Film Processing Another Victim of the Pandemic

One year ago, life resembled all of the characteristics of a “normal” society.

One could still sit, or stand, along a railroad track with camera in hand to photograph a passing train.

For those of us who still insist upon using the legacy technology of a film-based camera system, all was good.

Travel to a location, scope out the scenery, wait for a train, expose film, return home, then visit the local camera store to process film. Wait one to three weeks to receive processed film, inspect film, and then file film.

That was how it was in January 2020. The film I used that month was processed and received in February with the usual immaculate results.

The world suddenly changed in March 2020 with school closings, business closings, toilet paper shortages, and anti-social distancing.

But through it all, the railroads were still running freight trains. The days of spring were upon us, and what better way to maintain sanity than by being along a railroad track with camera in hand.

Photography provided for limited travel and relaxation. However, between March and June, film processing became non-existent.

With the local camera store being in lockdown mode, I was forced to accumulate four exposed rolls of FujiChrome 120 ASA100 film.

The local camera store finally reopened and the four rolls were dropped off for E-6 processing on June 16.  

For several years, the local camera store has outsourced all slide film requiring E-6 processing to a major photo lab in Parsons, Kansas

The four processed uncut film strips along with four photo CDs were retrieved on July 2.

I returned home to inspect the results. My heart almost stopped beating.

The four strips were severely over-exposed. Was it caused from the fact that the film processed was 10 years past its expiration date?

Was there a malfunction in my 26-year old Bronica GS-1 medium format camera? “Nay,” I say.

Upon further inspection of the film strips, I concluded that the black frame masking between images did not have sufficient density.

The film had exhibited evidence of being under developed. The photo CDs were also burned with all images being reversed.

The film was from the same lot that I had previously shot in January, which had been flawless. 

Never before had I encountered such a problem with commercially processed film.

So, it was back to the local camera store to inquire about what might have happened.

After a few phone calls, it was confirmed, that with COVID-19 lockdowns in place, the Kansas lab was scrambling to find and maintain those people with the knowledge to process 120 roll film. I felt vindicated.

All of my film since them has been processed to pre-pandemic quality.

Unfortunately, I was left with what I considered four rolls of garbage.

Would I be able to recover any detail upon scanning the images?

Thanks to digital technology, I could. The image above shows the raw scan with no enhancements.

The next image is the same image with increases in the yellow and red channels, and reductions in midtone brightness and overall contrast. The results are quite acceptable.

The image made during the Forest City Division of the Railroad Enthusiasts trip to Bellevue, Ohio June 13, 2020.

The joys of still shooting film.

Article and Photographs by David Kachinko

Canon Sells Last Film Camera

Camera retailer Canon has sold its last film camera. That doesn’t mean you can no longer buy a Canon film camera, only that it won’t come from Canon.

The last Canon film camera was the EOS-1V, which Canon stopped making eight years ago. But it has taken this long to sell out its stock.

The EOS-1V is a professional grade single lens reflex camera and part of the fifth generation of professional SLR camera bodies.

If you have an EOS-1V, Canon said it will continue to offer repairs on it through Oct. 31, 2025, although that date might move up to 2020 if parts and inventory run out sooner.

Canon has been selling film cameras since the 1930s, starting with a device it called the Kwanon.

Other camera brands, including Nikon, continue to support film photography with various products and used Canon film cameras are still on the market.

Nikon continues to list two film cameras, the F6 and FM10.

Although reports surfaced in 2006 that Canon planned to cease making film cameras, it never acknowledged that to be the case. Instead, it quietly stopped making them.

The EOS-1V was introduced in 2000 and billed as the fastest moving mirror camera with its ability to shoot 10 frames per second.

An online report indicated that the second-hand market for the EOS-V1 shows them going for between $300 and $750, depending on the condition of the camera body.

However, some expect Canon’s announcement to boost those prices. New models of the EOS-1V retailed in the $2,000 range.

Forcing Film Shooters into the Digital World

Organizations have ways of forcing people to do something they might not wish to do otherwise.

It used to be that airlines issued paper tickets to passengers. They still do, but for a fee.

The reason why this changed is obvious. The airlines save money by shifting the cost of paper and printing onto their customers.

In theory customers get the “convenience” of being able to print their tickets at home. That saves them a trip to the airport or a travel agent.

To many people, printing your own tickets is no big deal. The cost of the paper and ink for printing airline tickets – technically called boarding passes – is minuscule.

Most people who travel by air already have computers and printers at home.

Some don’t even print their boarding passes. They show a code on their smart phone sent to them electronically. No paper is involved at any step of the process.

But not everyone who still makes photographic images on film has the equipment needed to digitize their work.

Those photographers might be out of luck if they wish to enter the 2017 Trains magazine photo contest.

Tucked into the rules is this change: “We will no longer be accepting submissions by mail.”

No explanation for that rule change was provided, but it likely wasn’t a financial move.

The photographer paid all costs associated with sending slides or printed images by mail.

More than likely this rule change was for the convenience of the staff. All entries can now be kept in one location and viewed in the same manner.

There is no more having to toggle between digital entries and slides and prints.

It also might save some staff time. Winning entries submitted as slides or prints no longer need to be digitized.

But what is convenient for the magazine staff is not so convenient for certain photographs. If they lack the equipment to digitize the images they wish to submit to the contest, they will have to buy the equipment or pay to have their images digitized.

