Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Buckle up film shooters because things are about to get a whole lot more expensive. Or at least, they will if you insist on using Kodak film. And you live in Japan. According to National Photo in Japan, both 35mm and 120 films will see a price increase by as much as 40% in some instances.
The price increase is set for January 16th, and as Digital Camera World puts it, even though the increases are happening in Japan, it’s highly likely they will roll out similarly in the rest of the world.
Although there are still a few exceptions and holdouts, the vast majority of movies, cartoons and other cinema and broadcast content today is shot digitally. In the 20th century, though, digital wasn’t really much of a thing. At least, not until we got right to the very end of the century. Most movies and even cartoons back then were created on film or later recorded to film for use in movie theatres.
The problem with film, though, is that it degrades over time. Depending on the material the film’s made of, that degradation can happen quite quickly, too, causing many films to become quite rare. In this video, Norm from Tested takes a visit to see Steve Stanchfield at Blackhawk Films to see how old films – in this case, cartoons by Max Fleischer, animator of Superman, Popeye, Betty Boop and more – are cleaned and restored.
Pentax is an odd duck, for sure. They’ve held onto DSLRs with a death grip against the onslaught of DSLRs, which could potentially become their undoing in a few years. Now, though, it seems that instead of taking a step towards the future, they’re taking one into the past. But it’s not a backwards step! Film’s resurgence over the last decade or so is no secret. New film brands seem to be popping up regularly and even Kodak is struggling to keep up with demand.
It’s a trend that has not gone unnoticed by Pentax, who have always been a more familiar brand amongst film shooters than digital. So now, they’ve launched a new Film Camera Project. In a press release, the company said the project entails research and developing new Pentax brand “film camera products”, bringing together both veteran and younger engineers to take advantage of both old and new tech.
One of my favourite channels to watch on YouTube is Technology Connections. In each video, our host takes us on a journey through the histories of different technologies, explaining where they came from and how they work. It covers all kinds of technologies, but occasionally, the topic becomes somewhat related to photography or video. We’ve featured the channel here on DIYP before, to explain why cameras and our eyes see in RGB.
Now, he’s back to explain film. But it’s not a complete overview of how film is made, how it captures an image, how you can develop it or turn it into a print. Oh no, this super geeky video goes in-depth into one very specific aspect of 35mm film and that’s DX encoding – Or Digital IndeX). What is it? Why does it even exist? What does it do? And does it really matter?
Leica has officially announced the Leica M6 reissue. It’s a relaunch of its popular M6 35mm film camera and the first new film camera that Leica has launched in over two decades. In fact, it’s been 20 years since Leica stopped making the original M6 back in 2002. It was initially launched in 1984 and Leica says they’ve handmade almost 175,000 Leica M6 cameras, serving photographers all over the world.
Leica says that the return of the legendary rangefinder “bring[s] back a cultural icon for a new generation to experience”. The new generation will be paying a lot more for those film and development costs than the last M6 generation did, of course, if you’ve got the money to splash out on a Leica, that’s probably not much of a concern.
After the digital boom that changed the world of photography forever, it looks like film is making a comeback. Over the last few years, we’ve seen the birth of new films and the rebirth of old ones, as well as announcements of new film cameras.
NBC Nightly News recently covered the rising interest in film photography, and they did it in the only way that does his story justice – they shot it entirely on film. It doesn’t only add to the story itself, but it brings back the feel and the magic of film that many of us remember from childhood or youth.
He never writes, he never sends flowers, he just doesn’t seem interested anymore. I don’t know, since the beginning of the year he just seems kind of obsessed with watching videos, he never makes time for us anymore. He, of course, is Instagram. And it appears that we are in a very toxic relationship.
It’s no secret that more and more stills photographers are feeling disenfranchised by the once-loved app as it tries to compete with video-centric app TikTok. However, there are other options. And if you shoot film, you might want to check out this new app aimed just at film photographers called Grainery. In this video, Chris Chu walks you through what he likes about the platform.
We’re back in the Kodak factory in Rochester, New York today with Destin from Smarter Every Day. It’s the second part of a three-part series looking into exactly how Kodak makes its film stock for photographers. In part one, we saw a general overview of the mechanical processes involved in making the blank film base and in part two we find out how they actually make it light sensitive.
As with the first video, part two is almost an hour long and goes into a lot of depth into not only how the process is done but why certain choices are made during manufacture, depending on the needs of the final product.
This is a video we’ve actually featured before, way back in 2014, but it appears to be making the rounds on social media again and it’s well worth a revisit. It was shot by NASA, obviously, and it’s footage of the Apollo 11 launch, shot on 16mm film at 500 frames per second in 1969. Now, that might not seem like a lot compared to the crazy slow motion cameras available today, but 53 years ago, that was pretty impressive!
When shot at 500 frames per second and played back at 30 frames per second turns that ~30-second real-time clip into an 8-minute and 22-second sequence that you just can’t take your eyes away from. The Saturn V rocket that launched Apollo 11 was an extremely powerful Heavy Lift Vehicle. It was the heaviest rocket ever to ever fly successfully, weighing in at 6.2 million pounds fully loaded.
Well, this is sad news. film company Street Candy Film, founded in 2018 by Vincent Moschetti is calling it a day. In a post to their Facebook page, the company announced that while they had great hope for the future, rising costs from their suppliers have given them no choice. They say the manufacturer who produces their product “decide[d] to triple the price of film overnight” there was nothing left for them to do.
The company released two films. ATM 400 in 2018, which was made from security surveillance film and offered a fantastic contrasty look and MTN100 in 2021, another black and white film made from motion picture film stock. As of the Facebook announcement, they said there were 174 rolls of ATM400 left, but now both films are now listed as discontinued and out of stock on the Street Candy website.
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