35mm photography in the 21st century

New Topic
This topic has been archived, and won't accept reply postings.
 Martin W 08 Aug 2016
I still have a 1990s Olympus 35mm compact camera, though I haven't used it in years. Last year I acquired my Dad's old Yashica 35mm rangefinder camera which dates from the 1960s. Then recently I found myself browsing idly in the window of a local used photographic equipment shop - and I was really quite surprised at how little you'd have to pay to get something that 20 or more years ago would have been a very respectable 35mm body, and some quite impressive glassware to go with it (prime lenses, not zooms - and certainly not autofocus).

Which lead me to wonder: how easy is it to source 35mm film these days, and to get it processed? For years, once I had given up on putting Ilford FP4 through my Zenit E and processing it at home, I stuck with Kodachrome - which was process-paid - and then Agfachrome, ditto. Towards the end of my 35mm days, when I was a bit less fussy and more lazy, I reverted to colour print film and commercial processors.

What about equipment & chemicals for doing your own processing? When I last did that sort of thing Jessops was the first port of call, Practical Photography or Amateur Pornogapher were where you found stuff advertised and you sent orders by post or, if you were really cutting edge, you ordered by phone with a credit card.

Has 35mm photography become a virtualised network of Internet-based cottage industries these days?
 Tall Clare 08 Aug 2016
In reply to Martin W:
It's really easy to purchase and process film - there's been a big resurgence in availability. There seem to be a lot more quirky films around than twenty years ago too, as well as the likes of Ilford and Kodak - see http://ntphotoworks.com/ for instance.

Lots of people out there processing film, though I have to say some are better than others and sometimes what seems like a good price really is too good to be true.

For film and for developing materials, http://www.ag-photographic.co.uk/ and http://silverprint.co.uk/ are both going strong.

There's also been a surge in interest in alternative processes, e.g. wetplate collodion, cyanotype, etc.
Post edited at 18:37
In reply to Martin W:
I used lots of film before I turned digital and always got mine from Mathers of Bolton. I just looked them up and they still sell a good range including my favourite Ilford FP4+, XP2 (Processed in C41 Colour print labs) and Kodak Tmax for Mono. Fuji Velvia seems to have survived and was always the first choice for Landscape stuff. I still occasionally put a film through my old Pentax Spotmatic, ME Super or Nikon F100 and get it developed by a mail order lab. I use Darkroom UK and get good service - I then scan and print digitally. I think it reminds me to think before I click because each shot costs about 50p!
Post edited at 21:51
 felt 09 Aug 2016
In reply to Tall Clare:

> There's also been a surge in interest in alternative processes, e.g. wetplate collodion, cyanotype, etc.

Anyone still use the "honey" process?
 MikeTS 09 Aug 2016
In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

Interesting. Question. After you convert to digital,how do the images compare with digital from the beginning with equivalent camera and lenses?
In reply to MikeTS:
It is indeed an interesting question and the short answer is quite well.

I used the mixed film/scan/digital print method before I had a digital camera and have some brilliant home printed A4 pictures on my wall from that process. I used Fuji Velvia film commercially processed, a Nikon Scanner and a pretty good printer - Epson R800 - to do this. The scanned files were 28Mb. Any bigger pictures I had printed commercially and they illustrated that I was at the limit of the resolution at A4 - any bigger and they looked unsharp.

I now have a digital camera that produces RAW files of 24Mb and the prints from that seem better even at larger sizes. How much of this is pure resolution and how much is in the cameras digital processing is not clear.

In the early days of digital there was a lot of material on the net comparing film to digital. A question often asked was - what pixel count equalled the grain count of film? I seem to recall a figure of 20Mb for fine grain film being suggested but it is not that simple. Grain is random but pixels are in a grid and the eye & brain can cope better with grain - leading to a perception of better sharpness in film printed images. The other aspect is how a grid based scan deals with random grain - there needs to be a much higher resolution with some smart computing to overcome this.

Another area that is relevant is the dynamic range of the two media. In the early days of digital cameras, film could detect a higher range of light values (Dark-light) than the digital sensors but modern advances in optical chips and yet more smart processing techniques have overcome this but only just.

In conclusion I would say that I now treat film as an expensive novelty that reminds me how it used to be, the bulk of my picture making is digital. As I take a short burst of images I no longer think 50p,50p,50p....... and perhaps there is a loss of consideration in that factor - a day with film puts that right and increases my critical faculties.
 Only a hill 09 Aug 2016
In reply to MikeTS:

I think it partly depends on the quality of the scan. I've used AG Photo Lab ( http://www.ag-photolab.co.uk ) for developing and scanning over the last couple of years, and although they do a very fine job, absolute image quality is still nowhere near what you'll get from a modern DSLR or mirrorless camera. For example, I have been shooting a Pentax MX with a Pentax-M 50mm f/1.7 lens (a good lens) and generally using Ilford XP2 400 film (which is fine-grained), yet this combo can't even approach the sharpness and resolution I'm able to achieve with my Fujifilm X-E1 and its 18-55 lens. This is a digital camera from 2012; new ones will yield even better results.

