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Friday, 31 January 2025

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"Before I begin..." Wait! What?

[Fixed now. --Mike]

Popular T-Shirt slogan: “ I’m not Getting Old … I’m Becoming a Legend”

"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.

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.

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.

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 {{NOT FOR PUBLICATION: Mike - please add your purchase links if you post this}}

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]

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]

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.

Long time reader. One of the best posts ever!

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?

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!

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.

That was a fun read, and, besides, I agree!

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."

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