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Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

231 points by lelf 7y ago

colejohnson66 7y ago
Genuine question: Why do people still use film anymore? I know some big movie studios do sometimes use it (The Hobbit comes to mind), but I don’t understand why anyone would use film when we have DSLRs that can have resolutions over 30 megapixels. EDIT: added “why” at beginning
- jimktrains2 7y ago
  For fun? My SiL and I sometimes shoot in b/w and then go into a dark room in our in-laws' basement and develop it. She knows how to, I'm more of an apprentice.
- Filligree 7y ago
  They do, for the same reason some people still use vinyl. It isn't about quality, it's about... quality, in a different sense of the word.
  - daveFNbuck 7y ago
    It's the scanners for carry-on luggage, not the ones you walk through. edit: I seem to have responded to the wrong comment here, but it's too late to delete.
    - Seenso 7y ago
      > It's the scanners for carry-on luggage, not the ones you walk through. They don't let you carry anything through the walk-through scanners.
      - daveFNbuck 7y ago
        Looks like I responded to the wrong comment. I thought I was responding to someone who said they were worried about walking through scanners that would damage negatives.
        Filligree 7y ago
        Oh, you were. I just corrected myself after reading the article.
- minikites 7y ago
  For the same reason some people still listen to vinyl records now that lossless music formats exist or who play NES games now that VR exists: it's about enjoying that particular technology for it's own sake, or the ceremony, or the memories and associations it provides.
  - rhizome 7y ago
    Vinyl and NES are a little different. Lossless audio formats still have a sample rate and a bit depth that limits the maximum fidelity, while vinyl is always improving, or I should say record players are still improving. For instance, records made in the e.g. 1940s sound much better on modern equipment than they did when they were new, and in the future might sound even better. On the other hand, digital formats (audio and visual) have a fixed resolution and will never supply more detail than they do now. So, it's not "for its own sake," but because it does actually sound different. Sure there's a little bit of "for its own sake" in the acts of handling a record and operating the equipment, which I think is what connects with NES: sometimes you just want to sit on a couch with a little controller. But at the same time, there are games that don't exist outside of NES, or are emulated in distasteful way, or something else that makes playing the actual device the best way to enjoy a game. Vinyl has this also, there is lots and lots and lots of music that has not been digitized, neither for CD nor File, and having a turntable is the only way to experience it.
- hadtodoit 7y ago
  Personally I enjoy the mystery of taking a photo and waiting to see how it turned out, there is a charm to film photography that isn't captured by digital for me. Getting photos developed is equally exciting, and having the physical copies to hand out or place in an album is nice. It's a dying art, but being held together by enthusiasts.
  - mark-r 7y ago
    For me it was the opposite - my photography improved greatly once I didn't have a huge delay between taking the shot and seeing the result. Physical copies are still easy to do too.
    - mark-r 7y ago
      P.S. forgot to mention that not paying for film or processing has left me a lot more free to practice. I can take as many pictures in an afternoon as I used to take in a year with film.
  - abruzzi 7y ago
    To me the greatest magic in the film world is placing (in darkness) a nondescript grey sheet into a tank, flushing a few chemicals through the tank, and pulling out a full color transparent positive image (E6 slide processing). Technically I understand how most of it happens, but seeing a positive in a large size like large format sheets or medium format rolls is an amazing experience. Even if I don't have a slide projector to shot them, a loupe on a light table is enough. (While I shoot negative much more often, it doesn't have the same visceral impact as positives.)
- scblock 7y ago
  I don't know that I believe this is a "genuine question", because it's quite easy to look up that yes, people still use film, and the article itself is a clear indication that Kodak still produces and sells film. As far as not understanding, there are things about film that are different than digital. It's may not necessarily be a technical discussion any more (though others may disagree with me), but artistic choices such as the choice to use film are still valid.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - libria 7y ago
    > I don't know that I believe this is a "genuine question" Because you're being pedantic i.e, if there's one person left shooting with film, then "people" are. Look past the literal words and understand the sentiment "What advantages do people see with film over digital?" > there are things [...] not necessarily be a technical discussion [...] others may disagree [...] artistic choices Things like what? Artistic choices such as? I don't think this is a genuine answer. Certainly there must be good reasons people shoot film. But nobody can disagree with you here because in so many words, you said nothing to answer the question. edit: It's frustrating to see gp's question downmodded because we reserve that for "Doesn't add to the discussion". It was not impolite and it allowed many of you to surface your passions about shooting with film. How was it unhelpful? Don't interpret gp's inquiry as a dig on your choices; no one need be insecure about sentimentality.
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    It was a genuine question despite what you think. I genuinely did not understand why, with the many advantages (IMO) of digital why people would choose analog.
    - scblock 7y ago
      The poster I responded to edited his statement after my reply to change his "genuine question" from "do people still use film anymore" to "why do people use film". Like the original question, the poster's edit was dishonest, or at least done in bad faith.
- bebna 7y ago
  MF is cheaper to acquire in film. Because of the big negatives, u do can make high resolution digital copies from them. Uninteresting for most photograhic fields, because of the big and hefty equipment to a APS-C/FF system, but it could make sense for someone doing landscape or architecture. Those bigger lenses have less of a problem to keep the "resolution" high before it hits the sensor/film, that gives small things in big pictures more detail.
  - Seenso 7y ago
    > MF is cheaper to acquire in film. By "MF", I take it you mean medium format. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_format That a very excellent point that emphasizes how technology is often about trade-offs, not linear advancement. With film, it's far cheaper to increase the sensor size because the sensor is literally a consumable item. With digital, the sensor is an sophisticated electronic component that it's much harder and expensive to fabricate the larger you make them.
    - mherdeg 7y ago
      Yeah, basically for nostalgia and no other reason I prefer to shoot with full-frame sensors (like Nikon FX) rather than on the crop sensor (like DX). The larger-sensor digital bodies are considerably more expensive, even if they're years old and used.
- cattlemansgold 7y ago
  I shoot on a film camera for fun. There's something indescribable about an image shot on film vs digital. The colors, texture, and vibrance of certain films are not easily achievable on a DSLR. Also, you only get 24 or so shots per roll, so it forces you to be more thoughtful about each shot. It's not for everybody, but neither are vinyl records, and that business is thriving.
- hellisothers 7y ago
  I still use and travel a lot with film, including ISO800 and ISO3200 film the latter of which is totally destroyed if it goes through the scanner, even in an film protection bag. Megapixels are unimportant, there is a look to film you can’t reproduce no matter how many VSCO plugins you use :)
  - paulmd 7y ago
    To be clear, film protection bags don't work for scanners at all. And if the operator sees a blob he can't image, he is likely to back up the belt and increase the power until he can. Film protection bags are to protect against fogging from radiation at higher altitudes, not the scanners.
- epage 7y ago
  Besides any modern negatives, there are historical ones that need preservation (my grandfather-in-law's WW2 negatives for example). We've been meaning to digitize them but time is always an issue.
  - stevehawk 7y ago
    Is it that hard to mail them off for digitization?
    - jabroni_salad 7y ago
      Depends on how sentimental you are. I personally would not mail my negatives. The $12 insurance payout would not be worth it if they were lost.
      - copperx 7y ago
        So insure them for $1000?
  - paulmd 7y ago
    Radiation doesn't harm film that's already been developed.
    - garmaine 7y ago
      It does. Just not as badly.
      - paulmd 7y ago
        It doesn't. Once film is fixed it's insensitive to further radiation, by design. Light is just radiation at a different wavelength from x-ray, if the fixing didn't work then the negative would fade out very quickly from ordinary light. Yes, at some scale, if you put it in the jet of a black hole the radiation is going to destroy the image from physically blasting it off. That's not a reasonable concern to raise about film stability. Having your developed negatives x-rayed will not harm them, full stop. The exception is that you shouldn't project slides for days and days on end, because the color couplers aren't as stable as grandpa's black and white negatives and do fade out eventually. Early color negative films had some problems too and would fade out over time regardless of radiation. But still, flying with a developed slide is not a problem, we are talking about the difference between a few mw of energy and sticking it right next to a 200W projector bulb.
- ProstetnicJeltz 7y ago
