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I'm a film photography legend. A "legend" in modern parlance is any person who has pigheadedly persisted in any given pursuit for a lot of years, and has gotten old. "She's a neighborhood legend, she's been running that sandwich shop for forty years." "He's a guitar legend, he's been playing coffeehouse gigs in this area and giving lessons since the late 1970s." Etc.
But at least one thing is true: I do think I've forgotten more about film photography than most people ever knew. And that's because I've forgotten a lot! So that's accurate. When I asked the camera-lens polymath Rudolf Kingslake, founder of the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester and head of the Optical Design department at Eastman Kodak, age 93, if he would write articles for the magazine I edited, he said, "Oh, I don't know anything any more." I was incredulous at the time—yep, he had forgotten more than most people ever knew—but now I know what he meant: that his knowledge of current practice didn't match the depth of his knowledge at an earlier stage of his career, and at an earlier point in the parade of history. Got it now, Rudy. (Rest in peace. He died in 2003, a few months short of his 100th birthday.)
Self-deprecation aside, I put in my 10,000 hours and then some. In my early, obsessive period, I did such a deep dive into darkroom craft that my teachers in art school used to ask me technical questions. I became the de facto lab manager for the upper class darkroom, and when I wanted to try a cold light head, I bought one, installed it in one of the school enlargers, and put a chain across the booth with a sign that said "Off limits, do not use this enlarger." The teachers were so taken aback by this that they had to have a faculty meeting to discuss it. I simply explained that if anyone wanted to use it, they could, but I would need to teach them how first. They decided to let me get away with it. As no one else was curious, it became "my" enlarger.
Every claim or "secret" I read about, I would test experimentally. I worked doggedly to continually refine my craft, technique, and methods. I not only read current technical books, I set out on a survey of historical technical treatises as well, going back to the 19th century and even to the crucible years. I tired of that soon enough, but not before learning a lot. How much does one man really need to know about Ferdinand Hurter and Vero Charles Driffield and their Actinograph, as historically important as that knowledge is? Later I worked as a custom fine printer, making prints for professionals, archives, galleries, and museums, and for public display at venues such as the Monterey Jazz Festival, and rose through the ranks of photography magazines until I became editor-in-chief of a technical magazine for six years in the 1990s. Regular readers knew that already. What I might not have mentioned or emphasized before, however, is that there, at the magazine, I met a whole lot of people I could learn even more from. Not only that, if I got interested in something, I could find an expert on the subject and commission an article about it—for example, I commissioned the very pleasant, erudite, and gentlemanly Dr. Harold Merklinger, Chief Scientist of the Canadian Defence Research Establishment Atlantic at the time, who retired as that agency's Director-General, to write this article. And my position, such as it was, allowed me to talk to people I wouldn't otherwise have had access to. So, for instance, when the then-new Kodak T-Max films came out, I was able to discuss them with Dick Dickerson and Sylvia Zawadski. Dick was the head of B&W products at Kodak when T-Max films were developed, and Sylvia was the emulsion scientist who led the development team. I became one of the beta-testers for those films. I believe I received the first two rolls of T-Max 400 ever sent to a member of the public. Dick and Sylvia became consultants after they retired, and I enlisted them to write articles for the magazine.
There is one good reason to use the color hybrid technique that is common now: it allows you to use the cameras.
They ended up writing most of their articles for the magazine after I departed, but you get the idea. In these ways I was able to get much better credentialed experts to research claims for me. Er, I mean, us, of course, for us. We answered such burning questions as, does fixer really sink to the bottom in archival print washers? (No.) Do pyro-based developers really have special properties unlike any other developer? (No.) Did Agfa secretly change the formula of Agfa Portriga paper? (Yes.) Who invented the common system of developing for an average contrast index and then adjusting contrast with paper grade? (C.E.K. Mees—he's a real legend—and his assistant, Loyd [sic] Jones.) We also uncovered a lot of unexpected facts: for instance (I got this from Dick and Sylvia), conventional B&W films look best when processed very promptly. It takes about two hours for the latent image to stabilize, and it then begins to subtly deteriorate at about six hours, and the image is slightly but noticeably changed within a week. You see this deterioration most plainly when looking at film developed many months or years after exposure, but if you want the absolutely optimal image quality you should develop your exposed B&W film between two and six hours after exposure, or as close to that as conditions allow. And a week at the most. (Yes, I had to test it.) That's just one example out of many.