(This is just about the sharpest result I've ever been able to get from a scanned negative: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alex_roddie/16493085046/in/album-721576465721... )

*However,* it is theoretically possible to extract a huge amount of resolution from a 35mm negative, with the best quality scans. I'm sure that better scanning could yield bigger, sharper files. I still don't think they would be anywhere near as good as my X-E1 digital files, though.

There's also the question of dynamic range. Print negative film has superb dynamic range, but as far as I'm aware digital has now caught up (although you still have to be careful to avoid clipping highlights). Digital also gives you the flexibility of shooting in raw. Of course, if you process your own film, you will have something like that kind of control over your 35mm negatives.

Ultimately film and digital are just completely different. Film has a unique look that can be very difficult to emulate with digital – it's all in the grain structure and the tone. I think digital files are going to be sharper 99% of the time, with less noise and better objective image quality, but subjectively it's a lot more complex – and that's why many people continue to shoot film, because they love the look and the overall process.
OP Martin W 09 Aug 2016
Thanks to everyone for your advice and suggestions.

I discovered last night that I have yet another 35mm camera stashed away, my trusty old Olympus AF-1! I was little worried to find that the Panasonic lithium battery was still installed, but a quick check showed no signs of leakage, and it powered up and took a no-film flash picture no problem at all.

I also found that, although it had no battery, my Olympus mju actually still had a film cassette loaded. Just stuck a fresh battery in it and it seems to have remembered that it was on frame 5, which was clever of it. I think I might try finishing off that roll and sending it away for processing, just out of interest.
 MikeTS 09 Aug 2016
In reply to Only a hill:
Yes, I can see that the scanner would be the key component. Would it be correct to say that if you could scan a 35mm negative to more pixels than a top digital camera produces, it would be better - or is this too simplistic? And to ask a dumb question, how/when do you get from the negative to the positive?
Post edited at 13:45
 Only a hill 09 Aug 2016
In reply to MikeTS:

I'm no expert, but I think that even if you could scan a 35mm neg to the same effective resolution as a digital file, image quality would still not be as good. The reason for this is the size of the grain. Even the very finest-grain film is still quite coarse and noisy compared to standard DSLR/mirrorless sensors at an equivalent ISO and enlargement size. You could probably get a 16MP (or even larger) image from a 35mm negative, but it would still have grain – although film grain can look quite attractive. It just isn't *objectively* as good in terms of pure image quality due to the fundamentally different structure of the image at 100% magnification.

For example, based on my own experience, Ilford XP2 at ISO 400 looks about the same as ISO 6,400 on my Fujifilm digital camera. That's a pretty huge difference. ISO 200 on my digital camera is effectively free of grain and noise in a way that you just can't reproduce with any speed of 35mm film (although medium or large-format film could probably do the job, if scanned at sufficient resolution).

"And to ask a dumb question, how/when do you get from the negative to the positive?"

Not a dumb question at all Once a negative has been processed, it simply needs to have the colours reversed. Most labs will do this for you when they scan the negative, or it's trivial to do yourself in any image editor if you scan your own pictures.
 Only a hill 09 Aug 2016
In reply to MikeTS:
Out of interest, I've done a rough-and-ready comparison.

1. Both exposed at ISO 200
2. Both similar subjects
3. Both taken with wide-angle lenses
4. Both images were originally at 3091x2048 resolution
5. Both images are 100% crops to allow comparison of detail, grain and noise

Of course, lighting conditions are completely different, and the camera hardware is different too. It's far from scientific, but the comparison is as fair as I can find in my image library.

The film image: http://www.alexroddie.com/links/film.jpg
The digital image: http://www.alexroddie.com/links/digital.jpg
Post edited at 14:10
 MikeTS 09 Aug 2016
In reply to Only a hill:

The images demonstrate your points well. Thanks
 greg_may_ 10 Aug 2016
In reply to Martin W:

Interesting topic! I've been playing with film again having found my old Canon AE-1Program. Personally, I'm quite enjoying the whole slowing down process rather than the shoot and adjust later that I normally get with a digital camera.

Not sent anything away for processing yet, so who know's if I've taken anything decent!
 Adam Long 10 Aug 2016
In reply to MikeTS:

I still shoot a lot of film, as well as digital. I've got three high-end scanners and provide both images and scanning services professionally. Film grain and digital pixels are fundamentally different. As you magnify film further, the detail slowly becomes lost in the random pattern of the grain. With digital, assuming good lenses, detail increases as you zoom up to 100%, then breaks down into a pixelated grid. The end result of this is that both look good small, digital looks better fairly big, but film often still looks better when you need a really big blow-up.

But there is more to image quality than resolution, and I shoot film partly for the colours, partly for the gentler highlight response, and partly because I enjoy the more considered way of working. But perhaps the main reason is the way working with medium and large format draws the scene differently to small digital sensors. These are all subtle things but they do work in concert to make images that, to my eye at least, just look better despite not having significant resolution advantages.

Having said that, film technology stopped advancing in the nineties, scanning about 2005, whilst digital marches on apace. Each generation of sensors improves and whilst I don't have much need of more resolution bigger sensors are slowly becoming more affordable, dynamic range and colour improve too.

New Topic
This topic has been archived, and won't accept reply postings.
Loading Notifications...