  Yeah. For one thing it's fun. Another is that film genuinely has features digital cameras can't match. For example, if you overexpose most film you aren't left with massive pure white patches - there's still differentiation in those areas. This is particularly the case in colour negative film, other formats are more sensative. A lot of people prefer films grain to digital sensors noise and artifacts. A huge (literally) benefit of film are the extra formats. Medium format film photography is accessible, but digital medium format cameras are mind-blowingly expensive. Even then, it's not the resolution. Larger formats require longer focal lengths, which means narrow depths of field are possible at long range. See David Burnetts superb portfolio from London 2012 - shot on 4x5 (inch) film. https://www.davidburnett.com/gallery.html?gallery=London%202012%20%2F%20Olympics https://www.davidburnett.com/gallery.html?gallery=London%202.... You've also got all sorts of other odd formats, such as the 6x16 (cm) panoramic medium format (not cheap though). But really, it's just a lot of fun. Nailing exposure using a light meter, rather than just trying again until you get it right. Not missing photos because you were looking at the screen. Watching b/w prints form. The long and tense process for turning b/w negative film into positive slides.
- bberenberg 7y ago
  I would think of imaging as broken out into three very high level categories. Consumer, Commercial, and Industrial. For consumers it is mostly about nostalgia and a process that is enjoyable to use. For commercial (I am including high level hobbyists, still professionals, cinema, etc) there are technical advantages such as the size of the image produced (film area vs digital sensor area) and other factors which have a meaningful impact on the final product. For industrial (I am including things like research) there is no (cost effective) digital equivalent. I remember reading about an experiment where they would fill a chamber with large blocks of film, and then track particle paths through the film. You can go super deep in each area to find the technical differences that people in each one care about.
- tel 7y ago
  You’re getting all kinds of answers but a key one, for me, is that film is unavoidably slow and expensive. Digital cameras teach you that each frame is cheap and throwaway. That encourages some kinds of photographic/artful thinking while obscuring others. Old masters of large format film photography have a workflow and thought process that’s vastly different from modern digicam shooting. When you have just one or two potential exposures and maybe only 15 minutes of perfect light to pull it off, you must research and plan and conceptualize deeply. Ansel Adams is the grandmaster here. He has three books on exposure, shooting, and development which read like alien artifacts to someone who’s used to digital. They also convey amazing conceptual clarity. Picking up an old film camera is a good way to get a little bit in touch with that ethos.
  - lb1lf 7y ago
    This, this and this. I've consistently found my keeper ratio to be much higher when shooting film, as the memory cards are small and single-use only. That forces you to think your composition through, take an extra second or two to ensure the exposure is good - it basically enforces self discipline. (Which reminds me I've got a few rolls to develop after my latest outing with the Texas Leica - a Fuji G690BL; the 6*9 format gives me eight exposures on a roll of 120 film. Besides the enforced self discipline, I spend all of my working time in front of a computer, so I find it a bonus to have a hobby which does not (necessarily) involve one; I do shoot digital, too, though - I just mostly prefer the analog workflow for recreation.
    - paulmd 7y ago
      I personally find the act of throwing away the garbage shots to be paralyzing with digital. If you have 8 nearly identical shots, which do you keep? And the act of examining and comparing to make a choice based on some minute detail drastically slows down the whole cataloging and editing process. It's the paralysis of choice. Less is literally more, and I personally don't find an evening of spending a couple hours paralyzed by choice and analyzing minute details to be enjoyable. At all. And yes, film makes you think a concept through fully and optimize everything before you press the shutter. My 'hit' rate is much higher with film than digital. I have so many cameras I don't have time to use them all, but my Fuji cameras and LF lenses are definitely among my favorites as well. Very underrated, Fuji didn't do a good job of advertising in the west at all. My general purpose camera is a Pentax 67 though. Looking forward to trying a new Polaroid rangefinder that was converted to 4x5 as well. Just bought some Velvia for a cool $2 per frame.
- cwal37 7y ago
  I actually stopped using my DLSR entirely in the last year and picked up a pristine Canon EOS 3 for super cheap since I knew I'd be comfortable using it pretty quickly. I always found (now continued) kodachrome film to be incredibly beautiful, and when I realized there were still other color reversal films out there I took the plunge, and have been very happy with Fujiflim's Velvia[0]. and I end up putting much more thought into photos I take. It feels really different. Here's a pretty lengthy breakdown comparison[1] of digital and film from a few years back if you wanted a read. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvia [1] https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2014/12/36-megapixels-vs-6x7-velvia/ https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2014/12/36-megapixels-vs-6x7-v...
- wl 7y ago
  I like doing landscape, architecture, and portrait photography with view cameras. Scanning backs are rare, expensive, and not suitable for anything that might move. Backs that work like film are even more expensive (likely more than I'd pay in a lifetime for film and development supplies) and they have a very low resolution.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  There's a great documentary called "Side by Side" produced by Keanu Reeves where he goes through the history of the movie industry moving from film to digital. There are still a lot of major Hollywoo releases that are made on film. It's producer/director preference a lot of times. In the past, stuff on film meant you could rescan the originals and remaster them in 4K, which you can't do with 1080p digital recordings (like Star Wars ep1 .. they used other digital techniques to upscale them). But there are limits to that. Trying to rescan old film at 8K often results in a lot of noise, and you don't gain much even after trying to clean it up .. so there are limits to the resolution of the analogue medium that we are just now surpassing with digital sensors.
  - kgoltsov 7y ago
    Once you get into 70mm film or 70mm IMAX, you're better off just leaving it alone and projecting it directly. I think 70mm could be scanned to 8K, and I'm not sure there's even a equivalent for 70mm IMAX yet. That's why Nolan still screens his films with 70mm IMAX projectors. He might use digital for effects, but I believe he preserves the analog film in the final prints instead of using a digital intermediate.
    - fsh 7y ago
      I don't see any objective reason for choosing 70 mm analog over 4K digital. Sure, the resolution of 70 mm is higher, but does it really make a difference? A lot of digital cinema is "only" 2048×1080 and you usually don't see the pixels at normal viewing distances. On the other hand, when it comes to linearity and color reproduction, analog film doesn't stand a chance against a digital sensor. 2001: A Space Odyssey might look sharp, but the colors are definitely off. I guess the real reason why Nolan and Tarantino still use 70 mm is not quality, but personal preference and a bit of self-marketing.
- kome 7y ago
  I have no idea why, but colors look SO bad on digital point and shoot. They are always a bit too crisp. Perhaps very high-end digital cameras are good. But if you need a good dynamic range for cheap: use film.
  - acomjean 7y ago
    There are usually a bunch of color profiles you can set to control the colors. He defaults are too “vivid”. High end cameras can shoot “raw” images and have more control over color as you need software to “develop” the raw into a more useful format(jpg/tiff...)
  - jackhack 7y ago
    To my mind, the hypersaturation of colors in digital photography is the same as the loudness wars on CDs (which ironically loses one of the great benefits of CD, the huge dynamic range which is now effectively unused outside of few jazz and classical recordings), and the televisions/monitor defaults that emphasize red and high contrast. Consider, too, with CCD and the lens systems, there are shifts toward certain hues, and further post-processing (e.g. photoshop) is used to distort the color balance. Of course they probably said the same about Kodachrome's vibrant, but unnatural colors "back when..." But why? It's done, because we can. And it's noticeably different. And it's sometimes not a matter of being better, just different, since in a saturated world of media (no pun intended) differentiating one's work from the millions of others is often enough of a deciding factor to trigger a choice. Which brings me to the topic of the fashion industry...
- welly 7y ago
  Why do people use hand saws and chisels when powered table saws, compound saws and biscuit joiners are available to us? As someone who shoots film, there are a number of reasons, one being the asthetic you get from film that you can't (even with x hours in Photoshop) get from digital. I shoot large format and there are no (within my budget, at the very least) 8" x 10" digital sensors. Film also more or less forces you to make prints. I would hazard a guess that a small percentage of digital photos ever make it to print and half of a photograph for me is a tactile thing you can hold in your hands and give to someone else. Lastly, it's the process. That's something I can't explain.
  - paulmd 7y ago
    > I shoot large format and there are no (within my budget, at the very least) 8" x 10" digital sensors. You can make a scanner back out of a normal CCD film scanner. It comes with a lot of downsides since you have a giant "rolling shutter" that works on the scale of 10s+ but it does give you an image.
  - geerlingguy 7y ago
    > Why do people use hand saws and chisels when powered table saws, compound saws and biscuit joiners are available to us? That analogy breaks down a bit because in the former case, there are very many circumstances where the small unpowered tool is the best fit for a job (touching up an area, finishing off a mortise, trimming off something by hand where a power tool would not be able to give the proper feedback). In photography, the preference is a lot more subjective, at least when it comes to 35mm formats. Most carpenters will carry hand saws and chisels with them even if they have all the top of the line power tools because they remain relevant and immensely useful.
  - aaronbrethorst 7y ago
    Is anyone even making large format scanning backs any more?
  - mark-r 7y ago
    An 8" x 10" digital sensor would take a whole silicon wafer. Doubt you'll see one, ever.
- GlenTheMachine 7y ago
