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@grainydays Jason demonstrates how a popular but controversial “rule” helps him make good exposures on expired film.
“The Rule” dictates that you should over-expose your colour-negative film by 1 stop for every decade it’s been expired. Not everyone agrees with this prescription, but Jason showed that it worked (at least in his experience).
For example, an ISO 200 colour-negative film that expired in 1994 is 3 decades past its prime so it should be metered like ISO 25 (200 — 1stop = 100 — 1stop = 50 — 1stop = ISO 25).
Jason takes “The Rule” a little further by suggesting to add 1/2 stops for every stop the film stock is faster than ISO 400.
So, an ISO 800 colour-negative film that expired in 1994 should be metered like ISO 100 — (1 × 1/2stop) = ISO 66, which can be rounded to ISO 50.
For black-and-white film, Jason suggests over-exposing by 1 stop for every 20 years past its expiry date.
Finally, the expired slide film should be shot at box speed and prayed for, which seems to have worked out for Jason as well. However, he did show some bad results when he tried to cross-process Kodak Ektachrome 64T in C-41 chemicals.
We may get a new colour film later this year or early 2025; it would be coming from China, and it has much to do with Kodak.
Before you read any further, you should know that the info presented here has sparse evidence. Moreover, all things said here are based on English translations from Chinese social media (i.e., the Redbook app).
Earlier this week, I saw a video by Isaac Abner on his channel, Overexposed: youtube.com/watch?v=ltnYiI…
There, he shared rumours from Reddit that the Chinese firm Lucky (who has already promised a re-release of the B&W SHD400: analog.cafe/r/film-photogr…) may be working on reviving of their short-lived colour film line.
Those colour films, as reported by Kosmo Foto, are the product of Lucky’s collaboration with Kodak in the early ‘00s (kosmofoto.com/2024/05/chin…).
It’s hard to say whether this will mean affordable, quality emulsions based on proven science or litigation that would block sales in the US/EU due to the IP that Kodak still owns. Only time will tell. Remember, this is not an official announcement but rather a collection of corroborated rumours about a Chinese company’s intention to step into colour film production.
More from Reddit: reddit.com/r/AnalogCommuni…
#video: Brian Wright shows Linus how to clean up the negative transparency from the peel-apart instant film.
Brian is one half of the Brothers Wright ensemble (the other, Brandon), who founded the CineStill film company. In this video, Brian shows Linus a technique that the Wrights developed for freeing up the negative from the black goo that covers it:
Peel-apart film is a virtually extinct format that still has legions of fans admiring the fidelity of the images and the experience of revealing the photographs. Once peeled, you get a grainless positive and a negative. The negative is often discarded as it barely contains a picture — but the technique Brian shows here turns it into a scannable transparency using a bleach washing method.
Once scanned peel-apart negative transparency is a lot sharper and noticeably grainer than the print. One could argue it’s the most important/archival part of the package that is peel-apart film.
I am now curious if a version of this technique could work for the modern integrated Polaroid film frames, which are descendants of the original Polaroid peel-apart film (see this passage about the modern Polaroid film’s technical origins: analog.cafe/r/a-brief-hist…).
#TIL: Autochrome is a colour photography process patented in 1903 that uses multicoloured microscopic potato starch granules to make some of the first colour photographs.
Developing Autochrome glass plates is akin to making black and white positives (a process that’s still in relatively wide use today) — but with a twist. Unfortunately, constructing them is a laborious and expensive process. As noted on Peta Pixel, there’s just one person who’s actively working on it today: petapixel.com/2024/05/06/m…
Autochrome plates are created by methodically and evenly spreading a random mosaic of mixed microscopic starch beads, which are individually painted orange, cobalt, and green. When the light passes through that mosaic, it exposes black and white emulsion behind it while each bead acts as a tiny colour filter — effectively making a localized trichrome.
Once a matching light wavelength freely passes through the bead “lens filter,” ex. green light through a green bead, it registers on the emulsion. The emulsion, when developed as a positive, appears transparent — but the green bead makes it look green again.
Now repeat that for millions of other coloured beads, and you will get a full-colour photograph.
This video explains Autochromes quite well: youtube.com/watch?v=hE3KjK… and the Wiki page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto…
An Australian film lab, Film Never Die, has just launched a Kickstarter project for their film camera design, Nana.
The camera was on presale on their website since October last year (I briefly wrote about it here: analog.cafe/r/film-photogr…). It then listed a 31mm 𝒇9 fixed-aperture lens, motorized film advance, and a metal body.
The Kickstarter version now offers a 31mm 𝒇11 single-element fixed-aperture lens with a top shutter speed of 1/125s. It’s a “focus-free” camera (similar to Kodak Ektar H35N analog.cafe/r/kodak-ektar-…). FND says they’re working on a side-in lens element (presumably for sharper close-ups), but it’s unclear whether that’s going to be done in time for the product launch.
The Kickstarter page: kickstarter.com/projects/f…
The camera is designed to be light and compact (110mm x 62mm x 38mm) and 300g with film. The company has also shared photos demonstrating the Nana lens outperforming their previous “reusable” (presumably plastic lens) film camera — though it’s the same image they shared last year, attributed to a 𝒇9 lens design.
Kickstarter pledges that include the camera are between AU$225 to AU$275 (or $150-$180 in USD).
Video: youtube.com/watch?v=PIcbJu…
The generative “AI” hype cyclone is sweeping across the internet as companies like Google, Microsoft, and Adobe pour billions into the technology.
It’s a net negative for small blogs like this one. Years poured into creating content are slurped up within minutes to be later regurgitated by chatbots. This week, I’ve learned that the world’s most popular search engine will push links to websites even further below their endless ad boxes to make space for their ML-generated stew.
Source: platformer.news/google-io-…
All that for hideously inaccurate results:
Nilay Patel noted on The Verge yesterday that Google provided terrible advice to the “why is the lever not moving all the way” question by a film photographer in their joyous Gemini video ad. Their highlighted advice was to *just open the camera back* (which would destroy the film), quickly followed by a clip of a guy happily taking pictures after the fact.
Source: theverge.com/2024/5/14/241…
Apologists will claim that film jams require opening the camera back. But as someone who’s been shooting film for over 13 years with very old cameras, I tell you this never happens. It’s a made-up scenario (with even worse “AI” responses) that a trillion-dollar company didn’t bother to think through before adding to their public ad.
Fucking posers.
The ad: youtube.com/watch?v=s4InWs…
YouTube Video