Gee he didn’t say “unique advantages” of analog recording. I remember using super 8 in school. The quality really sucked (but maybe I was just a lousy “cinematographer”). Isn’t using digital a lot easier and more flexible? Without that 24 hour or more wait for developing? And can’t you simulate just about any kind of ancient film effect digitally? Perhaps the differences aren’t exactly imperceptible, but really, why use this? Maybe it’s the historical interest – the “experience.” Like having an old-fashioned tooth yanking from before anesthetics.
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Frankly the real time saver in digital is in non-linear editing. Making a series of edits across a piece takes less time than it does just to find splicing tape…
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Those lenses look better than I thought- and, weirdly, Kodak’s own tech page lists the lens as c-mount. So there’s that.
And just because they say you have to send the film in to be developed doesn’t mean you HAVE to- what stops you from cracking open the cartridge and developing yourself?
Count me as fascinated.
Of course, I’m the guy who still shoots on 35mm still film for fun, so…
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Not a lot–though movie film, esp. color movie film, requires different processing than still film, in part because you have to remove the antihalation layer in a separate step. I’d imagine you’d need to collect all the appropriate reels and tanks, and how easy they are to come by, I don’t know. At least super-8 is usually positive film and not negative, so you don’t need to make a print. It can be done, whether you want to, I don’t know. I mean, I still have a wet darkroom too, but I don’t mess with color.
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I am not a filmologist, and may in fact be close to a philistine, so my opinion shouldn’t be taken as anything more than that; but I imagine that (aside from pure analog nostalgia) it is a philosophical divide between the pro-digital “The secret to good photography is lots and lots of bad photography for practice” school, where the obvious cost-per-shot advantage of digital makes learning-through-screwing-up nearly free, rather than discouragingly expensive; and the “technical constraints force you to hone creativity, as with the flavors of poetry where fairly rigorous constraints on structure are imposed” school, where the relative inability to just spray 'n pray, ‘fix it in post’, etc. is presumed to encourage forethought, elegantly compact expression, the ability to incorporate the unexpected results that came back from the lab through clever editing, and so on.
I suspect that there is some truth to the latter school(whether it is truth that could be captured on a much smaller budget through voluntary limitations on success-through-superior-firepower use of digital gear I do not know); I don’t know if it is enough truth to be worth the fact that there is also some truth to the ‘betterness through practice’ concept, which gets a lot cheaper if you can practice for close to free.
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Because nobody does color film at home. It’s too cost prohibitive and the chance of ruining everything through temperature difference alone means you’re better off at any pro lab. You’ll just never get the same consistency at home with two different reels when you edit.
Secondly, editing. Editing film is a pain. You have to make a copy, splice it together and then look at it and then adjust this and a bit more of that and it just goes on. With stills it’s as simple as marking up the contact sheet and picking the next exposure. Even on a roll of 24 exposures you’ll have some misses. In movies that’s literally a second of time. And God forbid that don’t sync sound with this. I haven’t seen anything about it, but if they don’t put doing on negative this is dead in the water. Syncing sound is even worse since you can’t hear what you’ve cut until after you cut it. Getting footsteps to match on screen is a nightmare.
Look, I love film. I do long exposure Polaroids and spend my time with 120. I’m married to a filmmaker who loves film. There is a market for a good film camera. But at these prices you might as well shoot digital, especially for beginners who are going to burn through film. To shoot a fifteen minute short is going to take at least thirty minutes of film. And to develop this film alone it’s about twenty dollars per minute. You have to invest a thousand dollars to make one short you shoot really well the first time. You can get a Canon 5Dii and a lens for that price and make a second movie for free.
Film has advantages, I’m not denying that. But it’s tough to see who this is aimed at without using the phrase “rich hipsters” who are going to shoot and not edit but makes their friends watch two and a half minute short films. But the major negative to film is editing. Digital editing just makes filmmaking on the whole approachable and easy. This feels like a step back the same way the Impossible Projects Mobile Film Lab does. I predict the used market on these will be very active in a year or so.
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Really?
The image width is around 6mm, the height is 4mm. Assuming camera on tripod and an excellent lens of 100lp/mm, that represents a maximum resolution in digital equivalent of 1200 by 800 pixels, or around 720p. In my own tests back in the day using a couple of Bolexes, one with a fixed focus turret, I was getting about 50-60lp/mm on the standard fixed lens or about VGA/ NTSC standard resolution.
Cine lenses can in theory resolve more than this - up to about 250lp/mm - but this is a bit theoretical to say the least because of diffraction limits. The Minox camera, which used 11mm film, had an image roughly 4x the area of Super-8 and used a fixed aperture lens (15mm if my memory doesn’t fail me) of f/3.5 because smaller apertures would cause diffraction loss. The Minox could just about resolve type on an A4 sheet reliably, hence its popularity for spying. That’s about 1600 by 1100 px, and agrees with my numbers above. Minox lenses were so excellent that Leitz acquired them to extend their portfoloi down to small digital camera lenses.