Much of that information and expertise goes begging now. No one needs to know it any more. Or it's obsolete; or it pertains to products no longer made; or, ignorant pseudo-facts have overtaken real facts in the current conventional wisdom (entropy never sleeps!), and the issues would need to be argued and proven all over again, which I personally have neither the patience nor the energy for. (That happens a lot in photography, which we might cover later.)
What kind of film would a film shooter shoot if a film shooter must shoot film?
So I'd like to address one little question today. It's a minor point, and it's absolutely up to any individual, but here it is:
Color or B&W?
Before I address that, let me say that this is all mainly for the benefit of young, upcoming, entry or re-entry photographers. For the record, I am on your side—you're one of us. You might not know you're joining the ranks of "us," an amorphous, disparate group of individualists, intrepid souls, and heroes of the visual imagination I refer to casually as Photo-Dawgs, but I know you are entering those woods. At least some of you are. A few of you*. All Hope Abandon, Ye Who Enter Here**! If that sounds vaguely menacing, well then it does. I'll refer to this group as the Y/N, short for "young and/or new." If you are O/O, don't feel offended, because I ain't talking to you.
Photo credit: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual
Archives, Physics Today Collection
Rudolf Kingslake, 1903–2003. The
first paragraph here is interesting.
I've heard—from lab owners, who should know, but at second hand—that many Y/N film photographers shoot color film, get it processed and scanned, and throw away the negatives right at the lab counter. This in not, in my opinion, film photography. It's a form of hybrid photography, which is a related but different thing. Most such people, I'm told, shoot color film. Many of my readers have opined that shooting color when you shoot film makes no sense whatsoever; you end up with a digital file just as you do shooting digital, and yet your visual results a.) don't look as good and b.) are much less amenable to post-processing.
My own opinion, which I've voiced before, is some version of "Color came of age with digital, but B&W was already perfect" (Carl Weese said that first, or some variant of it***). My take is that if you're going to shoot film, be hardcore. Go all the way. Shoot conventional (i.e., not chromogenic) B&W film, develop it yourself at your kitchen sink, and make prints under an enlarger. Then scan those, in a flatbed scanner, to get the images online. I'll leave the arguments pro and con for another time. Most of them boil down to some version of this: why do something half-assed? Don't be gutless. Don't be faint; don't be all whiny and whimpery and weak-dishwater about it. Yeah it's hard. Some people like hard. People jump out of planes or go flying in those insane squirrel suits. People climb mountains when they don't have to. People try slick tricks 400 times so they can post it on IG the one time it works. People master difficult and arcane arts and skills and crafts all the time. Because some things that most people consider a pain are fun to the chosen few. (See * again.) If you're going to shoot film, go for it. Go the whole way there. Don't just cross the ocean: step ashore.
Accordingly, I used to agree with those who said it makes zero sense to shoot color film in old film cameras. B&W is so much more expressive, because it has so many different "looks" depending on how you expose and develop it, such that it rewards you for doing your own work, whereas color film is just a set process that a lab can do better than you can.
But I only used to agree with the argument that it's pointless to shoot color if you're going to shoot film. That point of view has a lot going for it. But then I thought about it some more. Now I think there actually is one really good reason to use the color hybrid technique that is apparently common now: it's that it allows you to use the cameras. Because you can divide the practice of photography roughly into two main streams: you can care more about the results; or, you can care more about the experience and the process. It's usually assumed that the final result is the important thing, but who says so? Who's to tell us which we have to give more weight to? Old MMM (metal, manual, mechanical) cameras are clever, pleasing devices that enjoyed the better part of a century's worth of development and refinement. They can be very satisfying to operate. They're a breath of fresh air after using insanely complexified digital compu-cameras that completely bury the basic parameters behind layer after layer of sophistication. Mazda, the car company that is devoted to being a good corporate citizen of Hiroshima, used to have (or still has? I don't know) an advertising slogan, Romanized as jinba ittai (人馬一体), that translates roughly to "horse and rider are one." Back in the film era, I used to love a very specific feeling that I would get after using a film camera for a while, and it could be called jinba ittai. I felt the camera was completely under my control, and operating it became second nature. It got so I could do it without thinking. It became natural. Smooth. Fluent. Instinctive. And it didn't make up its own mind as to what it wanted to do; it was completely responsive to what I wanted it to do. No nannying, no second-guessing, no hidden algorithms or behind-the-scenes features that help you some of the time and frustrate you at other times. There's nothing wrong with today's digital cameras if that's what you like or need, or if you're focused mostly on results and just use the cameras you need to. But there's also nothing wrong with using beautiful old film cameras because you enjoy the experience.
