making a photography darkroom

[whisky-dave]

I've shown the evidence you've ignored it.

[tabbypurr]

a musuem takign videos all with a yellow orange cast he thought there's was something wrong with his camera, of course he didn;t realise this until he got home.

igital and the differencies between them. I'd have set the white balance be fore I started recording. He thought the scene looked OK no colour cast and digital cameras arn;t effected by such things as colour temerature of teh light source.

Film & digital are affected much the same by colour balance, but digitals t hen correct it, for some hit & miss & limited value of corrected. The end r esult problems that crop up are much the same, except that film is passive, and thus reflects consistently any difference between film colour balance and lighting/scene colour balance, whereas digital produces much more varie d results when in automated colour balance mode.

NT

[dennis]

I didn't mention the lens.

How do they differ

They are for 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999% of pictures. If you are taking those 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000001% you will know how to do it and be using digital anyway.

Of course you can, bining, iso, etc.

Yes its understanding how to compose and use your equipment. It isn't restricted to old fashioned film. You can teach it on a phone if its the right phone.

A smart phone could well be a good choice, if it has manual controls. You could write an app and do online teaching.

No film camera shows exactly what you get, they don't do 100% views to start with.

Of course it is true of all digital SLRs, they have the same optics as film SLRs. The display is an extra that you can use on some digitals as not all have live view.

I am pretty sure you are barking up the wrong tree teaching using film. You should teach the basics using a digital camera and then explain the differences with film if anyone actually wants to use it.

[whisky-dave]

anyone that can;t tell teh differncies or even a single differnce between a digital camera and a film one is'nt worth talking to are they. If they have a camera in their hand how will they know whether it's digital or film if they don;t know the differnce ?

well I listed some in my 2nd post 1st wouldn't post came back with some error.

in the way

that's NOT my problem.

If you use words I haven;t used .....

I NEVER said, plese only quote what I have said. I DID NOT say a film camera is NEEDED to teach photography.

I said it's better for teaching PHOTOGRAPHY. and please NOTE that for me photography and selfies and the average baby snap is NOT the same for me.

Someone would have to think carefully about which product wpould be best for teaching photgraphy. I would NOT advise an iphone6 even teh s+ version.

for that I would need to be convinced that those that I was discussing it with had a clue about photography otherwise it's be like talking about women with Rod speed as he can't tell the differnce between a womens arse and a sheeps as long as they're called shiela ;-)

No as you have done you change what I say then expect me to defned what you've said. Show me again where I have said you need a film camera to teach photography .

[dennis]

Its not a difference as far as teaching photography. You obviously need a special camera tailored to your idea of what to teach.

So do mine on my digital.

One of the reasons why digitals work better. You can turn it off on all of them.

See as far as teaching goes there are no differences between film and digital unless you decide to use them.

[whisky-dave]

Yes it is, with digital it's easy to change it after taking the photo or retake the shot or even in post processing. Not quite so easy with film. WHich means with film if you're going to take pictures under anyhting other than daylight you need to think about it, even before loading the camera. Have you ever had to think about teh shots you are going to take before taking them in this way ? How many times has the decision of which media to choose has been dictated by whether you're shooting in daylight artificail or even at night. ?

No just one where you can alter Av Tv focus, compensation, ISO, all idependantly.

In fact I have 2 DoF marks on my film camera. But I bet you don't know what they are for.

which one is that then. ?

doesn't mean the lens works any better. What it can do is help eliminate camera shake. Which is why you don;t know about teaching photography. A lens with IS will help you get a picture with less camera shake, it CAN NOT ensure you get a good picture that is down to the photographer in what's he's framed and his knowledge of the subject will depend on what shot he gets.

So I'm right there sis a differnce even more significant when you teach the subject.

[dennis]

8<

So its only photography if its difficult to do. Best of luck teaching that.

Like you can on many digitals.

Which one what? they are on the lenses not the camera. and they have IR focusing marks too.

Which is why a digital camera is just as good if not better than a film camera. Now you have finally got there I think we can stop this thread.

