10 ms·

I think this is a good call from Kodak. People are enamored with less accurate reproduction of vinyl records. So it's no surprise that up and coming hipsters

I think this is a good call from Kodak. People are enamored with less accurate reproduction of vinyl records. So it's no surprise that up and coming hipsters will soon be shooting with another media that capture a less accurate version of reality, calling it superior and claiming they like it better.

tjr 10y ago
While I've used digital SLRs almost exclusively for about 12 years, there's still something I enjoy about using film. Maybe it is less accurate, but it's less accurate in what I find to be an aesthetically pleasing way. That said, I am surprised that Kodak is bringing back Ektachrome. I find it hard to believe that there would be enough users to warrant this, from a business perspective. I guess we'll see what happens. (I personally prefer Fuji film anyway...)
- stevefeinstein 10y ago
  Perhaps a larger concern is the chemicals that are required to develop the stuff and making sure they are disposed of responsibly and not just flushed down the drain. There's more important reasons than "liking how it looks". I know people will disagree, but a skilled photoshopper can often reproduce the look and feel of film with digital. And certainly can do things film could never do. I believe it's a good trade-off
  - leejo 10y ago
    > Perhaps a larger concern is the chemicals that are required to develop the stuff and making sure they are disposed of responsibly and not just flushed down the drain. The same argument can be made for the disposal of electronic devices, the half life of digital camera bodies seems to be far shorter than that of film camera bodies. I know of at least one photo project on the subject: http://www.bitrotproject.com/ http://www.bitrotproject.com/ and i'm sure there are others. I think what has happened here, in reference to your original comment, is that the decline of film sales has reached its end state; that being it has stabilized. The fact that there are millions of film camera bodies floating around means there will, at least for the short to medium term (decades), be a market for film. Hipsters or otherwise. > There's more important reasons than "liking how it looks". I know people will disagree, but a skilled photoshopper can often reproduce the look and feel of film with digital. And certainly can do things film could never do. I believe it's a good trade-off I agree, but the film vs digital argument is always reduced to boring technicalities like resolution, sharpness, colour rendering, etc etc. The most important reasons to shoot one camera over another, or one medium over another, is that it will inform your approach and ultimately your results. If you're working on the long term, then that matters.
  - vaskebjorn 10y ago
    > I know people will disagree, but a skilled photoshopper can often reproduce the look and feel of film with digital. But why go through the hassle of photoshopping when you can just get the image out of the camera the way you want it? This is especially the case where you're taking a lot of pictures. All of that photoshopping would be tedious. And why is a more "accurate" photo superior? Like take any famous photo and ask yourself: If the photo showed even more detail would it be better?
    - dublinben 10y ago
      The issue with film is that you can't get an image "out of the camera," it must be developed first. In order to get a usable image, you must know how to properly develop the film yourself, or pay one of the handful of competent remaining labs to develop it for you. It's a much more sustainable process to throw a digital filter on your image.
      - macNchz 10y ago
        >The issue with film is that you can't get an image "out of the camera," it must be developed first. In order to get a usable image, you must know how to properly develop the film yourself, or pay one of the handful of competent remaining labs to develop it for you. To some degree I think this is part of the reason that film photograph has retained some appeal. There is no instant feedback, the process forces you to be more deliberate with each photograph, and the techniques to create images with film are becoming more arcane each year. Like many other things that have been made easier by technology, there is often lasting interesting in the art of doing something by hand even if there is an easier/faster/more efficient way to get the same result. See Etsy:IKEA, craft beer:Budweiser, Digital:Vinyl music etc. I see film photography headed towards a similar niche.
        lb1lf 10y ago
