This week, Miles @expiredfilmclub shot the NY Jets game on film, developed it, scanned it, and posted it while the game was still happening. (PetaPixel has more: petapixel.com/2024/10/18/p…)
Last week, I shot Aurora on film around midnight, then posted the results here (along with a long-form article: analog.cafe/r/shooting-nor…) in the afternoon (yes, I slept).
From what I understood about the demise of film photography, particularly in journalism, it was pushed out by the convenience of digital cameras. They were faster and more practical for time-sensitive applications. But in 2024, it seems less true, as we’ve learned to use the same digital cameras to scan film quickly and transfer the results instantaneously:
It’s easier to select the best shots out of 36 instead of thousands on a memory card, and well-scanned quality emulsions come with a formulated colour profile, in contrast to the editing some digital photos may require to look “right.”
Lastly, there’s something to say about the built-in authenticity of physical negatives in the sea of digital fakes and AI slop (see analog.cafe/r/shot-on-film…).
Of course, not every shot is possible on film, and it can be out of the budget (esp video analog.cafe/comments/lso8), but still.
According to 73 Degree Films, disposable film cameras didn’t get their start until the ‘80s with introducton of Fujifilm disposable camera. Their rise in popularity was swift, mainly fueled by brands, celebrities, and their commercial interests.
That growth led to various innovations, including Polaroid instant packs and underwater disposables. Today’s disposable, still in wide distribution after a brief lull of the ‘00s-‘10s, feature slimmer design and return of branding by well-known names like BTS.
73 briefly mentions the contraversy associated with waste, providing what I thought a nowel point of view suggesting that “reusable” plastic cameras are no better as their build quality may still inspire a trip to landfill after the first use.
Polaroid just made a new special-edition film available at their store: Reclaimed Green.
You may remember last year’s Reclaimed Blue release (analog.cafe/r/polaroid-rec…), which sold out quickly as it was the first emulsion of its kind.
Unlike the Duochrome editions, which are essentially black-and-white films with added dye, Reclaimed Blue is a colour film capable of rendering whites (Duochromes use colour dyes which cover whites of the black-and-white positives, yielding darker images).
Reclaimed Green is nearly identical to Reclaimed Blue in the way it works (including its ability to produce whites), only with a yellow dye added to the formula, which turns it green. However, the resulting effect is lighter than that of Duochrome Green (see analog.cafe/r/polaroid-gre…).
Polaroid Reclaimed Green 600 is available at the web store for $16.99 ($3 cheaper than the regular colour film): polaroid.pxf.io/an3RPZ [affiliate].
You can learn a bit more about this film from the excellent In An Instant channel on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=5sSpVp….
As someone who’s recently resigned from a well-paid gig to pursue a creative career, I can feel the sentiment clearly. It’s difficult to do hard things, like being an independent artist.
But,
Bruce will be broke in a year; I’ve got about six months. A person next to me on a train doing something they do not love is already broke. So what?
There are plenty of stats available online showing growth in photographic markets. Of course, this doesn’t make the pursuit any easier, but neither do sentimental writeups that rely on the words of a single person who lives a life different from most of us.
My point is that it’s always been difficult. The greats can and do fail, and the odds have not changed for anyone.
Whether it’s a hobby or a career ambition, photography is still worth a try. It’s in demand. People still want to see photographs, in fact, more than ever.
Jonathan Paragas, or @KingJvpes, recently published a video about his incredible experience finding a Leica M3 at a thrift store for $30.
Jonathan is a San Francisco/Bay Area photographer who’s got over 175K subscribers on YouTube thanks to his popular film camera thrifting videos and content about analogue photography. Of course, there’s more to his fame than just the subjects he picks.
In his recent video, @KingJvpes is seen shaking with excitement after finding a Leica M3 at a thrift store for $30 — a camera that sells for over a thousand dollars on eBay. Though the video had a lot of extra content, I was most impressed with Jonathan’s honesty (he didn’t try to make himself look cool or cut his emotional reaction to such a find from the reel) and his commitment to do the right thing.
Gear theft is a big issue, particularly in the Bay Area (from what I gather online). Which is why Jonathan spent considerable effort to see if his Leica find was lost or stolen before adding it to his collection permanently. But after months of scouring the internet, he determined that it isn’t (besides, why sell it at a thrift store if it could fetch a lot more on eBay?)
A new hand-held large format camera is “coming soon.”
I saw a video this week on YouTube about a 4x5 film camera explicitly designed to be carried and used without a tripod. It uses a mirror and a ground glass for top-down focusing and weighs “just over 2kg.”
This 3D-printed camera also comes with a unique focusing screen mask designed to host a mobile phone for immediately capturing the ground glass output on your digital device. While that may seem unusual and unnecessary at first, from what I understand, it’s a genuinely novel feature that lets you capture the world (inc. video) through the 178mm (50mm eqiv.) large format lens — which gives you an advantage of the incredible depth of field in a wide-angle. If you’ve ever tried to capture the view through a viewfinder of a regular film camera, you’ll know it’s nearly impossible to do it well. But a large ground-glass plane can make it happen.
