Mono Magic: Photography, Breaking Bad style • The Register Forums

Sunday 22nd March 2015 10:34 GMT Fihart

Dust to (bloody) dust.

As your kitty pic demonstrates, 'real' photography was/is blighted by dust. Try scanning old slides or negs and you'll appreciate digital cameras more. Add the weird issues with Kodachrome and you'll see why sales of film scanners never took off.

The real joy of 35mm was that a good lens was all you really needed -- the rest of the hardware had little bearing on results. With digital there's a big difference between the output from compact snappers and professional gear, though I've yet to see a digital camera with the physical charisma of a 1958 Leica IIIG or a Nikon F.

9 3 Reply
1. Sunday 22nd March 2015 10:38 GMT Nigel Whitfield.
  
  Re: Dust to (bloody) dust.
  
  The kitty pic also suffers from the film - Adox CHS100 - which is quite prone to spotting, I find, and even more than usual with the caffeine developer
  
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  1. Monday 23rd March 2015 09:27 GMT Fihart
    
    Re: Dust to (bloody) dust. @1980s_coder
    
    One of the most pronounced differences is the use of cheap zoom lenses on budget snappers. Pros use a range of lenses. Perhaps explains why shots with phone cameras can be surprisingly good.
    
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  2. Monday 23rd March 2015 16:02 GMT Ian Michael Gumby
    
    Re: Dust to (bloody) dust
    
    Dust?
    
    You can get issues with dust on DSLRs when you have to change lenses.
    
    The only time you have dust and dirt issues is in the dark room that you don't have with digital.
    
    The other issue is if you don't load the film properly in to canisters for developing or you don't mix your chemicals correctly or use out of date chemicals. (The issue of loading film on to spools has become less a factor when the spools became plastic and not single piece metal which required you to pinch the 35mm roll. ( Yeah, I'm old enough to have mastered both)
    
    As someone who grew up doing B&W photography in the 70's and 80's, I prefer digital. Not because its better, but that its easier to work with and I don't have the $$$ for a good darkroom.
    
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3. Sunday 22nd March 2015 21:53 GMT ecofeco
  
  Re: Dust to (bloody) dust.
  
  "The real joy of 35mm was that a good lens was all you really needed -- the rest of the hardware had little bearing on results."
  
  Exactly. Or most any other film camera. The magic was, and still is, in the lens.
  
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  1. Tuesday 24th March 2015 10:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    Re: Dust to (bloody) dust.
    
    Agree. I have a few point and click cameras (all Panasonic ones) with Leica lenses.
    
    Never had a bad photograph from them to be honest. I did get one without the Leica lens and it wasn't great.
    
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4. Monday 23rd March 2015 10:51 GMT jjk
  
  Re: Dust to (bloody) dust.
  
  Film grain, too. Film actually has surprisingly low resolution.
  
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Sunday 22nd March 2015 10:34 GMT keithpeter

pinhole cameras are fun

Just saying, if you can find a community darkroom and want a project for an afternoon.

Using 35mm film as negative

http://www.kodak.com/ek/US/en/Pinhole_Camera.htm

Using printing paper as 'negative'

http://www.pinholephotography.org/Beer%20Can%20construction.htm

The wheelie bin camera guy

http://www.pinholephotography.org/

Might dust off the old Nikon this holiday.

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1. Sunday 22nd March 2015 10:56 GMT Nigel Whitfield.
  
  Re: pinhole cameras are fun
  
  Do! It was a proper holiday that inspired me to get back into film some years back.
  
  I'd been in Köln, and seen so many people in the cathedral just experiencing it through a three inch screen instead of actually looking. So when I set off for Sicily by train, I took the FG20 with me, and came back with some great shots.
  
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  1. Sunday 22nd March 2015 11:13 GMT keithpeter
    
    Re: pinhole cameras are fun
    
    @Nigel: I experience things with a pencil and a sketchbook more these days but may indeed dig the brass brick out. The apotheosis of 3 inch screen isolation must be the selfie stick. I may experiment with handing total strangers the Nikon and asking if they can take a photo of us. Sort of Richard Hamilton process.
    
