other film formats

what happened to cameras which used 110, 126, and
kodak ring or circle?

why was 35mm preferred over these?
if i have 110 or 126 negs, can any photo place
make photos for me?

 

Good question, but the groups you want are:

rec.photo.equipment.stupid-formats-that-kodak-failed-to-introduce-because-they-do-idiotic-things-in-the-marketplace-from-time-to-time-like-those-formats-you-mention-and-aps
AND
rec.photo.film+labs-for-obsolete-junk

 

Actually, it was a good question for photographers who are
interested in all sorts of photography and recognizes that there has
been a lot of evolution in the business.
I remember press photographers who said that it would be a
cold-day in hell when they went from 4x5 to 2-1/4x3-1/4!
Then there were those who said, "Well, the films really have
gotten better and it is easier to make a fast lens for a shorter focal
length than a long one, so maybe there is a place for those little
format cameras."
I remember two of these photographers seeing a guy with a
Rolli at a press breifing and saying that the Rolli shooter couldn't
be taken seriously because of his minature camera.
And films and reproduction capability got better.
Then the only place for the minature cameras (35mm) was in
combat (though many still used the 4x5) and maybe sneaky photography.
So a good question could be: With the improvement in film
quality over the recent years, why have we been burdened with such an
old and out-dated format such as that dictated by 35mm film?
(This is an unmootable question on the digital camera groups.
They may know the answer there.)
The split frame 35mm cameras would produce a really good image
today and with few changes in other equipment.
There was nothing wrong with the smaller films but the
cameras. The camera can be made very good.
But we no longer purchase by requirement and things are no
longer made to satisfy technical requirements. They are marketed to a
target and this marketing ability has improved faster than film
quality.
The marketing creates the need/desire.
But then...maybe I might think this way because I am old and
inflexible.

Ken Cashion

 

From: (PCportinc)

110 and 126 are still going, 110 is easier enough to get processed and printed
still, 126 is straightforward to get processed but a nightmare to get printed.
Filmwise 110 film is still on the shelves, if you need new 126 film look up
Ferrania on the web, if you need Magicubes or just flashbulbs in general see
me. ;^D

Disc film is definitely dead as a Norwegian Blue, as is Kodak Photo CD.

For your second question, 110 can be printed by some labs, 126 by precious few.
(although it is standard 35mm film it makes modern autoprocessors go nuts
apparently).

Hope that helps!

 

From: Alan Browne

You are Tony Polson. I claim my £5.

 

35 was there first and the others did not offer enough advantages. 110
and the disk film, in addition, were limited in quality by small size
and hence lower resolution.

Biggest thing these formats offered, cartridge loading, was soon matched
by autoloading 35s.

Also, 126 did not locate film in the focal plane very well, so focusing
was spotty. Some shots would be okay, others out of focus. The
cartridge lacked the pressure plate of conventional 35s and other roll
film formats.

 

In that context I agree. But the formats mentioned were brought out to
push the consumer side of Kodak films and nothing else.

In that, Kodak et al hit the nail on the head with APS, but the format
is intended for and useful to P&S consumers. The camera companies
ignored APS for other more serious photographic pursuits.

See above: there is so much available at 35mm as to make investments in
a new system prohibitive.
If the 4/3 dig. format takes off and if the densities there approach
being able to make clean 24x18 prints, then we won't care about sensor
size, but we'll all be replacing our lenses over time...

But, repeating, the OP was mentionning "dead" formats like 110, 126 and
disc...


Cheers,
Alan

 

Yeah, go ahead claim it.

(confused)

 

....agree with everything you say, except your parting shot. Digital is
well on its way to becoming most serious amateurs and pros "film" of
choice. It is but a question of time.

 

I used my Pentax A110 just last week at a rock concert where the idiotic
staff wouldn't let me take my ME Super in because it was 'professional
photography equipment'!!!!!
Admittedly, I probably wouldn't have taken it if this wasn't the case, but
it did mean I could fit an SLR and four lenses (one zoom and three primes)
into one small camera bag designed for a digital camera.
You can still get 110 film easily enough, but unfortunately none of the
films are particularly good quality - Kodak make a 110 cartridge with some
horrible ISO400 'Gold' film (the results are terribly grainy). I think Fuji
makes the best 110 cartridge with ISO 200 Superia film.
Most big one hour labs will tell you they'll have to send it away for
processing, I think it would be near impossible to get any 110 film
processed by a one hour service, but finding places that will do it in a
week is easy. However, I tried a new place recently and I think they messed
up. All the shots were heavily contaminated with light and I only got about
half the pictures I should've had. I think it must have been so long since
they last got a 110 film, that they couldn't figure out how to open the
cartridge up properly.
You can still buy slide mounts for 110 film format, I've been considering
getting some and then scanning the negs. If only I could get some decent
slide film in a 110 cartridge, I reckon the results would be really quite
good.

