Film fights back- on cost.

It is interesting to read about push back from studios and even producers where cost is concerned- and film is reconsidered instead of digital. 

Some of the thoughts are true, you need a digital imaging technician to do it right, you need a media wrangler, but weren’t those positions already there on film crews (DP, loader, respectively)? Using less film reduces cost, but it also reduces quality- at a time when digital is improving quality with every codec revision. 

Film may still record more latitude, but HDR still cameras are already here so HDR video can’t be far behind. Those few advantages film has are slowly being whittled away, while the advantages digital offers keep increasing. The only one Film may keep, in the end, is as an archival medium, having already demonstrated, in some cases, 100-year stability.

They took my Kodachrome away.

On June 22, Eastman Kodak Company announced that it will retire Kodachrome color film this year, concluding its 74-year run.

This is quite a long time for any single product to be offered by any manufacturer. Kodak says that Kodachrome represents just a fraction of one percent of Kodak’s total sales of still-picture films. That’s pretty darn small and the fact that they’ve held on to it for this long really is a testament to Kodak’s endurance.

Ditch mm. Time for AoV.

These days, with so many digital cameras sporting different sensor sizes and different lenses to zoom from here to there, the “mm” reference for that camera means zilch to the end user. Because of this, marketing departments have taken to converting most zoom measurements to 35mm equivalents, even though, aside for those few full-frame DSLRs, there is little true 35mm acquisition taking place any more- especially in the consumer realm.

B&H Photo Video posted a nice article comparing numerous sensor sizes and lens zoom measurements and put all that against an Angle of View (AoV) measurement which makes a lot of sense out of such disparate dumbers. Anyone can spread their arms out in a 90° Angle of View. This is the same for a sub-compact as it is for a DSLR- no matter the individual camera lens measurement in milimeters. A 20x lens is still a 20x lens. Its time we start thinking in new photography terms. Time to ditch the mm and move on to AoV so its easier to explain, and use any sensor and lens in real life.

Where to get 8mm & Super8 film transferred?

I have a client who needs thousands of feet of 8mm and Super8 film transferred to DV tape so they can edit their family memories. This is not a service I perform so I thought I’d ask the hundreds of TechThoughts visitors every day where is a good place to do this…