    @Everyone: Retro analogue things are back in fashion (vinyl records, film cameras including instant, knitting, making stuff like furniture, cooking). Is this because we want to leave marks in some way through the process as a kick against the pixels? If OP wanted a crisp sharp colourful picture of his moggie, he would have just taken one on his iPhone. Instead, the image presented, dusty though it is, has a story and is a momento of time spent.
    
    Google 'William Christenberry box cameras' for an idea and a theme (change over time).
    
    The coat: off out before the downvotes start...
    
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    2. Sunday 22nd March 2015 21:58 GMT ecofeco
      
      Re: pinhole cameras are fun
      
      " Retro analogue things are back in fashion (vinyl records, film cameras including instant, knitting, making stuff like furniture, cooking). Is this because we want to leave marks in some way through the process as a kick against the pixels?"
      
      No. It's because it was (mostly) a lot simpler and more durable to use.
      
      When the high tech works it works great. But when it fails, it is non-repairable by the average person and often very, very costly to fix. Do not get me started about incredibly stupid interfaces, including mechanical ones. Black on black, anyone? 5 level nested menus? "Press 4 for more options"?
      
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2. Monday 23rd March 2015 16:05 GMT Ian Michael Gumby
  
  Re: pinhole cameras are fun
  
  You know you can go out and buy a decent camera for under $100 USD.
  
  Fun cameras would be the old Roloflex twin lens reflexes that took 120mm film.
  
  Or an old Nikon body. Saw a couple of old Nikon F (original , 1950's) bodies for sale.
  
  In terms of film... I wonder if they sell technipan still.
  
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Sunday 22nd March 2015 10:43 GMT Anonymous Coward

Don't forget...

Local Camera Clubs - many are filled with "old duffers", but they are old duffers with years of experience and are always willing to share that experience and the kit that goes with it.

Leica Range Finders (and their Russian/East German copies) are great fun to play with and can be had for not a lot of money on ebay (although with the situation in Ukraine the supply may soon start to dry up).

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Sunday 22nd March 2015 11:02 GMT frank ly

Ah, I remember ...

... developing slide film in the bathroom, after fiddling under the duvet, with a bucket of warm water as a temperature control bath and a small bucket of very hot water for topping it up. It's very easy if you keep to a procedure and I had good results from the first attempt. I thought they were good anyway.

I used to take stereoscopic picture pairs and viewed them in two small hand-held viewers fixed side by side with a piece of foam rubber betwen them to enable fine adjustment.

I've thought about trying that with my digital camera using two pictures side by side on the screen and using the cross-eyed technique but never got around to it. Has anyone done that?

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2. Sunday 22nd March 2015 13:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: Ah, I remember ...
  
  "[...] with a bucket of warm water as a temperature control bath and a small bucket of very hot water for topping it up."
  
  In the subtropics the water from the roof tank came out of the tap warmer than 68F. Ice cubes had to be used for temperature control.
  
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3. Sunday 22nd March 2015 19:38 GMT DiViDeD
  
  Re: Ah, I remember ...
  
  There's a cheap plastic splitter you can get to produce crosseye 3D images in a single frame. I have one and it produces surprisingly good results once you get your head around the changed aspect ratio you're working with. I use the Loreo Lens in a cap 3D that cost me about 20 AUD and works fine on Eos 30 film and D1X. They do subframe versions too, for your APS-C sensors, and although it's a bit of a gimmick, people still get impressed by them.
  
  As for film, certainly. There's a discipline that imposes itself when you have 24 or 36 frames rather than 1,000. Having to wait for the result also trains you to 'predict' the result, to actually see the image you want, rather than snapping off a couple of hundred frames blindly and hoping the money shot will be in there somewhere.
  
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4. Monday 23rd March 2015 15:57 GMT AJ MacLeod
  
  Re: Ah, I remember ...
  
  (Re: stereo pairs)... Yes, I've quite often done that - you will generally need to sit quite far back from the screen to avoid too much eyestrain but the results can be good. There are also a fair number of good stereo images on Flickr etc - I actually find that my eyesight is slightly improved after a period of crosseyed viewing! (I'm a little bit short sighted)
  
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Sunday 22nd March 2015 11:16 GMT Anonymous Coward

I remember doing this with my Dad.

