Paul Simon said it best.
At either 25 or 64 ASA, you do need a sunny day, but it does make better pictures.....and then you have to send your film to Kodak or one of their labs for processing. From Ft. Lauderdale it took about a week and cost about $4 for an unmounted, uncut roll developed. I never owned a slide projector. we made contact sheets and printed the good stuff.
C41 develop only was $1.50 and E6 was $2, bring the film in in the morning, pick it up early afternoon.
I have some Technidol if you need it, although the postal authorities I am sure would frown on sending it across the Atlantic.
I used Tech-Pan in a reversal process for high quality B&W slides. The definition was incredible. As a negative, never went beyond 100 ASA.
I have a vintage Nikon Coolscan III and a Win98 computer and it takes forever to clean, scan and colour correct 50 year old slides.
$110 seems like a deal for 250 slides.
Probably went to the Atlanta or Rochester lab. Those where the main east coast labs. There were some things Atlanta wouldn't do, but I think they did Kodachrome.
Sometime later Kodak farmed out the Kodachrome processing to independents, but that was near the end.
Thanks for the tip on Fotobridge. I am checking in to whether they are a good option to Canada.
Wow this thread is something. I admit you guys had me looking at what the current Nikon lineup looks like, and checking my newest lenses for backwards compatibility.
Doesn't sound like it was nearly as into it as you guys, I always used commercial labs and print film. I remember with my F75 you had to do the hack with double sided tape, aluminum foil, and electrical tape to shoot at a different ISO. IIRC I used to shoot XP1 400 at ISO 800 and Fujichrome 100 as ISO 64, but not really sure.
Wow this thread is something. I admit you guys had me looking at what the current Nikon lineup looks like, and checking my newest lenses for backwards compatibility.
Doesn't sound like it was nearly as into it as you guys, I always used commercial labs and print film. I remember with my F75 you had to do the hack with double sided tape, aluminum foil, and electrical tape to shoot at a different ISO. IIRC I used to shoot XP1 400 at ISO 800 and Fujichrome 100 as ISO 64, but not really sure.
Last edited:
It's nice that Nikon (and presumably others) have maintained compatibility between new cameras and old glass. It is also interesting to see how the market has moved lens design. When I was young a typical 35mm SLR came with a fixed focal length lens with a maximum aperture of f:2.8 or faster. Now typical "consumer" DSLRs come with a "kit" lens which is a zoom (mild wide angle to mild telephoto) with maximum aperture around f:3.5 or slower. Lens light gathering ability has been sacrificed for the "simplicity" of a zoom.
Best purchase for my "DX" (aka APSC) Nikon was the 35mm f:1.8 prime. It is less versatile than the 18-55mm that came with the camera, but it makes me think about the picture before I take it, and makes me move to get the framing I want? Plus of course it is much better in low light.
The second day that my wife and I were in Paris I was tired of lugging around a camera bag and a few lenses, and I wanted to kerp things light, so I mounted that kens and left everything else at the hotel. Some of the best pictures I took in Paris were from that day using that small fixed focal length lens.
PS: I am continually amazed by my ability to take bad pictures. I mean I looked through the lens, why didn't I notice the truck in front of the building I was looking at?
Best purchase for my "DX" (aka APSC) Nikon was the 35mm f:1.8 prime. It is less versatile than the 18-55mm that came with the camera, but it makes me think about the picture before I take it, and makes me move to get the framing I want? Plus of course it is much better in low light.
The second day that my wife and I were in Paris I was tired of lugging around a camera bag and a few lenses, and I wanted to kerp things light, so I mounted that kens and left everything else at the hotel. Some of the best pictures I took in Paris were from that day using that small fixed focal length lens.
PS: I am continually amazed by my ability to take bad pictures. I mean I looked through the lens, why didn't I notice the truck in front of the building I was looking at?
AI-S on any of the more "pro" level bodies I believe are good to go for aperture. I shoot Canon, so I might be wrong. And it really depends on what glass you have. Newer 24-70/2.8's are so good that it's really hard to justify anything unless you're going for a very unique rendering or have a seriously fast lens.
Yeah, this isn't my 1st rodeo, I have a few Nikon lenses, a hodgepodge since I don't have more than 1 of any lens series, and a couple of 3rd party lenses.
My main lens is a 28-105/3.5-5.6 AF-S DX that stays on my D300 90% of the time, and I throw on a 85/1.8 AF-D to take pics of the kids. All my lenses would technically work on my old FG with limited features in some cases, but of course the DX would take pictures with black corners.
I think I might pull out the old FG sometime soon. I used to get so pee'd off having to hunt down the proper and expensive 3V lithium cell, but I'll just throw in some cheap dollar store 1.5V cells.