Chris.

 

Some of those improvements have given new life to older gear. I think part of the resurgence of interest in old cameras, like folders, is due to their good results using modern
films.

The 35 mm format is very successful, and the movie industry is still using a similar film for a great deal of work. Basically, it is the established leader. There are consumer
films like APS, which do explore new ground, and it is possible to buy 110 film at some department stores. What would be interesting is if the 16 mm film format goes to any
still camera developments, though I doubt there is much market for it.

I think you mean cameras like the Olympus PanF, and other half frame cameras. Some of the minilab gear may not work well doing automated printing in that format. However, I
have seen a couple articles about professionals still using the PanF. Definitely still a functional change from 35 mm.

Probably just made to a profit point. It is a shame that half frame options for 35 mm do not exist in the new market. With the mostly electronic film advance, it could be a fun
settings option for a camera. As it stands, only the Hasselblad XPan takes advantage of that idea, though in the opposite direction to get larger than 35 mm panoramic views.

That is the hope, though it is not always effective. What is bad is pushing ever increasing features over simplicity and ease of use. I doubt many people ever look into the
owner's manual far enough to understand the settings on their cameras.

No . . . but there is a market for that as well. ;-)

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
Alliance Graphique Studio
<http://www.allgstudio.com>

 

..

. . . . . . but why would you want to ?

;^)

 

Is 126 the big cartridge thing that goes in my dad's instamatic?

 

Well, I agree. But there are still some old Zeiss Ikon Contaflex 126 cameras
out there with some really nice lenses. Actually, the Contaflex 126 was a
good example where the camera was better than the film.

 

Well, I will stand by that statement.
The apparent popularity of digital has more to do with a combination of
marketing hype and techno-whiz-bang 'cool'. It is not that digital has
reached and exceeded the quality standards of photographers but that the
quality standards have been lowered to reach digital.

I remember one of my last outings with a digital camera. I was shooting a
St. Patrick's Day parade and I had lots of memory cards and 3 spare
batteries. (I still had my Yashica T4 super in my coat pocket.)
Unfortunately, the digital camera let me down (as it had several times in
the past) and ran out of power long before the parade was over. I pulled out
the Yashica and finished the parade in film.

The next day, I had both the digital prints and the film prints in my hands
so I could compare them side by side. Same position, same lighting, same
day, same scenes and the film shots were so much better in every way that I
sold off all of my digital cameras and returned 100% to film.

It was an epihany...a paradigm shift...an eye-opener! Prior to that, I would
have guaranteed that the shots I was taking with my digital were far
superior to anything I would get from old, obsolete, film technology. I was
caught in a techno-haze and didn't want to believe that the digital cameras
(that I had paid so much for) wouldn't be 'better' than film cameras...but I
was WRONG!

Digitial shots that I was particularly proud of, now, didn't look so great.
Had the pictures changed? No...what changed were my quality standards once I
saw what film could do. The digital shots didn't look so go any more. Once I
had a 35mm film shot I took in honour of a friend's birthday and I had it
enlarged to 8x10. Inkjet 8x10s, (that I thought good enough to display on my
walls and had given to friends as gifts) looked pretty shabby in comparison.

It was enough to get me to swear off digital completely and there has been
nothing that I have seen posted as samples of current digital cameras
(costing thousands of dollars) has impressed me. Neither 6Mp nor 8Mp nor
11Mp has reached the point where I can see any advantage to justify the
excessive costs of digital gear.

 

They died.

35mm is clearly a brilliant compromise between quality and convenience.
Sure, MF is better quality, but it's a major pain to use. The smaller
formats don't provide enough added convenience over 35mm to be meaningful.
Of course digital does (no film costs, instant gratification), so that's why
consumer digital is doing to 35mm what 35mm did to MF.