  Another point in film's favor is that it has extremely high resolution per dollar. I just bought a Rolleicord TLR camera, which shoots 6 cm square negatives. It cost me $250 on eBay. If shot with good quality low grain film, and scanned with a professional grade negative scanner, the equivalent resolution I get from it should be on the order of 100 megapixels, and possibly more in good lighting conditions. Even regular 35 mm film shot in a decent SLR will give you 30+ megapixels. You can buy good used 35 mm cameras all day long for less than $100. You can buy a Hasselblad 500C, the very same camera the Apollo astronauts went to the moon with and that Ansel Adams used for shooting his iconic photographs of Yosemite, which uses the same 6 cm film as my Rollei, for less than $1000. Buying a 100 megapixel digital camera would cost me ten thousand dollars minimum. See: https://petapixel.com/2014/12/18/comparing-image-quality-film-digital/ https://petapixel.com/2014/12/18/comparing-image-quality-fil...
  - floren 7y ago
    Hell, my Yashica TLR was only $100. Those 6x6 negatives look AMAZING.
  - slumdev 7y ago
    > Buying a 100 megapixel digital camera would cost me ten thousand dollars minimum. Hasselblad makes some nice ones. https://www.hasselblad.com/h-system/ https://www.hasselblad.com/h-system/
    - GlenTheMachine 7y ago
      Yeah, they're marvelous. But the digital back by itself is $26,000. A full camera is around $35k.
      - paulmd 7y ago
        There are some options in the $3-5k range. $3k gets you a used Pentax 645Z which is pretty nice. (I know, I know, only $3-5k, what a deal. Better than the "cash payment for a pretty nice car" range though.)
  - 7y ago
- tomc1985 7y ago
  I don't get why techies can't understand why people might not choose to do things just like they do As other comments have alluded, film still is very good for things. Even the best digital camera sensors can't match the dynamic range of film. Digital photography is so much more than just megapixels
- chungus_khan 7y ago
  In addition to the other points, film X-ray machines are still in widespread use because unless there's a specific need for a digital one it's hard to justify the enormous expense of the upgrade (and some people prefer looking at film output over digital as well, if it's what they're used to).
- rangibaby 7y ago
  1. People enjoy the craft and experience of doing it. Why knit? Why paint on a canvas when you could do it in Photoshop? Why do people still buy records when Spotify etc exist? 2. Medium and large format film still look as good or better than digital 35mm, and are still affordable for hobbyists 3. The look of BW film can’t be replicated by current color digital cameras without an expensive (in time or money) modification to the sensor
- gambiting 7y ago
  So I know someone who is very much into photography but is of modest means. Turns out you can pick up a second hand analog camera and film for it for very little money, and achieve quality that you'd need something like a Canon EOS 5D for otherwise. Obviously there are things you can't do with the analog that you can with the 5D, but not everyone is made out of money.
  - et-al 7y ago
    The hashtag #shootfilmstaybroke exists for a reason. Film's initial cost may be cheaper than digital, but after 10-20 rolls of film, digital comes out to be cheaper when accounting for film + development costs. A used Canon 5D MkII kit can be had for under $800 these days.
- lm28469 7y ago
  It's fun and it looks good. Sure, if you only look at the technical specs it's inferior in almost every way, resolution [0], no image stabilisation, poor autofocus, slow shutter speeds, poor high ISO performances, 10 to 36 shots per roll &c. I bought a d3400 to get into photography, never really liked it. One day I visited my parents and my dad showed me an old Nikon FE, the one he used to take my childhood pics with. Slapped two batteries in and it worked just as good as 30 years ago, I haven't shot digital since then. Good luck shooting medium format digital if you don't have $15k+ to burn. I got a bronica SQ + two lenses for less than what you'd pay for a good aps-c digital camera. If you dev and scan yourself it's good fun and not too expensive, you can experiment with different film stocks, different developers, different techniques. I personally find it much more rewarding, you can't spray n pray, you can't fix a 2 stops under exposure in post prod, you just have to know what you're doing and get it right. It's more of a creative process in a way. There are also many quirks that you can't really replicate : Infrared photography isn't really easy on digital: https://fstoppers.com/film/humanitarian-conflict-beautifully-captured-kodak-aerochrome-film-46330 https://fstoppers.com/film/humanitarian-conflict-beautifully... You can't shoot xpan panos on digital: https://i.redd.it/5184siubabv11.jpg https://i.redd.it/5184siubabv11.jpg & https://i.redd.it/ajrj8o38a1t21.jpg https://i.redd.it/ajrj8o38a1t21.jpg & https://i.redd.it/m7z6wm2idiw01.jpg https://i.redd.it/m7z6wm2idiw01.jpg You can't shoot cinestill 800t either: https://i.redd.it/dnh3vi4u4s841.jpg https://i.redd.it/dnh3vi4u4s841.jpg & https://i.redd.it/x852qq3h43c41.jpg https://i.redd.it/x852qq3h43c41.jpg etc. https://i.redd.it/5h74tuzocva41.jpg https://i.redd.it/5h74tuzocva41.jpg [0] although you can get some pretty high res stocks these days, here is a 35mm frame: http://www.adox.de/Media/cms20test.jpg http://www.adox.de/Media/cms20test.jpg
  - semi-extrinsic 7y ago
    You can technically (depending on film) fix a 2 stop underexposure - e.g. with Tri-X there's no problem pushing it to EI 1600. But you can't really do it on a picture-by-picture basis, only for a whole roll.
  - octorian 7y ago
    You can still get the good autofocus, good metering, good shutter speeds, and image stabilization with 35mm film. You just need to pick up a Nikon F100 or F6, and slap on a modern F-mount VR lens. Of course to get better resolution, you need to go up to medium format. (where those niceties become harder to come by)
- kgoltsov 7y ago
  When switching from film to digital, we took a lot of steps back and are slowly catching up to quality. I guess around the 2010s, theaters started switching to digital projection, which I believe started with 1K (similar to 1080), then 2K, with a small amount of theaters showing 4K projection. Most high-quality 35mm film is equivalent to 4K resolution. Unfortunately, a lot of movies were shot and mastered at 2K or less, like Mad Max fury road, so there's no point of having them at 4K because the information was never there. With old 35mm, it was probably scanned for dvd or vhs at some point, but studios are going back and scanning movies to 4K with great results. Megapixels aside (an irrelevant number btw), dynamic range was pretty bad compared to film in the early days of digital, but it's starting to get there. The revenant was shot on digital and looks amazing. Once you start watching on streaming though, you're losing so much to compression. Even with 4K HDR blu-ray, you're only getting 10 bits of color compared to 12 bits with DCP (digital projection).
  - semi-extrinsic 7y ago
    Nitpick: 1920x1080 is approx. 2K, 1K is more like 1024x768. The "4K" resolution syntax refers to horizontal resolution, while the "1080p" syntax refers to vertical resolution.
- Finnucane 7y ago
  Clearly, you've never used a Hasselblad.
- bitwize 7y ago
  The reason why people still shoot on film (or record vinyl records) is the same reason why people still make ukiyo-e woodblock prints: it's an art form, and both the process and the results are interesting.
- yesimahuman 7y ago
  I shoot photos for the memories and film just makes me feel more (the look, the grain, the process). Old lenses have a character I prefer. Old cameras feel great and are fun and low-risk (take it on the water w/o worrying about losing it, for example). I enjoy digital but just like cycling, the industry has gone mad equating technology with quality.
hadtodoit 7y ago
Flying out of SFO, the security gave me a heads up about putting aside film. They are not TSA, but at least they had been briefed.
- tpmx 7y ago
  That's really impressive, given how few people are using film.
  - tecleandor 7y ago
    Seems like there are relatively more film users at SFO (insert outdated hipster joke) Jokes aside, I'll take care from now on, film goes at least two two four times through the scanner on a plane trip...
- dmix 7y ago
  That's good, hopefully they keep a sign up or tell TSA agents as my spouse uses film regularly on trips and I'm sure not everyone will find out. Just another headache traveling through the US I guess.
- et-al 7y ago
  SFO checkpoint staff have always been accommodating with hand-checking my film regardless of ISO.
- LeoPanthera 7y ago
  SFO is one of the few US airports that doesn't use the TSA for security - and it shows. The experience there is so much better.
JustFinishedBSG 7y ago
Can wait until very important data is lost to bit flips / corruption from scanner. " Cure to cancer lost to TSA scanner "
- vernie 7y ago
  Damn, that was the only copy.
- ChuckNorris89 7y ago
  If you're working on a cure for cancer you should have double, triple, quadruple backups on and off site and not fly around with the only copy of your data.
  - harikb 7y ago
    I bet GP meant it to ironic. That said, having a backup and knowing that the data was just corrupted are two different things. In a word without storage level CRC checks, it is possible an otherwise successful test is overlooked and we move on to 'n + 1' in the iteration. But that said, hopefully all filesystems have some sort of error to show the file has been damaged.
- dekhn 7y ago
  Failing to plan is planning to fail.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  "Plans to turn TSA scanner into radiation therapy machine corrupted inside TSA scanner."
coldcode 7y ago
If its bad for film, would it not be bad at some level for people?
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  This is for the checked luggage, not the people scanners.
  - cguess 7y ago
    It's for carry on. Checked luggage goes through WAY more radiation and you should never put undeveloped film or anything else that's radiation sensitive in your checked luggage.
    - morsch 7y ago
      Details: https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q12361.html https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q12361.html
      - tbihl 7y ago
        For reference, 300-350mrem is a decent estimate of your annual dose of radiation. If you fly a lot, smoke, or live in areas where the ground releases significant amounts of radon, your own annual dose can be twice that.
  - uptown 7y ago
    Sometimes they’re one and the same. https://twitter.com/CaughtCctv/status/1212381004591255553 https://twitter.com/CaughtCctv/status/1212381004591255553
- pdonis 7y ago
