that film dies with them. It means that people will be forced to process on their own. This is actually the best workflow for a studio anyway...even the best labs are not 100% consistent. The only way to guarantee a consistent film workflow with consistent color and handling is to do it in-house. The future of film may also be associated with small processors like the photo therm