Slashdot Mirror
Kodak To Stop Making Black and White Paper
Swirsky writes "For those of us who remember spending quality time in a dark room with Kodak Rapid RC paper and a bottle of Dektol, here's some bad news - Kodak will stop making black and white photographic paper. Black and white photo work (especially because you can use a safelight!) is a wonderful way of introducing someone to photography. I guess if we want to do it, we'll have to use home-made emulsions on paper. As a pro photographer, I'm bothered by this, though admittedly I haven't done b/w darkroom work in years."
Oh ... wait... 8 MP digital cameras and a steady tracker... i guess my astrophotography is still going to be ok.
First I hear they're essentially getting out of the film business, now they're starting on paper too... I guess they're really heavily banking on digital..
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
I say we need to keep this project going. Let's start a donations round. Please PayPal $5 or more to SupportBlackAndWhite@kodak.com to keep the black and white in the stores. If every American donates, we'll be able to keep the black and white paper running for another 18 months.
On the other hand, the whole concept seemed too racist to me when they first started selling it.
Black and white pr0n sucks. And we all know pr0n is the only useful application of photography.
Le français vous intéresse?
Ilford fine grain semi-matte was always way better than any muddy paper kodak made.
Or Portriga -- Agfa is good too.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Why bother with Black and White photography when you can do basic filtering like black and white and sepie on most digital cameras? Am I missing out on something that Black and White Film has? Does it have better contrast or something?
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Still plenty of other manufacturers. Eventually b&w materials will stay on the market like oil colors and other arts materials. Fewer manufacturers, but will not disappear, either. Prices probably will rise, though.
so now, because kodak says so, the black and white photo market dies? this seems senseless...
amateur photographers need easy access to b&w photo materials so they can continue the long tradition of appearing cool. color is out. b&w just looks sexier/
holy shit... when did slashdot implement the ENTER THE LETTERS IN THIS IMAGE TO PROVE YOU'RE REAL game?
does this also mean the idiot/script filters can finally be turned off?
Well another pre-press and printing technology gone. so what? I will never miss the chemicals and different kind of paper.
... or cave painting?
Anyone miss Lithography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithograph
Digital cameras are still way crappier than film cameras.
Le français vous intéresse?
Digital has never been Kodak's strong side. They made a comparatively decent digital camera way back when, when no one was making good digital cameras anyways. So, WTF?
Ilford is so much better, and Kodak relying on their band name is more expensive. I still use a few hundred sheets a year of black and white photographic paper and I hadn't even heard about this.
When Ilford stops making paper that will be a sad day. Kodak stoping isn't even newsworthy.
Out with the old, in with the new..
www.brido.com : not your average blog..
so maybe B-W is dead---I think I'll do everything in sepia from now on
Reality is all that stuff that doesn't care if you believe in it or not.--Solomon Short
I'm bothered by this, though admittedly I haven't done b/w darkroom work in years.
This is exactly the reason why they are stopping the product. The poster is probably representative of alot of photographers (and people in general) with a "Hey that's a great thing to start people on this, but I no longer use it myself"
It's economics 101 if you don't make a profit out of something then don't sell it. Yes I know about loss leaders, but this couldn't be described as one of them. I'm sure there will always be a market for black and white photography, but so much is going digital that I think b&w specific film and paper are past their sell by dates
Supply & Demand.
"Derp de derp."
Kodiak paper is best, but it's a bear to work with. The real question isn't so much digital replacing conventional, but one of profit and user effort. Sure, professional photography will always have some sort of want of traditional methods, but which is more appealing to the tyro...having to buy special paper and mess with chemcials and the extensive setup required to render good images in the old method, or to shoot a dozen shots, delete the ones that weren't quite right, edit it on the computer, and throw it out to dozens of friends via email, DArt, et cetera. The I-gotta-have-it-now generation much prefers to spend a large chunk now and have easy, even if printer-limited, quality and the flexability of electronic distribution than muck with the consumables required for classic photography. So, let's sell digicams in bulk and get their money now, rather than take the ever-dwindling profit trickle of classical photography product subscription.
Black and white photo work (especially because you can use a safelight!) is a wonderful way of introducing someone to photography.
..As if your average /.'er could ever get a hot chick to enter into a dark room with him.
Most of digital camera uses a cheaper quality CCD with a shallow dwell depth, i.e., saturation occurs too quickly and hence only achieving low dynamic range. Spatial resolution isn't that great either, definitely not opimizing the quality of lenses available in some cases (Nikon D* series, etc).
And converting a color CCD image to B&W isn't the same, since the pixel filtering is likely involved (if it's a professional digital camera with multi-ccds and a beam splitter, it might be ok).
And obviously you never looked at mid-frame size camera. Digital media is approaching to 35mm camera, but nothing beyond that.
People say the craziest things.
Looks like we haven't killed that pesky B&W just yet! Ah well, keep the faith, and keep fighting!
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/a dams/index.html
This is a sad happening.
Although I expect to see about a 100:1 ratio of B&W is dead to not dead, here's the thing. B&W is hardly dead, it's simply being moved into the realm of art rather than production photography. When was the last time you went to a major gallery and didn't see silver based prints? True, digital is overtaking, if it hasn't already overtaken, typical every day photography. But, silver halide is anywhere but dead. Remember platinum prints? Go to a high end gallery and you'll see lots of them. Not practical in any way for every day use, and even possibly for a lot of typical fine art work, but it's not going anywhere.
Other than in a classroom, you don't find all that many people printing on Kodak B&W papers anyway, and it's been that way for a long time. I'm a phto student/beginning pro photographer and the only time I've printed on Kodak is when it's been given to me. There are other papers that are cheaper and work as well, if not better.
Call it trolling, or flamebait, or whatever, but the biggest thing you have to understand is that the fine art world of photography is not going to die no matter what becomes popular. Hell, there are still people shooting tintype, because they can, and because that's the nature of art. Not what's popular, but what they create and what sells.
Kodak can sit and spin, they aren't the only supplier of B&W paper. It'd be worse if they got rid of their chemicals, which I do use, but also wouldn't be the end of the world. There are many alternatives besides Kodak.
Ranting maybe, but this has been a major topic on many photo boards (it's not new news really), and life goes on.
This is as stupid as arguing that RC paper is better than fiber base, or visa vie. It all depends on what you're doing.
And yes, I do shoot digital too. And large format. I won't give up any of them, they all have teir place, and each have their strong points and weak points.
While this guy could state it better, how is this a flamebait?
I took an intro Photo class last year. We all used Ilford papaer. It was a hell of a lot cheaper...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
I took a photo class last Fall at Moorpark College, and their photo program begins in the black and white darkroom. Sure, digital is the wave of the future (or today, depending upon your views), but with the hours I spent in that safelight, I really learned to appreciate b&w photography. Furthermore, since color can be more difficult, what would you prefer students do to learn photography? There IS more to the art than Photoshop 1337 skillz. Note that I am somewhat biased; I used the Kodak paper almost exclusively, and enjoyed its results.