As a teenager I used to do all this with my Dad, we had converted a bedroom into a Darkroom for both colour and B&W.

Still remember the almost magic of B&W prints just appearing before my eyes in the developer tray, had to let it get 'too dark' as the red 'safelight' made everything appear dark.

Still have most of the kit gathering dust somewhere. Including his quarter plate camera....

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Sunday 22nd March 2015 11:19 GMT Mage

Well, it's a hobby

I started with a Zenit in 1970s after years of "toy" cameras and occasionally using my dads.

I have about 4 or 5 film cameras including a big Olympus OM10 kit and a half frame range finder.

In the later years (1990s) I got the films processed to "gold" archival Photo CD, (not the later rubbish over compressed poor quality consumer jpeg format Picture CD). This allowed the content for media projects and internet.

Keeping the negatives and slides safe is a problem.

I borrowed a prof. slide scanner to scan all my Dad's old slides, but most had deteriorated badly. Scanning old photo albums on the SCSI based scanner and repairing fade was more successful

I'd not go back to film. I can backup my photos easily now. Colour balance is less of an issue too.

Film is a hobby for people with lots of spare time and money.

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1. Sunday 22nd March 2015 11:43 GMT Nigel Whitfield.
  
  Re: Well, it's a hobby
  
  I won't dispute that it can take time, but I do think it can be a lot cheaper to develop film than people think, and if you shop well the rolls of film are relatively inexpensive too
  
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2. Monday 23rd March 2015 16:14 GMT Ian Michael Gumby
  
  Re: Well, it's a hobby
  
  You know you have a serious hobby when you have an old drum dryer in your dark room. ;-)
  
  (Yeah and rolling your own film too. ;-)
  
  I've shot with a lot of different cameras and formats. And while I learned on film, going digital for me was easier. I started when I was 5, but got burned out by the time I was 18.
  
  I started to get back in to photography when I got a D70 back in 2004 for a friend's wedding and safari.
  
  I purchased a Nokia 1020. Sure the OS isn't that good, but it worked well as a phone, but was a killer camera that you could put in your pocket. And yes, the 24MP makes a difference over other phones.
  
  I just ordered a Nikon 810. Sure its overkill, but then again, I'm getting back in to wanting to shoot again.
  
  (They say its the last camera you'll need to buy) ;-)
  
  In truth, it doesn't matter how good your camera is. Its up to the photographer to make the shot great. Post work in either the darkroom or photo-shop can only make an OK photo better.
  
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Sunday 22nd March 2015 11:32 GMT Ole Juul

Water issues

All my Nikons are gone, but I've still got a nice collection of historical cameras including the Kodak No1. Otherwise there's a good 4X5 and a home made box camera that takes film up to 15" wide. I've even got a stash of film up to 8X10, lots of unused paper, and the fixings to make my beloved D25 developer from scratch, and piles of trays and tanks. So what's the problem? Where I live now I'm on a septic and I can't be putting my rinse water in there. It's nice in the country, but I really miss my old photography, and the many hours spent in the dark with that lovely smell of developer and other chemicals.

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Sunday 22nd March 2015 11:33 GMT TheProf

Poundland

I bought some AGFA film in there yesterday. I've been running it through a Recesky Twin Lens Reflex I bought from eBay. It's a DIY plastic camera and it puts all the 'arty' bits in for you.

I get the films developed at a local ASDA (because it sounds like AGFA!) I get the smallest print size and ask them not to to cut the negatives.

As for not experiencing 'life on a 3" screen, I agree. When I saw a Space Shuttle launch I gave my camera to my friend and watched the whole thing with my own eyes.

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1. Sunday 22nd March 2015 13:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  That was the principle used for old school panoramic pictures. The camera rotated and the pupils sat very still - apart from the one who sprinted to appear at both ends of the picture.
  
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2. Sunday 22nd March 2015 18:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  That old red dot..
  
  One tricky thing to do with digital is IR. But then again since Kodak stopped making their film, it's not easy the old way either. At least a digital camera can be converted for IR/UV if you've got a spare body.
  