My main lens is a 28-105/3.5-5.6 AF-S DX that stays on my D300 90% of the time, and I throw on a 85/1.8 AF-D to take pics of the kids. All my lenses would technically work on my old FG with limited features in some cases, but of course the DX would take pictures with black corners.
I think I might pull out the old FG sometime soon. I used to get so pee'd off having to hunt down the proper and expensive 3V lithium cell, but I'll just throw in some cheap dollar store 1.5V cells.
I think the newer full frame DSLR's will automatically detect a DX lens and switch to only using an aps-c size chunk of the sensor. Pretty sure my D750 does this, though I don't have any DX lenses to try it.
I only have three lenses. A tamron 28-200 XR that I bought with my F80, which is good provided I shoot at F8 (which limits it a lot
A nikor 20mm f2.8 which I also bought for the F80, and a nikor 50mm f1.4 which I bought with the D80.
I use the primes a lot, though I use the tamron for closeups. A nice 90mm macro is the next on the wish list
Tony.
I only have three lenses. A tamron 28-200 XR that I bought with my F80, which is good provided I shoot at F8 (which limits it a lot
A nikor 20mm f2.8 which I also bought for the F80, and a nikor 50mm f1.4 which I bought with the D80.
I use the primes a lot, though I use the tamron for closeups. A nice 90mm macro is the next on the wish list
Tony.
World War II in Kodachrome: Vivid color photos paint a moving picture of the 1940s American war effort | Daily Mail Online I hope our American friends can open this link as it shows quite how amazing kodachrome was when it first came out. And how good some of the photographers were!
I'm viewing on my laptop which has poor colour rendition (I'm colourblind and can tell it is bad!) so I can't comment. I was thinking I would have to have a look on my good monitor.
After this much time unless they have been stored very well (and even then) they would probably have had to have been digitally restored to some extent. I know my Dad spent a long time fixing up old ektachrome slides (and that's just from the 70's) that had faded and had a general red tinge.
Apart from not being particularly punchy colour wise (which may partially by my laptop) I thought that they were otherwise great quality.
Attached is what I would call punchy colour. Shot on Fuji Velvia 100F It's not super sharp, but it was hand held at 1/15th second (20mm lens).
Installation by Rebecca Gilmore "America 2006"
Scanned using my canoscan 4000 film scanner (one of the slow ones!! takes about 20 minutes to scan a frame at 4000dpi!)
Tony.
After this much time unless they have been stored very well (and even then) they would probably have had to have been digitally restored to some extent. I know my Dad spent a long time fixing up old ektachrome slides (and that's just from the 70's) that had faded and had a general red tinge.
Apart from not being particularly punchy colour wise (which may partially by my laptop) I thought that they were otherwise great quality.
Attached is what I would call punchy colour. Shot on Fuji Velvia 100F It's not super sharp, but it was hand held at 1/15th second (20mm lens).
Installation by Rebecca Gilmore "America 2006"
Scanned using my canoscan 4000 film scanner (one of the slow ones!! takes about 20 minutes to scan a frame at 4000dpi!)
Tony.
Attachments
All of this nostalgia reminds me why I gave up on film. Back in the 90s the quality of processing went down in UK ( negative) and it got to the point where I couldn't tell from the prints whether it was good film on my SLR or the free film in the wife's happy snappy. A pain when I had splashed out for a nice negative film ( I used to like Fuji Reala). But I still have my old canon and might one day start to play again.
Oh I agree my opinion is completely pointless on this one. I was just hoping that the lack of detail in peoples faces were from a bad print because my only reference to that far back is of pictures of my grandmother and of other B/W pictures from that era.
So now moving forward with the knowledge that this is as good as 1942 gets I'm very impressed.
Last edited:
Yes, I remember this well. Processing got so bad that you never wanted to use a photo or big box store, but had to use a photography supply store that sent things out to a decent lab. Near the end I managed to find out what lab the pro's were using and used that.
The other thing that drove me crazy was international travel. It was easy to get a hand check of film through security screening in the west, but I used to fly to and in China a bit to visit my wife, and they would insist the camera went through the x-ray. At some point you ask yourself what's the point of buying a $10-15 roll of film to have it ruined by security screening.
I have an old, really faded sepia print of my grandfather taken during the Boer War.
I scanned the photo on a 3 in one printer and opened up the digital image in the free programme, Irfanview, and used the unsharp mask and contrast feature.
The result was amazing, how the lost detail was discovered was miraculous, even a finger print from the developer appeared.
I downloaded a few WW1 images and got equally good results. Perhaps Photoshop would work even better?
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.