That's my advice to the Y/N—and they don't even need my advice. You've heard their expression "you do you"? They do them.
But they should listen to what I say anyway, because, you know, I'm a legend. :-)
Mike
*Because devotees in any field are rare and few.
**Sign above the gates of Hell in Dante's Inferno. The top illustration is one of Gustave Doré's illustrations for Canto I.
***Of course Carl might say that if you're going to "go all the way," you should use an 8x10 view camera and make platinum/palladium prints.
Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)
Featured Comments from:
Dan Khong: "There is another good reason to shoot film (even if you do not have the time or opportunity to go all the way under the enlarger) is this: B&W films are very stable under the right storage conditions, and can be said to be archival! So for as long as I have those strips of negatives to rescan, the HD can crash or my laptop can conk out, and I will almost never lose my images (hopefully the house does not catch fire)."
Keith B.: "I was exposed early on to the concept that real, professional-level photography required the highest possible level of control of the medium. On film, starting out in the early 1970s, I shot mostly color, and some B&W. When I got my first digital camera, I was delighted to be 'in charge' of the color rendition, contrast, brightness, etc...something not available to the kid (me) shooting Kodachrome 25 in order to get that oooh-ahhh Ernst Haas-like color back in the 1970s and 1980s. Seeing today's Y/N shooters posting their color film shots on social media (Meta's Threads in this case) made me realize that, at least in my imagination, I miss the idyllic simplicity of not being able to control the color, contrast, etc. Things were simpler then."
Harry B Houchins: "I began my photo journey in 1965 using the GI Bill at the New York Institute under David Vestal. I moved on to the School of Visual Arts under Ralph Hattersley. I worked in the New York fashion industry for awhile then worked in various galleries in the city. I finally left New York City in 1975 for Oregon. In that time of experience and exposure I never truly became proficient in the darkrooms—no, not ever. In my own work I stopped making prints. I loved Portriga Rapid and Brovira but never felt I did it justice. A hell of a thing to admit, but there it is. I saved my negs until such time as the gods created a digital world and I could make the images I saw in my mind. I didn't know it was coming. But, it came. Your column today made me think of those years. Thank you. I don't miss a minute of those hours in the darkroom."
Bear.: "I’m lucky in Melbourne Oz. Big film revival going on with lots of little hand-run labs popping up. I don’t have enough time to do my own darkroom work any more. But I’m going to try a hybrid B&W model—have the negs lab developed and scanned—do my proofing digitally—then see if I can get analogue prints from the negs to match what’s in my head. I suspect it’s trying to scratch a mosquito bite with a feather duster, but best I can do."
Greg Heins: "I’m reminded of a chat with someone who teaches photo at a prep school. Lots of interest in traditional black and white. And he said that when the kids pull the print out of the fixer onto the whatever-the-name-is-for-the-heavy-leaning-piece-of-glass [viewing board —Ed.] and turn on the white light, they promptly take out their phones and make a photo of the print so that they can send it to their friends."
Gary Nylander: "Good article Mike. I once observed a young woman taking photos with a film camera from the deck of a B.C. Ferry. Every time she took a photo she would slowly and methodically advance the film using the film advance lever, she seemed to be taking her time as if she was savouring every second of using her film camera."
Christopher Perez: "Thank you for this trip down Memory Lane. Yes, we worked so hard for such esoteric knowledge, only for it to become obsolete. 'Did Agfa secretly change the formula of Agfa Portriga paper? (Yes.)' I was working at Samy's Camera photolab on Sunset Blvd. at the Cross Roads to the World, where we went through a lot of Agfa Portriga. We printed many exhibitions and portfolios for LA photographers on that paper. It had such a gorgeous nutty-brown tone and beautiful blacks to it. My favorite photograph of my grandfather has stayed with me to this day and it's still a joy to look at. Around the time I quit Samy's to return to UCI to complete my computer engineering education, things changed, and the Agfa that we all loved and used so much of was no longer the same. Never could figure out why until I read your comment. Keep up the great work."
Luke: "Damn. You should break a rib more often. I was afraid your 'early-onset rigor mortis' would take a lot longer to overcome. You know I agree with the anti-film rant, but there's something else here. You speak of 'insanely complexified digital compu-cameras that completely bury the basic parameters behind layer after layer of sophistication.' To me, a recent digital camera is so good that it lays bare all those basic parameters, and makes them easier to learn from and take advantage of. I'm a tech geek from way back, but I can ignore all the 'layers of sophistication' and just see photos in the (EVF) viewfinder, and control the focus, aperture, and speed like with any camera."