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  1. Sunday 22nd March 2015 19:50 GMT DiViDeD
    
    Re: That old red dot..
    
    I still have a Canon 20Da (for 'astronomy') with an extended IR sensor, which produces excellent results on APS-C. If they could do it back then , I'm pretty sure these sensors would be available in more modern DSLRs.
    
    The 20Da will be coming camping with me at Easter for some low noise night shooting and interesing (I hope!) round the campfire shots.
    
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    1. Monday 23rd March 2015 11:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
      
      Re: That old red dot..
      
      Modern sensors are normally already very sensitive to IR. But that itself is a problem since when taking daylight photos most people want to capture the visible spectrum only, so camera manufacturers put an IR filter right in front of the sensor. You can get most modern canons (probably other brands as well) converted by taking the IR filter out, but this makes the camera unusable for daylight photography (unless you put an IR filter on the lens)
      
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  2. Monday 23rd March 2015 11:37 GMT Nigel Whitfield.
    
    Re: That old red dot..
    
    Rollei still sells a range of IR film (manufactured by Agfa), and there's also an Ilford IR film too
    
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Sunday 22nd March 2015 12:21 GMT LesC

Can't beat medium format b&w film - even though I've got a Nikon DSLR it's more satisfying getting a good shot with my Agfa Isolette 3 and Ilford FP4 / HP5, believe this stuff's resolution can be measured in greyscale gigapixels as it's at molecular level?. And my trusty Leningrad - IV light meter to this day it's point this thing at the sky, ground then take the middle reading. Not instant results as with digital but cameraphone users havn't the anticipation of waiting for your shots dropping through the letterbox.

Smiley face as it's what you get when you've shot a good 'un.

LC

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2. Sunday 22nd March 2015 13:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  An unrepeatable roll of slides came back mangled. It appeared that the film had come off the developing process track - and the toothed transport had punctured the slides. On complaining the lab scanned the damaged slides and digitally corrected the holes before making a duplicate slide.
  
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Sunday 22nd March 2015 13:13 GMT JeffyPoooh

"Knowing you only have 36 exposures at a time can impose discipline."

If this is a genuine ambition, then for digital equivalency...

Find an old memory card that has a capacity described in MB, not GB.

In fact, some digital cameras have a tiny memory built in.

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1. Sunday 22nd March 2015 14:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: "Knowing you only have 36 exposures at a time can impose discipline."
  
  Many professional 35mm photographers in the 1970s used motor driven magazines holding hundreds of frames. They just pressed the trigger to take multiple shots. Out of this large roll of film they then picked the handful of good shots. A far cry from lugging 10x8 plates up a mountain in Yosemite.
  
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  1. Sunday 22nd March 2015 21:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    Re: "Knowing you only have 36 exposures at a time can impose discipline."
    
    Those backs were not so widely used - check old images of sport events or the like and tell me how many are in use. it's not difficult, they were large and bulky -, and could hold *one* hundred frames or so, not "hundreds", but very special versions made for some scientific tasks, and even more bulkier.
    
    Anyway, at 5 fps - the average max speed but for very special versions again - , they would last 20 seconds. Motors were usually separate from the film holder, you could still use them with standard film rolls, even if at max speed they would burn one in less than eight second. But an expert photographer could load a new roll in less time some now takes to change CF card ;-)
    
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2. Sunday 22nd March 2015 15:28 GMT Moonshine
  
  Re: "Knowing you only have 36 exposures at a time can impose discipline."
  
  That's luxury. In the 90s I switched to 10-expure medium format because I thought 36 exposures was causing me to be too slap-dash. Medium format (in my case a second-hand Mamiya TLR) was a great because developing and enlarging it was easier that 35mm (detail and tones was fantastic, dust was less obvious, handling it was easier).
  
  In the early 2000s I remember the great Usenet flame-wars about 35mm-vs-digital and later medium format-vs-digital.
  
  Nowadays my 20MP Sony Xperia Z3 Compact phone can probably pick out more detail than Fuji Velvia, but it still doesn't have a colour, tonality and veracity of film. RIP silver.
  
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  1. Monday 23rd March 2015 13:13 GMT druck
    
    Re: "Knowing you only have 36 exposures at a time can impose discipline."
    