I dont think that 35mm and 16mm film will be going anywhere anytime soon the UER *Useable Exposer Range* of film is about 7 stops were SD is around 3 and HD is about 3.5
Linux is like living in a teepee. No Windows, no Gates, Apache in house.
i've been using ilford for years, doesn't really mean much if kodak slips off of the market.
This is really sad. Especially since sometimes, black and white photographs just look better.
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
As an artistic medium I've heard that black and white can't be matched.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
I don't mean a camera with a color sensor that just gets desaturated. I want a dSLR camera with a sensor designed strictly for black and white.
I think it makes great sense. Current technology could probably give you 32-48 bit dynamic range if all you sampled was black and white and forgot about color. (current color cameras are around 12-16 bit) That would make for incredible quality images and I bet it would sell quite well within the pro and artists market.
Kodak makes great film (T-MAX 3200P, Tri-X), but their Variable Contrast paper has never really been of Fine-Art quality. The images always seem muddy. I've never really gotten a good print out of Kodak paper, and only really use it for contact prints.
Ilford makes a lot better paper, especially their Fiber VC glossy. And Agfa makes an incredible Resin Coated (RC) VC glossy (MPC 310), with incredible tonal depth.
I just can't wait to burn through my remaining Kodak polycontrast paper.
Nobody serious about B&W printing will miss Kodak. And if anything it will just mean Ilford and Agfa (who are both struggling) will enjoy a larger market-share. Maybe even Oriental will make an American surge.
For those of you who are curious about what traditional photography has over digital in an age where digital is approaching (and soon exceeding) the resolution of film, it mostly has to do with art, and the feel of the print. For journalism, tourist shots, birthdays, and pr0n, you won't get much for the hassle of chemicals. But there's an organic quality that digitial is missing, which affects artistic expression.
It's kinda like this: a CD of Jazz music played over a solid-state stereo has a completely different feel than a staticy record of Jazz music played over vacuum tubes.
Which is better? Well, it's purely subjective.
-j
--
photos @ http://www.ghostmanonfirst.com/
Sad troll really. You cannot beat B&W for an artistic medium. Many photos look far better in B&W than they ever could in colour.
Because he could have said it better. Because if he had said it in a different way the probability of flames would be considerably lower but he could still express his opinion.
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
RTFS?
Black and white photo work (especially because you can use a safelight!) is a wonderful way of introducing someone to photography.
B&W photographaphic printing is easier (and cheaper, I think) than color, and it's a good way for beginners or hobbyists to print their own photos.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Even with colored paper, the black crayon is usually the first color to run out. Then I have to use the purple crayon to finish drawing Bruce Wayne's "other" car.
computers have always had more range of contrast than film.
What BS! The exposure latitude of print film is far higher (more forgiving) than current digital SLRs and point and shoots.
This submission about Kodak discontinuing B/W paper production is categorically incorrect!! I did a little research because I want to put an end to Slashdot lies and found that indeed Kodak is promoting and selling black and white paper for use with the same looking single lense reflex camera you had back when you had that telephoto lense and got some nice shots of that chick naked in the appartment acros.. nevermind.. And not only that, they upgraded the camera for this futuristic paper and GUESS WHAT! Not only can do control depth of field and shutter or whatever it is you do that makes your pictures "artistic" or whateverthefuck, you can use your old SLR lenses on Kodak's frickin awesome SLRs. So calm down and damnit editors do not drop to the Republican's level to use fear to increase ummm... Kodak sales. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Black & White photography is an artform unto itself. It's not like you can "unplug" black & white, and then just just "plug" color in its place and get the same results. Good black and white images are very rich in detail and contrast, and that contrast can lend itself to a much more dramatic image. Color will never match this quality.
No DSLR uses multiple CDDs (AFAIK). You'll get rather a good B&W by just taking the green channel.
Finally film resolution is always quoted for some tiny contrast ratio (20%? something like that). Digital resolution is at 100% contrast ratio so it can actually look sharper even when the lpi is lower.
If anyone's not seen it, this DSLR vs medium format shootout from a few years ago has some interesting stuff in. Has a film person made a rebuttal? I'd be interested to see.
I introduced my daughter to photography the same way I learnt. I gave her a Pentax K1000 with a few lenses and an extension tube set, a good supply of ilford b/w 400 and a book on the Zone System. There's so much to learn that starting with the basics is mandatory. Taking pics by point and shoot is to photography what using Windows and using a mouse to point and click is to computer literacy.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
There are several other manufacturers of B/W paper, including Agfa and Ilford. Go search oh bhphotovideo.com and you get dozens of resuls from half a dozen manufacturers for fiber-based paper alone. If anything, Kodak left the market because they were the least competitive.
(How a self-proclaimed "pro photographer" can be so unfamiliar with the market as to think that Kodak was the only manufacturer of B/W paper left is hard to understand.)
"I guess if we want to do it, we'll have to use home-made emulsions on paper."
No other company does B&W paper? Having done black and white paper development, and having a rather nice experience in the romantic qualities of the safety light while helping a fellow student rock the chemical bath trays to develop her photos, I too am rather sad.
Fond memories.
Still, if it helps, you can always put your SD card into a chemical trough...
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Maybe, I'll be able to pull this off easier with my (future) kid
http://www.jasonadamreed.net/images/cartoons/calvi n/ch941106.gif
Care to see any of my Black and White Photography?
Dada Mail - Program, Art Project or Absurdity?
I haven't done b/w photography in years, but I remember there were other brands than Kodak. There still must be.
So if something like this happens, a big player quits because he's not interested in the market anymore, a smaller one quickly steps in.
Don't worry, b/w-photography guys.
I don't need a signature.
Yeah, you can do whatever you want with digital, but make sure your printer is up to the task. Epson and HP both have good photo printers that make use of gray and light gray ink in addition to black. It makes a HUGE difference in the quality of B&W prints, and a noticeable difference in color prints.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
While I'm not 100% sure about this comparison on mid-frame vs. Canon D1 (that's a nice camera), I'd like to say I stand corrected and ask politely to mod the reply up.
I believe that digital images looks "shaper" since high frequency foureir component is always present in these CCD detectors. In analog, such forier compnent tends to be smeared out.
...load the image from the digicam down an then make:
[Image] -> [Mode]-> [Grayscale]
Et Voila! Very artistic!
