Post by Steaphany on Jun 26, 2013 15:44:34 GMT
Did you ever consider that, in this age where digital photography predominates, not only does film photography thrive, it is now far more versatile in how deep into the nitty gritty details you can to go while also having everything available to you ? Yes, the darkroom itself is actually optional. Nor does film photography limit you to negatives, transparencies, and wet darkroom photographic prints, film can easily be scanned, whether in house or through a scanning service, into digital files that can join your process flow along with your digital camera images.
As many of the photographers who started out in film can attest, there once was a time when no one out side the employment of the likes of Kodak ever knew what were the chemical components of their processing solutions. Even there, you had to be one of the chemical engineers involved in a formulation. Everything was either trade secrets or proprietary. This was all due to the abundance of competition and the size of the market. There was just too much at stake to reveal just what made your formulation so much better than the competition. Likewise, film processing labs just had too much business to bother deviating from standard manufacturer process flows. If you shot a roll of Tri-X Pan at ISO 1600 and wanted the development pushed, well, apart from doing it yourself, you were out of luck.
Today, the film photography and wet darkroom industry is a bit more relaxed. There is a huge abundance of solution formulations to allow a photographer not only to mix a solution from scratch, but you can put on a lab coat, play chemist, and experiment with formula variations. For those not so inclined, you can simply buy pre-blended chemicals that you dissolve or dilute in water and off you go. If you are unsure of making the investment in a darkroom, but still want to play with film photography, you can easily send your rolls off to a lab for processing. Plus, you can now find labs that perform customized processing. Go ahead, shoot that T-Max 400 film at 1600 or have your E-6 pulled from the bleach at half the chemistry manufacturer's specified time, with a custom wet lab, just ask. A great advantage is you can operate at any do-it-yourself level. Start out using a lab which delivers scanned files of your negatives. After you become comfortable with the capabilities of the film photography medium, you can then decide what aspects you wish to bring in house. Whether you choose to develop the film yourself and then send it off to a scanning service or have a wet lab process the film and you do your own photo printing with an enlarger and a minimal darkroom, it's all up to you.
Along with my growing list of from-scratch formulas, and my post Photographic Chemicals & Darkroom Equipment, here are some great resources supporting film photography:
A great service by Praus is their Imacon 848 Scans and they can handle up to 5x7 film. To get a sense of what this can achieve, the Imacon 848 scanner can operate at 8,000 pixels per inch with 48 bits per pixel. ( Are there any dSLRs offering 48 bits per pixel ? ) A single 135 frame, 24mm x 36mm, would yield a digital file of 7,560 x 11,340 pixels, or simply 85.7 megapixels. ( Does anyone here have, or know of, a 85.7 MP full frame dSLR ? ) It turns out that 8,000 pixels per inch, 315 pixels per millimeter, actually exceeds the resolution of the highest resolution films. Pixel peeping at this scale will show you the shape of individual grains making up the image. Now, lets get crazy and look at what other film formats yield when scanned at 8,000 PPI. Type 120 or 220 roll film, depending on the camera, can produce negatives of 2¼" × 1⅝" would yield 18,000 x 13,000 ( 234 MP ), 2¼" × 2¼" would yield 18,000 x 18,000 ( 324 MP ), 6 cm × 7 cm would yield 18,900 x 22,050 ( 416.7 MP ), and 2¼" × 3¼" would yield 18,000 x 28,000 pixels ( 504 MP ). Large format 4x5 film would produce an image of 30,000 x 38,000 ( 1,140 MP or 1.14 GP ). I'll stop here, I don't want too many digital photographers in tears.
Another plus with Praus is their ability to process film and scan in the one lab. This means the lab does not have to ship the processed film back to you and you don't then need to ship the film off to a scanning service, saving all those potential problems of shipping loss and damage.
So, you have a transparency or negative and want to try you hand at scanning it yourself ? Instead of just going out and buying a film scanner and using the manufacturers software, take a look at the Software/Scanner bundles available through LaserSoft Imaging:
Their SilverFast suite offers
For those who never had the opportunity to own and use a film camera, or worse still, those who sold off their film equipment when digital exploded, new and used film cameras are available through the camera dealers listed in my Photographic Chemicals & Darkroom Equipment post, through ebay, and from these dealers:
An example of the kind of deals you can get these days is my purchase of a Sigma SA-9 fSLR through ebay. The camera was near new condition and came with two very nice kit zoom lenses. I chose the SA-9 since it is lens compatible with my Sigma SD14 and the total price was just $35 ! How's that for a camera that can yield a 85.7 MP full frame digital file ?