    The Fuji X series of cameras has a pretty good Velvia film simulation.
    
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3. Sunday 22nd March 2015 15:37 GMT beanbasher
  
  Re: "Knowing you only have 36 exposures at a time can impose discipline."
  
  Absolutely. Used an Oylmpus OM10 for years and learned to "look before you shoot." Now I find I get the shot I want first time (most of the time). While others take 10 20 30 shots and never really get good picture because they think I can always take another and never think.
  
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4. Sunday 22nd March 2015 16:19 GMT Paul Hovnanian
  
  Re: "Knowing you only have 36 exposures at a time can impose discipline."
  
  36? Try 12 shots with 120 film in 6x6 format (Rolleiflex SL66). Or 8 shots with an Zeis Ikonta (6x9 format).
  
  Fortunately, I live a few miles from a major camera shop that caters to professionals with film and does 35mm and 120 developing.
  
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  1. Sunday 22nd March 2015 17:56 GMT Neil Barnes
    
    Re: "Knowing you only have 36 exposures at a time can impose discipline."
    
    Roll of 36 * 35mm? Two good shots.
    
    Roll of 12 60*45mm? Two good shots.
    
    Two sheets of 5x4"? Two good shots...
    
    Funny, it's always been that way for me.
    
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    1. Monday 23rd March 2015 11:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
      
      Re: "Knowing you only have 36 exposures at a time can impose discipline."
      
      This is something which someone should investigate, I think. If I'm lucky I get a good picture (something I'd consider printing) from a roll of 35mm film, while from 5x4 my rate is something between 1 in 3 and 1 in 2.
      
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      1. Monday 23rd March 2015 19:07 GMT Hugh McIntyre
        
        Re: "Knowing you only have 36 exposures at a time can impose discipline."
        
        Back when I did some medium format, the long time that it took to manually focus, meter, and compose a tripod-based shot meant that you spent a long time really looking through the viewfinder and then often deciding "no, this shot is not worth it" or correcting the composition to get a better shot. Rather than quickly click-click-click with a 35mm camera with auto-exposure. So it's not surprising the fraction of good pictures is higher for medium format, and 4x5 is the same.
        
        Whether 35mm is any better than digital in this regard is questionable though. And, you can take the time to check and compose digital shots too.
        
        Also, film was a big PITA in a studio if you were taking tons of shots with medium format and needed to keep switching 12-exposure film backs at a rate of knots all day :(
        
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5. Monday 23rd March 2015 13:46 GMT Harmless
  
  Re: "Knowing you only have 36 exposures at a time can impose discipline."
  
  On the flipside of the argument, I can think of hundreds of things, people, places and events from my past that I'd quite like to have photos of, but I don't have any because film was such an expensive pain in the nethers.
  
  With digital I can *choose* whether to be lax about deleting the duds, and still have shots that cost virtually nothing, allowing me to record things for future nostalgia sessions. And they stand a chance of having more realistic colour than I ever managed with my 35mm old point-and-shoots. I'd NEVER go back to film!
  
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Sunday 22nd March 2015 14:05 GMT Anonymous Coward

Secondhand prices

Selling most 35mm cameras seems to attract no takers. A friend finally advertised her Nikon on a local "free" site and had only one reply from someone who was collecting old cameras.

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1. Sunday 22nd March 2015 18:12 GMT keithpeter
  
  Re: Secondhand prices
  
  "Selling most 35mm cameras seems to attract no takers."
  
  Pop a card on the noticeboard in the local art school (the one that does degree level fine art) in your area. That audience seems to be interested in the possibilities and most art schools will have a wet darkroom tucked away somewhere.
  
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2. Sunday 22nd March 2015 22:31 GMT John 110
  
  Re: Secondhand prices
  
  When my son did a photography course at college some years back (2007), he needed a 35mm film camera with manual controls. My old Practika was too automated so we hunted for a Pentax K1000 (gold standard apparently) That's when we discovered that a Vivitar v3800N was A) a Pentax clone and B) only £60 new. Another £10 added a Pentax 50mm lens, and there you go.
  
  These are still availabe on ebay bytheway
  
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