Don't get me wrong... I still like film as a medium. It's beautiful, high resolution per volume, and requires pretty base fundamental technologies. That old medium or large format camera from the early 20th century is still going to outperform digital in terms of raw resolution. Small format is debatable, esp since color resolution was getting close to that of old B&W the last time I checked. Contact prints, while lossy, is as low tech as you can get. I use to get away with using an old slide projector and an easel on the wall.
k e_your_own_b_w_ink_kits_4228684.htm
But who wants to work in a dark room? You've got the chemistry issue, bulky enlarger issue, and making a room light tight issue, not to speak of working under a safe light. And the printer market is so saturated that you can get an entry level photo printer for $100, an a5 dye sub for $300 and laser for $400. HP has their own photo gray cart for their printers, or you can go with bulk ink and B&W multitone ink.
http://www.lyson.com/quad-black-tone.html
http://www.inksupply.com/bwpage.cfm
http://www.weink.com/ecom/catalog/chromiumbw_-_ma
If I was going to get back into B&W imagery... I'd get my self a $100 Canon i960 inkjet printer if not an Epson, hex black tone ink, and go print happy. Lots of control, buckish/page, Ilford classic pearl paper, and go print happy.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
The article submitter needn't fear (yet) - there are plenty of companies still making B&W film and photo paper (probably the best being Ilford - I've never actually used Kodak paper more than once or twice, I've always used Ilford Multigrade).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Actually, color RC paper is cheaper than B&W RC... Kodak Endura Color Glossy 8x10 goes for $29.95 for 100 sheets while Kodak Polycontrast IV RC B&W paper, 8x10 sells for $44.95 per box of 100 sheets. I can't speak to the chemistry, though. And in initial setup, a color enlarger head will set you back more than a black & white condenser enlarger.
This sig intentionally left justified.
Ilford HPs film was my choice. Much, much better than Tri-X from Kodak. And when you pushed it, it kept a nice smooth range. I only used grade 6 Kodak paper for the junk going into the newspaper.
We've got good consumer home equipment printing options and affordable big commercial labs (filled with automated equipment and button-monkey "technicians") and digital photo everything within easy grasp and price. Digital photography is cheaper all around and has many noteworthy advantages over traditional photography.
Also, even the most weenie digicams one step above the Wal-Mart toys has a B&W and Sepia setting, and the good digicams have tons to offer.
So why fuss or lament ??
Because the collective body of knowledge, experience and artistry in photography is formiddable, and black & white process is an inseperable part of that. Because printing photos (again, where the discontinued paper comes in) is a whole different world from actually taking the photos. Because artists use B&W and it's the most sensible place for newcomers to start learning since it's easier and cheaper than traditional color process.
I'm not sad that Kodak for business reasons decided to quit making B&W paper. That was a business decision from an old company that's confused about it's current and future place in an industry it helped define, and trying to survive. I AM concerned that some will view this as the demise of traditional photograhphy. I don't believe it is.
If traditional small format (8 and 16 mm) motion picture film can survive in a digital imaging world, then traditional photography certainly can.
Photography has a history of invention and evolution, this is just another step.
B&W process will move to the edge, the background. It will step away so that newer processes can rise, but it will not be lost, not for a very long time at least.
While digital process photography will take over the mainstream, B&W process will remain in the hands of the artists and those who wish to learn the craft of photography.
Bottom line, B&W is not dead, one important company's decision to get out of the business is not it's tombstone, and the value of having a significant body of knowledge + traditional options + modern innovation and evolution leading the way makes the craft all the more rich and strong.
- Marching Band: It's not just for breakfast anymore
A few important points about digital imaging today: - the quality of the cameras AND the printing exceeds film and paper today. This is not some sign of the future, this is the present. Professional-level digitalSLRs are rivaling cameras larger than 35mm already. - the RAW data from a camera is effectively B&W and could be converted directly into B&W images if someone built a convertor for it... not a bad idea really. - B&W imaging is NOT going away. It has gone digital. Epson (and other) inkjets when equiped with quadtone inks (multiple shades of gray and sometimes other tint colors) exceed even the high quality platinum prints done in years past. There is some amazing work being done today in B&W. If anything the digital conversion has given the industry a rebirth. Silver halid is indeed dead. Yes people will continue to buy it and it will be made in smaller and smaller batches but for all intents and purposes put a fork in it... it's done.
That's a rather loaded statement. You could just as easily say that it's a less powerful artistic medium, since many photos look better in it than in color, that the demands of skill aren't there. I would argue against this; I think B&W is pretty hard to get your head around at first, since you have to think in terms of contrast and texture rather than bright, vibrant color. You could interpret it that way, though.
B&W is a very, very good artistic medium, but I think that the best, near-perfect color work is better than the best, near-perfect B&W. Black and white has a higher average, but color has a flatter curve; the high-end outliers go higher.
Personally.
Wrong. Just plain wrong. This comment represents a complete misunderstanding of how black and white film, color film and digital image sensors work. It takes a whole hell of a lot more work to make a digital picture look good in black and white than just greyscaling it.
Try enlarging digital verses film and you'll see that film still has many good years left.
"The only thing I wonder is whether digital will reach a point that it will simply be so much better than film, that no-one will use it."
Eventually the universe will die a heat death.
Black and White photography is taught at my school, mainly because it is an art-form itself. Learning how to manually develop b&w photography is an excellent skill to have, and increases your appreciation of photography as an art-work.
Anonymous Coward
Sure, Kodak is stopping production, but they are not the only ones that make quality B&W photo paper. Ever heard of Ilford?
When the news came out a couple days ago I thought it was a shame since I used to develop my own B&W film, but quickly realized that even back then I was scanning my films. I almost never printed them so at least in my particular case there is no real loss.
And sure, we got digital, but in over 5 years shooting digital I am still not too happy with my B&W results. It is nice to know that I can grab a manual camera and shoot some Kodak PLUS-X 125 if I feel like it.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
OK. Turn the Button [Contrast] to 'High' after you grayscaled it :D
Such an animal does exist... or at least did exist. Check out the Kodak DCS 760M, which is now discontinued. It was a monochrome-only B&W professional digital SLR. While it's not 32-bit, it did yield fantastic images.
Mike
Mike
"There is no reason for black and white anything today" - You insensitive clod. You obviously have no eye for art and no feelings for Penguins, Zebras, Pandas and other monochromatic life forms.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I wouldn't start a kid on anything but digital, and preferably digital SLR. Digital point and shoot is certainly better than film point and shoot. You can review the results for one. With SLR you generally get manual focus, though.
Another thing is that you can take a lot more photos. I can happily take a drive and shoot 100 shots in the country, because I'm not counting cost. 100 shots of film is a decent amount of money - enough to consider the investment in a digital SLR worthwhile.
Kodiak paper is best, but it's a bear to work with.
You, Sir, are a stich. Ha, ha.
Of course there are others manufacturers but still, this can be bad news, as others may follow. I was once playing in a dark room and since it was on amateur level, only black&white was achivable. Well, lets just hope that Agfa, Fuji and others will continue their production cause there is something really fascinating in self-made prints. Digital photography is convinient, but traditional is just fun.
