The Death of Film, Chapter 31

Yesterday (September 8, 2008), my local supermarket took away their Drop Box for film processing.

The C-41 machine was pulled out of my corner CVS a few months ago. (They still do prints from digital files, and they still accept film for processing.)

For a brief interval, there were FOUR drop boxes and TWO One-Hour processors within walking distance of my house. (Eckerd when they were down on the corner, CVS when it was in the local strip mall, Hannaford, and the local PhotoLab about a klick away. This would have been back around the year 2000? 2002? (When did my local lab close? 2006?))

Now, there's only the CVS drop-box.

Today's "Not Dead Yet!" Film Post

Perhaps for the first time this century, there's good news on the "Kodak Processing Mailer" front.

For several years now, Kodak has contracted out their mailer processing. (It seems to have finally come to rest at Dwayne's in Parsons, Kansas.) For a while, it was sent to an address in Maryland and then forwarded to Kansas, and then returned to the customer via some slow mail service. Last year, Kodachromes were taking two weeks or more for the round trip. For a couple of years there, each time you sent off a mailer, you would never know where it would come back from, or how long it would take - except you knew that it would several weeks.

This season, Dwayne's has resumed returning Kodachromes via first class mail.

With the return of spring, I'm shooting Kodachrome 64 again - and the last three batches I've sent to Kansas have come back to me in 6 days, 5 days (!) and 7 days, and have come via First Class Mail (just like the promise made on the mailer, the promise that had been ignored in recent years).

This is the first encouraging news about the survival of slide film that I've experienced lately.

.

Today's "Death of Film" News, #34

Postage went up today - up 5% for a First Class letter - and it actually went DOWN for additional ounces - but non-machine-readable items - lumpy stuff like, say, film mailers - got completely p4wn3d.

A mailer -by weight - would actually have gone down to 58 cents (from 63 cents) - but the new "shape" rates make it a "large envelope", and 97 cents: up 54%.

It still pays to send multiple rolls together, but: jeez!

Film mailers now become even less competitive.... (I have about 50-60 still on hand.)

Today's "Death of Film" News, #33

this guy

http://www.unicircuits.com/shop/index.php?currency=USD&cPath=27&sort=2a

has a boutique business in Japan exporting hard-to-find photo supplies.

If I ever shoot through my stock of film-on-hand, I'd been idly planning to buy a 100' of Neopan 1600 from him. (To keep my Tech Pan company, I guess.) Now it's "stock up before the hoarders".

>July 20, 2006
>Fujifilm to discontinue black & white bulk rolls, Rembrant V papers

>This is bad news for everyone enjoying the great Fuji Neopan films by "rolling your own", i.e. buying in 30.5m/100ft rolls. We are disappointed to inform you that Fujifilm has announced that they will drop Neopan 100 Acros, Neopan 400 Presto, Neopan 1600 Super Presto and Neopan SS from their product line in March 2007. We expect a lot of stock-up purchasing before that, leading to fears that the pipeline will run dry long before that and will do our best to counter it. We recommend that you stock up well in advance.

>Note that this does not affect the Neopan film supplied ready in cartridges.
> Neopan will not disappear - for now (?).
>
>Rembrant V fibre based papers are also affected.

Today's Story from the A-V Department

Ok, I've been shooting slides for 30 years or so;
by now, I must have close to 10^4 mounted,
with another couple thousand transparencies
that I might yet mount.
(boop)

Kodak stopped production of slide projectors about two years ago.
I've heard that this year they very abruptly stopped support, too.
(boop)

Which makes me a little anxious about being so
deeply committed to what's now essentially a dead medium.
(boop)

So - in addition to stockpiling bulbs and trays for my Carousel projector -
(boop)

I just bought a Bell & Howell "Ringmaster" from OGS surplus, as a backup.
Ten bucks. (It works, too.)
(boop)

Getting it home, I discovered that it's not just one of the models
with sound - - it's actually one of the _recording_ models
(a "779B", from about 1977).
(boop)

Here's a recognition silhouette :
http://www.uaf.edu/library/media/equipment/video/ringmaster.htm
Note the slot for a cassette.
(boop)

Which means that I now have the capability
to record my own synchronized narration onto cassette.
(boop)

I'll have to poke around and figure out how the sync tone works.
(boop)

Roll Film

As the world goes digital, I seem to be moving more and more Old School. Last fall, when I mail-ordered Rodinal, I had to order some film as a make-weight to meet the dollar minimum. So I bought a few rolls of the most obscure film that I could think of that I've actually been meaning to try: Ilford's Delta 3200, in 120.