Modern video recording is just so much better even than 16mm that it really is not comparable.
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Also, I highly recommend coming up to medium format if you’re still shooting film. If you’re ever in the New York area let me know and we’ll take the Hassy for a spin. 120 is super fun.
I enjoyed reading your post because of the memories it brought back. Iagree with everything you say. Back in the 1990s I had a home darkroom for 120 B&W and I really liked producing those prints which have a quality you cannot get any other way - every print a bit different due to dodging. But film became an enormous pain for all the reasons you state.
There are still things you can do with still film that digital cannot quite capture, but only if you have the darkroom and a serious enlarger. But video? The only real advantage of the cost was that it kept hoi polloi out and only the well off or dedicated could do it. With nostalgia those old 16mm and Super-8 moves tended to be quite good, but that was the exclusivity factor at work, not the medium.
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No, you have to reverse it in processing, which is to say the least complex. I have processed 8mm B/W film myself and as I recall there were 14 process steps, with first development being absolutely temperature/time critical - no latitude at all. I wouldn’t want even to think about the accuracy needed for color.
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The antihalation layer is usually RemJet, yes? If so, it’s not too bad to get off- I’ve processed Kodachrome (as B&W, mind you) successfully, and it wasn’t much of a problem.
I’d assume they’d do B&W 8mm too- which, for a home hobbyist, would (might?) be somewhat less onerous…
I’ve spent a bit of time shooting 120- mostly on Bronicas, but it was enjoyable.
I’ve been trying to shoot more 35mm mostly as a thought exercise: walking around with a smaller camera means I have to keep my brain in the mode where it searches for images. That’s a different place than it spends much of it’s time normally. The 35mm thing (for me) is about smaller/lighter cameras for walking around- though, I think, I’ll always have a sweet spot for SLR’s (as that’s what I grew up with).
Shooting motion film isn’t practical, it isn’t cheap, and it isn’t easy. I’ll concede all those points. Digital has become superior to this format in nearly every what that matters, and the ease of editing digital makes linear editing… unattractive.
But.
It’s fun, and it’s a way to keep the past alive (in some small way). Indeed, the limitations of the medium (short reel length, small negative size, sound, etc) can become advantages. Those self-imposed limitations can lead to impressive lateral thinking, and (at least for me), that’s sometimes where the best stuff comes from.
If you’re shooting polaroids and 120, you know what I’m on about- there’s little in still photography that digital can’t do at this point. It used to be that medium format offered more resolution than digital was capable, but I’m pretty sure Phase One has made that a moot point, too. Film is nice because it’s different, and that can be enough. Practicality doesn’t need to factor in (all the time, anyway…).
It doesn’t need to factor in if you’re just screwing around, but this price point isn’t that by a long shot. 120 film is super cheap and provides me with a lot of personal return for my investment.
But I was able to buy a Hasselblad I can hand down to my kids for the price of this camera and eight rolls of developed film. They are talking about a serious outlay of cash for someone to mess about with. And the people who are going to do that have the money to go for 16mm right off the bat for their home screening rooms.
If I was going to get one it would be on the used market for a song in a year.
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Huh.
I just looked (briefly) at the used 16mm camera market- I had no idea a Bolex had gotten so cheap. Or that a roll of 100’ Tri-X cost $40.
That changes things a bit, I suppose.
Used, though? DONE!
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There is also the small matter of the 16mm projector. Plenty of cameras out there, I imagine far fewer projectors.
NOPE!
Tons of them out there, even cheaper than the cameras.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1311.R1.TR8.TRC2.A0.H0.X16mm+pr.TRS0&_nkw=16mm+projector&_sacat=0
Totally nuts. This new knowledge will, I’m afraid, ruin my day…
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no. I hear you. Not really. only technically. Start introducing analog losses from equipment, time, and processing imperfections (and that B/W film has higher res natively) and that technically accurate answer gets pretty hazy. Hazy to the 640p to 480p range. But, since the original point was ‘could the film be digitally exposed with HD digtal images by art students’, the technicality of the yes, I hope, becomes less hazy.
Film editing is non-linear, so much so that we use film “bins” in FCP as a metaphor. It is electronic video tape to tape editing that was linear, where you could do overwrite edits, but not insert edits. With film or a video NLE, you can re-order clips or scenes to your heart’s content - though an NLE video editor is easier to use, faster and more versatile.
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I think it’s going to make your day actually. You can develop Tri-X in a bucket at home…
Oh, I know!
The part of my day that is ruined is the part when I go home and have to tell my wife what amazing new thing I’ll have bought on ebay.
It will go badly from there.
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