Rubbish.

BTW I know more about photography than you do as you obviously can't tell us the difference between digital cameras and film cameras.

Bye.

[whisky-dave]

It's skill not luck and yes it's about teaching PHOTOGRAPHY and NOT how to take a snap. Just because you can't tell, the differnce it doesbn't mean there isn't one.

Yes,but tehre are so many varibles and setting, and as you differnt know the differnices between digital and film then expecting you to teach it would be a waste of time, which is probbaly why you don't teach anything. No suprise there.

you can't even work that out !

what does the sentance "So do mine on my digital"

Are you refering to the DoF marks tatooed on your penis.

your digital what.....

I have a DoF mark on my camera. You don't even know what that is do you, or what it's for.

So what digital cameras and lenses do you own or have even used. Lets face it you think digital and film cameras are the same, or yuo didn;t know there's was a differnce.

but NOT for teaching which is the point. but of course if yuo know so litle about teaching you probably think a mobile phone is even better for teaching everythijng because it's digital can take phones has a spell checker and can play music better than a record player can.

Fact, which is something you haven't understood.

already have done bye f****it.

[NY]

Since someone (I think it was you but I'm not certain of the quoting) said "I have two DoF marks on my film camera" and someone else replied to that with "So do mine on my digital" I presume the latter was referring to a digital *camera* since a camera is what you referred to previously. Standard rules of English that you don't always need to repeat the noun..

I presume both of you are slightly imprecise since the marks will be on the lenses for the film or digital camera rather than on the camera bodies themselves.

As to the two marks, my first thought is visible and infra-red, unless they are for the two extremes of a zoom lens (narrower DoF for same aperture at longer focal length). For visible/IR, I presume as well as two DoF marks there are two focus marks and that the different pairs of DoF marks are roughly equally spaced about the respective focus mark.

Have I understood your question correctly? Are the two sets of DoF marks (and also the marks for the different focus points) in different colours? That's usually the convention for visible/IR.

[whisky-dave]

that was me although I said I have two DoF ones on teh lens the other on the camera.

I agree so I'm awaiting to find out on which digital camera this or those DoF marks appear.

Wrong. mine is ON THE CAMERA but to understand this with film you have to know what the mark represents.

No.

I have a canon A1 film camera.

just to the left of the hotshoe the symbol that looks s little like the london underground logo.

This is the DoF mark, for the camera, it's Not Depth of Field, but Depth of Focus. It only appears on film cameras (perhaps not all) it is where the film will lay aka film plane.

I think it was a hang on from the old days before SLR focusing. This mark has NOTHING to do with the lens attached unlike Depth of Field.

[NY]

Ah! I didn't appreciate that your use of "DoF" wasn't referring to depth of field, as I think a lot of other people had been using that abbreviation earlier in the thread, but instead referred to depth of focus, more commonly called focal plane. I wonder how many other people made the same misunderstanding of what you were saying. If you'd mentioned the crucial detail about "London Underground sign" I'd have known what you meant and realised that you really *did* mean on the camera rather than on the lens.

Now I wonder why you have *two* of those marks. Given that the plane of both visible and IR film will be the same, it's nothing to do with that. What could the second mark relate to? I'm even more puzzled because in

I can only see one mark.

By the way, digital cameras have the same mark as well, marking the equivalent place: the location of the sensor as opposed to the film - eg

which relates to DSLRs.

[NY]

Whisky Dave has given several things that you need to be aware of when using film, such as

- reciprocity failure at extreme shutter speeds

- need to choose the film type (eg speed, manufacturer, B&W/colour, slide/neg) before shooting

This raises an interesting philosophical question: do you need to know about film (and the limitations and issues that only affect film and not digital) in order to know about photography nowadays?

I would never go so far as to say that film is an obsolete photographic medium (in the same way that I wouldn't describe vinyl as an obsolete sound-recording medium), but it's becoming more of a niche product.