When that arrived, I dusted off the MF cameras. Rediscovering the Rollei was so satisfying that rather than wait for my B&W results, I stopped in at Photo-Lab and bought the slowest color print film they had on hand:

Feb 11, 2006: 1 roll Portra 100 UC $5.27 + 8% = $5.69
(Nice that I could buy a single roll on a whim, but it's only $3.99 at B&H. It's fully 30% more expensive locally.)

Kodak has stopped selling "DP-12 for 120", but they still *honor* them. So I sent it off to District Photo, 16 day turnaround.
(ALSO just like the old days...)

And seeing THOSE results was so much fun that this weekend I stopped in NYC to stock up on 120.

March 25, 2006 K&M Camera, 1st & 23rd AND Broadway (8.375% tax)
16 asst'd rolls of 120:

2 Reala @ $2.59
4 Pan-F+ @ 2.95
2 Plus-X @ 3.07
2 Tri-X 320 @ 3.24
4 Tri-x 400 @ 3.19
2 HP5+ @ 2.59
2 Delta 400 @ 2.74

(and 4 rolls of the last Agfa APX 400 135-36 @ 2.99)
$67.24 + $5.46 tax = $72.70 total
that's $59.74 for eighteen 120 films ($3.32 each)
and $12.96/ four 35mm ($3.24)

Notice a couple of things:
- I can buy 100-speed Fuji in NY for HALF the price of 100 EK here locally.
- Reala (color!) is CHEAPER than most B&W films.

And note the discovery of "K&M Camera": B&H prices, and open on SATURDAY! (Where has THAT been all my life?)

Addendum:
In other "120" news:
researching the camera ads, we learn that K64 was available in 120 from 1986 to 1996. The final processing run was a few years later (1999?).

A certain 'Old-World' charm

Photo-Lab in Schenectady has been around since 1914, they've been at the corner of State and Erie since the 1930s - since George Eastman was alive. My father used to be their customer. Last year, when Kodak dropped B&W paper, the media called up Photo-Lab in Schenectady for comment.

Most of my photographic life, I've been oriented more toward Albany, or, more typically, NYC. So I don't recall EVER buying anything there: I've always been price-conscious enough that I buy my photographic supplies by the pallet, usually in NY, or wherever I find a bargain. (But come to think of it, I might have brought them a roll for processing, once. On my bicycle.)

I find myself currently woefully low on my inventory of roll film, waiting for my springtime expedition to B&H. But, the other Saturday I happened to find myself in Schenectady (when they were actually open!) and dropped in at Photo-Lab to purchase A Film. A Film for My Rollei.

"One roll of your slowest 120, please".
I paid cash.

I felt like Bertie Wooster:
It was like the 20th Century had never happened.
(Or most of it, anyway.)

(PS: I'm going to send it in for processing on a Kodak mailer.)

Just like Christmas

Today (Veterans Day) is a holiday, and a cold winter morning. I slept in late, stumbled downstairs to make coffee, and - when I opened the door to compost the old coffee grounds - there on the porch was a FedEx package. It really felt like Christmas morning. What could it be?

Why, Freestyle came through with my Rodinal order! They had back-ordered me a couple weeks ago, and - as Agfa has stopped production - I assumed that it would never come.

When it didn't come from Freestyle in LA, I turned around and ordered some from Unique in NJ, which arrived a week ago, in about 36 hours. Now I seem to have a lifetime supply fully two liters. At 1:100, that's 800 rolls of 35mm; but still 200 rolls even at a more rational 1:25 dilution. (Which sounds like an insane amount of film, but I seem to have something like 140 rolls of B&W on hand....)

Poking around my darkroom, I find that my lifetime supply of Rapid Fix is looking pretty dubious. I may need to buy some useable fixer before I proceed here.

Paying it forward

On Tuesday morning, my old buddy Rod turned on the Bat Signal: his son Andrew (now 19 and a college sophomore) is taking a photogrpahy course and could use a camera, as Rod's hand-me-down Oly gear is falling apart.

"What I’m leaning towards right now is an older manual focus system, and even manual exposure system, though one that can do aperture priority and shutter priority exposure (as well as manual) would be okay. He needs a 30ish to 70ish zoom or near normal fixed lens and a 70ish to 200ish longer zoom as well.

"So my question is, what do you recommend, and more importantly, perhaps one of you has some equipment we could buy or rent."

