I Second That Emulsion (a film thread)

wal-mart! they subcontract it out to fuji, at least on the east coast.

got back a few rolls of film, not feeling any of it

Starting to think that I should sell my stores of traditional B&W and shoot all C-41. I'm not feeling gung-ho about developing myself, sounds like Wal-Mart is good processing+cheap, I'm probably never setting foot in a darkroom again and I can convert to B&W when I want to...

hating an entire 'roll' is less depressing with digital

haha I feel the opposite

I'm wired for sunk costs. Since I already own the camera, it doesn't feel like it cost me anything when a bunch of shots don't work out. Whereas (with the current system) I've got a $2.50 roll of Arista 400 Premium, plus $10 developing/shipping.
Totally irrational looking at the overall cost, I know.

kinda sad that it's going to take at least a week to get back my first rolls from the Pentax 645N. For some reason (maybe the big THWACK mirror sound and motor drive combined) it's the most fun camera I've ever owned.

moving into an apartment with a bathroom by myself, maybe I'll wait and develop my own B&W for a while and see if the extra control bucks me up

haha - I've mentioned before how I view film costs like groceries or something. it's healthier for my mind that way.

my experience with digital used to be - oh man, it looks totally great when I chimp at it - or when I chimp, I take 500 photos of a scene and chimp and think they all look great - and when I go home and put them on the computer, none of them look that great and I realized that I probably missed the angle that I really wanted or maybe there was some imperceptible motion blur that I couldn't see on the camera screen.

highly recommended to all: Polaroid Pro-Pack camera (packfilm camera that looks like a plastic version of an old press camera, complete with big flashgun) and Fuji FP-100C and FP-3000B. I paid $25 apiece for two and keep one kind of film in each.

Let my friend's daughters (~5 and 8) play with the 100C and they thought Polaroid peel-apart film was magic. I wish I had the portraits they took of each other, but they took them back to Louisiana to show their friends.

my experience with digital used to be - oh man, it looks totally great when I chimp at it - or when I chimp, I take 500 photos of a scene and chimp and think they all look great - and when I go home and put them on the computer, none of them look that great and I realized that I probably missed the angle that I really wanted or maybe there was some imperceptible motion blur that I couldn't see on the camera screen.

― dayo, Thursday, 19 April 2012 02:26 (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think when i first read that eggleston thing about just taking one shot of something, because it's easier/prevents confusion, it seemed like some sort of zen master challenge, but it's way more practical than that, & makes a lot of sense. getting a bad roll back makes me want to hang up my camera or go digital or stop goofing around with newly invented theories about what will make photos good, but that's fortunately a different impulse from the feeling-compelled-to-take-a-camera-out-&-photograph-stuff, so.

also i found a new (old) camera store in my town. i squinted through the window & saw that they sold extra colour film, which I like, & so maybe also sell a bunch of other stuff (like portra) that I can't get here. excited. some inevitable new old musky camera guy to tolerate my questions.

got film back from Wal-Mart:
e-6 120 - $5/roll, came back in plastic rolled inside of a tube
c-41 120 - $1/roll!!!!!, came back cut inside of plastic
c-41 35mm - guess they couldn't do dev only, $10 for developing and 4x6 prints, negs are loose in the paper envelope

makes me want to shoot a lot more medium format color neg

yeah I've tried to write DEVELOP ONLY on 35mm rolls I get developed at wal-mart, they just ignore it (on one, they put the price sticker over my instructions)

http://news.doddleme.com/news-room/and-so-it-begins-20th-century-fox-to-end-film-distribution/

you gotta think that this was a big source of revenue for film copmanies. yuk

hey so look at this:

http://varial-artworks.com/projects/view/?page=12

finding it v useful - like i am making mental notes to buy some Ilford PAN 400 to push to 800 - but pretty beguiling at the same time

http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad215/jiaoqu/scannnnnn1.jpg
http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad215/jiaoqu/scannnnnn2.jpg

http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad215/jiaoqu/scannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnner333.jpg

sorry. i just thought it looked cool.

looks cool

I really like those.

Stuck some Ekta 100 in to be developed last week - first film in ages. I'd been shooting for a few days with my EOS 10 because my 40D was in for repair (actually, I baulked at the cost of getting the whole shutter release replaced and just got them to clean it; in the process they put the superimpose screen back in wrong, and I needed to make another trip to Sendean to get it tweaked... and the free tweak mostly fixed my shutter problem...). On the way from Sendean to Jessops I took a photo of an apple core in a bus shelter (just autofocus testing really) and got verbally abused for five minutes by two meatheads! They threw the apple at me! I don't even do street photography FFS!

