Overexposure, TIFFs, and the Giftable Guide to Film

Thank you ❤️ for supporting this independent, ad-free review, guide, app, and community publication for and by film photographers!

Your contributions give me the time and the opportunity to work on projects like film Q, which is the only web-based negative film inversion tool with full 16-bit TIFF and camera RAW support.

Still, film photography and the written word have always been at the center of Analog.Cafe’s ethos. That part has also grown this month, thanks to your support. I published several excellent community submissions and added four new in-depth articles, one of which is a new exclusive read for the GOLD members.

In this newsletter: A more convenient and powerful web-based film inversion app. Community submissions. Free film. Film overexposure done right. Next month on Analog.Cafe. Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

A more convenient and powerful web-based film inversion app.

film Q works unlike any film inversion tool. It manages film archives, runs on any device that has a web browser, and features one-button batch inversions.

The inversion mechanism is an important but small part of this project. There’s a lot that this app must do to work flawlessly — from self-managing a small virtual machine farm to efficiently rendering a consistent design across screens with live updates.

There are no tools on the web that can do the same. If you search for web-based negative inversion apps, you’ll get to pages that would flip your colours, but they would look terrible. Even Lomography’s effort to build a similar tool on the web seems to be short-lived, as they no longer actively promote it. The DigitaLIZA Lab only works with one small JPEG file at a time, crashes often, and yields pretty bad results (if you get it to work at all).

Meanwhile, film Q got another update this month: full support for 16-bit TIFF output. Though a true 16-bit pipeline was part of the app design from the start, you can now select TIFF file output as an option. This will produce high-bitrate archival-quality files with zero data loss, which can be beneficial if you’re planning to print big or apply extreme edits to colour and contrast. But be careful: those files are huge!

 ☝︎Further reading: “Are TIFF Scans Worth It?”

I also rewrote the Dropbox authentication, enhanced the interface with a few animations, copy, and design changes, and rewrote the help docs to include all the new screenshots, features, and a short video.

Community submissions.

I was surprised and pleased by the recent influx of community submissions. This month alone, I reviewed and published two essays, two guides, and one announcement. It was lovely reading these works, and I’m grateful for the authors’ trust in my edits, scheduling, and distribution. I am looking forward to publishing more this June!

Free film.

In case you haven’t heard, I’m giving away three rolls of Kodak Vision 3 film in very nice packaging every month to one lucky Analog.Cafe GOLD member every month! Details.

Film overexposure done right.

As promised, I wrote the internet’s most detailed guide on overexposing film negatives. This article goes beyond simply exposing for shadows and rules of thumb. I hope it’ll save you a shot and give you new ideas for making interesting photos on film.

Next month on Analog.Cafe.

June is the last month of school in many parts of the world, which means that the summer of film is almost here. ☀️