Is there anything about photography (the creation of pictures using light) which you would lose if you didn't teach about film-specific issues like reciprocity, different light curves of different makes of film, the need to choose the speed of film before you start shooting, given that these are not relevant to digital.

Choice of colour v black and white is an after-shooting post-processing issue with digital (indeed the photographer who took digital photos of my wedding presented a few shots both in colour and monochrome, with contrast-enhancement to emulate a B&W negative as opposed to straight colour-to-monochrome conversion).

Choice of emulsion can be controlled after the event using programs that alter the gamma curve to emulate different brands of colour slide and negative film - again, deferring that decision until after shooting.

Choice of ISO speed can be made from shot to shot. When I used film I used to wish I could do this. As a photographer you need to know why you don't shoot everything at 3200 ASA (greatly increased noise, maybe different tonal and colour representation though I can't detect any with my cameras), but you don't need to decide on a fixed ASA for all shots.

It is not a deficiency of digital that some of these issues do not exist. Some might even see it as a bonus that you have fewer restrictions like this.

Of course if your pupils intend to use film as well as digital then they need to be aware of them, but since most people will only ever use digital, it may no longer be necessary to know about them, in the same way that we don't need to know about choosing the correct amount of flash powder to use, now that everyone uses electronic flash, and we don't need to use a tripod for every single shot and the subject does not need to remain still for many seconds now that film/digital sensitivity is a lot higher than it once was. Knowing that all these restrictions used to exist is probably sufficient.

For example my wedding photographer said that he no longer uses film for any of his work (portrait, wedding, landscape, buildings, as far as I could see from his portfolio) because digital allows him to do everything that film could, but for a minimal per-exposure cost and with fewer restrictions such as need to choose film before shooting, and inability to preview shots in the field if necessary. As such, knowledge of film is starting to become unnecessary.

I must admit in some ways I regret the passing of film: there is something evocative about the smell of a box of slides or a wallet of prints; the noise of the projector; watching slides in a darkened room on a silver screen; the way that a slide would occasionally go out of focus as the projector lens started to "hunt". And the moment of anticipation when you first opened the box of slides or the wallet of prints - remembering what you had taken pictures of, maybe several weeks/months ago, wondering whether such-and-such tricky shot had "worked" (ie whether you'd estimated the non-metered exposure correctly).

But I wouldn't want to go back to those days.

[dennis]

Well you don't as its not a DoF mark.

Before you teach photography learn something about cameras.

[dennis]

You are wasting your time, he mangled the quoting so much that he put the they are on the lenses somewhere that the reply didn't make sense.

I expect he did it deliberately.

The so called DoF mark on his camera is almost certainly the line through a circle that marks the plane of the film and not a DoF mark at all.

Lenses have pairs of DoF lines on them and they are curved along the barrel on zooms. There may be one for each aperture but not always and then you have to estimate.

He has probably never seen a Olympus or Sigma lens so he won't know what's on them.

He has no idea about modern cameras which is why he doesn't want to teach with them.

[dennis]

Nothing to do with DoF.

So why do you insist on calling it DoF, its not depth of focus either it is just the position of the film plane which you need to know if you are using a tape measure to set focus like you might for macro work.

BTW depth of focus depends on the lens attached, you should read more

Oh and look they the mark on digital cameras too

Yes I have one of these to go with my Pentax MX and Sony a580 which also have them.

You really don't know about cameras do you?

[dennis]

That mark has nothing to do with DoF in either meaning. DoF is just the cone of light at the image plane and it is the acceptable size at which it is deemed to be infocus. It varies with lenses just like depth of field.

He is trying to bullshit but he doesn't know that we know more about photography than he does.

[dennis]

So far he has only given differences that we have told him about. I don't actually think he knows any.

I would say vinyl is obsolete as a recording medium, some still use it for playback but I doubt if many cut vinyl these days.

They aren't very relevant to most photography as most people would correct for them in printing and there isn't much you can do when taking the picture without adding extra light.

There aren't many emulsions that you can easily get these days.