  If you mean the people going through screening, they don't get CT scanned, only the carry on luggage does. The machines are shielded.
- mirimir 7y ago
ohazi 7y ago
How much radiation would it take to flip a bit on an SSD? What about RAM (many people send their laptops through in a suspended-to-RAM state)? I would assume that RAM is more susceptible, since we still store a single bit per RAM cell, while some SSDs now store multiple bits per cell, but I've never tried to do the math on "what would it take to actually make these problems start to appear?" Might be a fun exercise... has anyone looked into this?
- zitterbewegung 7y ago
  How many bits are you carrying with you ? 4MB be 4TB has two orders of magnitude so you have to first specify that.
  - ohazi 7y ago
    The math is going to be back-of-the-envelope OOM analysis anyway, so you could work it out per bit or per unit area and multiply it out from there, given your particular configuration. The statistics get more complicated when multiple bits are flipped (either by a single event, or over time) before an error correcting pass can look at the bits in question. In those cases, the particular flipped bits and where they are spatially will matter a lot more.
- cm2187 7y ago
  Don't SSD have some kind of cyclic redundancy check?
  - Seenso 7y ago
    > Don't SSD have some kind of cyclic redundancy check? Yes, but they're pushing the the technology so far to get higher densities that error correction is required for normal operation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_cell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_cell > The primary benefit of MLC flash memory is its lower cost per unit of storage due to the higher data density, and memory-reading software can compensate for a larger bit error rate.[5] The higher error rate necessitates an error correcting code (ECC) that can correct multiple bit errors; for example, the SandForce SF-2500 Flash Controller can correct up to 55 bits per 512-byte sector with an unrecoverable read error rate of less than one sector per 1017 bits read. Making the cells smaller and cramming more bits per cell reduces the amount of energy/radiation required to trigger a bit flip, making the data more vulnerable. It sounds like they may also be increasing the energy put out by the scanners. Not a very good combination if you care about your data. Maybe they'll push the fraction of storage reserved for error-correction data even higher to compensate. IIRC, radiation-hard chips often used processes with larger feature sizes and different materials in order to be more resistant to the effects of radiation.
modo_ 7y ago
I've never run into any trouble getting film hand checked while traveling within the US. Sadly it's a completely different story internationally. Indian security has been the strictest in my experience -- flat out refusal to do anything other than run the film through the X-Ray machine. I don't travel with fast film (800+ ISO) anymore. It's just not worth the stress.
- klodolph 7y ago
  I decided to switch to digital for anything where I want to go over 400 ISO. My personal feelings are that the image quality of 800 ISO film is just terrible. YMMV based on personal preference, I know people who really like the look of fast film.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Leaving aside the work associated with chemical processing generally, you could “coax” ISO/ASA 400 B&W films up to 1600. Maybe 2400. But you definitely lost a lot as soon as you started pushing. For a lot of photography, especially basic journalist event stuff, I find the fact that I can go to about 3200 without even thinking about it a huge benefit of digital.
    - klodolph 7y ago
      Sure, you can push two stops if you like swaths of flat black in your photo. Same thing with TMZ, which says “3200” on the box but if you look carefully it doesn’t actually say “ISO 3200”, because its ISO speed is actually something like 800.
  - i_am_proteus 7y ago
    Tri-X 320 pushes to 800 pretty well.
    - klodolph 7y ago
      I’m not happy with it. YMMV. I don’t like Tri-X in general though.
anfractuosity 7y ago
On the topic of film, this little short video "Behind the Film - Inside the ILFORD factory" is cool - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXpoALotxf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXpoALotxf0 They also have a lab that do b&w prints from digital files on photo paper interestingly.
- plapetomain 7y ago
  > They also have a lab that do b&w prints from digital files on photo paper interestingly. Not new or uncommon. The “last generation” of photo finishing (think drug store 1 hour photo mats) since the early 2000s mostly used digital printers. They called them laser printers no less (not a xerographic process, but direct exposure) The developed film was scanned and this of course allowed them to give you a CD cheaply. Also of course allowed printing digital media easily.
  - anfractuosity 7y ago
    Yeah, I've had colour prints before, but not really seen anyone do true b&w prints.
    - klodolph 7y ago
      It wasn’t super uncommon in the past, because you could just use the same equipment with different chemistry. When I say “not super uncommon” what I mean is that you might have a couple different shops with a B&W (non-chromogenic) option in the same city.
- shoes_for_thee 7y ago
  I'm not in a place where I can watch the video right now, but are they doing this via like.. an LCD-equipped enlarger? This would be pretty cool. In the early 2000s I did a lot of experimentation with printing digital negatives to transparencies and printing them in a traditional darkroom or using alt processes.
  - anfractuosity 7y ago
kailuowang 7y ago
I have been traveling with a Filmguard bag. Sometimes they take it out and ask for a hand inspection, sometimes they don't they rarely insist on scanning the films themselves outside the bag. Regardless never check-in your films. Nothing can protect them from the powerful scan for check-in luggages.
- supernova87a 7y ago
  Those bags do not do what you think they do. When a TSA x-ray operator sees an opaque bag on the screen, he/she just turns up the exposure until the contents are visible. Not much help there for your film.
  - neetdeth 7y ago
    Turning up the exposure on the screen does not do what you think it does. With a line-scan X-ray, the bag is well out of the beam path by the time the operator sees the image. But it's probably coming in through a 12 or 16-bit ADC, so there's a lot more range than can be effectively displayed on screen (at least with a simple linear+gamma mapping). It's a matter of adjusting the display mapping to see inside denser objects. The X-ray source power needs to be high enough to deal with the worst case scenario of large/dense luggage. If you can give your film a 10x lower dose while still allowing enough X-rays through that the operator can clear it, that sounds like a good idea. It just has to be traded off against the fact that deliberate shielding is likely to be frowned upon, and they may take the film out and run it through "naked" anyway. Seems worth a try, but I'd definitely use a commercial product marked for the purpose and resist the temptation to DIY it.
joecool1029 7y ago
My first job over a decade ago was managing a photo lab. The x-ray machines would often damage film that people traveled with. Amateur photographers just weren't aware. The damage typically looks like white fuzzy diagonal lines across the image. It's not enough to completely destroy a picture, but it'll ruin it. The most common widespread damage we saw were people that bought like 50 disposable cameras for their Caribbean wedding, then brought them back home to get developed. The worst overall damage we had at that lab was when high school kids would run customer Tri-X film through the C-41 lab. That would completely wipe the film, no recovery whatsoever possible.
- Finnucane 7y ago
  Ever put the fixer in first? That's fun too.
  - cannam 7y ago
    There are companies like Silbersalz (https://silbersalz35.com/ https://silbersalz35.com/) selling ECN-2 cinefilm stock in 35mm cartridges. You have to return the film to them for processing, rather than take it to a C-41 lab - and they warn that if you send them to a C-41 lab, you can damage the lab's equipment and ruin everyone else's photos as well as your own. I don't know how paranoid the warning is, but that seems like it could be pretty bad.
    - joecool1029 7y ago
      > There are companies like Silbersalz (https://silbersalz35.com/ https://silbersalz35.com/) selling ECN-2 cinefilm stock in 35mm cartridges. To be fair, anyone buying that likely knows what they're getting into. Tri-X was sold next to C-41 film in every store, so a lot of people would just grab it when they wanted B&W thinking it was the same thing to develop as color film. (Yes, there is B&W C-41 film as well)
      - cannam 7y ago
        > To be fair, anyone buying that likely knows what they're getting into. True, I'm just dwelling on the possible consequences. I have some Silbersalz film myself that I haven't used yet, and I'm actively imagining everything that could go wrong. > Yes, there is B&W C-41 film as well Ilford XP2 - it looks a bit different from typical B&W film, with very flat whites. I used to love XP1, which came out sepia when processed C-41.
Finnucane 7y ago
Ilford has been warning about this also. Previous generations of scanners were generally okay for film up to about ISO 800, but these new scanners are believed unsafe at any speed.
hosteur 7y ago
What about those full body scanners? I always opt out due to health concerns. Does anyone known anything about the actual radiation levels involved in those and the safety standards the machines must live up to?
- yummypaint 7y ago
  If you assume the dose is absorbed by the "whole body," then it isnt of any concern. However, in reality the energy is so low that almost all the dose is absorbed by the outer portions of skin, which could be more hazardous. Public-facing literature i've come across doesnt address this, so erring on the side of caution isnt a bad idea. More importantly it disincentivises use of these devices for security theater.
- dijit 7y ago
  I know a lot about them; I researched them extensively even to the point of talking to designers. I came to the understanding that they're quite harmless; even considering the radiation doses you get while flying after (because, radiation is additive of course)- However using them many times per day can cause damage to the skin over long periods of time. Regardless, Opt out anyway; if people choose to opt out the economics of the devices will stop making sense and perhaps they'll be a little less invasive in future. I will always opt-out, even when I'm being threatened or condescended to (as was the case in Gatwick airport some time ago).