At the Biochem lab that I work in we do a lot of autoradiography, and our protocols have standardised around kodak B&W film. We know exactly how long a tritium labeled thin film chromatography preparation will have to expose inside the -80C freezer to get a good result.
If we have to go to ilford, we'll have to work out how to do all this stuff all over again.
Does ilford even expose at -80C?
But I guess that since paper is merely a rendition of a monochrome negative, digital sampling of the negatives would suffice to a degree. Maybe not as nicely as people would hope, though.
There are some niche uses for B+W paper such as electron microscopy (I'm sure there must be others but I'm only a lowly biologist). Color paper just doesn't cut it.
Of corse, you're talking to someone who's made his own B+W glass slides. The resolution is really spectacular (great for EM) but they sometimes jam projectors made for the cheap mass-produced plastic slides. Of course, with everyone switching to digital projectors, their days are also numbered.
Nevertheless, I won't miss Kodak B+W paper, I prefer Ilford.
I've read that digital cameras actually do record more levels than what you get in the final image, but they're storing them in an image format which only has 256 different levels, so either they choose the exposure, or you do, and the rest of the data is cropped out as you would expect it to be.
But high dynamic range imaging is coming to games... where pixel entensities are represented by floating point values, and I imagine it won't be too long before the same comes to your digital camera, allowing you to adjust the exposure after the fact and even do effects like simulating the variable exposure over the entire image which your eyes see when you look at the same scene.
Given a few years of development, digital always beats analog. So okay, there are audiophiles who insist on vinyl. We're now at the threshold when digital cameras could now replace the standard 35mm professional SLR.
I'm a sci-fi vegan: I don't want the aliens to think we have as much right to live as the fried chickens we eat.
Sorry to deliver the news, but that announcement isn't fake. The paper you link to is inkjet printing paper, not photographic paper which is what the announcement is about (as in, the stuff that works with chemicals that you develop).
:) While these cameras have big sensor resolution, one thing I don't like about them is the price, which is also big.
Also remember that Kodak no longer produce the digital SLRs you link to. Kodak sales increasing? I should hope not.
If you want to use that telephoto, consider a Nikon D2X - or a Canon 1Ds Mark II. 12 or 16 megapixels will give your telephoto glass a new lease of life
The first digital SLR was a Nikon D1. That sucker came out about six years ago (or was it 5?). Only 2 megapixels, but Nikkor F-mount glass (manual and auto) works a treat.
Perhaps if you stopped looking at ass all day (referring to your website), then you'd be able to read.
I enjoyed reading your post, but perhaps this is a bit dubious:
For one thing, film is an analogue, within it exists infinite possibilities for shade and color.
Is it really analogue? Surely, the fact that we can see grain would indicate there must be some sort of step function occuring?
The first digital SLR was a Nikon D1. Don't be so fast to condemn others for minisformation when your posting is filled with the same The first digital SLR was the DCS-100 back in 1991. A bit further back than 6 years. Do some research yourself. (took me 10 seconds and I've been shooting digital professionally for over 10 years)
Has anyone yet produced a digital camera with a setting to automatically take pictures at various different f-stops and exposure lengths in the course of a few seconds? My camera has the ability to change both manually, but a lot of the time, the subject will change too much before I can tell my camera to change to a certain f-stop and shutter speed. Automatically, it attempts to find the best one using light settings and a few interesting algorithms, but it doesn't always pick the best settings to use. Why can't it try a few settings around each other, store them to my iPod, and give me the chance to sort and find the one I want?
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
The signs are there; Ilford and AgfaPhoto analogue photography had/has financial problems, Kodak ceases B&W paper production. The first two will continue for the time being and some Eastern European producers + Bergger + Oriental fill the rest of the niche.
On the other hand digital B&W printing gets more and more important. While small players like MIS, Jon Cone and others introduced B&W quad inkjet inksets + software several years ago, it is now taken up by Epson with the new 2400, 4800 etc printer models that have a standard three grey inks for superb B&W printing. Especially if that is done with the shareware B&W RIP from www.harrington.com and similar commercial products.
B&W printing isn't dead, instead it is in many ways becoming a healthy activity.
Take two pictures of a girl who is wearing a red swimsuit. One in colour, one in black and while.
In the colour picture, you look at the swimsuit. In the b/w shot, you look at the girl. QED.
The general shrinking of the market is worrying though - my digicam just doesn't do what I want it to (big enlargements, shallow depth of field, nice grain) but I can see film and processing getting a lot more expensive. I don't think it will ever disappear though; the lab I use have just bought a few millions' worth of new processing equipment and black-and-white was never completely killed off by colour. I don't think there'll be much R&D going into film any more, but Tri-X is decades old and people still like it :-)
And yes, this is a sampling of the output signal from the CCDs. So the camera could probably deliver higher resolution pixel values if the A/D convertor and file format supported it.
And your comment regarding 'cropping' is non-sensible so I ignored it.
Now, try that with a street shot, or a sports shot, or a safari shot..
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
ITS THE END OF THE WORLD!! KODAK HAS STOPPED MAKING B&W PAPERS!!!! TIME TO START MAKING MY OWN!
Last time I checked, Kodak didn't have a monopoly on B&W photo paper (or photo anything). Try Ilford, its better paper anyways.
Now, I understand someone could miss Kodak white photo paper, but what is one supposed to do with black paper? Nobody will miss that!
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
I doubt anyone will read this this late into the story.. oh well.
:)
I spend most my hours in a dark room, doing holographic exposures. More fun than making ordinary photographs. Just get some holographic glass plates, from http://www.geola.com/ for example, then put an object behind the glass plate, and fire a laser through the glass plate.
Then develop and bleach it (geola.com also do the chemicals for that - just add water)
Tons of fun
Never trust the grey scale conversion. Ever. Use the Channel Mixer function in Photoshop. Bear in mind that black and white film is insensitive to green (green is the safe light for BW film). Red/orange is the safe light for BW paper, so adjust the channels accordingly. All your values *should* add up to 100% (again, artistic judgement may demand that they add up to 110% or 80%)
Fiddling with the Channel Mixer in Photoshop lets you simulate prints for varying types of film and paper (note I said "simulate" on purpose - you will get close, but not quite there). You can get some very striking results.
Going straight to gray scale simply mixes the channels evenly, and the resulting images look flat by comparison.
How long will these cameras last? How long does the storage medium last? Yes, they have inkjet printing inks and paper that will last 70 years now...but that's just the print. What about the "negative"?
Here's my point...I could go into a camera store that sells used equipment, buy a Leica from the 40's or 50's and still run film through it. Will people still be running a digital camera they buy today 60 years from now? Will they even be able to get the info off of it?
You could take a negative from Ansel Adams that he made way back in the 20's and still make a very find, high quality print today. Don't have to worry about making any interface or program to read the data or worry if the media is still viable on a disk somewhere. Hell, with his 8x10 negs you don't even need an enlarger, could make a contact print with a lightbulb if you wanted.