Anyway, midway through a roll of Neopan 400 B&W now, though I somehow failed to shoot any film with my hired 85L over the weekend (wedding shoot, borrowed 5D2 and 40D). Did take some EOS 10 shots with a borrowed 17-40L though. Wiiiiiide.

what in god's name was the reason the two guys gave for being upset?? I can't even begin to comprehend.

by the way, after a Miami trip, I dropped off 19 (!) rolls of film this morning. and the black and white rolls are still in my fridge.

"Ain't half some stupid c***s in the world, eh? Who takes a picture of a fackin' apple? Fackin' c***." Etc etc, a few feet behind me as I walked down New Oxford Street. I didn't react, but waited until they passed me at Bloomsbury St and glared witheringly at them as they turned back to me. The more stupid looking of the two actually looked confused. Like, "why didn't you try to fight me?" Marvellous, eh? And this is why I try not to just flagrantly wave an SLR around in central London. I rather hoped it was some extended Derek'n'Clive tribute but, nah, they were for real.

I'm so glad I hardly ever get any reactions at all. That's the kind of thing that would really shake me up. I could count the number of people who've ever acted even remotely upset with me on one hand.

A work colleague has just put 3 x 120 E6 rolls in for processing / hi-res scanning at Snappy Snaps. Total? £72. SEVENTY-TWO QUID. £14 for processing each roll, £10 each for the 15MB scans. He used to work at Jessops and refuses to use them for film processing as a result (they wouldn't be much cheaper).

I sent him a link to the place in Birmingham I used to use (unless they failed to do a scan I'd paid for and didn't respond to emails). Through them the same job would've been £31.70.

by the way, after a Miami trip, I dropped off 19 (!) rolls of film this morning. and the black and white rolls are still in my fridge.

― lou reed scott walker monks niagra (chinavision!), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 13:50 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

going places is just too much, i went to paris for a few days a while ago & was shooting a couple of rolls a day. this time of year is photo-happy anyway. i can't imagine going to pick up nineteen rolls of film though! what a great subsequent evening.

what was the place in birmingham, out of curiosity, Michael? i miss living somewhere that doesn't have a good lab (there was a great place in manchester called something like colorprint i used to go to, where they really knew their shit). jessopps lost a roll of my film, once, so i can't go there, but if not i'd probably not be so picky about dropping off somewhere.

man I got a lil overwhelmed with a mere four rolls from montana, I still haven't gone into them for any work aside from a minor crop or two

http://www.metrocolourlab.com/

Really not a very good website - you basically have to load some of the printable order forms to found out what some of the prices are and even then they're slightly contradictory.

Oh, the Jessops horror stories my work pal tells me. The retired couple who came back from a month in Hawaii with 25 rolls of E6 and 19 of them were then basically destroyed by the off-site processing (they can only do C41 in-store) - that was a good conversation for him to have.

oh man. yeah. i think i hesitated before ever mailing any film; to shoot some & then wrap it up and just leave it to the chance of royal mail just felt insane. & to take your film to somewhere that might not cherish it & treat it under the photographic oath of neurotic hypervigilant care unnerves me. dropping stuff off at a lab i try to check the negatives to see that they were all even printed, which doesn't always happen on account of scanners, &c. but going somewhere nice is reassuring.

on another note, however, 35mm film is 3 for 2 at jessops, at the moment. i'm still fussing around about what film to use & trying to find solutions to getting hold of something nice, whether it's expired or bought in bulk or whatever. & you can go buy a few, varied rolls of ilford B&W for £4 a roll, so it works for something.

how many of you have like a dedicated film fridge?

Nah, it's all in there with the cheese and beer and what-have-you.

how many of you have like a dedicated film fridge?

― catbus otm (gbx), Friday, 1 June 2012 18:09 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't refrigerate my films. i think because i always shared a fridge that i imagined could end up in buttery films. i should probably start refrigerating them?

I only refrigerate the stuff that's meant to be stored below 10C - yr E6 stuff and so on.

I've taken to putting my film in the fridge, though very little of it is particularly "special", mostly just cheap stuff. I got a big plastic tub with clip lid to store it in to minimise the chance of mishap, though! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaellambert/7218261068/)

I've been using Asda for dev-only processing as it's cheap and the opening hours are convenient for me, otherwise my local option is Jessops. I have access to a darkroom for B+W through my girlfriend, will be attempting to develop my first ever roll tonight! Have previously done a couple of prints.

