moving over to the dark side

Rummaging through some old boxes came across this kit with some exposed and unexposed rolls of film. Thing is they all expired some time around 2003… Dont hold much hope. Batteries still work though.
B&Ws got while waiting for the negatives. 3x fomapan to mess about with exposures - box speed, bracketed and pushed then start shooting in earnest with the tri-x.
Will be camera scanning the negs and converting with darktables negadoctor, so it still counts for inclusion here :wink:
So why B&W? 'Cos its film
And why Tri-X? Go have a look at Jane Bowns portrait of Samuel Beckett
(really like how she worked - click, click, done)
Curious to see how it pans out.

7 Likes

The dark side is proprietary software, not film :rofl:

5 Likes

FOSS film is a pipe dream, have you seen the price of this stuff???

1 Like

Build your own chemical lab in your living room! The government loves it :smiley:

1 Like

ahh chemistry - stinks and stains

I don’t think I’ll ever lean towards processing my own film, but I do like taking the film camera out every now and then. There’s something about maintaining the discipline to compose a scene as opposed to my usual method of “shoot everything, choose later”.

2 Likes

Hello, general advice from analogue photographers is: overexpose a bit, like a half or a full stop. My experience is that expired b&w films still work well, they lose some contrast perhaps. With color films you can except some color shifts, sell that as “original vintage” or something… :wink:

I’m just shooting a roll of expired Fuji Superia (develop before 09/2007) with my beautiful Agfa Paramat (around 1965). Just curious for the results.

In a recycling shop I found a 120 roll of Kodak Verichrome Pan. The package says: develop before May 61 (that means 1961!). So 63 years expired, we’ll see what that gives…

Have fun with your kit!

2 Likes

Please do share the result, if anything develops (pun intended).

1 Like

For a moment there I thought you were shooting medium format, and had gone over to the dark slide…

3 Likes

Have fun!

I find film photography fun these days. Excruciatingly expensive in volume, but fun for the odd roll or two. Film development (of B&W) and scanning are good fun, too.

And boy do I wish the digital camera companies put as much thought into their color science as those film emulsion labs did back in the day. Perhaps the Panasonic LUT support and Fujifilm recipe craze will get is there in time.

1 Like

A quote from a lecture I attended a short time ago:

Much good can be said about analog photography – not the least that we don’t need to deel with that stuff anymore … :wink:

3 Likes

It’s not only this, we are about to entirely lose the technology. The problem is that this technology, especially regarding color film, does not easily scale down to lab scale, and therefore it is difficult to preserve once the market for film totally vanishes, even at museum scale. If you want to get an idea what is needed to produce film, I can recommend this and the following two parts of the series on kodak’s technology:

1 Like

I do have dark materials as well. Not sure if any of them work or whether mom threw them out.

Is film proprietary? :thinking:

We’re not about to loose it, surely? The market is pretty much the strongest it’s been since digital took over in the Noughties. Harman are working on new films, and I’m sure Kodak isn’t going anywhere given the demand for Portra even at astronomical prices.

1 Like

I’d say yes, but it isn’t software :wink:

I’ll second that. Please do!

@kofa, @martbetz
I will, with pleasure. Can’t say when because busy with other things and a complete lack of a “photographic mood” surrounded by questions as “why taking photographs at all”, etc. :roll_eyes:

1 Like

Yeah, I have to admit that I was sorely tempted to get some B&W film and development chemicals since Pentax 17 came out recently.

But then I realized that I don’t need to get a new film camera, however tempting that is, because I have a couple ones at home (kept out of nostalgia) that I never use. No point in getting a new camera that basically does the same thing.

Then I realized that I should not get chemicals and paraphernalia either, until I have shot at least 100 pictures on film and decided whether I liked it.

Then I talked myself out of getting film after looking at lab prices where I live and realizing that there is a reason why I have not been shooting film for a while.

So I ended up walking around with my digital camera and taking some photos. Still, the sight of all that film is so, so tempting.

1 Like

Well I’m finding the whole shooting experience very charming. From the click whirr of the film advance to the surprised bafflement of the click extended whirr as the last frame gets pulled back into the cassette - what, already??? Then there’s the whole giddy excitement waiting for the negs from the lab. FYI for those in UK found a ‘filmprocessing’ lab down in Plymouth - reasonably priced and very quick response to queries. One more roll to shoot and they’re off.

2 Likes

At least a B&W development setup is relatively cheap. It’s really the digital scanning that’s the most expensive part.

To me, at least, the development is definitely part of the fun. And it reduces the turnaround time from photo to image to a matter of hours, not weeks.

No chance for color development, though. That’s a whole different level of complexity, toxicity, and expense.

2 Likes