Well, he's come to the right place. I just happen to have a spare F3. And a drawer full of spare lenses.

It went out Thursday.

Nearly thirty years ago, back on 25th Street, Rod was the guy who taught me how to load and develop film.

Stock up before the hoarders

First it was120 kodachrome, which I missed (mid-'90s). Then K25, which I also missed ( a couple years ago).. Last year, it was Tech Pan, which I actually heard about in time to stock up on some cans of bulk. Agfa 25 went away at some point, too. This spring, EK discontinued B&W paper, but I have too much paper already.

Agfa has been in bankrupcy twice this year: in October, they announced that the rescue negiotations had failed, and production would cease by the end of the year. I made an efffort to stock up on Rodinal. B&H won't ship. Central Camera in Chicago has some in -store, but they don't list it on-line. Out at Adorama. Not at Ritz. Freestyle lists it, took my money, but it's back-ordered. When the shipment arrived, no Rodinal, so I ordered more from Unique.

“Color slides make you feel like a hero.”

's'funny. As I contemplate the impending death of Kodachrome (and maybe of all 'chrome film...), I’m only now recalling what a huge ‘Ektachrome’ geek I used to be. Back in the years of my young adulthood (the late 70's through the '80s), color prints used to be pretty ferociously expensive, and I could keep costs down by processing my own slides. So I did, several gallons’ worth - probably 100 rolls or more.

Then parenthood happened, and, like, everything else in my life, Everything Changed. As a new, proud parent, you quickly learn that you simply cannot inflict Baby Pictures upon your long-suffering relatives - even the relatives who want to see them - in the form of slides: no, the social contract obligates a parent to pass around snapshots. So I switched over to C-41. And so, for the last 13 years or thereabouts, I’ve shot slides only occasionally. Most dramatically, there are a few rolls of Alice and maybe even Adam shot on 120 roll-film Kodachrome. (But soon I would be so distracted by the trials of "living with autism" that I didn't even notice when Kodak discontinued 120 Kodachrome.)

And while I was shooting print film, the price continued to drop. At some point in there, it became cheaper (and it was always easier) to shoot prints rather than slides.

With slide film now in the final stages of its lifespan, I realize how much I’ve missed it, and how much I will miss it. As Phil Greenspun notes in his photo.net review on loupes and light tables called “evaluating photos”:
http://www.photo.net/photo/evaluation.html

“Your pictures will mostly look gorgeous because slides can hold at least twice as much contrast as prints. You will pat yourself on the back for being a photographic genius. “

Or, more succinctly, from his review of films and film types:
http://www.photo.net/equipment/film

“Color slides make you feel like a hero.”

And he's right. I find that crappy color prints lower my standards: I stop caring about printing quality, color balance, resolution, about any of the attributes that are usually needed to make a noteworthy photo. Photography becomes "Just grab a point'n'shoot and get some snapshots". Whereas, when I shoot slides, I find that it stiffens my resolve to do good work: I reach for my more serious cameras, my best lenses, I work more carefully, etc.

(Too bad that My Best Work is still so damn mediocre....)



Slide projectors: gone, last year. 120 Kodachrome: gone, years ago. Kodachrome 25: gone. Kodak's own K-14 processing: gone.
Local E-6 machines - Motophoto closed their line last summer (a few weeks after I brought them my Transit chromes).


Right after Fair Lawn closed (Sept. 2004), I dropped a roll of Kodachrome off at Eckerds (because I had no idea where to mail it...). And I had a huge fight with the clerk, who kept asking me "How many prints do you want?" and when I kept insisting that this is slide film, "I don't want ANY prints!", he filled in the special instructions with "do not print" or something - and my roll dutifully came back uncut and unmounted. I had to explain what happened to the manager, and they had to send it back to the lab to be remounted - - sorry sir, no charge. But think of it: in 2004, a kid working in a photo lab did not even recognize the very concept of slide film. (. . . Durn young punk. . . I hope he stays off my lawn, at least.)

That's enough, already

Eckerd is closing out their inventory of Kodachrome, at 75% off. Now, I happen to drive past two Eckerds on my way to and from work, and I drive past about six more in the course of various errands.

But now I have a Quest.

I already see outdated K64 on eBay for fully twice what I'm paying for fresh. There are 22 Eckerds in the phone book (which goes out as far as Chatham, but which doesn't include Saratoga). Since discovering the close-out last Sunday, I've been going out of my way to hit all of them that I can: three rolls here, five there, here's a big score of ten. It starts adding up.