Digital photos taken today won't be around 60 years from now...sorry, but that's the fact. You would constantly have to keep upgrading and transfering your shots to the latest storage medium just to keep up. Can anyone honestly say that you'll be able to read a CD 60 years from now to get the pictures off? Maybe if you find an old computer in an antique shop...maybe.
Not to mention the fact that the camera you buy today is obsolete a year from now when something better AND cheaper comes along.
I don't know, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
No!!! You're just eliminating image information that way. The proper way to compress the dynamic range is to reduce it before it hits the lens. Use reflectors, white paper, fill flash, whatever you can to lighten your subject. If you're using digital, there's really no excuse to not try this - you can take as many test shots as you want.
If you can't do that because your subject is someone sitting in front of a tree and you want lots of shadow details AND cloud hilight details, maybe your subject should occupy more of the frame so people can figure out what that subject is. That sort of thing is really difficult to do with basic film and paper - but see a paragraph later on for more info on the easy way. The background is not as important as the subject, ever. If the background is the subject, emphasize that. If an object or person is the subject, expose for that.
Now I know you probably want clouds in your pictures, and that's why you invented this process. That can be done... just mask in the darkroom, and use one of your under-exposed brackets. It's really not that hard.
Or, you could find a paper that has a greater exposure range than the usual stuff in the store. It does exist, and can be made with liquid emulsion. Your paper's exposure range is the limiting factor here. Film has way more exposure latitude than paper or digital anything today.
Learning a little about the development process will help you go from blind luck to predictable results. For example, learn the different grades of paper - you can use them to take an image having a 10-stop range and print it on normal paper.
"Black and white photo work (especially because you can use a safelight!) is a wonderful way of introducing someone to photography."
Digging a leech field is a wonderful way to introduce someone to indoor toilets, but I'm glad it wasn't the training method imposed on me. Yet somehow, I still grasped the basic concept. Some people will never know film, just as some people will never know vinyl records, vacuum tubes, steam engines, etc.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
Penguins, zebras, and pandas are not monochromatic.
They are duochromatic - black, and white.
You want a monochromatic animal? Think panther with its eyes closed.
Or Micheal Jackson.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Nooooooooo! I am taking a black and white photo class this spring! Gah! Guess I'll use a different brand paper then. Anyway, I am not sure if it was mentioned, but good B&W photos tend to be better composed than color, just because the colors can't carry the picture in B&W.
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I retired mine last month, after 15 years, and went digital. Film was just getting too expensive.
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...but IBM is no longer manufacturing 8" Floppy Disks. ...Macs aren't shipping with 3.5" Floppy Disk Drives. ...Rosebud is a sled. ...the Gimp is Keyser Soze.
all you people are missing an essential property of BW film / prints : only real film / Fb prints can present you with a real TEXTURE, which is part of BW unbeatable beauty. I say this as a professionnal photographer for 10 years (now turned programmer...)
I was deeply saddened when I went to a Magnum exhibition last summer to find that most prints where made with InkJet printers instead of traditional paper ! It was really noticeable AND annoying.
Please do not compare the 'add grain' feature of photoshop to what a real camera (try the Tri-X at +1/2 stop, for instance) would give you...
I now shoot digital only (cost) for leisure but I regret the quality my 35mm slrs gave me, especially in BW or with Kodachrome 200. It is not always about range & resolution !
Oh, by the way, I've got some BW stuff there : http://www.amakuru.net/irlande/
I've read a bunch of uninformed posts and people touting the digital and the film side and most of them pretty uninformed.
B&W film has a much better dynamic range than any digital camera out there that I know of. Now before someone points to camera X that I haven't seen that you have to take out a second mortgage to get, I'm gonna talk about the digital cameras that most people have, including some of the higer end cameras like the D70, D2H, etc...
While the dynamic range of some of the new digital cameras are approaching that of color film, it's still not there yet and still no where near that of a good B&W film. It's just not. Now for most people in most circumstances, it doesn't really matter. Sure there are sometimes when I would like the extra dynamic range but most of the time I would have been shooting color film anyway so it's a moot point. I would like to get back to artful B&W shots and if I do I would definately switch back to film.
Darkrooms are fun, they just are. I've spent a lot of time in a darkroom in college and I would love to have one in my house but it's just not practical for me right now. It's a shame that Kodak is getting out of the paper market but I guess it's not being profitable for them anymore. Photoshop just doesn't have the same fun factor and it's a shame that future generations of photographers will most likely miss out on the darkroom experience but that seems to be the way things are going.
So we've seen where film excels, what about digital. I think digital is one of the best things to happen to photography as well as one of the worst. It is the best because it gives you an instant look (ala polaroids) at what you just created and you can just delete pictures or even choose to not have them printed. It is an incredible tool to help you learn because of that. However crappy digital cameras make crappy pictures which is usually compounded by the fact that people who don't know how to take a picture in the first place, usually buy these crappy cameras. It used to be in the film world, that at least the picture was usually taken on 35mm film and there usually wasn't too much people could mess up that couldn't be fixed in post processing. I have seen more blurry, underexposed and grainy pictures taken with a digital camera than I can shake a stick at.
I think the little P&S digital cameras (the good ones at least) are great because they are usually small and unobtrusive and great for parties and other events where most people would typically use a camera. However, just like that film P&S camera, you're still not going to be able to take a good picture at a graduation or a wedding with that little flash in a dark room 100 feet away... it's just not going to happen, it's going to be dark and probably blurry.
What I find depressing is the shift from camera as precision instrument to camera as consumable toy. Proper film cameras was built to last, and (above a fairly low price threshold) the pictures were as good as the film you loaded them with. Digicams are like PCs - laughably behind the times after 3 years, vertical depreciation and uneconomic to fix.
There is some truth to some 3rd world people not liking there photo taken because it steals their soul.
There something about a Blk & Wht photo that captures more then just the image.
As a pro photographer, I'm bothered by this, though admittedly I haven't done b/w darkroom work in years.
Umm, isn't that exactly the problem? What are they supposed to do, just keep making it to satisfy your sense of nostalgia, even if you never buy it?
:-)
I guess if we want to do it, we'll have to use home-made emulsions on paper.
Interesting - doesn't sound to me like this guy's a pro, or at least not one that has a lot of dark room experience. While Kodak certainly has decent offerings in this area, there are still quite a few companies to choose from that make B&W paper (Ilford, Bergger, and Forte to name a few). There's no need to create your own emulsions.
Kodak's discontinuing paper, not their highly-successful B&W films. They've also invested heavily in chromogenic films - b&w film that can be procesed in standard color chemicals and printed on standard color paper. Producing B&W paper is, for Kodak, catering to a "niche" market, since they provide a wide variety of photo products, most geared toward the average consumer.