231 points by lelf 7y ago

Genuine question: Why do people still use film anymore? I know some big movie studios do sometimes use it (The Hobbit comes to mind), but I don’t understand why anyone would use film when we have DSLRs that can have resolutions over 30 megapixels. EDIT: added “why” at beginning

jimktrains2 7y ago
For fun? My SiL and I sometimes shoot in b/w and then go into a dark room in our in-laws' basement and develop it. She knows how to, I'm more of an apprentice.
Filligree 7y ago
They do, for the same reason some people still use vinyl. It isn't about quality, it's about... quality, in a different sense of the word.
- daveFNbuck 7y ago
  It's the scanners for carry-on luggage, not the ones you walk through. edit: I seem to have responded to the wrong comment here, but it's too late to delete.
  - Seenso 7y ago
    > It's the scanners for carry-on luggage, not the ones you walk through. They don't let you carry anything through the walk-through scanners.
    - daveFNbuck 7y ago
      Looks like I responded to the wrong comment. I thought I was responding to someone who said they were worried about walking through scanners that would damage negatives.
      - Filligree 7y ago
        Oh, you were. I just corrected myself after reading the article.
minikites 7y ago
For the same reason some people still listen to vinyl records now that lossless music formats exist or who play NES games now that VR exists: it's about enjoying that particular technology for it's own sake, or the ceremony, or the memories and associations it provides.
- rhizome 7y ago
  Vinyl and NES are a little different. Lossless audio formats still have a sample rate and a bit depth that limits the maximum fidelity, while vinyl is always improving, or I should say record players are still improving. For instance, records made in the e.g. 1940s sound much better on modern equipment than they did when they were new, and in the future might sound even better. On the other hand, digital formats (audio and visual) have a fixed resolution and will never supply more detail than they do now. So, it's not "for its own sake," but because it does actually sound different. Sure there's a little bit of "for its own sake" in the acts of handling a record and operating the equipment, which I think is what connects with NES: sometimes you just want to sit on a couch with a little controller. But at the same time, there are games that don't exist outside of NES, or are emulated in distasteful way, or something else that makes playing the actual device the best way to enjoy a game. Vinyl has this also, there is lots and lots and lots of music that has not been digitized, neither for CD nor File, and having a turntable is the only way to experience it.
hadtodoit 7y ago
Personally I enjoy the mystery of taking a photo and waiting to see how it turned out, there is a charm to film photography that isn't captured by digital for me. Getting photos developed is equally exciting, and having the physical copies to hand out or place in an album is nice. It's a dying art, but being held together by enthusiasts.
- mark-r 7y ago
  For me it was the opposite - my photography improved greatly once I didn't have a huge delay between taking the shot and seeing the result. Physical copies are still easy to do too.
  - mark-r 7y ago
    P.S. forgot to mention that not paying for film or processing has left me a lot more free to practice. I can take as many pictures in an afternoon as I used to take in a year with film.
- abruzzi 7y ago
  To me the greatest magic in the film world is placing (in darkness) a nondescript grey sheet into a tank, flushing a few chemicals through the tank, and pulling out a full color transparent positive image (E6 slide processing). Technically I understand how most of it happens, but seeing a positive in a large size like large format sheets or medium format rolls is an amazing experience. Even if I don't have a slide projector to shot them, a loupe on a light table is enough. (While I shoot negative much more often, it doesn't have the same visceral impact as positives.)
scblock 7y ago
I don't know that I believe this is a "genuine question", because it's quite easy to look up that yes, people still use film, and the article itself is a clear indication that Kodak still produces and sells film. As far as not understanding, there are things about film that are different than digital. It's may not necessarily be a technical discussion any more (though others may disagree with me), but artistic choices such as the choice to use film are still valid.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- libria 7y ago
  > I don't know that I believe this is a "genuine question" Because you're being pedantic i.e, if there's one person left shooting with film, then "people" are. Look past the literal words and understand the sentiment "What advantages do people see with film over digital?" > there are things [...] not necessarily be a technical discussion [...] others may disagree [...] artistic choices Things like what? Artistic choices such as? I don't think this is a genuine answer. Certainly there must be good reasons people shoot film. But nobody can disagree with you here because in so many words, you said nothing to answer the question. edit: It's frustrating to see gp's question downmodded because we reserve that for "Doesn't add to the discussion". It was not impolite and it allowed many of you to surface your passions about shooting with film. How was it unhelpful? Don't interpret gp's inquiry as a dig on your choices; no one need be insecure about sentimentality.
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  It was a genuine question despite what you think. I genuinely did not understand why, with the many advantages (IMO) of digital why people would choose analog.
  - scblock 7y ago
    The poster I responded to edited his statement after my reply to change his "genuine question" from "do people still use film anymore" to "why do people use film". Like the original question, the poster's edit was dishonest, or at least done in bad faith.
bebna 7y ago
MF is cheaper to acquire in film. Because of the big negatives, u do can make high resolution digital copies from them. Uninteresting for most photograhic fields, because of the big and hefty equipment to a APS-C/FF system, but it could make sense for someone doing landscape or architecture. Those bigger lenses have less of a problem to keep the "resolution" high before it hits the sensor/film, that gives small things in big pictures more detail.
- Seenso 7y ago
  > MF is cheaper to acquire in film. By "MF", I take it you mean medium format. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_format That a very excellent point that emphasizes how technology is often about trade-offs, not linear advancement. With film, it's far cheaper to increase the sensor size because the sensor is literally a consumable item. With digital, the sensor is an sophisticated electronic component that it's much harder and expensive to fabricate the larger you make them.
  - mherdeg 7y ago
    Yeah, basically for nostalgia and no other reason I prefer to shoot with full-frame sensors (like Nikon FX) rather than on the crop sensor (like DX). The larger-sensor digital bodies are considerably more expensive, even if they're years old and used.
cattlemansgold 7y ago
I shoot on a film camera for fun. There's something indescribable about an image shot on film vs digital. The colors, texture, and vibrance of certain films are not easily achievable on a DSLR. Also, you only get 24 or so shots per roll, so it forces you to be more thoughtful about each shot. It's not for everybody, but neither are vinyl records, and that business is thriving.
hellisothers 7y ago
I still use and travel a lot with film, including ISO800 and ISO3200 film the latter of which is totally destroyed if it goes through the scanner, even in an film protection bag. Megapixels are unimportant, there is a look to film you can’t reproduce no matter how many VSCO plugins you use :)
- paulmd 7y ago
  To be clear, film protection bags don't work for scanners at all. And if the operator sees a blob he can't image, he is likely to back up the belt and increase the power until he can. Film protection bags are to protect against fogging from radiation at higher altitudes, not the scanners.
epage 7y ago
Besides any modern negatives, there are historical ones that need preservation (my grandfather-in-law's WW2 negatives for example). We've been meaning to digitize them but time is always an issue.
- stevehawk 7y ago
  Is it that hard to mail them off for digitization?
  - jabroni_salad 7y ago
    Depends on how sentimental you are. I personally would not mail my negatives. The $12 insurance payout would not be worth it if they were lost.
    - copperx 7y ago
      So insure them for $1000?
- paulmd 7y ago
  Radiation doesn't harm film that's already been developed.
  - garmaine 7y ago
    It does. Just not as badly.
    - paulmd 7y ago
      It doesn't. Once film is fixed it's insensitive to further radiation, by design. Light is just radiation at a different wavelength from x-ray, if the fixing didn't work then the negative would fade out very quickly from ordinary light. Yes, at some scale, if you put it in the jet of a black hole the radiation is going to destroy the image from physically blasting it off. That's not a reasonable concern to raise about film stability. Having your developed negatives x-rayed will not harm them, full stop. The exception is that you shouldn't project slides for days and days on end, because the color couplers aren't as stable as grandpa's black and white negatives and do fade out eventually. Early color negative films had some problems too and would fade out over time regardless of radiation. But still, flying with a developed slide is not a problem, we are talking about the difference between a few mw of energy and sticking it right next to a 200W projector bulb.
ProstetnicJeltz 7y ago
Yeah. For one thing it's fun. Another is that film genuinely has features digital cameras can't match. For example, if you overexpose most film you aren't left with massive pure white patches - there's still differentiation in those areas. This is particularly the case in colour negative film, other formats are more sensative. A lot of people prefer films grain to digital sensors noise and artifacts. A huge (literally) benefit of film are the extra formats. Medium format film photography is accessible, but digital medium format cameras are mind-blowingly expensive. Even then, it's not the resolution. Larger formats require longer focal lengths, which means narrow depths of field are possible at long range. See David Burnetts superb portfolio from London 2012 - shot on 4x5 (inch) film. https://www.davidburnett.com/gallery.html?gallery=London%202012%20%2F%20Olympics https://www.davidburnett.com/gallery.html?gallery=London%202.... You've also got all sorts of other odd formats, such as the 6x16 (cm) panoramic medium format (not cheap though). But really, it's just a lot of fun. Nailing exposure using a light meter, rather than just trying again until you get it right. Not missing photos because you were looking at the screen. Watching b/w prints form. The long and tense process for turning b/w negative film into positive slides.
bberenberg 7y ago
I would think of imaging as broken out into three very high level categories. Consumer, Commercial, and Industrial. For consumers it is mostly about nostalgia and a process that is enjoyable to use. For commercial (I am including high level hobbyists, still professionals, cinema, etc) there are technical advantages such as the size of the image produced (film area vs digital sensor area) and other factors which have a meaningful impact on the final product. For industrial (I am including things like research) there is no (cost effective) digital equivalent. I remember reading about an experiment where they would fill a chamber with large blocks of film, and then track particle paths through the film. You can go super deep in each area to find the technical differences that people in each one care about.
tel 7y ago
You’re getting all kinds of answers but a key one, for me, is that film is unavoidably slow and expensive. Digital cameras teach you that each frame is cheap and throwaway. That encourages some kinds of photographic/artful thinking while obscuring others. Old masters of large format film photography have a workflow and thought process that’s vastly different from modern digicam shooting. When you have just one or two potential exposures and maybe only 15 minutes of perfect light to pull it off, you must research and plan and conceptualize deeply. Ansel Adams is the grandmaster here. He has three books on exposure, shooting, and development which read like alien artifacts to someone who’s used to digital. They also convey amazing conceptual clarity. Picking up an old film camera is a good way to get a little bit in touch with that ethos.
- lb1lf 7y ago
  This, this and this. I've consistently found my keeper ratio to be much higher when shooting film, as the memory cards are small and single-use only. That forces you to think your composition through, take an extra second or two to ensure the exposure is good - it basically enforces self discipline. (Which reminds me I've got a few rolls to develop after my latest outing with the Texas Leica - a Fuji G690BL; the 6*9 format gives me eight exposures on a roll of 120 film. Besides the enforced self discipline, I spend all of my working time in front of a computer, so I find it a bonus to have a hobby which does not (necessarily) involve one; I do shoot digital, too, though - I just mostly prefer the analog workflow for recreation.
  - paulmd 7y ago
    I personally find the act of throwing away the garbage shots to be paralyzing with digital. If you have 8 nearly identical shots, which do you keep? And the act of examining and comparing to make a choice based on some minute detail drastically slows down the whole cataloging and editing process. It's the paralysis of choice. Less is literally more, and I personally don't find an evening of spending a couple hours paralyzed by choice and analyzing minute details to be enjoyable. At all. And yes, film makes you think a concept through fully and optimize everything before you press the shutter. My 'hit' rate is much higher with film than digital. I have so many cameras I don't have time to use them all, but my Fuji cameras and LF lenses are definitely among my favorites as well. Very underrated, Fuji didn't do a good job of advertising in the west at all. My general purpose camera is a Pentax 67 though. Looking forward to trying a new Polaroid rangefinder that was converted to 4x5 as well. Just bought some Velvia for a cool $2 per frame.