        >To some degree I think this is part of the reason that film photograph has retained some appeal. There is no instant feedback Leica took this philosophy to extremes when introducing the M-D a while ago - a digital rangefinder camera with no preview screen. It's one of those Marmite things, apparently. If I wanted to shoot without instant feedback, I'd use a film M, thankyouverymuch - but obviously, YMMV.
  - tomc1985 10y ago
    This might pass in commercial work, but right now only the nicest of digital filters can capture the je-ne-sais-quois of analog. Everything else looks subpar to a trained eye.
  - lllr_finger 10y ago
    Most of it is rather safe. Fixer is the bad part of the process IIRC.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago
  Most color films aren't designed to capture accurate colors, they're designed to look good. Portra, Velvia, the various -chromes, etc. are all deliberately inaccurate. What you like about film is the color grading that the emulsion engineers designed for you. Film-emulating post-processing is getting there, but it's not there yet. Even with a good digital capture that keeps the highlight information, it's very difficult to get a good film look. It's more than just curves adjustments. I've played around with some software that tries to simulate the chemical development process, and that seems on the right track, but it's not there yet. I tend to think this would be a good application for ML if someone did the work to take side-by-side images with a given film and digital.
jannyfer 10y ago
Film isn't necessarily less accurate than digital capture, especially with film cameras that do automatic exposure and focus. Film uses chemical reactions to capture light, and digital uses electrical signals. Accuracy is based on how we map these to their true colours. Digital would make sense to be more precise (not accurate) than film, though.
- deeth_starr 10y ago
  It depends if you are talking about detail or color accuracy. I shot medium format for years until digital just passed it by on both.
- StRoy 10y ago
  Film is automatically much worse any time you need higher sensitivity because of low light situations and can't use a tripod or need to capture a more mobile target. 400 iso film in 35mm format is noisier than any modern DSLR used in 3200+ iso settings, any, even entry-level $400 Canon or Nikon. Also, in terms of level of details it has been possibly a decade since DSLR have become much better than 35mm film. Medium and large format film was still better for a longer amount of time, but medium format cameras are a lot more cumbersome and large format cameras are something only the most dedicated would ever bother to carry anywhere. This is one of the smallest medium format camera for comparison : https://melbournestreetphotography.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/dsc_6129.jpg?w=500 https://melbournestreetphotography.files.wordpress.com/2013/... And it's a rangefinder, so it's basically unusable with telephoto lenses. Mirror based medium format cameras like the Hasselblad were things that pretty much never left indoor studios.
  - PeanutNore 10y ago
    I take my Bronica ETRSi all over the place.
  - lllr_finger 10y ago
    Correction: 35mm is grainier, not noisier. After staring at grain vs color noise in shadows for hours at a time, the aesthetics of grain are one of the reasons I still shoot film sometimes.
necessity 10y ago
Good luck buying a large format digital camera with a high quality sensor, it'll cost you an arm and a leg. Film cameras are super cheap, you can get 35mms for free on yard sales or Craigslist. Their lenses also. A high quality 50mm prime lens with an old mount is absurdly cheap compared to its modern equivalent used on digital cameras - you can even get high quality prime lenses for free if you're ok with manual focus.
- NegativeK 10y ago
  For some mounts, 40-50 year old lenses still work. The breakdown isn't film/digital; it's manufacturers deciding to (or not to) retain backwards compatibility for forward flexibility.
brennen 10y ago
> People are enamored with less accurate reproduction of vinyl records. I just did a quick estimate and would say that there're around 300 vinyl records in my household, which I suppose is at the low end for people I know with a record player. A few years back, I owned one or two at most, and didn't have a functional player. That seems to have shifted similarly for a lot of people. You can buy the things new at such resolutely unhip outlets as Barnes & Noble, if you're so inclined. I'll be pretty happy if vinyl settles into a role as the end-state consensus equilibrium of physical media for music, which is roughly what seems to be happening. Still-playable records encompass most of the era of recorded music, require no digital computation to play, and are substantial enough