A five minute talk will tell you all about the differences.

Digital has exceeded the quality of film for a few years, that's why very few film cameras are sold. There is nothing a film camera can do that can't be done on a digital camera and you can restrict yourself to doing what a film camera can do if you want to.

I might dig some film out of the freezer and run a roll through my Nikon SLR if i can find a battery as it doesn't work without one. I could use the MX but I don't have any 35mm film.

[NY]

The only record that I've heard that was recorded to vinyl (well, actually shellac on aluminium) was a recording made by the BBC of a talk that my grandpa made on Children's Hour, probably some time in the 1950s. It is notable for the weird more-posh-that-Mr-Cholmondley-Warner voice that my grandpa puts on, under sufference, to mask his own "educated West Riding" Yorkshire accent. He was talking about how steam trains work and comes out with the phrase "end now the steam is caming aout of the chimney laike an ballett fram a gan" (and now the steam is coming out of the chimney like a bullet from a gun) - forever after we used to tease him about "a ballet fram a gan". Knowing grandpa, he was hamming it up as a protest against the daft rules which said that little children in Chobham or Weybridge wouldn't understand anyone who didn't speak in a Home Counties accent.

Vinyl is niche, like film: it has its devotees who prefer it, but the convenience and superior sound quality (eg lack of hiss and scratches, better frequency response and dynamic range) of CD make it a no-brainer to go for. MP3 has been a backward step, because it allows lossy compression and all the horrible artefacts that this introduces (like JPEG for pictures) but a lightly compressed MP3 (eg 192 kbps or higher) sounds indistinguishable to my ears to a CD.

It's ages since I've bought film. Kodachrome is no more, I believe, both in terms of manufacture and Kodak labs to process it. Is Ektachrome still made? I imagine if any slide film is still made, it will be something like Ektachrome that can be processed by any competent lab. Negative film of various speeds is probably still made, both B&W and colour? What about that Ilford XP5 that was B&W but which used colour chemistry (eg the image was made up of dye rather than silver)? That was amazingly fine-grained for 400 ASA, but it was a bugger to process consistently because of the higher temperatures needed, but fortunately it seemed to tolerate a wide range of under/over development!

And of course the cinema and TV industry still use negative film, though there aren't many programmes that use it in preference to high def video. "Lewis" still uses it (I went to watch them filming scenes when I lived near Oxford) but the cameraman said it was becoming rarer and cinematographers who were used to (and preferred) film were becoming rarer.

What intrigued me about Whisky Dave's comments was that he seemed to imply (though never elaborated) that you use aperture and shutter speed differently for film than for digital, which was why it was better to learn on film. At least I think that was the gist of his argument. Within a normal range of shutter speeds, you used them identically. All the same rules applied: a short shutter speed freezes motion, a long one allows it to blur; a wide aperture gives a shallow DoF and hence separates the subject from the background; a small aperture gives a large DoF. Halving the shutter speed requires doubling the aperture (ie going from f8 to f5.6 - I'm surprised he didn't know where the 1.4 factor came from). All that knowledge from one medium can be transferred directly to the other.

I've never experienced reciprocity failure because the only photos I've taken at long exposures (eg > 10 sec) have been of lighted buildings etc at night - situations where the light is too dim to use a meter, and there's not just one correct exposure but a whole range according to personal preference. When I took a series of slides of the Christmas lights and floodlit buildings in Bristol when I was at university, using a blue filter to correct for tungsten light on daylight slide film, I probably experienced horrendous reciprocity failure since I was using exposures of a minute or so, but since I was wildly guessing exposures anyway, and since most of the lights were coloured rather than being white tungsten (and many were discharge tubes which reproduce very oddly on film) I wouldn't have know if there was a colour shift. It would have been more apparent if I'd been taking photos in proper white light, eg metering at f 2.8 and then stopping right down by n stops and simply applying the normal multiply-by-2^n factor to the shutter speed.