cwal37 7y ago
I actually stopped using my DLSR entirely in the last year and picked up a pristine Canon EOS 3 for super cheap since I knew I'd be comfortable using it pretty quickly. I always found (now continued) kodachrome film to be incredibly beautiful, and when I realized there were still other color reversal films out there I took the plunge, and have been very happy with Fujiflim's Velvia[0]. and I end up putting much more thought into photos I take. It feels really different. Here's a pretty lengthy breakdown comparison[1] of digital and film from a few years back if you wanted a read. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvia [1] https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2014/12/36-megapixels-vs-6x7-velvia/ https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2014/12/36-megapixels-vs-6x7-v...
wl 7y ago
I like doing landscape, architecture, and portrait photography with view cameras. Scanning backs are rare, expensive, and not suitable for anything that might move. Backs that work like film are even more expensive (likely more than I'd pay in a lifetime for film and development supplies) and they have a very low resolution.
djsumdog 7y ago
There's a great documentary called "Side by Side" produced by Keanu Reeves where he goes through the history of the movie industry moving from film to digital. There are still a lot of major Hollywoo releases that are made on film. It's producer/director preference a lot of times. In the past, stuff on film meant you could rescan the originals and remaster them in 4K, which you can't do with 1080p digital recordings (like Star Wars ep1 .. they used other digital techniques to upscale them). But there are limits to that. Trying to rescan old film at 8K often results in a lot of noise, and you don't gain much even after trying to clean it up .. so there are limits to the resolution of the analogue medium that we are just now surpassing with digital sensors.
- kgoltsov 7y ago
  Once you get into 70mm film or 70mm IMAX, you're better off just leaving it alone and projecting it directly. I think 70mm could be scanned to 8K, and I'm not sure there's even a equivalent for 70mm IMAX yet. That's why Nolan still screens his films with 70mm IMAX projectors. He might use digital for effects, but I believe he preserves the analog film in the final prints instead of using a digital intermediate.
  - fsh 7y ago
    I don't see any objective reason for choosing 70 mm analog over 4K digital. Sure, the resolution of 70 mm is higher, but does it really make a difference? A lot of digital cinema is "only" 2048×1080 and you usually don't see the pixels at normal viewing distances. On the other hand, when it comes to linearity and color reproduction, analog film doesn't stand a chance against a digital sensor. 2001: A Space Odyssey might look sharp, but the colors are definitely off. I guess the real reason why Nolan and Tarantino still use 70 mm is not quality, but personal preference and a bit of self-marketing.
kome 7y ago
I have no idea why, but colors look SO bad on digital point and shoot. They are always a bit too crisp. Perhaps very high-end digital cameras are good. But if you need a good dynamic range for cheap: use film.
- acomjean 7y ago
  There are usually a bunch of color profiles you can set to control the colors. He defaults are too “vivid”. High end cameras can shoot “raw” images and have more control over color as you need software to “develop” the raw into a more useful format(jpg/tiff...)
- jackhack 7y ago
  To my mind, the hypersaturation of colors in digital photography is the same as the loudness wars on CDs (which ironically loses one of the great benefits of CD, the huge dynamic range which is now effectively unused outside of few jazz and classical recordings), and the televisions/monitor defaults that emphasize red and high contrast. Consider, too, with CCD and the lens systems, there are shifts toward certain hues, and further post-processing (e.g. photoshop) is used to distort the color balance. Of course they probably said the same about Kodachrome's vibrant, but unnatural colors "back when..." But why? It's done, because we can. And it's noticeably different. And it's sometimes not a matter of being better, just different, since in a saturated world of media (no pun intended) differentiating one's work from the millions of others is often enough of a deciding factor to trigger a choice. Which brings me to the topic of the fashion industry...
welly 7y ago
Why do people use hand saws and chisels when powered table saws, compound saws and biscuit joiners are available to us? As someone who shoots film, there are a number of reasons, one being the asthetic you get from film that you can't (even with x hours in Photoshop) get from digital. I shoot large format and there are no (within my budget, at the very least) 8" x 10" digital sensors. Film also more or less forces you to make prints. I would hazard a guess that a small percentage of digital photos ever make it to print and half of a photograph for me is a tactile thing you can hold in your hands and give to someone else. Lastly, it's the process. That's something I can't explain.
- paulmd 7y ago
  > I shoot large format and there are no (within my budget, at the very least) 8" x 10" digital sensors. You can make a scanner back out of a normal CCD film scanner. It comes with a lot of downsides since you have a giant "rolling shutter" that works on the scale of 10s+ but it does give you an image.
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  > Why do people use hand saws and chisels when powered table saws, compound saws and biscuit joiners are available to us? That analogy breaks down a bit because in the former case, there are very many circumstances where the small unpowered tool is the best fit for a job (touching up an area, finishing off a mortise, trimming off something by hand where a power tool would not be able to give the proper feedback). In photography, the preference is a lot more subjective, at least when it comes to 35mm formats. Most carpenters will carry hand saws and chisels with them even if they have all the top of the line power tools because they remain relevant and immensely useful.
- aaronbrethorst 7y ago
  Is anyone even making large format scanning backs any more?
- mark-r 7y ago
  An 8" x 10" digital sensor would take a whole silicon wafer. Doubt you'll see one, ever.
GlenTheMachine 7y ago
Another point in film's favor is that it has extremely high resolution per dollar. I just bought a Rolleicord TLR camera, which shoots 6 cm square negatives. It cost me $250 on eBay. If shot with good quality low grain film, and scanned with a professional grade negative scanner, the equivalent resolution I get from it should be on the order of 100 megapixels, and possibly more in good lighting conditions. Even regular 35 mm film shot in a decent SLR will give you 30+ megapixels. You can buy good used 35 mm cameras all day long for less than $100. You can buy a Hasselblad 500C, the very same camera the Apollo astronauts went to the moon with and that Ansel Adams used for shooting his iconic photographs of Yosemite, which uses the same 6 cm film as my Rollei, for less than $1000. Buying a 100 megapixel digital camera would cost me ten thousand dollars minimum. See: https://petapixel.com/2014/12/18/comparing-image-quality-film-digital/ https://petapixel.com/2014/12/18/comparing-image-quality-fil...
- floren 7y ago
  Hell, my Yashica TLR was only $100. Those 6x6 negatives look AMAZING.
- slumdev 7y ago
  > Buying a 100 megapixel digital camera would cost me ten thousand dollars minimum. Hasselblad makes some nice ones. https://www.hasselblad.com/h-system/ https://www.hasselblad.com/h-system/
  - GlenTheMachine 7y ago
    Yeah, they're marvelous. But the digital back by itself is $26,000. A full camera is around $35k.
    - paulmd 7y ago
      There are some options in the $3-5k range. $3k gets you a used Pentax 645Z which is pretty nice. (I know, I know, only $3-5k, what a deal. Better than the "cash payment for a pretty nice car" range though.)
- 7y ago
tomc1985 7y ago
I don't get why techies can't understand why people might not choose to do things just like they do As other comments have alluded, film still is very good for things. Even the best digital camera sensors can't match the dynamic range of film. Digital photography is so much more than just megapixels
chungus_khan 7y ago
In addition to the other points, film X-ray machines are still in widespread use because unless there's a specific need for a digital one it's hard to justify the enormous expense of the upgrade (and some people prefer looking at film output over digital as well, if it's what they're used to).
rangibaby 7y ago
1. People enjoy the craft and experience of doing it. Why knit? Why paint on a canvas when you could do it in Photoshop? Why do people still buy records when Spotify etc exist? 2. Medium and large format film still look as good or better than digital 35mm, and are still affordable for hobbyists 3. The look of BW film can’t be replicated by current color digital cameras without an expensive (in time or money) modification to the sensor
gambiting 7y ago
So I know someone who is very much into photography but is of modest means. Turns out you can pick up a second hand analog camera and film for it for very little money, and achieve quality that you'd need something like a Canon EOS 5D for otherwise. Obviously there are things you can't do with the analog that you can with the 5D, but not everyone is made out of money.
- et-al 7y ago
  The hashtag #shootfilmstaybroke exists for a reason. Film's initial cost may be cheaper than digital, but after 10-20 rolls of film, digital comes out to be cheaper when accounting for film + development costs. A used Canon 5D MkII kit can be had for under $800 these days.
lm28469 7y ago
It's fun and it looks good. Sure, if you only look at the technical specs it's inferior in almost every way, resolution [0], no image stabilisation, poor autofocus, slow shutter speeds, poor high ISO performances, 10 to 36 shots per roll &c. I bought a d3400 to get into photography, never really liked it. One day I visited my parents and my dad showed me an old Nikon FE, the one he used to take my childhood pics with. Slapped two batteries in and it worked just as good as 30 years ago, I haven't shot digital since then. Good luck shooting medium format digital if you don't have $15k+ to burn. I got a bronica SQ + two lenses for less than what you'd pay for a good aps-c digital camera. If you dev and scan yourself it's good fun and not too expensive, you can experiment with different film stocks, different developers, different techniques. I personally find it much more rewarding, you can't spray n pray, you can't fix a 2 stops under exposure in post prod, you just have to know what you're doing and get it right. It's more of a creative process in a way. There are also many quirks that you can't really replicate : Infrared photography isn't really easy on digital: https://fstoppers.com/film/humanitarian-conflict-beautifully-captured-kodak-aerochrome-film-46330 https://fstoppers.com/film/humanitarian-conflict-beautifully... You can't shoot xpan panos on digital: https://i.redd.it/5184siubabv11.jpg https://i.redd.it/5184siubabv11.jpg & https://i.redd.it/ajrj8o38a1t21.jpg https://i.redd.it/ajrj8o38a1t21.jpg & https://i.redd.it/m7z6wm2idiw01.jpg https://i.redd.it/m7z6wm2idiw01.jpg You can't shoot cinestill 800t either: https://i.redd.it/dnh3vi4u4s841.jpg https://i.redd.it/dnh3vi4u4s841.jpg & https://i.redd.it/x852qq3h43c41.jpg https://i.redd.it/x852qq3h43c41.jpg etc. https://i.redd.it/5h74tuzocva41.jpg https://i.redd.it/5h74tuzocva41.jpg [0] although you can get some pretty high res stocks these days, here is a 35mm frame: http://www.adox.de/Media/cms20test.jpg http://www.adox.de/Media/cms20test.jpg
- semi-extrinsic 7y ago
  You can technically (depending on film) fix a 2 stop underexposure - e.g. with Tri-X there's no problem pushing it to EI 1600. But you can't really do it on a picture-by-picture basis, only for a whole roll.
- octorian 7y ago
  You can still get the good autofocus, good metering, good shutter speeds, and image stabilization with 35mm film. You just need to pick up a Nikon F100 or F6, and slap on a modern F-mount VR lens. Of course to get better resolution, you need to go up to medium format. (where those niceties become harder to come by)
kgoltsov 7y ago
When switching from film to digital, we took a lot of steps back and are slowly catching up to quality. I guess around the 2010s, theaters started switching to digital projection, which I believe started with 1K (similar to 1080), then 2K, with a small amount of theaters showing 4K projection. Most high-quality 35mm film is equivalent to 4K resolution. Unfortunately, a lot of movies were shot and mastered at 2K or less, like Mad Max fury road, so there's no point of having them at 4K because the information was never there. With old 35mm, it was probably scanned for dvd or vhs at some point, but studios are going back and scanning movies to 4K with great results. Megapixels aside (an irrelevant number btw), dynamic range was pretty bad compared to film in the early days of digital, but it's starting to get there. The revenant was shot on digital and looks amazing. Once you start watching on streaming though, you're losing so much to compression. Even with 4K HDR blu-ray, you're only getting 10 bits of color compared to 12 bits with DCP (digital projection).
- semi-extrinsic 7y ago
  Nitpick: 1920x1080 is approx. 2K, 1K is more like 1024x768. The "4K" resolution syntax refers to horizontal resolution, while the "1080p" syntax refers to vertical resolution.
Finnucane 7y ago
Clearly, you've never used a Hasselblad.
bitwize 7y ago
The reason why people still shoot on film (or record vinyl records) is the same reason why people still make ukiyo-e woodblock prints: it's an art form, and both the process and the results are interesting.
yesimahuman 7y ago
I shoot photos for the memories and film just makes me feel more (the look, the grain, the process). Old lenses have a character I prefer. Old cameras feel great and are fun and low-risk (take it on the water w/o worrying about losing it, for example). I enjoy digital but just like cycling, the industry has gone mad equating technology with quality.