No idea.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

 

I have a local lab that I deal with and they do traditional enlargements and
NOT digital printing and I know exactly which labs in my city use a Fuji
Frontier (and I avoid them like the plague!).

I have had a chance to download samples from 11Mp and I still am not
impressed. It is about 1/2 of the resolution I get from 35mm and nowhere
near what my 50 year old 6x6 TLR delivers. (Thinking that the 11Mp matches
35mm is a symptom of the digital delusion...people were claiming (and
sincerely believing) parity with 35mm film since the 2Mp cameras came out!)

When I think about digital I see limitations, restrictions and a lack of
freedom and NOT the other way around. I always felt that I was tied down by
the battery problem...the file storage problem...and the weight of
accessories that had to be carried with digital while travelling. At home, I
felt tethered to the computer.

Now, with film...I never worry about having to have 5 sets of fully charged
batteries in my pockets...sorted according to charged and discharged. I
don't have to worry about always making sure I carry my charger with me when
I go on a trip and juggling the batteries in the charger...with film, I buy
one battery before I go on a trip and I have no doubt that it will last me
for the entire time. (Actually, my local camera store has a battery 'club'
which gives me FREE, fresh batteries for my SLR for 5 years!!) Travelling
with digital, I had to have a laptop or a storage device with me to off load
the memory cards...and they had batteries TOO!!

When I was done with a film, I have a nice Lowepro film vault so I don't
worry about running out of storage space. I vividly remember being on a 2
week holiday with ONLY digital cameras..what a fiasco! Sure, the party line
says: "You can shoot as much as you like..." but that isn't true! You can
only shoot up to the limits of your storage and THEN you have to stop
shooting; find a place to sit down where you can see the LCD; and start
weeding out the shots that you think (based on the view on the 2" LCD) which
shots you are going to delete (forever) in order to free up some space. (Oh,
while you are staring at your LCD the battery dies!!)

Oh yes, cards these days are quite huge but so are the new file sizes so, it
equals out...you buy a Hi resolution camera with anhuge file size and you
have to buy a huge storage card to hold a worthwhile number of shots..unless
you decide to reduce the resolution (and file size) of each shot which
defeats the purpose of the fancy Hi res camera!

When I use film, every shot is at FULL resolution and a couple of bricks of
film takes up no more space than a pair of shoes in my luggage and, if I run
out of film...there aren't many places where I can't buy more.

Digital, for me, is a step backwards in quality and convenience. A
limitation and not a freedom.

 

The writing is on the wall, whether you want to believe it or not is really
unimportant. The technology blew away darkroom work with the introduction
of Photoshop 4 years ago. The quality of dslrs reached centerspread
magazine quality at least 2 years ago. Even the wedding photographers are
now rapidly switching to digital cameras.
That said, there is still room for people who want to make chemical prints
in their basement, and artists who want to print 30x40" black and white
fibre based prints.
Just don't try and make us believe that 35 mm film cameras have much of a
future...even 3 years from now.

 

You omitted the effectiveness/creativity of using available multitudes of
various film types in conventional 35mm cameras that tend to enhance a
pictorial scene to the photographers delight which can later scanned and
become digitized, while still having the original neg.

The fact remains, with the exception of specialized photographic markets
most benefited by digicams, the need for digicams is not as much of a
necessity as you allude them to be. If digicams outside the markets of
industrial necessity were to disappear, film would still be scanned
providing digitized pictures to those who want digitized pictures. Yet, if
35mm film cameras were to suddenly disappear, we would be faced with having
to be somewhat satisfied with a lesser variety of creative photo conditions,
which may to some degree be offset by the increasing use of existing or
newly developed filters.

Consider also, that we have yet to reach a period in time where comparisons
can be made between the useful lifespan of film cameras as opposed to the
useful lifespan of digicams. We already know that cameras made up to 50
years ago (and in some cases longer) can provide esthetically worthwhile
scenes, especially when coupled with the technical expertise of behind the
scene technicians.

Digicams have yet to achieve that level of useful confidence.

Nick

 

The biggest drawback of digital is that it is as contrasty as a fast
slide film. Comparing prints, you were not comparing camera formats, you
were comparing printers. Have a digital photo printed on a
Tektronix/Xerox Phaser dye transfer printer sometime, and you would
probably revise your opinion.