"Before I begin..." Wait! What?
[Fixed now. --Mike]
Posted by: Blind Paperboy | Friday, 31 January 2025 at 12:52 PM
Popular T-Shirt slogan: “ I’m not Getting Old … I’m Becoming a Legend”
Posted by: Jeff | Friday, 31 January 2025 at 12:52 PM
"They're a breath of fresh air after using insanely complexified digital compu-cameras that completely bury the basic parameters behind layer after layer of sophistication. "
Not to mention when you want to take a photo *right now* and mash the shutter button to have the camera not respond, for any of a number of reasons.
Posted by: KeithB | Friday, 31 January 2025 at 01:20 PM
From my perspective, you have earned legend status for sprinkling your pieces with just enough bread crumbs to send us scurrying down fascinating rabbit holes.
While I knew of Kingslake, today's reminder had me finding this (https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of-spie/PC13023/PC1302301/Lessons-in-lens-design-from-Rudolf-Kingslake--in-the/10.1117/12.3025342.full) presentation, which tied in nicely with your piece. The next jump came at the 8:40 point in the presentation, which brought me to the terrifying narrative (https://dirtbagdispatches.com/2018/07/12/dirtbag-dispatches-one-summit-five-people-two-lightning-bolts/) about how one of his students met his untimely demise.
Posted by: Dave Glos | Friday, 31 January 2025 at 01:45 PM
Mike, if you still have Elements of Style from your Dartmouth days you can now donate it to one of those Little Free Library kiosks. It has nothing more to teach you.
Posted by: Allan Ostling | Friday, 31 January 2025 at 01:47 PM
Mention of Kingslake brings to mind his book, "A History of the Photographic Lens" - a fascinating trip through lens development. It also has mini-biographies of many early lens designers. A great read if you're interested in the technology. And that brings to mind another great book for tech nerds. "Camera Technology: The Dark Side of the Lens" by Norman Goldberg. It explores all the non-optical components of mechanical cameras in great depth. {{NOT FOR PUBLICATION: Mike - please add your purchase links if you post this}}
Posted by: Bill Tyler | Friday, 31 January 2025 at 01:49 PM
Good ideas. No one under 20 is going to do any of this. EVER.
I'm still shooting film, because I have 50 years in using F2s and Leicas and Hasselblads, and most of my work is in the backcountry or someplace very, very remote like the polar regions and anything electronic is unusable.
But in-town? Shooting film is one massive headache. I've come to hate it. Labs don't follow directions (good luck getting your twin check sheet returned). All scanners are functionally impossible to use for any production voliume ... return with 100 rolls? This will take you a MONTH of cursing to get junky scans, And then ANOTHER month to get the results right cursing at Lightroom.
Of course, I hear you say, you can digitize your film WITH A CAMERA (hooray!) which only needs a copy stand and a calibrated light source and a way to keep the film flat and then some ridiculous software to invert C41 and then... you still have to edit it in Lightroom.
All of this is one giant annoyance. This is not photography. It's being tech geek and in addition to cursing at junky hardware and software you get to curse the entire experience; you end up hating doing photography, because now you've simply create a JOB. Life is too short for this nonsense.
I've come to realize I can use the Nikon D850 (all digital, all the time) and get superior results than I ever did even with the Hasselbad, and I am DONE an hour after returning from the job.
Multiple companies had an opportunity to make a simple process for using film by supplying local labs with excellent integrated minilabs and high speed scanners. The minilabs are now all falling apart, chemistry does not mix right, and every lab is hoping their Noritsu HS1800 scanner stops breaking, because parts are no longer available.
So everything associated with processing film, even for pro labs, is one step away from failure. There is no longer any industry investment. That we still have E6 chemistry at all is a minor miracle; those days are probably coming to an end fast. C41 will be right behind (Fuji is already out of the game; Kodak remains run by ... a retirement firm ... for some bizarre reason).
What happens when there is only BW film left? No pro labs will be able to stay in business. My local lab already senses this is coming. They will not last a month.
At that point it will be home processing. Some of us make our money in the field, generating the work, not playing amateur chemist at home. For us, most of the smart people went full digital years ago. With the exception of Hasselblad V lenses, I can reuse all my lenses on digital bodies and have finally started switching, because I am fed up with ridiculous scanner software (have you tried to use Silverfast for real? Wins the award for worst software interface ever designed).
The kids dropping off film at my lab indeed toss the negatives. Because they get their digital files and THEY ARE DONE. Who can blame them?