Buyer’s remorse about the modern film cameras is beginning to cut through the hype.
I’d like to preface this by saying that there’s nothing wrong with being excited about new products. I take a positive approach to most products I review because I love film photography, I understand production constraints in 2024, and I do not expect perfection.
However, it must be difficult to be critical of a relatively expensive gadget that one gets and has limited time to play with. This is also fine. I am not happy about being attacked over not accepting that modern tools are somehow better in every way than their vintage counterparts (that happened, and it’s the Internet, so no surprise either).
But as time passes, the novelty wears and criticisms surface. Whether it’s Lok’s dissatisfaction with the build quality and design of the new Pentax 17 (youtube.com/watch?v=gwnlnE…) or @theinstantcameraguy’s complaints about Polaroid’s slow software fix cycle for critical bugs for I-2 (see: analog.cafe/comments/z0ow).
The truth about those tools is probably somewhere in the middle, and it will depend greatly on individual experience and expectations. But no matter what our collective opinion is about those new tools, it is nonetheless remarkable that there’s such a strong demand for film and film cameras in 2024. I sincerely hope that the manufacturers take note and remember that the user experience matters the most, whereas the hype always fades.
Update the firmware on your Polaroid I-2 to fix the autoexposure features.
Until recently, full auto, shutter priority, and aperture priority modes on Polaroid I-2 cameras have been lacking or useless, according to @theinstantcameraguy in his YouTube video: youtube.com/watch?v=j4z-T5…
But an easy firmware update that you can initiate through your Polaroid app is now available to fix it all. Once you pair your camera with your phone, you can view your firmware version in your app and update it if necessary. The version that fixes the above issues is v1.02.1.
In addition to the firmware announcement and explanation of what it fixes, @theinstantcameraguy notes that it took Polaroid an entire year to develop the firmware update meant to remedy critical features of an expensive camera. It is an unusually long software update cycle, even for a large company with the pains of corporate bureaucracy.
Based on his explanation of how the exposure issues were circumvented manually, it must’ve been a complex problem to solve. Nevertheless, Polaroid is also known for restoring one of the most complicated chemical products in the world. Hence, it’s hard to imagine this fix was beyond their ability to deliver in a shorter timeframe.
One last thing: the video is a little fumy, so if you’d rather not get upset, just update the firmware and enjoy the fix!
I found a video of someone scanning 35mm film with a microscope.
@atticdarkroom’s recent video is an experiment I’ve been meaning to do but never quite got around to. In it, he compares various scanners and demonstrates a relatively cheap method of adapting a digital camera lens to a microscope.
Of course, simple ideas can become complicated quickly, as is the case with this scanning setup. Because a microscope can view only a tiny area of the film strip, it needs to be shifted precisely and methodically over the entire area, and the resulting images would need to be stitched digitally. @atticdarkroom made each shift manually by twisting knobs with the numbers on them. Not to forget wet mounting, adapter lens aberrations, and vignetting — it’s a lot!
A mathematician and a stand-up comedian filmed the platform’s first YouTube video on 35mm film, only occasionally switching the format to 16mm to illustrate a point.
Stand-up Maths’ explainer video is not a short film or an art project. It is specifically YouTube-style educational content. In his exceptionally expensive ($2 per second, not counting the crew fees) video, Matt Parker explained various film formats and aspect ratios, including anamorphic lenses and IMAX. His team did film some anamorphic footage, which you may get as a gift (on a strip of film) if you subscribe to his Patreon account under an appropriate option.
This video was so impressive (just for its sheer audacity) that I half-expected some of it to be filmed on an IMAX camera. That didn’t happen — which I suppose opens the door for someone else to claim YouTube’s first. Maybe Marques Brownlee can afford some?
I made a short video about loading, testing, and packaging Kodak Vision 3 Motion Picture film.
A few of you ordered Cinema Shorts, anniversary edition triple packs (analog.cafe/r/new-film-cin…) last month — thank you. It’s that film.
I’ve since loaded all 200 feet of it into upcycled metal film canisters, tested the emulsion, designed the branding, ordered the materials, and packaged the boxes. This short video summarizes the process.
I didn’t include the part where I was sweating while trying to fit a reel that was too big for the bulk loader and the (literal) potato stamp. But that’s not important.
This isn’t exactly film photography but what a trip! Certainly fits in the vintage electronics category and there are some analogue bits there too: “I Made a CRT Game Boy” by James Channel.
Vladimir, it seems that for slide film it’s best to shoot at box speed. It worked for me thus far, though the results are never guaranteed.
This is an excellent video where Jason explores a few “rules” about exposing expired film with examples that I thought was very well made and informative:
@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).
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.
#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.
YouTube Video