As many of the photographers who started out in film can attest, there once was a time when no one out side the employment of the likes of Kodak ever knew what were the chemical components of their processing solutions. Even there, you had to be one of the chemical engineers involved in a formulation. Everything was either trade secrets or proprietary. This was all due to the abundance of competition and the size of the market. There was just too much at stake to reveal just what made your formulation so much better than the competition. Likewise, film processing labs just had too much business to bother deviating from standard manufacturer process flows. If you shot a roll of Tri-X Pan at ISO 1600 and wanted the development pushed, well, apart from doing it yourself, you were out of luck.
Today, the film photography and wet darkroom industry is a bit more relaxed. There is a huge abundance of solution formulations to allow a photographer not only to mix a solution from scratch, but you can put on a lab coat, play chemist, and experiment with formula variations. For those not so inclined, you can simply buy pre-blended chemicals that you dissolve or dilute in water and off you go. If you are unsure of making the investment in a darkroom, but still want to play with film photography, you can easily send your rolls off to a lab for processing. Plus, you can now find labs that perform customized processing. Go ahead, shoot that T-Max 400 film at 1600 or have your E-6 pulled from the bleach at half the chemistry manufacturer's specified time, with a custom wet lab, just ask. A great advantage is you can operate at any do-it-yourself level. Start out using a lab which delivers scanned files of your negatives. After you become comfortable with the capabilities of the film photography medium, you can then decide what aspects you wish to bring in house. Whether you choose to develop the film yourself and then send it off to a scanning service or have a wet lab process the film and you do your own photo printing with an enlarger and a minimal darkroom, it's all up to you.
Along with my growing list of from-scratch formulas, and my post Photographic Chemicals & Darkroom Equipment, here are some great resources supporting film photography:
A great service by Praus is their Imacon 848 Scans and they can handle up to 5x7 film. To get a sense of what this can achieve, the Imacon 848 scanner can operate at 8,000 pixels per inch with 48 bits per pixel. ( Are there any dSLRs offering 48 bits per pixel ? ) A single 135 frame, 24mm x 36mm, would yield a digital file of 7,560 x 11,340 pixels, or simply 85.7 megapixels. ( Does anyone here have, or know of, a 85.7 MP full frame dSLR ? ) It turns out that 8,000 pixels per inch, 315 pixels per millimeter, actually exceeds the resolution of the highest resolution films. Pixel peeping at this scale will show you the shape of individual grains making up the image. Now, lets get crazy and look at what other film formats yield when scanned at 8,000 PPI. Type 120 or 220 roll film, depending on the camera, can produce negatives of 2¼" × 1⅝" would yield 18,000 x 13,000 ( 234 MP ), 2¼" × 2¼" would yield 18,000 x 18,000 ( 324 MP ), 6 cm × 7 cm would yield 18,900 x 22,050 ( 416.7 MP ), and 2¼" × 3¼" would yield 18,000 x 28,000 pixels ( 504 MP ). Large format 4x5 film would produce an image of 30,000 x 38,000 ( 1,140 MP or 1.14 GP ). I'll stop here, I don't want too many digital photographers in tears.
Another plus with Praus is their ability to process film and scan in the one lab. This means the lab does not have to ship the processed film back to you and you don't then need to ship the film off to a scanning service, saving all those potential problems of shipping loss and damage.
So, you have a transparency or negative and want to try you hand at scanning it yourself ? Instead of just going out and buying a film scanner and using the manufacturers software, take a look at the Software/Scanner bundles available through LaserSoft Imaging:
Their SilverFast suite offers
- Multi-Exposure - The original gets scanned twice at different exposure values. From these two scans SilverFast then calculates the final high quality HDR-Scan with a considerably increased Dynamic Range
- Kodachrome IT8 Calibration - Kodachrome slides usually have a blue cast and this eliminated by calibrating the scanner with a newly developed SilverFast Kodachrome IT8 target.
- A HDRi RAW Data Format - Uses 64bit HDRi color files, that contain all readable image information.
For those who never had the opportunity to own and use a film camera, or worse still, those who sold off their film equipment when digital exploded, new and used film cameras are available through the camera dealers listed in my Photographic Chemicals & Darkroom Equipment post, through ebay, and from these dealers:
An example of the kind of deals you can get these days is my purchase of a Sigma SA-9 fSLR through ebay. The camera was near new condition and came with two very nice kit zoom lenses. I chose the SA-9 since it is lens compatible with my Sigma SD14 and the total price was just $35 ! How's that for a camera that can yield a 85.7 MP full frame digital file ?