For me and, I'm sure, many like me, this won't be much of a loss - while I love shooting T-Max 100 and Tri-X, I print on Ilford Fortezo papers.
Digital cameras are still way crappier than film cameras. I posted that quote from an earlier reply to a thread. It was marked as flamebait. Not entirely sure why as the poster of the reply has a point when it comes to visual quality.
Digital cameras do some things that film based cameras do not. I won't argue that point. They make many things convenient. However that is not the point I think the poster is trying to make. (That digital cameras suck over all)
The point he is trying to make is that digital cameras don't provide the quality of medium format and 35mm slow speed films. (I am talking slow, not 400iso or 100iso. I am talking about below 20iso)
They are not wrong. Digital is moving forward with leaps and bounds but still hasn't made it into the fine quality area of imaging. It isn't a wonder why Hasselblad and Mamiya are still selling strong. Or why Nikon hasn't pulled their F and N lines. If digital is taking over, why aren't they pulling cameras off film based cameras off the shelf?
[change of subject]
When I heard that kodak was pulling their RC line I wasn't heart broken. I didn't even care really. Kodak is a name that is old, they aren't the best by any means. Honestly I prefer Forte paper myself. There are many alternatives. When I took photography in high school and college I experimented alot like everyone does. My instructors even went so far as to recommend Forte, Agfa, Ilford... never once did I hear them recommend Kodak paper.
Some people used it sure but there are so many other quality companies out there that this isn't drastic. Nor are you gonna find yourself making home made emulsions in your garage. Kodak is a name, not an archetype.
What about Ilford? I know they make a good paper and B&W film--better than anything you'd get from Kodak, that's for sure.
I'm just worried that they're going to discontinue their T-Max film developer, which has historically been my chemistry of choice. Nothing against speed processing with Dektol, of course, but keeping it at 68 degrees F throughout the process while agitating constantly is a bit of a pain. Not to mention the pain of mixing up Dektol (a couple liters of water at 90-100 degrees F and constantly stiring).
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
The issue at hand is the use of B&W print paper, and its potential demise.
I'm still getting over the loss of Kodachrome II - and now K25 is gone!
If we're talking B&W fine-grain film and standard 11x14 or 16x20 enlargements, digital has a long way to go.
Working in a darkroom, there is no digital 'scanning' done. it's analog end-to-end.
Now, if you're talking over the counter snapshots - there is still a benefit to analog - I've shot my workhorse Pentax analog SLR system side by side my digital camera - and there are things you can get out of an original transparency or slide to a print in a darkroom that you cannot do in digital - you have one shot from that digital file - near zero latitude as compared to most slow or medium speed films, and nowhere near the ability in a darkroom - I can recover light and shadows from analog film that no matter how many times you adjust sliders in photoshop - if it's not in that original file, you'll never get it back. My first 'digital only' trip to Acadia taught me that.
Even the 6 MP CMOS cameras are apparently only capable of 3/4 of the info that is on a 35 mm frame - and we're not even considering larger format film which is out of the question for digital.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I, for one, will be looking at the girl in either photo, but that's just me.
Don't Blame me if I seem bitter, I'm at work, and the TV only plays soap operas.
KODAK PROFESSIONAL BW400CN Film has been out for about a year. It is B&W film that can be processed like color film, on color paper. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure color processing is cheaper, so this seems like a good move on Kodak's part. Maybe they need to work on their press releases, though. It seems like this fact would be worth mentioning.
But without black and white paper how will goth kids represent visually the darkness of their foul souls and the deep, infinite pits of despair they dwell within?
Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
but it cant be processed under a standard red bulb, leaving amature B&W photographers who develop their own photos in the dark, so to speak...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
because it's modded "Insightful"
Why does my post history abruptly stop? I want to laugh at the stupid things I posted as a kid.
I had better get all my old B&W stuff and dump it on ebay fast! Wonder if that 20 year old B&W photo paper is still good.
Pr0n will make androids come to reality, I'm telling you.
"For those of us who remember spending quality time in a dark room with Kodak Rapid RC paper and a bottle of Dektol"
During photography class certainly the RC paper and bottle of Dektol were present but the 'quality time' was being spent in another direction.
I went all digital a year or so ago, and everyone I know in weddings has too (except anyone I know in Reno/Tahoe. I spoke with about 5 of them in December, and they were all still using film. It was like finding a bunch of people who used the telegraph, very weird.) I'm sure film traditional b&w will survive as an art form, but I feel sorry for anyone who makes their living at selling any of that stuff.
San Francisco Photographers
Kodag BW paper has been a dog for a long time. Ilford makes much better paper across the board.
If you need a fiber paper, there are several other manufacturers that make better BW paper than Kodak: Ilford, Agfa, Bergerrer, Forte...
I've worked in professional imaging for something like 12 years now. Nobody uses the kodak products for output. Even the color papers are not as good or as stable as compared to the Fujicolor options. The only thing they still do well are the professional films.
So kodak stopped making black and white photo paper, huh? Eh, not really a show stopper. I mean, any good digital camera (even some bad ones) can do black-and-white pictures now, without the hassel of a darkroom. Nostalgic, but I think Kodak made a clean move.
Besides, if you're into taking black-and-white pictures, the process of taking the shots hasn't changed. A digital SLR works basically the same as a manual camera. How you get the picture out of the camera has changed, but the hobby of black-and-white photography has not died.
Kodak is slowly but surely going out of business. They underestimated the speed of adoption of digital photography and now it's too late for them to catch up. Their stock is stagnant, revenues are shrinking every year, they post losses quarter after quarter, they've even been dropped from the Dow Industrial Average after being on it for 75 years.
They are the 21st century's first buggy whip maker.
Photos from my Fuji E550 will result in a 30" x 20" print at slightly better than 150dpi. Given that a modern photo processor is only prints at 300-330dpi, I don't think the quality would be particularly horrid.
Get yourself a cheap InkJet and stop yor bitchin!
This disturbs me because there is a very important scientific use of black and white film--autoradiography. This is a powerful and economical method whereby a tissue slice is exposed to a radioactive substance, and then the tissue is rinsed and placed into contact with a sheet of black & white film. After a few days or weeks, the film is developed and the optical density is measured to determine the amount of radioactivity taken up in different regions of the tissue.
Unfortunately, black & white film suitable for autoradiography is becoming harder to find. I know of at least one research project that was delayed because investigators could not obtain suitable film in the US (I believe they ultimately imported film from Europe). If black and white film becomes a specialized item manufactured only for scientific use, its cost will likely rise by an order of magnitude.
You cannot be a semi-pro, either you are a professional, or you are not.