hadtodoit 7y ago

Flying out of SFO, the security gave me a heads up about putting aside film. They are not TSA, but at least they had been briefed.

tpmx 7y ago
That's really impressive, given how few people are using film.
- tecleandor 7y ago
  Seems like there are relatively more film users at SFO (insert outdated hipster joke) Jokes aside, I'll take care from now on, film goes at least two two four times through the scanner on a plane trip...
dmix 7y ago
That's good, hopefully they keep a sign up or tell TSA agents as my spouse uses film regularly on trips and I'm sure not everyone will find out. Just another headache traveling through the US I guess.
et-al 7y ago
SFO checkpoint staff have always been accommodating with hand-checking my film regardless of ISO.
LeoPanthera 7y ago
SFO is one of the few US airports that doesn't use the TSA for security - and it shows. The experience there is so much better.

JustFinishedBSG 7y ago

Can wait until very important data is lost to bit flips / corruption from scanner. " Cure to cancer lost to TSA scanner "

vernie 7y ago
Damn, that was the only copy.
ChuckNorris89 7y ago
If you're working on a cure for cancer you should have double, triple, quadruple backups on and off site and not fly around with the only copy of your data.
- harikb 7y ago
  I bet GP meant it to ironic. That said, having a backup and knowing that the data was just corrupted are two different things. In a word without storage level CRC checks, it is possible an otherwise successful test is overlooked and we move on to 'n + 1' in the iteration. But that said, hopefully all filesystems have some sort of error to show the file has been damaged.
dekhn 7y ago
Failing to plan is planning to fail.
whatshisface 7y ago
"Plans to turn TSA scanner into radiation therapy machine corrupted inside TSA scanner."

coldcode 7y ago

If its bad for film, would it not be bad at some level for people?

colejohnson66 7y ago
This is for the checked luggage, not the people scanners.
- cguess 7y ago
  It's for carry on. Checked luggage goes through WAY more radiation and you should never put undeveloped film or anything else that's radiation sensitive in your checked luggage.
  - morsch 7y ago
    Details: https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q12361.html https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q12361.html
    - tbihl 7y ago
      For reference, 300-350mrem is a decent estimate of your annual dose of radiation. If you fly a lot, smoke, or live in areas where the ground releases significant amounts of radon, your own annual dose can be twice that.
- uptown 7y ago
  Sometimes they’re one and the same. https://twitter.com/CaughtCctv/status/1212381004591255553 https://twitter.com/CaughtCctv/status/1212381004591255553
pdonis 7y ago
If you mean the people going through screening, they don't get CT scanned, only the carry on luggage does. The machines are shielded.
mirimir 7y ago

ohazi 7y ago

How much radiation would it take to flip a bit on an SSD? What about RAM (many people send their laptops through in a suspended-to-RAM state)? I would assume that RAM is more susceptible, since we still store a single bit per RAM cell, while some SSDs now store multiple bits per cell, but I've never tried to do the math on "what would it take to actually make these problems start to appear?" Might be a fun exercise... has anyone looked into this?