Thank goodness digital is immune to reciprocity failure. As a test, I took a photo in room light at wide aperture and maybe 1/20 second, and then through almost-crossed polaroids as a crude neutral density filter and with the lens stopped right down, resulting in an exposure of something like a minute. And the brightness, contrast, colour and tonal range were indistinguishable; the only way to tell the pictures apart was the greater DoF.

Talking of discharge tubes as a source of light, one thing that has changed from the days of film is the horrible green tinge of photos taken under fluorescent light. It's not down to auto white-balance because I've fixed my digital camera on daylight and photos come out with either no colour cast if the lights are daylight fluorescents (6500 K) or else with a pale orange cast if warm white fluorescents are used (around 5000 K) - a less extreme version of the stronger orange cast under tungsten (2000 for normal bulbs,

3000 for photographic lights). So the results with digital are more as the physics of light would suggest. I wonder if there was something in Kodachrome that reacted to the small amount of UV in fluorescents.

If you white balance off a sheet of paper, it's possible to take copies of the same subject under a wide range of lights (room tungsten, fluorescents, LEDs, sunlight, shade) and get results which are all very similar, apart from a slight muting of some tones of red under fluorescent and LED because these are not a continuous spectrum. Imagine the range of filters you'd have to carry around to cope with all those different light sources on slide film. Negative is less critical because they can (and do) correct at printing - confession time: if room light was fairly dim I didn't even bother with a blue filter which would have "stolen" about 2 stops of light, and I used to let the printing take care of the adjustment.

And then there were the joys of push-processing. HP5 push-processed to 1600 ASA resulted in grain that made the pictures look like pencil sketches! Ektachrome 160 tungsten pushed to 640 was vile: very saturated and very contrasty, though in fairness the stage lighting was probably a bit harsh and shadowy as well.

Yes, finding a battery for an old camera is always a problem. I had a film in my film SLR which I forgot about after I got a digital camera, and only discovered several years later. Because my camera was motor drive, there was no way of rewinding the film other than with the motor, and the battery was dead. I got the photo shop to remove the film rather than buying a battery just to do that job! It was weird to see photos taken some five or six years earlier!

I tried to sell the camera and lenses on eBay but all I got were offers of

50p or £1 which says a lot about what value people attach to film cameras these days. Sad - it was a good camera (certainly lighter than my DSLR and its long lens!) though I skimped on the lenses and forever after wished I'd bought genuine Canon rather than third-party which had more pincushion distortion than I'd have liked.

It's great with packages like PT Lens to be able to correct for lens distortion like this: it picks up the make of camera and lens, the focal length and aperture, and adjusts using its database of known lens distortion. Purists might say that it's cheating and that you should buy a more expensive lens in the first place, but zoom lenses will always have

*some* distortion somewhere in the range of focal lengths, and it's not always practicable to change your position to alter the framing to match one of your prime lenses.

[tabbypurr]

wise, I've suffered the result of too little blue light. At some point you get nothing but noise in the blue, making anywhere near proper colours impo ssible.

Actually you can make some very nice pictures by pushing that effect to its limit. Get yourself a ton of grain in the negative, then push process the paper print after very heavily underexposing it. The result is many areas/d etails stay completely white, and what dark you get is extremely contrasty with heavy & saturated grain. It's hard to describe how it looks good, but it really does with the right subject. I used to love it for portrait - you need to get the shadowing right for it to really work well, as a lot of th e scene detail is lost completely. It's a technique I've never seen anyone else use.

NT

[whisky-dave]

thre are two DoFs in PHOTOGRAPHY. Nowerdays most people that do photography know of depth of field, when I stared in the 6th form I looked DoF up in a photography book.

Well, ones Depth of Field, which is almost always on the lens and usually a little straight line mark rather than a symbol, and teh other is depth of focus which is an indication of where the film plane is, or where the film sits.

wrong. IR focus at a differnt point to visable light.

yes that's the flim/sensor plan, it's where the film is, so you can measure the flim to lens distance and even the film to subject distance.

But that isn;t a compact camera it has an interchangable lens.