Perhaps some have a friend who has a scanner who might be willing to do it for a beer.

The rule change also is likely a reflection of the reality that few entries are still being submitted the old fashioned way.

There remains a hard core of photographers who use film to make railroad images.

Some of them have scanning equipment to digitize their images, but most of the film guys I know do not have equipment to scan slides and negatives.

Most of them strike me as unwilling to learn how to do it. I can understand why.

Like cameras, film scanners come in all shapes, sizes and price points.

Some equipment is inexpensive, but the quality of the finished product might not be satisfactory.

B&H Photo offers a guide to scanning equipment at https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/buying-guide/film-scanners

If you know little to nothing about digital images, reading that guide might be bewildering. You soon learn you need to know about things that film photographers do not need to know unless they are in the publication business.

I can’t say what percentage of photographers has equipment capable of scanning film images into a digital format.

Most of the railroad images I’ve see posted online were made with a digital camera.

There are not as many pre-digital images in cyberspace as there could be. Aside from its cost, digitizing equipment takes time to learn to use.

Yet the day is coming when having scanning equipment will be a “must have” if you wish to share your pre-digital photographs with others.

Slide shows remain a staple of local railroad clubs, but some events, e.g., Summerail, no longer allow programs in which images are projected directly from film.

I have a sizable collection of slides and I do not foresee projecting them again with a slide projector.

Local railroad clubs are losing members and the number of opportunities to project slides the old fashioned way is dwindling even as slide film is making a modest comeback.

As I noted in a previous column, slide film has a future, but it is tied into the digital world, particularly if you want to share your images with a circle that extends beyond your closest friends who are willing to get together in a room for a slide showing.

In the Early 2000s Some Railroad Photographers Were Skeptical About Digital Photography

I recently ran across some writings about the pros and cons of digital versus film for railroad photography.

In each case, the author favored slide film. None of the authors were against the use of digital photography per se and all had experience with it.

But that was more than a decade ago. What would they think today?

Writing in Railway Photography (2003), Richard Jay Solomon said that for important (emphasis in original) subject matter he used a Leica film camera.

Writing in The Railroad Press magazine in 2004, Jaime F.M. Serensits favored slides because of their ease of storage and because he liked them.

Professional photograph Steve Smedley said he liked digital photography in his job as a newspaper photographer but favored slides for his railfan photography.

“Slides will be my medium for the next several years,” Smedley wrote in Railway Photography.

A common theme expressed by all three authors was the superior color quality of slide film.

Another theme was the fear that rapid advances in technology might mean that a photographer would not be able to “read” digital images some day. But slides are forever or at least the rest of your life.

That is a legitimate concern. At the time, most photographers stored digital images on CDs, which have been shown to have a relatively short shelf life.

In the early 2000s, USB devices, portable hard drives and storage on “the cloud” had yet to arrive or become widely available in the consumer market.

None of the authors from the early 2000s touched on a factor that has driven many photographers, myself included, into the digital world.

That issue was hinted at in the same issue of The Railroad Press in which the Serensits article appeared.

Several pages back was a feature piece on how to save money on slide film. At the time, slide professional film ranged between $5 per roll if purchased in bulk to $18 for an individual roll.

I remember a discussion I had with Marty Surdyk about slide film. He figured the cost of the film plus processing worked out to $1 per slide.

If you shot an average of one roll of film a week, that would cost $1,872 for the year. Of course not everyone shoots that much, but whatever your photography habits, the cost of film and processing aren’t cheap.

More than a decade since the works cited above were published, I wonder if those photographers are still using slide film. Does Solomon still rely on film for his most important images?

All three authors acknowledged that digital photography was likely to continue to improve. My guess is that they might still dabble in film, but their views of digital photography probably changed as digital technology evolved. They had little choice about that.

Kodak Marketing Executive Says Kodachrome Could be The Next Film to Make a Comeback

It almost sounds too good to be true, but there is hope that Kodak Alaris might bring back Kodachrome slide film.

Reports have surfaced on photography websites that Kodak is considering resurrecting what is, arguably, one of its most famous products.

In the wake of an announcement that Ektachrome would return to the market later this year, Kodak Chief Marketing Officer Steve Overman responded to questions about whether Kodachrome might be next.

“We get asked all the time by filmmakers and photographers alike, ‘are you gonna bring back some of these iconic film stocks like Kodachrome . . . , ” Overman said earlier this month during CES, a global consumer electronics and technology show. “I will say, we are investigating Kodachrome, looking at what it would take to bring that back . . . Ektachrome is a lot easier and faster to bring back to market . . . but people love Kodak’s heritage products and I feel, personally, that we have a responsibility to deliver on that love.”

Aside from Ektachrome, Kodak is also bringing back the Super 8 camera.

Some would argue quite strenuously that its rich colors made Kodachrome the best color film. Period.

But it was also a complex film to process and the cost of doing that was a major contributor to the film’s 2011 demise when the last lab in the country to process Kodachrome developed its last roll. Kodak had stopped manufacturing Kodachrome in 2009.

Aside from the fond memories of thousands — and  maybe millions — of photographers who used Kodachrome, there are some who still have rolls of Kodachrome film, some of it exposed but never processed, stashed away on shelves or in freezers.

If Kodachrome does make a comeback, look for a lot of film cameras to come out of the closet as the novelty factor kicks in.