Anyone still shoot film?

Well, you know, Bill, there are these things called "books" ...

 

Absolutely. Use the gear that gets you to your final result in as few steps
as possible. But if your end result is a high quality, long-lasting wall
portrait, then an optical print from a film negative is the obvious choice.

 

I've got an 80mm f/5.6 that'll infinity focus on my bellows with a
recessed mount.

Maybe I was thinking of infrared film?

 

Not odd at all; they've simply drunk the "digital must be better" Kool-Aid.

 

Odd that if the choice was so obvious that the White House
photographer is shooting with DSLRs.

Scott

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm not sure that I would cite the White House as an authority on
photography, or many other things for that matter!

But since the White House photographers are probably shooting mainly for
news publications, most of which are probably composing their pages with a
computer rather than a pot of paste, digital is probably the better choice.
OTOH, I ceratinly hope the official Presidential portrait and First Family
portrait have been shoot on film for maximum quality and longest life.

 

Dunno; he still could have drunk the Kook-Aid.

It also occurred to me, and this is a long shot, that there may be a
political aspect to this: after all, the last thing the Obama
administration (or any administration for that matter) would want would
be to have it revealed that someone in their entourage is
using--Horrors!--an antiquated technology. My god--the president must be
a Luddite!


[note post trimming]

 

I got a Aldia Tutor 1000 - made for lecture halls with a 1000W (serious)
ancient bulb. Worked well, but had to feed a slide at a time. Got a Leica
Pradovit 150 - and found that after a while more than a five magazines of my
own unedited slides in one sitting bored me as well!

One thing to note, the Aldis blew cold air over the slide and it never
popped whereas the Leica all slides popped.

Pete

 

Certainly not claiming they did, but I agree w/Noons that there's
nothing magically secure or particularly believable about EXIF data.
It's just some fields in an image file header: seems trivially easy to
rewrite it to suit one's purposes. Any programmer worth his or her salt
should be able to do that.

 

Dude... he's the White House photographer. He's essentially doing
photojournalism, shooting hundreds of images per day, which need to
be edited and annotated and filed, released to the press, and printed
and sent to people as quickly as possible. If I had his job, and I'd
love to, I'd be using digital, too.

I mean, you know, not with Canon gear, but still.

 

Peter Chant wrote,on my timestamp of 29/01/2010 9:01 AM:

I didn't say Astia didn't have enough colour for me. Can't you read?
I said underexposing it is an error. Comes from the old adage that E6 should be
underexposed by 1/3 stop to "enhance" colour. Don't do it with Astia. Simple,
really.

I'd *never* use Provia except for the new 400X. The rest of the Provia range is
old emulsion technology that Fuji has not updated in years, due to the low
demand from professionals. They concentrated instead on improving the Superia,
Velvia and Astia film, which is nowadays vastly superior to any of the older
Provias.

The often cited quote that Provia is the best slide film comes from folks who
last experimented with film 10 years ago and have no clue what is available
today. But they continue to propagate their old fashioned information as if it
was gospel.

 

Michael Benveniste wrote,on my timestamp of 29/01/2010 12:36 AM:

Actually, those make a lot of sense. I can't stop a slight smirk everytime I
hear folks claiming developers are toxic. Vastly more toxic is used fixer.
And that regulation points it out clearly. Ah well, back to the old jerry can
for the disposal of the used fixer then!
Not to be unexpected, most such council "regulations" in Australia forbid
disposal of developer but don't mention fixer! Shows what really happens when a
country allows bureaucrats to pose as "authority"....

Impressive specs! Thanks for that. My biggest problem with the entire Agfa
colour range, negative or positive, was always the same: longevity. Most of my
Agfa colour negatives and slides have turned to mush over the years. They were
already bad a coupla years old! I have 50 year old Kodachrome slides that look
as good now as they did back then, with perfect colour. And I have Fuji slides
dating back from the same time as the Agfa that look as good as new now.

Cut it into 120 roll lengths and farm it out to the Apug folks: there are a few
there that terribly miss Tech Pan! I'm still using Technidol LC and have a good
stash of it, but it's reserved for Adox CMS 20.

