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from the Film-At-11-Maybe...-Or-Maybe-Not... dept.
It's easy to think that film cameras are gone forever. But Marketplace has a short story about how Kodak is apparently close to re-releasing the Ektachrome 100 film line. Tweet as covered in the story.
There's news that Kodak is about to bring back Ektachrome 100, a popular slide film for analog cameras, that's been gone for five years. Launched in the 1940s, Ektachrome was one of the first commercially available color films and became the "preferred choice of magazine and advertising shooters." (It was a favorite of National Geographic.)
As far as I can tell, the development has been hanging for quite some time as here is one among several stories back from January of 2017 stating it was coming back. I guess software isn't the only industry that suffers from vaporware potential. Marketplace's question could also be asked here: What pieces of discontinued technology do you wish would come back?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Shimitar on Friday June 08 2018, @06:22AM
After a couple of events in my life i went back to shot B/W rolls on my "old old" fully mechanical SLR.
(basically, my DSLR was not mine anymore, and after a move i found again the old bag with my old analogue camera bodies, 1+1 = why not?)
Well, it blew my mind. After 10+ years of digital, shooting rolls literally blew my mind. It's a totally different perspective and world. I found out that while analog color is quite dead, B/W instead is well alive and kicking. I found a very specialized lab in my city which develops B/W by hand with great results AND a very reasonable price. They also print (in many old-fashioned ways) but i prefer to scan my negatives and go digital from there on.
The feeling you have from mastering your own camera (a manual one!), it cannot be described. The photo is in your head before the shot, not in the LCD immediately after ready to be deleted and tried again. Shooting analog is like being more mature, more adult. You have to do proper decisions, well considered, before hand and choose where to take your chances carefully. It's like taking care of somebody. Then you wait for the roll to be developed... and work hard on the results to really get what you can make of it. And the results will blow your mind. The entire process from what you pictured in your mind to what you can show your friends and family is TRULY a creative process, much much more than a digital process. It's like the opposite of the current quick paced and all-consuming lifestyle. Also, it teaches me the pointless in digital perfection... Creative and beautiful is not picture-perfect, quite the opposite.
Yes, it was fun also for my kids, who at first wanted to see the photo immediately and took some time to make them understand. But they did, and now the older is even interested in taking a picture herself now and then.
I am not a Luddite, i merge the two. Shoot films, develop analog, scan and perfect digitally. Trying to get the best of the two worlds, because it does not need to be two separate worlds. And beside, i do not want to be entangled in the process and chemicals and dark room required for analog prints. Which i STILL would need to scan afterward, because after all, living offline is pointless today. (and i would not have enough space in my house to store 'em all on paper).
But there is a huge comeback of analog photography. And Lomography too (not me, tough). I choose not to develop myself as far as i can find a good lab to do it for me, since they can do a better job. But who knows... one day maybe.
I urge any enthusiast photographer out there to try analog B/W at least once. You can find some "old" Yashica FX-3 for little money, and some lenses too... I got my second body years ago for something like 50€ and an amazing 50mm f/1.8 for at little as 30€. Totally manual. And still works, while i have two original Nikon lenses one with broken auto-focus and one with broken VR which are too expensive to have them fixed.
What i miss the most from DSLR world? The 1.5x lenses factor. I tend to like zooms, i enjoied that little extra zoom, and comparatively cheap tele-zooms. Now i am back with my good old 135mm and keep changing lenses on the go. But happy that i don't care anymore for any dust on the sensor :)
Ok, got carried away...
Welcome back Kodak slides! I never shoot slides, but i was interested in trying them, and found that the few left on the market had HUGE prices... Like 10x what they used to be. Maybe this move from Kodak will take prices down?
Coding is an art. No, java is not coding. Yes, i am biased, i know, sorry if this bothers you.