Those were the days...

I recently started scanning in some of my 35mm slides from 1980.  That was my first trip to the Southwestern US.  At the time, I was a graduate student at SUNY-ESF in Syracuse, NY, and was working on a master's degree in entomology.  Roy Norton, a professor in the department asked if I wanted to go on a two-week trip to the Sonoran Desert,  camping out along the way, and collecting insects at many locations (none from the national parks, of course).  It was a great trip in Roy's Ford Pinto station wagon, the back crammed with gear and supplies.  It's the trip where I learned to drive a manual-shift car, and my introduction to a real road trip across the USA.  We hit a lot of traditional destinations - Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, Great Sand Dunes National Monument, Monument Valley, the Painted Desert, Flagstaff, Tuscon, Organ Pipe Cactus National Park, and Saguaro National Park. Mostly we took secondary roads once we got into Colorado, and I wish that I had kept a journal of that trip.  I did take a borrowed Pentax Spotmatic camera, which was certainly an upgarade over my old Exa Ia SLR.    There were no electronics, we navigated with road maps, and we always carried plenty of water. 

1980 is the year that I think everything started to change.  I wish that I had been thinking as a photographer at the time and shot some of the town that we went through. The funky old towns hadn't yet been ravaged by Walmarts, and the uniformity we see today of chain stores and restaurants along strips had yet to happen.  Sure, we stopped at McDonald's when we were traveling, but we ate on a budget, and I have a memory of stopping somewhere in Arkansas for bread to make sandwiches (PB&J, of course), and all the store had was that awful white Wonder bread.  At the Grand Canyon, we camped at one of the campsites- and I found that the 25-cent shower was certainly a quick one.  That low-alcohol Coors sure tasted pretty good, too.

The trip was a great success, and I have a fair number of slides from it.  I scanned a few slides earlier this week, and all of the scans require minutes of removing dust spots.  I shot Ektachrome and Kodachrome, and all of the slides have aged pretty well. Over 40 years, they have been moved around, and at some point in the mid-1980s, I transferred them from the slide boxes to plastic storage sheets in binders.  Now that I have more time, I'll continue to scan the slides in, and I am finding that I did pretty well with most of my shots.  It just takes some time to clean up the images after the scan.

Here are a few... some have not been cleaned up.

Great Sand Dunes National Monument

Great Sand Dunes National Monument

Great Sand Dunes National Monument

Great Sand Dunes National Monument

near Oak Creek Canyon, AZ

The Grand Canyon, of course

Arizona Snow Bowl near Flagstaff

Monument Valley, converted from color slide.

40 years ago today

It's my 40th wedding anniversary. My wife Adrienne and I were still in college at SUNY-ESF in Syracuse. We married at 21 in Amenia, NY, her hometown. The reception was in the Amenia firehall, and it was a small (by today's standards) reception of less than 40 people.  Forty years later, we are still married, with many more years ahead.  I scanned in some 35mm slides last night and thought about the technology changes since 1978, and the fact that the same camera could do the same job today.  The film was Kodak Ektachrome. Adrienne's cousin, Chris Murphy was the photographer, and I think used a Pentax SLR. The slides are still easily viewed.  Imagine trying to find a digital file 40 years later.  You won't.  The physicality of a transparency or a negative is a quality that defines their existence, long after the event took place.  The beauty of photography is that it records memories better than our brains can fix them.  The sad reality that there is going to be a dearth of surviving images from 2002 onward, due to the digital avalanche.  Families record things on cellphones and rarely, if ever, make prints.  Phone goes dead, bye-bye-images, unless you have them backed up somewhere.  The other big difference, is that at our wedding there was one photographer, not 40 wannabe photographers with cell phones. The guests were enjoying the moment, not immersed in a cell-phone (which obviously didn't yet exist). 

The great thing is that the Ektachrome slides have lasted as long as our marriage, and I have hopes that at 50 years, they will still be as vibrant as our marriage.

Also happy Mother's Day to Adrienne.  Our daughter Marjorie is 30 years old.

Big News... Ektachrome is back!

my last roll of Ektachrome* in
the fridge

Unless you have not been anywhere on the internet in the past week, you have undoubtedly heard the unexpected announcement by Kodak Alaris at the Consumer Electronics Show regarding the resuming of production of Ektachrome by Eastman Kodak later this year.  Yes, this IS a big deal.  It's rare for a manufacturer to reintroduce a discontinued product, let alone a film stock.  I hope the hype pans out, and that people buy this film -- a lot of it, in fact.  One may wonder why they would do this.  Well, since it is a color-reversal film, development results in a positive image, which translates well for the 16mm movie market.  It's a niche, for sure, but so is Super-8, which also would benefit from this.  I think the still-photography folks will also appreciate having another option, too.

Up until now, Fuji has been the only manufacturer still offering slide film.  Their Fuji Velvia 50 and Velvia 100, and Provia 100 and Provia 400 films are terrific, and if you are shooting nature, those films are perfect.  Meanwhile, Ferrania is trying to restart their factory, and until they actually produce a product (and I think they will), it is just what we used to call "vaporware" in the software industry.  Eastman Kodak, however, has the facilities, the formulas, and the expertise already in place, so I fully expect Ektachrome 100 to appear this fall.  I would love to be one of the first people to get samples!

I also think that the continuing interest in shooting film has played a role (many many rolls!) in this decision.  Lomography has been selling slide film, which I believe is remaining stocks of Kodak Ektachrome, and perhaps Fuji, as well. The only way to tell is to look at the film box, which will state where the film was manufactured (USA = Kodak, Japan=Fuji).  Even the so-called Agfa Precisa is rebranded Fujichrome (correct me if I am wrong).  While I question how much slide film will be used in the commercial realm, the enthusiast market is growing again, and a smaller, more efficient Kodak operation can fill that niche.