You appear to have missunderstood the definition of professional. A professional is someone who gets paid to do something, an amateur is someone who does it as a hobby. Professionals have been trying to push your view that amateur is someone who isn't good, while a professional is good, but that does not follow. A good amateur doing something out of love will get better results than the professional who needs to make money. (Time is money, the pro doesn't have time to set up some of the best shots)
Polaroid once made a B&W film (designed to be color-neg processed) that had three different sensitivity layers. The high-sensitivity layer had an ASA rating of 100 or higher, the low-sensitivity layer had an ASA of about 0.003 (this from memory). That's 15 bits before taking into account the latitude of the layers.
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the early digital compasses. Boating mags and manufacturers touted them as 'sensing the changing magnetic field of the earth thousands of times per second.' Sounds impressive? Someone pointed out that a magnetized needle floating in a dish of water senses the magnetic field an infinite number of times per second!
"Everything looks worse, in black & bhite"
-- Paul Simon
Glad I'm not the only one that was thinking that.
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This story came out over a week ago.
"There is no reason for black and white anything today. Its time to stop dragging our feet and actually walk forward"
Sad, just sad. Ansel Adams is rolling in his grave hearing that.
The rewards from large format B/W photography still can't be matched digitally. The reward is the personal satisfaction of hand metering a scene with your 1 degree spot meter. Adjusting your exposure to compensate for a modified development process that can compress or expand your hilights. And finally selecting the tone and texture of paper for the print (a selection that far exceeds color paper options).
If all went well, you have a beautiful piece of work... hence the joy of photography. Note that color film only captures around 5 stops of light and BW captures 7 stops. And you can increase that using expansion techniques.
I wanted to get my wife into photography ...
.... ... and the real ancient tool: a thing we used to call suitcase-magnfier ... ... all that to realize, that the chemicals are not available, only to quantity purchasers ...
....
the real thing- when I went back home 2 years ago to hungary)
Got her a canon full-manual camera, and got all my developing tools out
safelight, negative developing box
it is a suitcase, with a few holes, where you can put the lamp frame, and build an ultra lo-tek photo developing studio in seconds...
(meaning hundreds of $$ for kilos of the stuff from which i needed grams)
I really loved to take b&w pix and then play hours with just one frame of negative film to figure what you can do with it in the post-production phase
well i guess now i can set my lame full-auto nikon to b&w mode, then play with gimp....
while I understand the act of killing b&w film for the masses, it bothers me too....
with digital I started to make so many (and so crappy) pics, that I do not really care anymore, just cram them on a DVD when they reach 4gigs and store them......
when film costs, and development takes hours you value your pics better..
I see someone else was up late last night watching TNT. I don't really care for Batman Forever. It is too colorful and flamboiant. The first two were pretty dark, and it worked very well. And Val Kilmer just doesn't pull off a very good Batman. He's like the Hayden Christensen of Batman. Surprisingly, I found myself thinking the same thing about Nicole Kidman. Still, there was nothing else to watch (other than The X-Files movie, which ended half an hour earlier). Personally, I think the animated series movie (Mask of the Phantasm) is the best portrayal of Batman. It's very dark and there are alot of plot elements mixing about. People actually DIE and Batman actually BLEEDS. I've read the Dark Knight Returns and it was somewhat similar. However, it was a little too dark for me and Batman looked like he was pumped up on horse steroids.
all those chemicals to develop b&w photos were pretty noxious anyway, i'm glad to see part of this going away. with a good digital camera and photoshop, you don't need a darkroom anyhow,
Interesting that the poster feels that Kodak stopping production of B&W paper means that we are going to have to resort to making our own emulsions.
r te
Seems they don't know other companies are making B&W paper (and film and chemsitry). Actually, several of these companies' only focus is B&W photography products.
Just a small list.
Agfa
Bergger
Cachet
Foma
Fotospeed
Fo
Kentmere
Luminos
Oriental
B&W isn't dead.
--JLockard - "Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." - Emo Phillips
I wont get into the debate over analog/digital ( though i do side on the analog side.. ), but its really sad when we start losing sight of our past due to the advance of technology.
We are doomed to repeat the errors of the past.. Only in a more grand fashion....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
After switching to Ilford, I never considered Kodak again. Kodak is crap.
Grrrr if i do that one more time... Grrrr
Sorry folks.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You can however take the colour out of colour photographs.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
. . . think about all the extra skills learned while hunting down 127 and 620 format film :)
hawk, who was already transfering 120 onto 620 spools almost thirty years ago
Vario was B/W film, not paper, so this is somewhat OT. It had high contrast and high exposure latitute; I could go +/- 2 stops with no problem, and maybe more. The film took C-41 processing, and then you used regular B/W paper. Because of this, a processor in San Diego called it 'special order' to process and print, which cost quite a bit more. Still, great photos.
This was around 1981. Anyone else try it?
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
I'm sure the popularity of these new papers hasn't helped Kodak. I gave up on Kodak a while ago due to their constant re-shuffling/re-branding of the product line. As long as HC-110 is still available I'll be happy.
Ever heard of Ilford? I have hardly ever used any Kodak BW paper, it is more expensive and does not have any appreciable advantage.
.. next time post when Ilford goes bankrupt (they just emerged), not when Kodak stops making something nobody uses anyway :)
So
--- "I didn't think anyone would understand it" -Prof. Bob Muller
solarization, for instance, is all about failure, and I don't think the digital filters do it right yet.
the original process of solarization, for those who don't know, is based on doing things wrong. usually you agitate the pan with the developer to keep fresh developer on the paper, with solarization you leave it still, and as the dark areas develop, the developer just above the dark areas gets 'dirty.' then, about halfway through the chemical process, you flash a light onto the picture in the pan, and the 'dirty' developer solution blocks the light, but just over the areas that are highly exposed.
after you flash the film, you agitate the pan for normal development, and where there was little exposure before, you have somewhat more, and there you have it, the thing is that solarization is somewhat more complicated than just reversing the middle area of the gamma curve, which is what most digital attempts at it do...
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
One word: Ilford.
I no longer use B/W paper, admittedly. However, had I not put years into the darkroom, learning the zone system, etc, my digital photography would suck today. Not to say that proper density/contrast ratios can't be achieved digitally...they totally can. But students (who have good teachers) using traditional the B/W media are forced to learn how to achieve proper exposures in the camera rather than in post-production.
Commercially, it may not matter whether work is done "in camera" or in Photoshop, but there's not much integrity in shooting crap and fixing it later.
I guess if we want to do it, we'll have to use home-made emulsions on paper.
Actually, more and more of the companies that make liquid film emulsion are switching to digital as well.
It's kind of sad, because my photography teacher has less and less to be able to teach his kids each year. That's part of why he's retiring and our school is replacing photography with digital photography.
XaNk: now I remember why I hated the girls in high school
XaNk: because none of them would talk to me
the dark room is one of the few places that magic still occurs...
It's funny, but I got that same 'magic' feeling the first time I used Photoshop. Conversely, I found the chemical darkroom to just be a pain in the ass.