I pop it in the fridge, because, why not? And sometimes I've got a lot of film sitting around, and we keep the apartment mostly un-airconditioned.
good luck on the the black and white development, btw!

yeah good goin, michael! i'm thinking about starting developing B&W too, would love to know what your learning curve's like. my friend - who i think possibly used to print colour phots, so this is a whole other thing - was talking about how much money she'd spend on equipment so that she could keep playing with an image, keep printing variations. but i still wanna do it.

will maybe put all of my slide &c film in the fridge. thanks ILP.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7245/7331389542_28b769ae53_z.jpg

A fairly nondescript image from the roll I developed, pleased it actually worked - was quite exciting taking the film out and seeing the images on the negative. Happy that the process is pretty straightforward, I think sometimes that reading about a practical process instead of trying it makes things seem more complicated.

On a tangent, Poundland in the UK are now selling Agfa Vista Plus 200, apparently re-branded Fuji. Picked up half a dozen rolls today, will see how I get on. Off to put them in the fridge...

On a tangent, Poundland in the UK are now selling Agfa Vista Plus 200, apparently re-branded Fuji. Picked up half a dozen rolls today, will see how I get on. Off to put them in the fridge...

ty so much for this!
& your phot's nice. geometric. photographic negatives are so beautiful. i don't routinely handle them - like they're always in a sheet or whatever, & sometimes i take them out and it's a real moment.

Hopefully on topic, I created a group on Flickr for live music/gigs shot using film:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/livemusiconfilm/

Ok, Jessops, you don't get any more of my Ektachrome 100...

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7077/7163023109_da1f77db1a_z.jpg

Had to crush the blacks on the JPG to get any kind of contrast but it just looks like a bad processing job to me. Yeah, it's well past expiry, but I've not seen such results with expired fine-grain slide film before. It looks like ISO 1600. The colour shifts may well be down to the chemicals going off.

Ok, the light is completely different here (and Lulu is two years younger!) but this is Ekta 100, decently processed, I think:

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3645/3599652131_9350eb0e15_z.jpg%3Fzz%3D1

Hmm, is that not showing up?

Trying again:
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3645/3599652131_9350eb0e15_z.jpg%3Fzz%3D1

Oh, forget it.

getting decent development of chromes is a huge pain. maybe it was once easier, but hardly anyone does it anymore, with most places mailing out to one of a few local labs. I messed around with some ektachrome and provia recently, and it turned out not to be worth it for the added cost, and the lousy looking results. I think the slides themselves actually looked pretty ok, but the scans were horrible. like absolutely bonkers atrocious, with bizarre cropping, completely out of focus, blown out everywhere. never seen anything worse. and the scans I got from duane's weren't great either. aaaand the scans that I can make at home aren't great either (scanning positives is a whole 'nother matter from scanning negatives). there's probably some place in nyc that will do a good job, but I don't care to spend the time/money trying to find it.
so I opt out.

plus developing/scanning costs a total of $20! crazy. a roll of negatives, from purchasing the film to taking home the developed roll costs me under $6.

Wal-mart is the best option for E-6 (as noted by Dayo above), everything is run through Fuji or Dwayne's lab and comes back for $5-6. They have a scanning service too, I think.

have a couple of rolls of ektar 100 to run through... is it usually p.good?

ektar is real nice. take pictures of some red stuff.

dumb q that i could google but you guys know better: what is the best way to buy film in bulk? the BW stuff i've been getting has been from my local CVS, but lately they haven't had it reliably, and the substantially-closer of the last two camera/film stores in mpls closed up shop a while ago.

also my one and only photog buddy (and an actual ~pro~, who has the most insanely charmed existence of anyone i know) is planning on setting up one of his rooms in his new apartment as a developing (but not printing) space, and said I could use it anytime. he also has a nice flatbed scanner, but given the time-consuming nature of scanning (right?) i'd rather do it at home.

plus all yr talk about shitty scans is making me wonder how different all my film pics would look with better scanning (they're all low-rez, for starters, none larger than 1900px in any dimension i think, which is basically half what my gf1 (languishing in the glove box of my car) gets. like what's the point of lugging around m lenses if you can't pull the detail, amirite

*haven't had it reliably AND never have more than two in stock