I don't want to count the number of rolls of slide film (aka "color reversal film") I have shot in 45 years of photography.  I did however, take a glance through some of my files of slide images, and I can see where I shot a ton of Fuji Astia and Provia, Kodak Kodachrome, and to a lesser extent, Ektachrome.  I pondered about that for a bit, but I suspect it was most likely due to price, and film specials, etc.  It may also have been cyclical -- I can see where I shot a lot of Ektachrome in a given year.  Of course, in the last decade, any slide film I shot was primarily whatever I could find and it usually was not the same kinds of subjects what I was shooting in the early 2000s.  Back then, I was doing a lot of nature and macro photography.  That's primarily what I use digital for now.  For me, street, architecture, and colorful subjects--slide film is a pretty darn good medium.  The trouble is, the local E-6 labs died off, and I had to send it out, and the development price was about $12/roll, including the postage.  So, of course, until more recently, I shot very little of it.  Now that I can do E-6 at home with the Unicolor kit, my price of development of a roll is about $3.   As a result, I am more likely to shoot more E-6 in the coming months.  I have been shooting the Retrochrome 320 from the FPP store, and while I like it, it is expired Ektachrome of some sort.  So again, having a true ISO 100 slide film from Kodak will be greatly appreciated.

If you have not ever shot slide film in 35mm or 120, you might ask "why all the fuss?"  There is something quite magical about holding a "chrome" in your hand.  The bigger the format, the more outstanding the positive color image.  You do not need an intermediary process to see the image (i.e. a negative needs to be scanned  or printed to see the positive image.  With a color reversal film, it's all there right in front of you.

So, to Kodak, I say, bring it on!!

*Elite chrome was the consumer version of professional Ektachrome.  Under the Kodak Professional branding, we had Ektachrome 100G, 100VS, etc.  The all-purpose Elite chrome 100 was a good film, and the edge markings are EB100.   You can find out more about the various types of chrome films here.   

If you are interested in seeing a lot of Ektachrome shots online, visit the Flickr Ektachrome group. 

The mighty little Sears 35RF

I don't shoot all that much slide film these days. A decade ago, I was easily shooting 30-50 rolls a year. Now, it's down to less than 10, including the cross-processed stuff. It's pretty simple really, C-41 and b&w are cheaper, and most of my color photography is done digitally. However, the true test of a camera has always been how it handles (and how the photographer handles, for that matter) slide film -- as in how accurate is the exposure system? Slide film has a dynamic range not too different from digital sensors, and depending on the film, the latitude can be only a stop or less in the difference between a good and bad exposure. So, I was a little curious as to what I would get from the little Sears 35RF camera that i have had for a while. These small cameras have a sensor on the front of the lens assembly, so one can use filters and get a proper exposure. I have shot mostly b&w with it, and maybe a roll of color C-41. I put in a roll of Ektachrome 100(probably expired, at that)back in the summer and made a bunch of random shots at different places. Overall, I am pleased with the results, and a few examples are shown below. By the way, this camera was probably made by Chinon for Sears. It's very similar to the Konica C-35.


Echinaceas are among my favorite flowers. I have taken many a test shot in my front yard.

One of the boardwalks at Crosswinds Marsh in Wayne County.

A ton of people downtown at the Ann Arbor Rolling Sculpture Car Show

Last shot on the roll. I think I used the polarizing filter.

As you can see, the little camera did pretty well. It's no Leica, but if you find one, be assured that it's a keeper.

A Shot In The Dark

Ektachrome 400

To be honest, it was many shots fired in the dark. Last Wednesday night, Marc Akemann and I went on a little night-photography adventure in Ann Arbor. We shot mostly in the State Street area, concentrating on the exterior of the Univ. of Michigan Museum of Art, and around State and Liberty near the State Theater. Marc was shooting with his Bronica, and I of course, as usual, had several cameras that I was shooting with -- my Nikon N80, Ricoh R-1, aand my 35mm Holga. Tripods in hand, we walked around until it got dark enough for some artificial-light shots.
Mark with his Bronica. Ektachrome 64T.

One of our aims was to shoot with slide film and get it cross-processed in C-41 (color print film) chemistry. It's bad enough to shoot the variety of light sources at night with any slide film and get realistic colors due to the various color temperatures of neon, tungsten, halogen, and sodium vapor lights. Daylight-balanced slide film such as the Ekatchrome 400 I was using will give odd renditions in such conditions, but it was funny how the cross-processing actually looked pretty darn good. Same for the Ektachrome 64T (for tungsten lighting), though some of the images had a more pronounced greenish cast to them.

UMMA and people playing with the "swing" Ektaachrome 64T

Finally, I shot some Superia 100 color print film in the Ricoh R1 - a wide-angle P&S camera that is normally about 30mm, but goes to 24mm in Panorama mode. I shot some Kodak Gold 200 in the Holga 35BC, but haven't developed that film as yet.

Ricoh R1

The Ricoh was a pleasant surprise with accurate exposures and good color. Obviously having it on a sturdy tripod also helped. I'll be interested in seeing how the Holga 135BC shots came out.

You are probably wondering why in the hell I'd be shooting film and not digital for night scenes. Serendipity and fun. You see, digital is way to easy for this. I like the delay in gratification, and because each film has a different characteristic, the results were uncertain. Add in the cross-processing, and one gets a totally different color rendition, depending on the exposure and the film. In addition, I bought the film at 50 cents a roll, and developing was only a few bucks. Thank you, Huron Camera (in Dexter, MI), for doing C-41 cross-processing!