Which would be fine, except that I went through the very same round of obsessive behavior a couple months ago when CVS closed out their Ektachrome 100 - - so now I have TWO hoards of slide film....

So now I need mailers...

Forward, Into the Past! II

To run the Welti, you really need a lightmeter. It's cumbersome enough to operate such a primitive device with its fiddly little levers without carrying a second camera and using that to meter, and then transfering the settings over to the Welti. (If you have to bring along a more capable camera, then why even bother carrying the Welti?)

So: my father's Luna-Pro? The mercury batteries are finally dead. Replacing the mercury cells with incorrect (higher)-voltage (but legal...) batteries and then re-zeroing it would be certain to give me existential white nights of Doubting the Eternal Verities such as the Truth of My Reference Meter. (And if you can't trust your Luna-Pro, what on earth CAN one trust?) Gossen sells a step-down voltage adapter - - but it's something like $40? bucks. For forty bucks, you can buy a whole new meter. And once again, turning to eBay, we find a $15 bag of junk that happens to also contain a Gossen Scout.

There's a certain elegance to using a selenium meter, not least of which is being reminded of Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect every time you pick it up. This Scout also happens to agree with my various Nikon meters, which is a comfort. So I trust it enough to run a roll of Kodachrome through the Welti. Now I just have to trust the shutter speeds of a 65-70-year-old Compur Rapid.

But for now, I've rediscovered the joys of hand-held lightmeters - - and it's back to eBay to buy a newer Luna Pro, one that doesn't need mercury cells - their SBC uses a nine-volt. Oh, and might as well pick up a new-in-box Pilot as long as I'm thinking of it. So, now I seem to have accidently acquired a whole bagful of meters, but at least I didn't buy the voltage adaptor...

[And the best thing about Gossen is that they put up a statue of Ohm at the factory gate.]

Last one to leave Kodak Park, please turn out the lights.

It was not so very long ago that I used to take pictures of The Teenager on roll-film Kodachrome 64.

I’ve been on a Death Watch for Kodachrome ever since they killed 120, and then K25. Kodachrome has been increasingly hard to find in the shops: Target and Walmart stopped carrying ALL slide film last summer. Last September, Kodak closed their FairLawn lab, and Eastman Kodak now contracts out their Kodachrome development. I understand that there are now only three K-14 lines left on the planet (Kansas, Switzerland, and Japan). (Though I would hope that EK still has a test line to check the film as it comes off the line; I presume that line is in Rochester, but I suppose they might have moved that to China, as well.

K64 has still been in the local drugstore chain Eckert, though; that is, until today, when they started closing out their stock at 75% off. I hit two of them this afternoon, and snared nineteen 24 exposure rolls @ $1.68.

That should hold me until Process K-14 is gone. I give it until the end of 2006.

(Words & music by Paul Simon, 1973)

When I think back
On all the (crap) I learned in high school
It’s a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of ed-u-cation
Hasn’t hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away

If you took all the girls I knew
When I was single
And brought them all together for one night
I know they’d never match
My sweet imagination
And everything looks worse in black and white

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away
(repeat and fade...)

(Addendum: Kodachrome is still around as of April 2007.)

Can't Stop the Tide From Flowin'

I’ve been fighting an increasingly lonely rear-guard action against digital photography for about a decade now. Until the last few years, there has not been much wrong with a strategy of Waiting Until the Bugs Are Out Of It: each successive year has seen better resolutions, shorter lag times, AND lower prices. By now, even I can’t argue that digital photography hasn’t Arrived. Still -- having never even bothered to make the jump to autofocus -- I’ve had little motivation to jump in at the deep end of digital photography. (Quite the reverse, in fact: as everybody dumps their film cameras on eBay, film gear has never been cheaper.)

This weekend, The Teenager discovered the little Olympus digicam that I picked up on a clearance table last summer. And I think I’ve lost her to The Dark Side.

Last summer, I had given her a little Nikon EM to get her started with Serious Photography. (This is just about how I started, thirty years ago: when somebody gives you an SLR, you’ve been placed under a geas to at least learn how to use it.) I can’t exactly say that she has caught fire with the hobby. But this weekend she decided to help her mom start selling stuff on eBay - which pretty much necessitates putting up digital photos.

So, all on her own, she got the little Oly out, installed it on the kids’ iBook, and started snapping away with it. Pouring photos into iPhoto followed immediately.

Now what am I going to do with all this film?