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
Sure, here's a rebuttal ...
http://www.photographical.net/canon_1ds_mf.html
The basic conclusion is that digital has less noise, but medium format has much more detail.
This is true, but the joy of B&W is the darkroom flexibility, and that's just not possible with colour emulsion/C41 process film and paper.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Unlike film cameras, digital cameras won't last any better than the computers do, at least not for many years. The basic difference is that with my 45-year-old Olympus Pen-D2, I can take advantage of all the improvements in film technology over the last 45 years, whereas with a digital camera I'm stuck. But I don't think we really care about this; who's going to complain at getting twice the camera for half the price only three or four years after buying your previous camera?
Lenses last, but become less convenient. My Olympus OM-series 100mm F2 I will put up against any lens in the world, it's that good (and I'm not the only one who's said this). But there's no auto-focus, and it would be technically tricky even to get shutter-priority AE out of it. On a modern camera, it's basically reduced to a completely manual lens. (Well, that's how it is anyway, but at least on my OM-4 I don't have to manually stop it down while metering and shooting!)
Black-and-white film negatives, if properly processed and stored, are good for perhaps a couple of hundred hears, maybe longer. We're not quite sure yet. But proper processing is a reasonable amount of work, and it is continuing work to store them properly.
Image files also take continuing work to store for long periods. (As others have pointed out, you can't just expect to slap them on a CD-ROM or tape , come back in a hundred years, and be able to read them.) But I think it's less work than storing film negatives. You could put them on a few geographically separated servers that can communicate with each other, and perhaps some off-line backups as well. It's certainly safer than keeping one's fridges running, as you're resistant to power failures, you've got multiple copies in case of disasters, all the usual stuff. If we find digital files easier to store than paper, we'd certainly find them easier to store than film.
Format conversions are a big problem with digital files. JPEG will probably be readable forever, but who wants to use JPEG? You really want to use the raw image format from the camera, or something that holds equivalant information, but camera manufacturers are pretty set these days on using proprietary formats that change and age rapidly. (Some camera manufacturers' latest software even now can't read their earliest raw files!) If we could get everyone to buy into Adobe's RAW/digital negative format the way they've bought into JPEG, that would help. At the least, for the moment, we can convert our camera raw files to that format and store both, with a JPEG copy for backup as well.
It looks to me as if, if you use proper planning, digital will be easier and cheaper to store in the long run, and will have a greater chance of surviving disasters. But, just as with film archival storage techniques, though to a lesser degree there will be on-going maintenance costs.
On the other hand, if you toss your negatives into a drawer and forget about them, they will probably be readable longer than a CD to which you do the same. But that's heavily dependent on environmental conditions: you're basically just trusting to luck, anyway.
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Nothing attracts pedants like slahdot :)
I agree, technically they are not monochromatic (shades of one colour) however "duochromatic" does not seem to be recognised as a single word. I think the word you are looking for is dichromatic (or duo chromatic or duo-chromatic) and technically even that does not suffice since white is made up of many different colours.
Having said all that the joke is now dead and the panther fell asleep.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This reminded me of the real reason I'm not using a digital camera: the user interface.
Perhaps if I learned to work with a really good auto-focus system I'd like it, but at the moment I prefer manual focus with a focus scale and depth-of-field indicators. (I use scale focus surprisingly often, and not just for setting the hyperfocal distance.) Many modern digital (and even many 35mm) cameras lack the focus scale, DOF indication, and comfortable controls of the older (non-auto-focus) 35mm cameras.
And I've yet to see anything with the fantastic metering interface of an Olympus OM-3 or OM-4. That's the only camera I've ever found where I can shoot practically as fast in full manual mode as I can in auto-exposure mode. (I can spot-meter three or four points, adjust shutter speed and aperture and take the shot within a few seconds, usually.) I don't have to give up the control I get with manual mode and multiple spot-meter readings in order to get speed.
If I could get that in digital, then I'd start being tempated to switch.
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Kodak's B&W stuff was not great anyway. Most of us guys doing B&W used Agfa, Ilford and Forte, their chemicals were much easier to use and their papers were of better quality. Ilford and Agfa checmicals were liquids. Kodak was mostly powder, and it was a pain to mix it, and storage was a huge problem for the 5-gallon packs. Even worse was their selenium toner. Selenium is extremely toxic, and every other vendor sells Selenium toner in pre-mixed liquid form. With Kodak you have to pour out the powder and mix it, and if you are not careful you inhale selenium powder.
Kodak had some good technology, but their collective brains don't quite function well.
Take two pictures of a girl who is wearing a red swimsuit. One in colour, one in black and while.
In the colour picture, you look at the swimsuit. In the b/w shot, you look at the girl. QED.
Better yet take a colour picture of a girl who is not wearing a red swimsuit with closeups of the boobies and hoo-hah.
I have two or three packages from my photo class in high school, so now they stoped making it can I sell the old stuff now? Its just sitting in my fridge.
It's been years since I've been in a darkroom processing b/w photos but it's this medium that ignited my passion for photography. It's really the end of an era and too bad recent technology hurts the 'classic'.
There are a few things that people forget in all of this... 1. Digital prints are dye-based. They are not archival the way that monochrome prints on real photographic paper can be. All dyes fade in time. It's right on the ink packages (and colour film and photographic paper boxes, too; it's not unique to digital). Because monochrome photography is based on the actual silver image and not a dye (at least what this article is about; I'm ignoring chromogenic films and such), it has that archival advantage. Niepce's 1837 image still exists because of that (and that was printed before they knew how to actually make prints last for a long time through toning and proper washing). 2. Digital photography versus film photography is not the same as digital audio versus analog audio. CDs are super convenient, small, high resolution (higher than the turntables 95% of us had, worse only than the very highest-end ones and only while the albums weren't damaged or worn), technologically stable (a 1982 CD plays fine in a 2005 CD player, and a 2005 CD plays fine in a 1982 CD player - my 1982 CD player even plays CD-Rs and they hadn't been invented yet) and cheap. Digital photography requires a high end computer (and probably a laptop too if you shoot a lot, or at least a ton of cards), much worse to approximately similar to 35mm film in resolution (much worse than rollfilm or sheet film), constantly makes prior gear obsolete, and the gear is very costly. 3. All film photographs are shot at full resolution. You don't have to remember, and you can't screw it up. 4. A good $70 point-and-shoot (e.g. Olympus Stylus Epic) outresolves 99% of the digital cameras on the market and basically equals almost all of the rest. 5. Digital gear barely works in extremely wet or cold weather. Autofocus film gear works alright in extremely wet or cold weather. Manual focus (and particularly mechanically-shuttered) film gear works quite well in extremely wet or cold weather. 6. I spend enough hours in front of the computer already. The darkroom is my escape. I don't want to do my photography on a computer. Digital photography is very cool, no question. It's just not for me, and nor should it be for everyone else. I can live with the majority of everyone else.
Interesting link, thanks.