as artifacts to incentivize paying money for units of art. They're also physically attractive objects with attendant ritual protocols that are easily legible across every living generation. Accuracy of reproduction is, above some baseline threshold, not the real concern here. All of which, I guess, is just to say: You're probably right that this is unsurprising. There's a market. "Hipsters" is a convenient shorthand, but it's worth remembering that technologies usually have important properties which are lost to succeeding modes of tech, even when things like the appearance of film grain can in theory be easily reproduced by a filter or what have you. We use the new stuff and we forget the real dimensions of the old stuff.
- huehehue 10y ago
  You're right about the ritual, and the inherent limits caused by physical things (1s and 0s notwithstanding). Digging a record out and dealing with a sound system is more work than opening up Spotify. You're also not already on your computer, surrounded by distractions. So, being invested in the process and having to make deliberate steps to engage in something else encourages people to focus more on the music and the experience. Also, and this sentiment is probably a meme or something, but I feel that being able to take unlimited pictures has hurt casual photography. The extreme example here is people living through their phones, taking pictures of every bite of food, etc. A disposable camera really made me think about each picture I took (limited # photos, paying for the camera, have to go get them developed).
  - lb1lf 10y ago
beat 10y ago
Hah. Hah. Most people talking about "accurate" have no idea wtf they're talking about. I'm a musician, and I've produced records. At best, vinyl vs digital reproduction aren't "better" than one another, just different. But personally, I think vinyl can be more true to the music. Start with dynamic range, since that's one of the spots where the "But it's more accurate!" people get it wrong. In theory, cd has far more dynamic range than vinyl. In practice, it has great deal less! This is a result of modern "loudness war" mastering. Most modern albums have less than 6db of actual dynamic range. Listen to something with more range than that, and it sounds flat and lifeless. Vinyl is usually mastered with significantly more dynamic range, but sounds more open and breathy - the way more dynamic range should sound. And why is this? Because either way, most audio reproduction equipment is in no way able to reproduce the sound of instruments in an "accurate" way. You cannot shove the massive sound of a 100 watt Marshall stack through a pair of iPod earbuds, any more than you can look accurately at the Grand Canyon through a pinhole. So records are a miniature of a real sound. The entire recording, mixing, and mastering process is built around trying to capture the essence, the spirit of the original sound (or an ideal sound) in a way that can be reproduced on car stereos, cheap headphones, and the like. And the sound itself isn't exactly accurate, not on a record where the acoustic guitar is as loud as the drum kit! Accuracy. Hah.
- Nition 10y ago
  I'm in audio too, and while what you say is true, it feels kind of like saying digital photography is worse than film if everyone's shooting with their exposure set five stops up. Then you can say "digital's clearly worse - look how blown out it all is!" The loudness war is unfortunate, but a CD can be used properly to have plenty more dynamic range and plenty less noise than a record. There are other benefits to analogue formats though, like soft clipping.
  - beat 10y ago
    Well, yeah. But that's a different issue than the "accuracy" line that's brought up by dudes who don't play instruments and have never mixed a song (or alternately, have little experience at professional-level photography and couldn't tell you the three factors of exposure if you asked).
6stringmerc 10y ago
Ever used a manual typewriter? I've got a lovely West German Olympia I picked up used. Very authentic writing experience...how authentic? It actually hurts after enough effort. If every keyboard took the same amount of effort as the typewriter, 80% of the internet chatter would be gone because of the amount of physicality involved.
analog31 10y ago
An odd benefit of vinyl records is that they're harder to copy, especially if the listener actually wants vinyl. Thus, the choice to distribute on vinyl might be a way to generate a return on the cost of recording.
- delbel 10y ago
  vinyl records can be copied easily (even mass produced) with silicone rubber and liquid plastic resin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdeWyBxL6Oc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdeWyBxL6Oc