Ah ok. Thanks!

Funny you mention 800Z. I heard a lot of good and bad comments on this one.
Some claimed it had "horrible" grain, others claimed it was the best for night
shooting. I tried a coupla rolls in 35mm and had mixed reactions:
1- for daylight, I wouldn't touch it unless with low light interiors. Too grainy
indeed, weird colour balance.
2- for artificial lighting and at night, I reckon it is perfect! The obnoxious
large grain vanishes and all that's left is a fine grain that's easy to get rid
of with Neat Image.

This leads me to believe 800Z has a lot of grain in the blue light sensitive
layer(s) and a lot less in the others. Which makes it perfect as a high speed
film for interior shooting, artificial light, night shots, flash, etcetc.
I've since used it as such and am very happy with the results!
Here is an example:
http://wizofoz2k.deviantart.com/art/two-religions-two-cathedrals-142906985

 

Scott W wrote,on my timestamp of 28/01/2010 10:28 PM:

I couldn't care less about posting raw files, Scott. Canon or otherwise.
They mean nothing to me. I don't spend time agonizing over raw files, they just
get processed to a pleasing image.

I found the flaws straight away, and I still haven't "found out" that it was a
single frame.
And once again, you - intentionally? - totally miss the point, Scott.
The problem is not a flaw at 150%.
The problem is the completely uneven resolution in that shot.
Some areas - the ones you like to point out, like the street numbers - are
perfect and at the expected resolution, others are absolute mush.
When I see a digital shot - Canon or otherwise - that looks consistent with the
claimed resolution across the *entire* frame, I'll believe I'm looking atthe
claimed image quality. Until then, I prefer the even resolution of film,with
no surprises.

No, I don't want anyone to view it at 150%, never claimed such. But I'llshow
and point out the uneven resolution of that shot, using whatever magnification
is needed to perfectly demonstrate it. There is a difference between a
demonstration and asking folks to look at it at a given magnification, and you
know perfectly well what I mean so don't try to wordsmith out of it.

I'm glad you pulled out something I did years ago. You see, Scott: unlike you
and the other "film experts" around here, my workflow and what I do with my film
and scanners has not stopped in time. It has progressed. Reminds me to go and
redo that one with my current workflow, it'll blow your socks off. Stay tuned.

Perhaps. One never knows. Funny though, you have "seen" sharper 35mm film
shots than mine but you have never been able to produce evidence of such.
Interesting theory...

 

David Nebenzahl wrote,on my timestamp of 29/01/2010 5:41 AM:

LOL!
Buddy: I *eat* Skippy - in sausage form - everytime we do a bbq.
One of the best lean meats anyone can get.

Very true. I just found it funny because Araldite is one of those things I grew
up with: it found use since a very tender age, fixing fishing rods and all sorts
of toys. Didn't even realize it wasn't a universal brand!
Ah well, learn until I die, I suppose.

 

Jeremy Nixon wrote,on my timestamp of 30/01/2010 11:42 AM:

Yeah, after all you'd need to have *some* images in focus!

 

Scott W wrote,on my timestamp of 30/01/2010 9:41 AM:

Just like the small jpg I posted with the exif from your image?
Yes, indeed.

 

Scott W wrote,on my timestamp of 30/01/2010 11:01 AM:

But just because it can be easily faked it means it should *never* be used as an
example of truth.

And because the person in question has a long history of faking shots,
backgrounds, exifs, etcetc. There is such a thing as context Scott, in case you
have forgotten it.

 

OK, thanks because I would have tried that, from memory...

 

I am having second thoughts about the practicality of slides. I showed
super-8 movies on my projector well past their obsolescence and it was
cool but has been a long time... I traded the (nice) projector to a film
student in exchange for digitizing my old films. I have a digital
projector but I don't use it any more either, partly because of the low
res and awful contrast problems.

 

They will *all* be flawlessly archived online for a fraction of a penny
and accessible through our 180-degree VR implants at the flick of a finger.



Pixel-peeper's heaven...

 

Heh; shows how much you know (and makes my point): Skippy here is a
brand of peanut butter. Kinda messy on your grill, I'd think.