Kids are living in cities with roommates in 500 square feet apartments that cost $2500/month in rent.
Enlargers? Chemicals? Processing trays? Scanning on a flatbed?
COME ON.
The world has changed. Even I have come around to the conclusion the iPhone does 99% of what I need.
[Thanks for your thoughts, but this feature is called "Film Friday." It's for people who either shoot film or like reading about it. It's not a post about film vs. digital. Almost all of us shoot digital, exclusively or mostly. --Mike]
Posted by: Moving to digital | Friday, 31 January 2025 at 02:05 PM
Do any Y/N read TOP?
[I doubt it! At least not N. I even had one reader, a woman from Central America who wrote very good comments, tell me she was leaving because too much of what I wrote was too far over her head. I begged her to stay, but she's long gone. (Why does that sound familiar?) --Mike]
Posted by: Sal Santamaura | Friday, 31 January 2025 at 02:34 PM
Well, you have infinitely more film experience than I do. I have exactly zero developing and printing experience with film. The closest I have come is buying a developer kit, letting it sit around for a couple years, then donating it to Goodwill. I do enjoy the look of some of my film shots. My guess is that one can focus a lot on just becoming a careful film shooter, and then a careful film scanner/post processor, and be perfectly happy, though in my case, I find this path always takes me back to 100 percent digital. The simple truth is that I don't want to work so hard on that part of photography (analog developing and printing) and mostly I like photographs, whether digital or analog.
As I've mentioned before, a compromise for me might just be using a good DSLR with a nice viewfinder. Still digital, but with that old fashioned view. DSLR are like nice acoustic guitars, but with quality pick-ups inside.
Posted by: John Krumm | Friday, 31 January 2025 at 02:42 PM
Long time reader. One of the best posts ever!
Posted by: Peter Rottmann | Friday, 31 January 2025 at 02:44 PM
Individuality is one of the hardest things to establish today, especially in a flooded visual environment. Thus the age-old interest in anything offbeat. You could write about the interesting mistakes that one could make in printing (solarization? tinting?) to catch a trawler.
I gave up film when I couldn't process slide film at home (I did scan it afterward, but it's only color...) Doing the whole process yourself is different and rewarding. I never thought of scanning a print - who makes flatbed scanners in 16x20?
Posted by: Bruce Bordner | Friday, 31 January 2025 at 03:20 PM
In the early aughts I rented a darkroom to knock off a few 16X20 prints, I developed one print, visualized everything I would have to address and correct, realized the amount of: time (probably measured in days rather than hours), materials, money and aggravation I would have to invest, and quietly packed up my things and walked home- smiling.
I would never print in a wet darkroom again in my life, and I was (more than) good with that- even though I had no alternative at that point. I had not edited a single photo in photoshop at the time, I was just relieved not to have to endure the trials and tribulations of getting every single detail in wide angle and panoramic shots correct in every B&W photo I ever took! I love the look of B&W film, perhaps (perhaps) one day I'll learn to emulate it via digital. For now, I'd be quite content to shoot hybrid (B&W film, digital scan and print). Yes, digital prints are a different animal, but (in my view) they can rise to a level of beauty that satisfies my needs- unlike the look of B&W digital files. While still an involved process, it still makes dealing with an image rife with small details, often within various lighting scenarios, infinitely easier.
After decades of shooting B&W analog, I'm now quite happy to be shooting digital color. It's a different experience (the fact that it's color, as well as digital) providing its own challenge- my sense of color balance still needs... work!
Posted by: Stan B. | Friday, 31 January 2025 at 03:24 PM
Mike I need to eat a bit of humble pie. Not sure if you saw it but a few weeks back I sent you a dog photo via email. My claim was that digital could not give the same look. Well I took a similar portrait of the same dog with a DX digital and fast 50mm lens. I got the same gritty B&W look out of the digital equipment. Better actually. The question becomes why bother with film at all? After retreating from my thinker pose the answer is….Because I can. Because I enjoy the process and because I enjoy using vintage cameras, some as old as I am.. (70).
PS. Hope you are feeling better. Getting older is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Posted by: Mike Ferron | Friday, 31 January 2025 at 04:10 PM
That was a fun read, and, besides, I agree!
Posted by: Rod S. | Friday, 31 January 2025 at 08:52 PM
At first glance, I thought the picture at the top was a William Mortensen, and I thought "Oh Mike's going off the deep end without, well something important."
Posted by: hugh crawford | Friday, 31 January 2025 at 11:38 PM