tjr 10y ago

While I've used digital SLRs almost exclusively for about 12 years, there's still something I enjoy about using film. Maybe it is less accurate, but it's less accurate in what I find to be an aesthetically pleasing way. That said, I am surprised that Kodak is bringing back Ektachrome. I find it hard to believe that there would be enough users to warrant this, from a business perspective. I guess we'll see what happens. (I personally prefer Fuji film anyway...)

stevefeinstein 10y ago
Perhaps a larger concern is the chemicals that are required to develop the stuff and making sure they are disposed of responsibly and not just flushed down the drain. There's more important reasons than "liking how it looks". I know people will disagree, but a skilled photoshopper can often reproduce the look and feel of film with digital. And certainly can do things film could never do. I believe it's a good trade-off
- leejo 10y ago
  > Perhaps a larger concern is the chemicals that are required to develop the stuff and making sure they are disposed of responsibly and not just flushed down the drain. The same argument can be made for the disposal of electronic devices, the half life of digital camera bodies seems to be far shorter than that of film camera bodies. I know of at least one photo project on the subject: http://www.bitrotproject.com/ http://www.bitrotproject.com/ and i'm sure there are others. I think what has happened here, in reference to your original comment, is that the decline of film sales has reached its end state; that being it has stabilized. The fact that there are millions of film camera bodies floating around means there will, at least for the short to medium term (decades), be a market for film. Hipsters or otherwise. > There's more important reasons than "liking how it looks". I know people will disagree, but a skilled photoshopper can often reproduce the look and feel of film with digital. And certainly can do things film could never do. I believe it's a good trade-off I agree, but the film vs digital argument is always reduced to boring technicalities like resolution, sharpness, colour rendering, etc etc. The most important reasons to shoot one camera over another, or one medium over another, is that it will inform your approach and ultimately your results. If you're working on the long term, then that matters.
- vaskebjorn 10y ago
  > I know people will disagree, but a skilled photoshopper can often reproduce the look and feel of film with digital. But why go through the hassle of photoshopping when you can just get the image out of the camera the way you want it? This is especially the case where you're taking a lot of pictures. All of that photoshopping would be tedious. And why is a more "accurate" photo superior? Like take any famous photo and ask yourself: If the photo showed even more detail would it be better?
  - dublinben 10y ago
    The issue with film is that you can't get an image "out of the camera," it must be developed first. In order to get a usable image, you must know how to properly develop the film yourself, or pay one of the handful of competent remaining labs to develop it for you. It's a much more sustainable process to throw a digital filter on your image.
    - macNchz 10y ago
      >The issue with film is that you can't get an image "out of the camera," it must be developed first. In order to get a usable image, you must know how to properly develop the film yourself, or pay one of the handful of competent remaining labs to develop it for you. To some degree I think this is part of the reason that film photograph has retained some appeal. There is no instant feedback, the process forces you to be more deliberate with each photograph, and the techniques to create images with film are becoming more arcane each year. Like many other things that have been made easier by technology, there is often lasting interesting in the art of doing something by hand even if there is an easier/faster/more efficient way to get the same result. See Etsy:IKEA, craft beer:Budweiser, Digital:Vinyl music etc. I see film photography headed towards a similar niche.
      - lb1lf 10y ago
        >To some degree I think this is part of the reason that film photograph has retained some appeal. There is no instant feedback Leica took this philosophy to extremes when introducing the M-D a while ago - a digital rangefinder camera with no preview screen. It's one of those Marmite things, apparently. If I wanted to shoot without instant feedback, I'd use a film M, thankyouverymuch - but obviously, YMMV.
- tomc1985 10y ago
  This might pass in commercial work, but right now only the nicest of digital filters can capture the je-ne-sais-quois of analog. Everything else looks subpar to a trained eye.
- lllr_finger 10y ago
  Most of it is rather safe. Fixer is the bad part of the process IIRC.
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago
Most color films aren't designed to capture accurate colors, they're designed to look good. Portra, Velvia, the various -chromes, etc. are all deliberately inaccurate. What you like about film is the color grading that the emulsion engineers designed for you. Film-emulating post-processing is getting there, but it's not there yet. Even with a good digital capture that keeps the highlight information, it's very difficult to get a good film look. It's more than just curves adjustments. I've played around with some software that tries to simulate the chemical development process, and that seems on the right track, but it's not there yet. I tend to think this would be a good application for ML if someone did the work to take side-by-side images with a given film and digital.

jannyfer 10y ago

Film isn't necessarily less accurate than digital capture, especially with film cameras that do automatic exposure and focus. Film uses chemical reactions to capture light, and digital uses electrical signals. Accuracy is based on how we map these to their true colours. Digital would make sense to be more precise (not accurate) than film, though.

deeth_starr 10y ago
It depends if you are talking about detail or color accuracy. I shot medium format for years until digital just passed it by on both.
StRoy 10y ago
Film is automatically much worse any time you need higher sensitivity because of low light situations and can't use a tripod or need to capture a more mobile target. 400 iso film in 35mm format is noisier than any modern DSLR used in 3200+ iso settings, any, even entry-level $400 Canon or Nikon. Also, in terms of level of details it has been possibly a decade since DSLR have become much better than 35mm film. Medium and large format film was still better for a longer amount of time, but medium format cameras are a lot more cumbersome and large format cameras are something only the most dedicated would ever bother to carry anywhere. This is one of the smallest medium format camera for comparison : https://melbournestreetphotography.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/dsc_6129.jpg?w=500 https://melbournestreetphotography.files.wordpress.com/2013/... And it's a rangefinder, so it's basically unusable with telephoto lenses. Mirror based medium format cameras like the Hasselblad were things that pretty much never left indoor studios.
- PeanutNore 10y ago
  I take my Bronica ETRSi all over the place.
- lllr_finger 10y ago
  Correction: 35mm is grainier, not noisier. After staring at grain vs color noise in shadows for hours at a time, the aesthetics of grain are one of the reasons I still shoot film sometimes.

necessity 10y ago

Good luck buying a large format digital camera with a high quality sensor, it'll cost you an arm and a leg. Film cameras are super cheap, you can get 35mms for free on yard sales or Craigslist. Their lenses also. A high quality 50mm prime lens with an old mount is absurdly cheap compared to its modern equivalent used on digital cameras - you can even get high quality prime lenses for free if you're ok with manual focus.