zitterbewegung 7y ago
How many bits are you carrying with you ? 4MB be 4TB has two orders of magnitude so you have to first specify that.
- ohazi 7y ago
  The math is going to be back-of-the-envelope OOM analysis anyway, so you could work it out per bit or per unit area and multiply it out from there, given your particular configuration. The statistics get more complicated when multiple bits are flipped (either by a single event, or over time) before an error correcting pass can look at the bits in question. In those cases, the particular flipped bits and where they are spatially will matter a lot more.
cm2187 7y ago
Don't SSD have some kind of cyclic redundancy check?
- Seenso 7y ago
  > Don't SSD have some kind of cyclic redundancy check? Yes, but they're pushing the the technology so far to get higher densities that error correction is required for normal operation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_cell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_cell > The primary benefit of MLC flash memory is its lower cost per unit of storage due to the higher data density, and memory-reading software can compensate for a larger bit error rate.[5] The higher error rate necessitates an error correcting code (ECC) that can correct multiple bit errors; for example, the SandForce SF-2500 Flash Controller can correct up to 55 bits per 512-byte sector with an unrecoverable read error rate of less than one sector per 1017 bits read. Making the cells smaller and cramming more bits per cell reduces the amount of energy/radiation required to trigger a bit flip, making the data more vulnerable. It sounds like they may also be increasing the energy put out by the scanners. Not a very good combination if you care about your data. Maybe they'll push the fraction of storage reserved for error-correction data even higher to compensate. IIRC, radiation-hard chips often used processes with larger feature sizes and different materials in order to be more resistant to the effects of radiation.

modo_ 7y ago

I've never run into any trouble getting film hand checked while traveling within the US. Sadly it's a completely different story internationally. Indian security has been the strictest in my experience -- flat out refusal to do anything other than run the film through the X-Ray machine. I don't travel with fast film (800+ ISO) anymore. It's just not worth the stress.

klodolph 7y ago
I decided to switch to digital for anything where I want to go over 400 ISO. My personal feelings are that the image quality of 800 ISO film is just terrible. YMMV based on personal preference, I know people who really like the look of fast film.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Leaving aside the work associated with chemical processing generally, you could “coax” ISO/ASA 400 B&W films up to 1600. Maybe 2400. But you definitely lost a lot as soon as you started pushing. For a lot of photography, especially basic journalist event stuff, I find the fact that I can go to about 3200 without even thinking about it a huge benefit of digital.
  - klodolph 7y ago
    Sure, you can push two stops if you like swaths of flat black in your photo. Same thing with TMZ, which says “3200” on the box but if you look carefully it doesn’t actually say “ISO 3200”, because its ISO speed is actually something like 800.
- i_am_proteus 7y ago
  Tri-X 320 pushes to 800 pretty well.
  - klodolph 7y ago
    I’m not happy with it. YMMV. I don’t like Tri-X in general though.

anfractuosity 7y ago

On the topic of film, this little short video "Behind the Film - Inside the ILFORD factory" is cool - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXpoALotxf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXpoALotxf0 They also have a lab that do b&w prints from digital files on photo paper interestingly.

plapetomain 7y ago
> They also have a lab that do b&w prints from digital files on photo paper interestingly. Not new or uncommon. The “last generation” of photo finishing (think drug store 1 hour photo mats) since the early 2000s mostly used digital printers. They called them laser printers no less (not a xerographic process, but direct exposure) The developed film was scanned and this of course allowed them to give you a CD cheaply. Also of course allowed printing digital media easily.
- anfractuosity 7y ago
  Yeah, I've had colour prints before, but not really seen anyone do true b&w prints.
  - klodolph 7y ago
    It wasn’t super uncommon in the past, because you could just use the same equipment with different chemistry. When I say “not super uncommon” what I mean is that you might have a couple different shops with a B&W (non-chromogenic) option in the same city.
shoes_for_thee 7y ago
I'm not in a place where I can watch the video right now, but are they doing this via like.. an LCD-equipped enlarger? This would be pretty cool. In the early 2000s I did a lot of experimentation with printing digital negatives to transparencies and printing them in a traditional darkroom or using alt processes.
- anfractuosity 7y ago

kailuowang 7y ago

I have been traveling with a Filmguard bag. Sometimes they take it out and ask for a hand inspection, sometimes they don't they rarely insist on scanning the films themselves outside the bag. Regardless never check-in your films. Nothing can protect them from the powerful scan for check-in luggages.

supernova87a 7y ago
Those bags do not do what you think they do. When a TSA x-ray operator sees an opaque bag on the screen, he/she just turns up the exposure until the contents are visible. Not much help there for your film.
- neetdeth 7y ago
  Turning up the exposure on the screen does not do what you think it does. With a line-scan X-ray, the bag is well out of the beam path by the time the operator sees the image. But it's probably coming in through a 12 or 16-bit ADC, so there's a lot more range than can be effectively displayed on screen (at least with a simple linear+gamma mapping). It's a matter of adjusting the display mapping to see inside denser objects. The X-ray source power needs to be high enough to deal with the worst case scenario of large/dense luggage. If you can give your film a 10x lower dose while still allowing enough X-rays through that the operator can clear it, that sounds like a good idea. It just has to be traded off against the fact that deliberate shielding is likely to be frowned upon, and they may take the film out and run it through "naked" anyway. Seems worth a try, but I'd definitely use a commercial product marked for the purpose and resist the temptation to DIY it.

joecool1029 7y ago

My first job over a decade ago was managing a photo lab. The x-ray machines would often damage film that people traveled with. Amateur photographers just weren't aware. The damage typically looks like white fuzzy diagonal lines across the image. It's not enough to completely destroy a picture, but it'll ruin it. The most common widespread damage we saw were people that bought like 50 disposable cameras for their Caribbean wedding, then brought them back home to get developed. The worst overall damage we had at that lab was when high school kids would run customer Tri-X film through the C-41 lab. That would completely wipe the film, no recovery whatsoever possible.

Finnucane 7y ago
Ever put the fixer in first? That's fun too.
- cannam 7y ago
  There are companies like Silbersalz (https://silbersalz35.com/ https://silbersalz35.com/) selling ECN-2 cinefilm stock in 35mm cartridges. You have to return the film to them for processing, rather than take it to a C-41 lab - and they warn that if you send them to a C-41 lab, you can damage the lab's equipment and ruin everyone else's photos as well as your own. I don't know how paranoid the warning is, but that seems like it could be pretty bad.
  - joecool1029 7y ago
    > There are companies like Silbersalz (https://silbersalz35.com/ https://silbersalz35.com/) selling ECN-2 cinefilm stock in 35mm cartridges. To be fair, anyone buying that likely knows what they're getting into. Tri-X was sold next to C-41 film in every store, so a lot of people would just grab it when they wanted B&W thinking it was the same thing to develop as color film. (Yes, there is B&W C-41 film as well)
    - cannam 7y ago
      > To be fair, anyone buying that likely knows what they're getting into. True, I'm just dwelling on the possible consequences. I have some Silbersalz film myself that I haven't used yet, and I'm actively imagining everything that could go wrong. > Yes, there is B&W C-41 film as well Ilford XP2 - it looks a bit different from typical B&W film, with very flat whites. I used to love XP1, which came out sepia when processed C-41.

Finnucane 7y ago

Ilford has been warning about this also. Previous generations of scanners were generally okay for film up to about ISO 800, but these new scanners are believed unsafe at any speed.

hosteur 7y ago

What about those full body scanners? I always opt out due to health concerns. Does anyone known anything about the actual radiation levels involved in those and the safety standards the machines must live up to?

yummypaint 7y ago
If you assume the dose is absorbed by the "whole body," then it isnt of any concern. However, in reality the energy is so low that almost all the dose is absorbed by the outer portions of skin, which could be more hazardous. Public-facing literature i've come across doesnt address this, so erring on the side of caution isnt a bad idea. More importantly it disincentivises use of these devices for security theater.
dijit 7y ago
I know a lot about them; I researched them extensively even to the point of talking to designers. I came to the understanding that they're quite harmless; even considering the radiation doses you get while flying after (because, radiation is additive of course)- However using them many times per day can cause damage to the skin over long periods of time. Regardless, Opt out anyway; if people choose to opt out the economics of the devices will stop making sense and perhaps they'll be a little less invasive in future. I will always opt-out, even when I'm being threatened or condescended to (as was the case in Gatwick airport some time ago).