NegativeK 10y ago
For some mounts, 40-50 year old lenses still work. The breakdown isn't film/digital; it's manufacturers deciding to (or not to) retain backwards compatibility for forward flexibility.

brennen 10y ago

> People are enamored with less accurate reproduction of vinyl records. I just did a quick estimate and would say that there're around 300 vinyl records in my household, which I suppose is at the low end for people I know with a record player. A few years back, I owned one or two at most, and didn't have a functional player. That seems to have shifted similarly for a lot of people. You can buy the things new at such resolutely unhip outlets as Barnes & Noble, if you're so inclined. I'll be pretty happy if vinyl settles into a role as the end-state consensus equilibrium of physical media for music, which is roughly what seems to be happening. Still-playable records encompass most of the era of recorded music, require no digital computation to play, and are substantial enough as artifacts to incentivize paying money for units of art. They're also physically attractive objects with attendant ritual protocols that are easily legible across every living generation. Accuracy of reproduction is, above some baseline threshold, not the real concern here. All of which, I guess, is just to say: You're probably right that this is unsurprising. There's a market. "Hipsters" is a convenient shorthand, but it's worth remembering that technologies usually have important properties which are lost to succeeding modes of tech, even when things like the appearance of film grain can in theory be easily reproduced by a filter or what have you. We use the new stuff and we forget the real dimensions of the old stuff.

huehehue 10y ago
You're right about the ritual, and the inherent limits caused by physical things (1s and 0s notwithstanding). Digging a record out and dealing with a sound system is more work than opening up Spotify. You're also not already on your computer, surrounded by distractions. So, being invested in the process and having to make deliberate steps to engage in something else encourages people to focus more on the music and the experience. Also, and this sentiment is probably a meme or something, but I feel that being able to take unlimited pictures has hurt casual photography. The extreme example here is people living through their phones, taking pictures of every bite of food, etc. A disposable camera really made me think about each picture I took (limited # photos, paying for the camera, have to go get them developed).
- lb1lf 10y ago

beat 10y ago

Hah. Hah. Most people talking about "accurate" have no idea wtf they're talking about. I'm a musician, and I've produced records. At best, vinyl vs digital reproduction aren't "better" than one another, just different. But personally, I think vinyl can be more true to the music. Start with dynamic range, since that's one of the spots where the "But it's more accurate!" people get it wrong. In theory, cd has far more dynamic range than vinyl. In practice, it has great deal less! This is a result of modern "loudness war" mastering. Most modern albums have less than 6db of actual dynamic range. Listen to something with more range than that, and it sounds flat and lifeless. Vinyl is usually mastered with significantly more dynamic range, but sounds more open and breathy - the way more dynamic range should sound. And why is this? Because either way, most audio reproduction equipment is in no way able to reproduce the sound of instruments in an "accurate" way. You cannot shove the massive sound of a 100 watt Marshall stack through a pair of iPod earbuds, any more than you can look accurately at the Grand Canyon through a pinhole. So records are a miniature of a real sound. The entire recording, mixing, and mastering process is built around trying to capture the essence, the spirit of the original sound (or an ideal sound) in a way that can be reproduced on car stereos, cheap headphones, and the like. And the sound itself isn't exactly accurate, not on a record where the acoustic guitar is as loud as the drum kit! Accuracy. Hah.

Nition 10y ago
I'm in audio too, and while what you say is true, it feels kind of like saying digital photography is worse than film if everyone's shooting with their exposure set five stops up. Then you can say "digital's clearly worse - look how blown out it all is!" The loudness war is unfortunate, but a CD can be used properly to have plenty more dynamic range and plenty less noise than a record. There are other benefits to analogue formats though, like soft clipping.
- beat 10y ago
  Well, yeah. But that's a different issue than the "accuracy" line that's brought up by dudes who don't play instruments and have never mixed a song (or alternately, have little experience at professional-level photography and couldn't tell you the three factors of exposure if you asked).

6stringmerc 10y ago

Ever used a manual typewriter? I've got a lovely West German Olympia I picked up used. Very authentic writing experience...how authentic? It actually hurts after enough effort. If every keyboard took the same amount of effort as the typewriter, 80% of the internet chatter would be gone because of the amount of physicality involved.

analog31 10y ago

An odd benefit of vinyl records is that they're harder to copy, especially if the listener actually wants vinyl. Thus, the choice to distribute on vinyl might be a way to generate a return on the cost of recording.

delbel 10y ago
vinyl records can be copied easily (even mass produced) with silicone rubber and liquid plastic resin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdeWyBxL6Oc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdeWyBxL6Oc